Dog Walk

Along the ridge path, down through the trees catching glimpses of the village, until the whole of one side of it opens up in front of me at the end. Down the last steep bit, turn left and all the way back along the bottom lane.

p.s. I think Jasper's in every shot, if a bit small.

50 minutes fast pace.

L'Aldea, Deltebre, Sant Jordi.

A day out today, and a welcome change. We went to a car boot sale (in aid of abandoned dogs, of which there are millions in Spain) down near to the coast between L'Aldea and Camarles, having been invited to go by a couple who attend the catalan class. As we travelled there the scenery changed from our usual and familiar mountains to flatter terrain near the coast. The car boot sale turned out to be very small, with mostly household items for sale (which we don't want) and plenty of electrical appliances (which we can't run)... so I bought a book and gave them a donation as well.

We thought we'd have a look at the Delta d'Ebre area as we've never been there and found it so different, with acres and acres of rice paddy fields stretching almost as far as we could see. Such a flat landscape... we're just not used to it!

Time for lunch and, having brought our lunch with us, we headed for Sant Jordi d'Alfama where there's an old castle which is in the process of restoration. The surrounding area is also being restored - the car parking area will look amazing when it's finished - and it looked as though building work was underway in the surrounding urbanizations too. So maybe the building trade is beginning to recover a little.

We had a walk along the coastline and spotted these hardy souls going for a scuba dive, although the water can't be very warm. I would have liked to take a more close-up photo, but hadn't the nerve to do it!

When we got home we discovered that a neighbour had left us a couple of tons of firewood on our car park, so we must find him tomorrow and see how much he wants for it.

Hidden Valley

Just before lunch I went off for a walk with Jasper, with the sun still shining, which was lucky because by mid-afternoon the mist/cloud was with us and everything was damp. The photo below shows our house on the top of the hill with pine trees on either side. Just about where I stopped to take this photo I noticed a track branching off into a clump of trees, so I thought we'd follow it. It didn't appear to be very well-used, and wound down and round for quite a way until the trees opened out into a valley that I hadn't really noticed before.

The track was quite narrow, and now and again views opened up through the trees.

Then the dog and I reached a flat area where the terraces widened out a bit. It had been ploughed fairly recently... well, sometime this year... but what a job, driving down there with a tractor! I didn't fancy going any further down as I'd only have to come up again, so looked around to see if there was a way up without having to retrace my steps...

There was a way up, but it was steep and a bit awkward in places... not for the dog, but for me as I'd got my old suede boots on which have very little grip!

Along the way back up I discovered this double cabana. I've never seen one like this. Our house is behind the trees on the left of the photo.

We ended up reaching the track more or less directly below our house, but next time I'll wear better shoes and go further along the terraces before coming up.

We've Got a Cauli!

Isn't it beautiful? This is the first cauliflower we've grown succesfully and it's about 4 inches across at the moment and growing quite fast. I'm keeping a careful watch on it and if the head shows any signs of splitting and separating we're going to EAT IT!

At last all of the broad bean seeds have germinated, and the mangetout peas are doing well too. They should stop growing very soon as the weather gets colder, and will make good sturdy plants for the spring.

These are the last of the parsnips, peculiar shapes and all! I have put some more seeds in, but they're tiny at the moment. I thought I'd got most of the stones out of all the vegetable beds but, by the look of those roots, I haven't!

The House in the Village

I thought I'd let you know what's happened to date. A letter has been sent, by the Notary I think, to the lady in Madrid asking her to go to a Notary and sign away her right to sleep in the village house. Apparently she is of sound mind but just very old and frail, so now we wait to see what happens.

To Blip Or Not To Blip

That is the question, but I don't know what the answer is. As you may have realised, I post a daily photo to the Blipfoto website (see the widget in the side column) and have been doing so for almost a year now, only missing six days along the way. For some time now I've been wanting to stop blipping (but at the same time I want to get to a years worth), but my brother's blip today was very thought-provoking because he was questionning whether he wanted to carry on as well.

