Where you once lived, September probably marked the start of high school football season, apple picking and cider making, the last weekend at the summer cabin, canning the end-of-the-garden relish or raking up huge piles of colorful fall leaves. 

The babies are gone. Over the weekend I heard the pair of hummingbird hatchlings chirping in the walnut-sized nest their mother suspended in the immense avocado tree in my patio.

Have you noticed? Clusters of lirio (water hyacinth) are floating from east to west out in the middle of Lake Chapala and I couldn’t be more thrilled. 

Yes, I absolutely am delighted at the appearance of the water plant that has several times spread to epic proportions covering portions of the lake.  

I was flipping through emails and blog posts when a headline caught my eye. I clicked back a page and read again the title of the NPR piece by Alan Gelb. “5 Good Reasons to Write Your Own Obituary: The case for taking hold of your life story.” 

What is the good of complaining about how things are if you don’t have anyone who can say, “Well now  … if you think that is bad, you should have seen the way it was when I got here in 1978.” 

Maybe it’s just my age or my mood, but it seems like there’s a new fad every week and each one seems less likely than the one before it … well until there started to be this new wave of talk about water. No question, water’s been around a while, but it’s not been the same here, not like it was in Iowa where if you let it “run a little” it was cold enough to make my teeth hurt and it tasted so good. Water’s just not the same when it doesn’t run icy cold from the faucet.