Ditch Day

Today was water day. The day when I get acequia water. As always this summer, being at the end of the ditch I got very little. All I can do is stare balefully at the people up the ditch who hog the water, but no-one wants a water war so nothing is done. The old major domo (water master) spoke no English, but he kept everyone in line. The water master we now have is very timid. He probably feels it isn't worth the trouble to stir things up when he only gets paid 7,000 a year.
Today a visitor arrived in the ditch water. A crawdad that had survived a journey from the river (more like a creek), through the diversion and numerous gates to end up stranded on my lawn. I have him in a bucket and tomorrow I will return him to the river. He is a most interesting creature. Every time I look in his bucket he comes over to stare up at me and reach his antennae to my fingers. He also uses his back legs to tuck his tail under his body and sit on it rather like a lady in a thirties movie smoothing her skirt over her bottom before she sits down. Yes yes you think I'm anthropomorphizing again, just like with the bird. Well I THINK NOT! I am just wondering at the commonalities in the process of living. At some point this wonder disappears. There are mosquito larvae performing acrobatics in the water with the crawdad, and their struggle for life is of little interest to me. But as a child I bred and observed mosquitoes in my bedroom. I had a row of jam jars full of water by my bed, and I soon learned part of their life cycle. Their bites didn't bother me. I guess I'm more jaded than I was!

Late summer

This patch of earth is leaning gradually away from the sun's killer rays. Perhaps it is just a subconscious awareness of the shortening of the daylight hours that makes me think that, but the nights seem to cool a little earlier now.

It is also the time of the chile harvest. The grocery store has big gunny sacks that look like the first woven fiber created by man full of chiles and labeled (the labels also look like the first paper created by man) either mild, medium or hot in either green, blue or red marker. People buy their sacks and wait patiently in line to get the chiles roasted at the rotary roaster set up in the parking lot. The chiles are roasted until their skins char, then they are taken home and put in freezer bags.

The chiles that grow around here are claimed to be the finest. Chile epicures also know that hot medium or mild is a highly subjective designation assigned by the grower. I've been told that Barkers of Hatch chiles are actually either hot, extremely hot or assburning hot.

Heat is only part of the story. The green chiles grown here have a beautiful flavor to go with the heat. Strangely, to me they are a comfort food, adding a reassuring zest to any dish in which they appear. Even apple pie.

The local McDonalds will put green chiles in hamburgers on request, and that is good.