The spring season in Mexico means that the leaves fall from the trees. The rainy season has arrived, and that will bring new leaves, but the fallen ones are one more item in the daily struggle to keep nature at a more comfortable distance. Life in the tropics really seems to be that constant battle of nature vs. humans: fighting back the dust and mud that threaten to overwhelm the house, keeping the streams of house ants at bay, preventing mold from consuming clothes and curtains, and trying to keep out the mosquitos, cockroaches, weird big things with wings, scorpions, and small biting/stinging/smelling things.
But the leaves: every day the neighbours are out raking leaves on the street. They rake big piles and every evening the air is heavy with smoke as they burn them. (I am stupefied that they generally burn them at the base of the mango trees. It seems like a good way to burn the trees down, but perhaps there is a reason behind what appears to be insanity.)
Anyhow, in my know-it-all way, I've been quite critical of the daily leaf burnings. I don't particularly like the smoke, but really, what amazing compost material that is going up in smoke!!
Determined to work on improving our soil quality at the property, I have been raking and preparing for compost making.
However, I have now lost count of the DAYS I have spent raking. The property is bigger than I originally thought. Like with the mangoes, the leaves threaten to overwhelm. There is no way to compost all of them!
(we burned some)
Sigh. Yet another moment of eating-my-words, hypocritical, having my principles smacked in the face of reality.
As I pointed out to Debbi later that week, parenting is really just the same. Nothing like having a live kid in front of you to challenge all your assumptions, and to trample your pre-arranged ideas and principles with the hard face of reality.
And fortunately, the rainy season has started so my principles are now too wet to burn.
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