Back in the Spirit

As kids, my sibs and I never experienced trick or treating.  There were no costumes and knocking at neighbors’ gates for us.  (In any case my strict parents would never have allowed us out of the house in the first place.)

Unlike today, department stores did not outdo themselves with cobwebs and macabre display of frightful masks.  Radio and teevee stations went on with regular broadcasting and nary a mention of Halloween.  No biggie.

Of Trees and Memories

Aratiles or Manzanitas is a fast growing tree, 5 to 10 meters high, with spreading branches. Leaves are hairy, sticky, alternate, distichous, oblong-ovate to broadly oblong-lanceolate, 8 to 13 centimeters long, with toothed margins, pointed apex and inequilateral base, one side rounded and the other acute. Flowers are about 2 centimeters in diameter, white, extra-axillary, solitary or in pairs. Sepals are 5, green, reflexed, lanceolate, about 1 centimeter long. Petals are white, obovate, 1 centimeter long, deciduous and spreading. Fruit is a berry, rounded, about 1.5 centimeter in diameter, red on ripening, smooth, fleshy, sweet and many seeded.  It is a tree that thrives in poor soil, able to tolerate acidic and alkaline conditions and drought. Its seeds are dispersed by birds and fruit bats.

http://www.stuartxchange.com/Aratiles.html

The Aratiles Tree was the subject of my second postcard to my niece, N.  

The Best Medicine

It began with an itchy throat in the morning.  Good thing I brought some lozenges and the irksome bother was gone. Or so I thought. 

By the afternoon, my body felt heavy and my joints were painful.  Oh, Oh.  This was not good. Specially when I was away from home to accompany my mother with her medical check-ups in the States. An early night to catch some sleep should do the trick and by morning I would be as good as new. Or so I thought. I was up every hour because of a nagging cough.

I did not fare well the next day.  The itchy throat was back with a vengeance and gave me a cough that came at the most embarrassing times. Like in the middle of a conversation with my sister, M. 

Before I had my next coughing spell, M had emptied her medicine cabinet of its cold-cough-flu arsenal of quick fix.