I am woken early the next morning by sunshine streaming into my room. It is the start of a beautiful day. My hostess accompanies me to the outside bathroom (she's not entirely sure the dogs realise I'm a friend) and then shows me round her beautiful kitchen garden. There are herbs, tomato plants, fruit trees: lemons, oranges, pomegranates, figs. Avocados. Pumpkins. Fruit-bearing cactus plants. Spanish-Mexican words I don't recognise and can't remember. Plants and trees the like of which I haven't seen before. A lush, green kitchen garden looking out onto fields of sheep, the tiny communities that make up Magdalena Jaltepec, the hills of the Mixteca stretching into the beyond. I walk with her, smiling, enchanted, the dark stain of the pomegranate juice colouring my fingers, and my memory of this sweet, fresh morning.
Garden view
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