The Not So Secret Garden

Tonight I sat behind my house in the twilight and sipped a drink while I watched the fireflies blinking and the bat swooping. This is one of my favorite ways to spend a summer evening. If I were a poet, I´d write a sonnet about my garden, which is pretty much the best part of my house. And when I say garden, I mean that in both the American sense (flowers and vegetables) but also the English sense (green space surrounding the house).

I wanted to sell my house in the fall specifically so that I could enjoy the garden for another season. I am even trying to space out my trips so that I can weed and plant and water in between being gone each month. It took me almost a week after my Galapagos trip to get everything back under control after being away for nine days.

Already, I am harvesting zucchini and peas and lots of flowers. And I keep encouraging the little tomatoes to grow, grow, grow.  Since I am not  freezing anything for later, I have also had lots to share, and fresh grown produce makes a lot of people happy, it turns out. 

I know I won´t have any place to grow anything at all in Madrid, at least at the beginning. But if I find I really need to be able to play around in the dirt, I comfort myself that I can move. It may take some time to decide where I want to settle down.

Animals, Up Close: The Galapagos

The big trip for June, and really for all of 2022, was the Galapagos. My parents and I took a tour, really a small cruise, this past week. This destination must be on everyone's bucket list, because whenever I mentioned it, people would get far more excited than when I framed it as a trip to Ecuador. 

I could summarize the trip in a few words: amazing animals, continuous lack of sleep, and then massive illness. So probably not a trip I'll be recommending for others, although I don't regret going.

What's this? It's a blue footed boobie. All the birds, sea lions, and iguanas were completely unfazed by humans. Because there are no mammal predators on the islands, they pretty much ignore people. Birds build nests in the middle of the path, and it's your job to make sure you don't step on then or their eggs. That's also why your small group is always carefully shepherded by a park ranger every minute of the day.

A demonstration of how close you can get.

My father, happy before the dreadful illness began. (That's called foreshadowing.)

Albatrosses, the largest birds on the islands. They court by closing y beaks together, like fencers.

Marine iguanas exist only on the Galapagos. They lie in great heaps that look like there has been a momentous reptile battle.

I refused to buy special trekking clothes so I wore my vintage clothes.

Halfway through the trip we realized there was something going around the ship. Over half of the passengers and crew got sick with what was probably a Norovirus. It was pretty unpleasant, and my mother ended up going to the hospital to get fluids. (Both my parents are on the road to recovery, thank you for asking.) I have not gotten sick yet, but I won't really feel safe until I've been home for a few days.

Separate from illness, it just wasn't really clear to us why so many people dream of this trip. It was cool to see animals up close, but to do so you travel in small, uncomfortable boats for a week or two. I have also realized that I value travel more when I accomplish something- learning about Stoicism and practicing my Spanish recently felt really good. For this cruise, you just spend a great deal of money for people to shepherd you around and show you where to point your cameras. 

So, if this is your dream, don't let me stop you. But I'm really looking forward to being back in my own bed in a couple of days, and I don't see any guided tours or cruises in my near future.