A walk on the campo.

Hi. We are off to choir practice soon, but I thought I'd try to do a quick blog post first. i intended to do it last night but I got bogged down in something else on the computer. We have had a week of really lovely weather with lots of sunshine. It still gets chilly enough to put the fire on for an hour or two in the evenings, but during the day we have been sitting outside as much as we can. Chris even went into shorts for the afternoon on a couple of days. I had to sit in the shade so that I could do some knitting. Jonathan asked me to knit a jumper for Ella, that is wide red and black stripes, and very baggy! I want to get it done before it is too hot to knit, and I try to do at least one stripe a day. I am on the last piece which is the back - so the biggest one. I usually do that first but I was trying to see how far the yarn was going as I am combining three different patterns to get the shape she wants. Unfortunately I will have to go and get one more ball of the black just to do the neck ribbing, but I can always make a pair of gloves for dog walking next winter, or something.

Yesterday we actually had a day with no other commitments so I suggested we took the dogs for a good run, and we went over to the campo. Sadly we have to keep them on their leads most of the time, because throughout the winter months the local men are licensed to shoot rabbits and although they are mostly out at the weekends, you never know when it is safe. And from next month there is sometimes a 'warden' on patrol to make sure you stick to the pathways and keep dogs on leads because of the ground-nesting birds, which is perfectly reasonable, but I would love to give our dogs more chance to run free. Anyway it was very quiet over there yesterday. There were no workers on the new railway site, no other walkers, no gunfire, so we did let them off for a short time. Foxy was off like the wind but she comes back when we call, and she enjoyed herself so much. Miki is not as keen to run, but even she had a good root around and kept running up the banks to look for her friend. She doesn't like it if Foxy goes out of sight. Then we saw them both getting very excited so we walked over to see what they had found, and it was a tortoise! I called them off, and went to make sure it was alright. They had bowled it around a bit so I set it the right way up again, and left it where it was. They are protected here and there are heavy fines if you are found with one. He wasn't willing to come out of his shell for the camera, but I can't blame him. He had just been used as a ball by two boiterous dogs. He did eventually show me his nose and toes, so I had to be content with that. I was surprised to find one out of hibernation already. It was a nice warm morning but the nights are still chilly. Perhaps they don't hibernate over here, but I would thik that they do.

It was nice to know that the tortoises are still around over there. The land has been so disrupted by the works for the AVE (Auto Velocedad España, or high speed train). Over a year ago they started digging out a valley where the track will run, and there was a constant stream of lorries, transporting soil and rock to further down the track where it has been used to build up the banks etc. More recently we have had to drive down into this valley to cross it to the campo where we walk the dogs, and it was very wet and muddy last time we went. But yesterday they had opened one of the new bridges and we were able to cross on that. They have built these bridges all along the valley to maintain acess to all the remote fincas scattered around the campo. From the bridge I took a couple of photos, one looking to the right, towards Mojacar and the sea, and one to the left towards Sorbas and on to Almeria city. It is a huge piece of engineering, and though their method is quite different from in UK, with little bits going on all over the place, when it all comes together it is very impressive. We are enjoying watching it being done, and just hope we are still around to see it when it is finished.

Everyone out here keeps talking about the lack of rain this winter. We did have some heavy falls in early autumn, but we expect to have much more in January and February, and this year we have really only had a couple of wet nights and some light showers. So I shouldn't really have been surprised (though I was) when the men who look after the orange trees next door, came on Sunday and turned on the 'acequia water', which is agricultural water that comes down from the mountains and each house can pay a small fee to be allowed to turn it on to flood their land once a month I think it is. The valve is in our front yard so when we heard the dogs creating a racket out there, and went to investigate, the men were turning on the valve. The earliest I have seen them do this in other years is May, but they obviously felt the trees needed it. I took a photo, much to their amusement, because I love the way the early morning light was reflected off the water, broken up by all the fallen leaves. It made me think about all our potted plants, and when I checked on them, I found they were very dry so I had a watering session yesterday as well.

I don't know if anyone else is interested, but following my previous blog, my friend John told me that the spider who came to call, was a wolf spider. I had heard of these though I hadn't seen one before, and they are best known because the female carries her egg sack around attached to her abdomen, and when the spiderlings hatch, they climb on to her back and are carried around for a few weeks until they are ready to fend for themselves. I looked it up on the net, and this was described as 'ugly', horrifying', 'scarey' etc, but I think it is 'amazing', and lovely to find such an example of caring motherhood in a species that is generally disliked. I wish it had a been a female who came to us, as I would have loved to have seen this. However I also learned that although they are not agressive, these spiders do have a venomous bite, which in severe cases needs a shot of anti-venom at the hospital. So perhaps I should be a bit more careful when getting 'close-up and personal' to take photos of unknown bugs! You can see a photo of the female with her babies by clicking here.

