Winter Green

I left El Salvador early in May and it was still summer, aka the dry season, though a few scatterings of rain had fallen.  Everything was dry and looked dry: dry brown grass on the sides of the roads, trees with few leaves or none (though many trees here are green year-round), bare and burned patches that would become milpas of corn and beans or hectares of sugar cane.  Dry, hot, smoky...April is most everyone's unfavorite month here.

I returned in June and it's winter - invierno - which means the rainy season here.  All the roadsides are bursting with thick green grasses and the horses and cattle are staked out to take advantage of the free salad.  Most, like this white horse I met along the road to Suchitoto, have ribs showing from the scant provender of summer, but soon they'll fatten up.

As always, the rain falls mostly in the late afternoons and evenings, so the mornings are available for drying clothes, walking, enjoying the coolness that follows a rainstorm.  When it rains the heavens open and a temporary river roars down my street (which is why our house is about 4 feet above street level), waterfalls gush from the stairs to our upstairs deck, all the plants rejoice and all the humans head for shelter.  Everything, everything gets soggy - even crackers supposedly completely wrapped in plastic.  Often, out here in the country, the lights go out, as they did the other night, for 3-4 hours and there you are, enjoying the rain by candlelight.  It's a wonderful time, the font of life here, the green winter.

- Susan