Looking good!

I said the saga of our street was now at an end, but I have a 'post script' to add today. When they first dug up the road we were rather sad to see the trees taken away from each corner. Of course they were very close to the houses and their roots would interfer with the new underground pipes, but they looked nice and offered some welcome shade when we walked up to the village in the summer. Anyway, the new parking lane of the road was left with small tubes sprouting out at intervals so we were hopeful of getting something there soon. This week large bowl shaped planters arrived and the tubes were duly fed up through them. Then today a van came down and filled each one with earth, and the next time we looked we found we had a small tree surrounded by shrubs outside our gate. This planter is just to the left of us, and there is another one a short way down to the right. Others are spaced all the way up the road. I don't know what sort of trees they are, but they are less likely to get vandalised here than they would at home, so hopefully they will continue to give us pleasure throughout the year. (As you can see, we have yet another showery day. The weather is very poor for April, though it is quite warm most of the time, but we just want to see the sun again!)

And while on the subject of plants 'looking good', here are a couple of pictures of our windowboxes, taken today. They are all thriving and the flowers add a lovely burst of colour. Several people have commented on them. The Spanish have a lot of window boxes, perhaps because the gardens are small in the village, or are used for growing fruit and vegetables, rather than being ornamental. So they tend to have lots of pots on their window ledges and patios.

I had a small success today when I won a bid on the Spanish ebay site. I use a lot of coloured ink in my printer when I copy photographs for scrapbooks, so this week I had to buy a new cartridge, and I was not impressed by the price of it. The web site I always used, to buy them in UK, would or could not post overseas, so Ben suggested I looked on ebay. But I found that the suppliers on there were also only sending within UK. So then I tried looking at the Spanish ebay. I had to register again, but I managed to understand the instructions, and then to search for what I wanted. Eventually I found a pack of one colour and one black cartridge for my printer, and over the last couple of days I have been bidding on them. Someone was bidding against me but at lunch time today, when the auction finished we both bid in the last second and I bid one euro more than them and won! The two of them cost me just less than I paid for the colour one in the shop this week, so I am well set up for ink now. I have just received an e-mail message from the seller which I was able to understand. It is occasions like that which make the weekly Spanish lessons worth while, because I realise I really am learning the language better. I just wish I had more opportunities to use it.

Consider the lilies of the field ...

This is such a beautiful time of year in Spain. I know it is in many other places as well, but out here, for so much of the year everywhere is parched and brown, so we really appreciate all the lovely colours we can see right now. Every day when we walk on the campo, we see new flowers opening. They are mostly pink/purple or yellow. many are quite familiar but there are also lots I haven't seen before. I just love all the grasses and plantains with their wide variety of flower heads, from tiny catkin-like tassels, to the loose ferny ones. Many of the flowers grow very close to the ground and are almost insignificant, but on closer inspection they are exquisite. I have been taking photos of them to make a little book. (Jean will smile when she reads that. She knows how many 'little books' I have waiting to be made!!). But in the meantime I have made a set of three collages. One of yellow and white flowers, one of pinks and purples with a couple of reds, and one of grasses and plantains. I have printed them out in A4 size to stick on my wall, so when we are baking in the summer I can look at them and remember what we have to look forward to again next year. So although some of the individual elements will be too small for you to see clearly, I am putting them on here, but I will also make a gallery folder of the separate pictures and if you like flowers, do take a look. These humble 'weeds' are worthy rivals for any cultivated flower if you take a closer look. And now I am adding two pictures of my little cats. When I was at the garden centre buying things for our window boxes, I picked up a few large saucers for our patio tubs. A couple are still out in the front garden and today Paco found a much better use for them. Doesn't he look comfortable? There is a beautiful pink pelagonium in the tub behind him, and some matching osteospermens that I took from my friend Sylvia's garden before she moves house this weekend. The second picture is of Destino. I thought she would be a real house cat but she loves to be outside. The other week she got caught in the garden when we had a heavy downpour, and although I opened the door and called her in straight away, she looked like a little drowned rat. She is all fluff with very little inside it, and she objects to being dried with a towel so she just had to stay one very soggy moggy!