The website is a great concept, where you post one photo per day, which has to be taken on that day, and you comment on others photographs and receive comments on your own. There's a fair mix of casual ohotographers like myself and those who are semi-professional and very serious about it all. You can include a diary entry for the photo if you wish, and there is no doubt that you will receive more comments if you do... it's just a nice, friendly site. BUT it's soooooooo time-consuming and I just don't feel that I can do it any more, and I'm sure that I don't do so much writing on here as I used to because I don't want to write things twice!

So, very shortly, I will probably stop.

Yesterday

In spite of our minds being in turmoil about the village house, we had quite a productive day yesterday.

I located a small dustbin that was originally bought for compost (but which was too small) and fastened it securely to the fencepost so that it won't blow away, so that we can put all the bags of recycling rubbish into it. We had just been leaving the bags by the gate, weighted down with stones against the wind, until we remembered to put them into the car for disposal but, as occasionally happens, the other night a dog or fox ripped the glass bag to bits trying to get at the remains of the mayonnaise and the mango chutney - no wonder Jasper was barking! So now I hope that this system is dog, fox and wind proof!

Steve and I collected another load of pebbles from the beach the other day... no it wasn't hot enough for a day on the beach but we had to go in that direction to see the lawyer... so I got them all sorted out into different colours ready to do a bit more to the mosaic facing the car park.

I shall be glad when it's finished now, because the sunshine and the sky are taking forever!

We also moved six fruit trees (apples and pears) from the bottom of our field up onto the "fruit terrace" as we call it to be with the other trees. I think we could be wasting our time - and money - planting fruit trees. We bought them a year ago, they haven't grown at all and I think we're very lucky that they're still alive! But we thought we'd move them to a very slightly more sheltered area and nearer the water supply... although there is nowhere that is very sheltered from the wind. No wonder that the neighbouring farmer told us that apples would be no good here, but I suppose it's just that we're english and we like apple trees.

I Spoke Too Soon

I spoke too soon... there is a problem with our house purchase after all we were told today, which may or may not be solveable. There is apparently a member of the family who still has a 'right to sleep' in the house, even though she is very old, not in good physical or mental health and lives in Madrid. Our solicitor is going to see if he can find out more, but until then we are not signing on the dotted line.

Anyway, tomorrow is Friday The Thirteenth.

We're Nearly There

We're nearly the owners of the house in the village, and about time too. House purchases are usually much quicker in Spain than in the UK, but that's not been the case here as it's about three months since we made our offer to purchase.

Following our difficulties in actually getting the vendor to speak to our lawyer, it appears that all is as it should be and we go to the Notary on Friday to complete the transaction. The vendor only really wanted to communicate through our friend in the village, which lead to some confusion at one stage, but eventually I suppose he realised that we wanted to deal with the legal profession and he would have to play ball if he wanted to sell the house.

I can't imagine that anything will go wrong before Friday, but fingers crossed!

And lastly... for Jasper lovers everywhere!

Harvest Monday

You certainly don't get greens like mine in the supermarket! The cauliflowers and brussels are rather holey at the moment, even though I squash caterpillars on a daily basis... although it might help if I remembered to take my glasses when I garden!

A couple of the cabbages are showing signs of going to seed, at least I think that's why the heads are starting to split, and so I picked a couple of them (both quite small) and made a batch of coleslaw.

The lettuces are going to seed too because, even though I've given a few away, I can't eat enough of it myself and Steve's not so keen now that the hot weather's finished.

There are still plenty of beetroot in the ground, but I'm not sure how much more they'll continue to grow now that it's colder. The patch of rather sorry looking beetroot plants on the right are some that were very over-crowded, so my sister and I replanted to see if they'd grow bigger given more space. At the moment they're still recovering from the trauma!