Glorious grapefruit and other culinary delights.

You must have gathered from my recent posts that this is the season for citrus fruits. In fact, apart from the oranges I picked from our tree, and a net full of late mandarins, both of which are in the larder so we remember to eat them, my garage is littered with boxes and bags full of lemons, bitter oranges and sweet but sour 'eating' oranges. There is also a shopping bag full to the brim with bags of sugar, and boxes and drawers of bottles and lids. My next job is to match the last two up. Last year I had to stop making marmalade because I ran out of jars, so throughout this past year, disappointed customers have been giving me their jars so the same thing won't happen this year. Each supermarket jam out here comes in a different shaped jar, and I also get given olive jars, and ones from pickles and sauces. It doesn't work to store them with lids on, as they smell musty and flavour-tainted after a while, so now it is time to use them, I need to sort them all out.

A friend of our who lives just across the campo from our village, lives in a house with a row of fruit trees along one side. For a while he has urged us to come and pick some of his grapefruit, and this week he begged us to, as he says he has eaten one a day for the last two months and can't face any more! So today we went round there and had a picking session. Andy had picked the outer layer of fruit for his own use, but when I ducked under the low branches and looked up, there was still loads of fruit inside the tree. Chris climbed into the central fork and picked them and handed them down to me below. We brought home a big bag full and they smell gorgeous. Last year when Andy gave us some, Chris had told him that I liked them, but neither of them realised that I couldn't eat them as I was taking simvastain daily for a high cholesterol problem, and grapefruit is the one thing you shouldn't mix with statins. So I made those into grapefruit marmalade and it was quite popular. Now my cholesterol level is so much lower that the doctor has told me to just take one tablet a week, so I feel I can enjoy eating some of these grapefruit this year. But I will also make some into marmalade, and perhaps do a batch with ginger in it too. I know now that I will eventually sell as much marmalade as I can make; of all the home preserves, it seems to be the best for keeping; so at least this year I won't run out quite as early as I did last year.

Our church has recently started holding life/house groups each Wednesday afternoon, and our group has decided that we would like to share a meal together before we have a time of Bible study and praise, and to make it fair, we are going to a different member's house each week. This week it was my turn to host it. We have agreed to keep it simple so it doesn't become a competition to see who can put on the best spread. While it is a bit chilly we settled on soup, followed by cheese, meat etc. So I needed to make a pot of soup that was sufficient for a dozen people. The only soup I make from a recipe is a very nice fresh tomato soup. Other than that it is a case of 'see what's in the cupboard, chop it up small and cook it all together'! I did dig a tray of stewing beef out of the freezer, and as it was the day after market day, I had a good selection of fresh vegetables in. I diced all of these up and put them in the slow cooker over night. I recently bought myself a bigger slow cooker as I like to cook enough for several meals at one time, and my little one wasn't very adequate. The new one was perfect for my soup, and the next morning I tipped it all into my preserving pan and added a tin of baked beans and a jar of chick peas. And I am glad to say there was enough for everyone, and some left over to make a meal for Chris and I one day. I wasn't sure whether I could manage to seat twelve people round a table. Our dining room is quite small so we pushed all the arm chairs back to the walls in the sitting room, and brought in our garden table and the one from the kitchen, and it was fine. Amazingly I still have enough crockery and glasses as well, so it was quite easy. We had a lovely time of fellowship together, and now I can enjoy several weeks of lunches at friends houses, before it is my turn to do it again.

After our grapefruit picking sessions we went home and sat out on the porch for a while, and we had a rather unwelcome visitor. This spider was on the inside of our fly-free area, so the warm sun must have brought him out of the brickwork somewhere. Chris put it outside where it continued to sit on the mesh of the door. It is very unusual to see a spider this big in our garden. We get quite a lot of little grey 'jumping spiders'. They are tiny and they do literally jump rather than run. They can give you a bite that is far more irritating than any mosquito bite, and it can often turn into a very nasty sore. When I had a bad one the man at the farmacia gave me cortisone cream and that soon cleared it up. But I hadn't seen one like this before. Maybe the cats and dogs chase them away for us. On closer inspection I have to say he is quite a handsome creature with some pretty cool markings on his body, but I'll never be able to really say I like spiders. However I didn't want to hurt it, but I didn't want it near me either so I found a soft brush and persuaded it to go down to ground level, where, eventually, it scuttled away, so I hope it has found a new home far away from mine!