Last week, as I was regaling a neighbor about the comings and goings of the ground squirrel community living in our backyard rockpile, he said “Isn’t it amazing what you focus on in retirement?” To be clear, this is also a condition of the pandemic but touché, mi amigo.

At the risk of sounding like a small town periodical or a child’s cat newsletter, I’m going to focus this entry on a bunch of little happenings that hopefully do more to distract you than bore you.

this is why we can’t have nice things

On one of the hills to our east, someone decided to leave a fifth wheel RV through the summer amid a circle of withering palm trees. I’m not sure if the people who left it were new to the area, but if you want anything intact when you return, you have to button that shit up. A few nights ago at dusk, we saw a fire on the hillside and hiked up to check out the remains. It’s a shame and a waste of a perfectly good living space, but I know people were getting tired of seeing an RV perched in the middle of their mountain view…

¡mangos!

It’s the beginning of mango season here and mango trees are everywhere which means LOTS of windfall mangoes. I’ve been scanning under the trees and snagged these off the ground in the parking lot of our local coffee joint.

¡queso!

We’ve had workers in the house to do some concrete shelving and the owner of the construction company gave us some home-made cheese from his family ranch. It is made using the natural bacteria, lactic acid and rennet from the cow’s stomach to curdle and ferment the milk. I think it is delicious. Dry texture and salty with a notable funk to it. If you have ever had aged cotija, it is similar to that. He said many gringos don’t like it. I’m guessing it is because of the funk, but I’m a big fan of fermented funk, so bring it on!

walks

We’ve been continuing to take walks and hikes to get out of the house. Being in nature makes me feel so much more stable in a time when being human seems so precarious. Since it is getting consistently hotter here, we’ve been trying to get up earlier to beat the heat with moderate success. The first photo is of the early morning atmospheric perspective on the Sierras just before sunrise. The next two are a solo hike I took when we didn’t wake up early enough.