Carrots are another crop that I really should have thinned at the seedling stage and didn't, so they're quite small, apart from the odd one or two. A few have a little grub living in them that you don't discover until you're about to cook them. Yuk!

However, the new sowing of carrot seeds are coming through now, so I will thin them if necessary, although I tried to be sparing with the seed.

The swiss chard is a star crop, it just keeps coming and coming and should do so all winter. It's got a very earthy taste, but we like it!

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne at http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/ so why not go there and see what other folks' are harvesting.

This morning we could see some snow on mountains that I don't remember seeing before, away to the southwest... maybe Teruel way? I probably only noticed them because the snow was making them more visible, but then the cloud came down lower and that was the last I saw of them! The photo is of the east, so don't go trying to see snow in it!

500 Spring Onions Later

Yesterday, in horrible cold, windy and drizzly weather, I managed to finish planting the spring onions. And before you say "but there aren't 500 there!", these are the few that I didn't manage to get done before! This year I followed advice and put all the plugs to soak to help me separate them for planting... notice the heavy, rubber container as a plastic bucket would have blown away!

Job done, hurrah!

Sorry, I'm All Behind.

I mean I'm behind with reading your blogs and commenting, but I'll try and catch up soon!

Today didn't help at all. On Wednesday we went to the poly-tunnels down in the valley in Mora and bought 100 spring onion plants (only 3 euros), but I didn't have time to plant them yesterday and so was desperate to do it today before they began deteriorating. I got up early enough, but by the time I'd had two cups of tea to revive myself, fed the dog, made the porridge, ate mine and left Steve's ready for him when he got up, it was not far off ten o'clock.

I went down to the field and got cracking, planting them fairly close together (because they're just NOT going to grow huge) and then, halfway through I took Jasper for his walk. Then I managed to get some more onions in before half eleven... which was time to stop, so the others I'll have to do tomorrow. The thing is, that you buy 100 onions, but they're in clumps and so in reality there are about 500.

I had to stop because we needed to call into the village before going to friends for lunch... the reason for the lunch being that Steve had been asked to help fix their water pump, which was completely seized up!

Our friends have a lovely garden (and an even lovelier vegetable patch) and we came away with quite a few baby cacti that were surplus to requrements. So that's another job for tomorrow! There are a couple more photos of the plants here http://photos-jamjaragain.blogspot.com/

Mizzle

Last night's sunset. Click on the picture to see some of the dreaded windmills!

A grey day, with intermittant drizzle... if it's going to rain I wish it would do it properly! Sorry about Jasper having vegetation in front of his eye, I didn't notice until just now.

Four Dogs Four

Luckily the weather was fine and sunny this afternoon when our friends called with their three dogs, so it was good for Jasper to have doggy company to realise that yes, he is a dog! He sometimes doesn't see another dog for a couple of weeks and so I begin to wonder.

I said that it was fine and sunny, but the extremely blustery winds that we had yesterday are still with us and, after braving the sun terrace for a half a cup of tea, we decided to move around the back of the house for shelter. It was still windy, but not quite as bad because with four adults and four dogs it would have been a bit of a squash in the house - it's only tiny you know!

Harvest Monday

Not much of a crop, as the summer stuff has more less finished and most of the winter things are not yet producing!

This was Friday's cleaning up of the chillis and peppers, with another few that I picked yesterday, and the plants have now been pulled up. There were a few more on the plants, but they're not going to ripen with the cooler weather and the high winds that we have now.

Then there are the crops that I forgot to photograph before we ate them! These are the remains of four very peculiarly shaped parsnips and half a dozen very small beetroots... but they all tasted very good, which is the main thing.

I don't think I'm going down to the vegetable plot today as I'd probably be blown away. The wind was strong when I walked the dog before lunch and it's increased quite a bit by the sound of it, and the temperature's only 13 deg C, so it's only risen 3 degrees since this morning. Not good!

With thanks to Daphne at http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/