Those bloomin' almond trees!

With all the rain and wind we had in February, our almond trees in LaMancha are blooming much later this year than usual.  I am particularly fond of almond blossoms because they remind me of the apple blossoms of my native New England (which I haven't seen in more than 20 years!).  Our area of LaMancha is famous for making marzipan, and almond trees grow wild everywhere. 

    This quaint dirt road is on our way to school.

 Down by the reservoir

Up near the center of town

  When you get close enough, their scent is incredible.

Some are even pink enough to look like cherry trees. 

These ones are giving the olive trees a run for their money.

 Baby almond trees in my garden

Pruning roses and sage

Although I usually start pruning my roses when the almond trees bloom, this David Austin rose, Benjamin Britten, seemed to want to jump the gun. 




That's a scary thought, considering it was already 10 feet (3 meters) tall.  I have to laugh, because I just saw that the Austin webpage gives a height for this rosebush of only 4 ft (1.2 m).  Yes, that is just how good a gardener I am (ha, ha).    



 This is how much I took off.

Tah-dah!

My supervisor seemed to approve.

I have mentioned before that my favorite non-rose plant is sage, specifically Salvia officinalis.  It stays green all year, is drought-tolerant, has lovely blue-violet flowers in spring, and it's edible (Thanksgiving turkey stuffing wouldn't be the same without it).  What plant can top that?  If you live in my climate, you need sage.

It can, however, get quite big.  It also self-roots if the branches are in contact with the soil.  Last year, I planted daffodils near this sage plant...
         

...and now they're under it!

So, the sage got a good pruning, too, and much of it had already rooted,

so now I have new sage plants!

 Guess who else needs a good "pruning"!  

Whoooo me?

After lunch yesterday, I heard a bird screeching and screeching.  It just went on and on.  Because there are so many birds of prey in the area, many of which are territorial, I figured that either a hawk or an eagle had been injured in a fight.  Funny thing is, even our dog, Cookie, was listening and seemed to be concerned.  So, I grabbed my cell phone and camera and went for a walk around the neighborhood to see what the problem was.

Believe it or not, what I came across was this little guy, a mochuelo (Athene noctua), who of course stopped screaming his head off as soon as he saw me.  According to the English version of Wikipedia, this little owl is actually called... a Little Owl.  (Ha!  How's that for simplicity?!) 

Look!  I'm only 2 bricks tall!

It's hard to believe that such a tiny owl, which can't be more than 8 inches tall, could put up such a racket.

I see you...

All the bird activity definitely keeps Luna entertained, although she also has become more of a scaredy cat, but who could blame her?

Please don't put me outside all alone! 

San Antón

Every year on January 17th, here in La Mancha small villages continue to celebrate "El Día de San Antón" in honor of Saint Anthony the Abbot.  Apparently, San Antón was a hermit from Egypt who became one of the earliest monks.  He was said to love animals, and in La Mancha and in Madrid it is still popular to take pets and farm animals to church to be blessed (outside, of course!).

Here in my village, no blessings are offered in the local parish church, but on the eve of San Antón people light bonfires to later jump over the coals (which is done on San Juan in many other parts of Spain).

It's olive harvest time, and the thin branches that fall off the trees burn hot and fast.

 

  

My 13-year-old is already taller than his father...

  

Happy San Antón!

Bloom Day, January 2014

This Bloom Day, I am cheating and adding some photos of colorful foliage and hips, too (otherwise this would be a very short entry!).

Tiny red hips on La Sevillana

I love  Nandina domestica, but it really does not do well here.  The color is great, but it never grows.  I keep trying in different locations, but it is a definite no-go.

This strawberry variety came from my father-in-law's garden.  Love the red!

  

Why won't Blogger let me publish vertical photos?  It always turns them horizontally, like this photo of La Sevillana (and the first fly of the year - UGH!).  

And here's a horizontal Jude the Obscure

The almond trees are getting ready to bloom!  

And you know what that means: time to prune those rose bushes...

So long, 2013!

Yes, 2013 was quite a year for us.  It started off with my husband losing his job, and then I lost mine just 9 days afterwards.  That is enough to rock any family's boat, don't you think?  Long live the Spanish economic crisis.

By summer, my expensive-ish camera bit the dust (thus, no blog entries since then), and this fall has been full of doctor's visits and more recommendations for surgery, just one year after my last procedure (I'm still dodging that scalpel).  Oh, and let's not forget that O's car died.  And my computer is on the fritz.

So, 2014 can only get better, right?  Well, actually, it hasn't started off that bad.  O has a new job, we have a new car, and Santa and the Three Kings have brought me a new camera.  Whooo-hooo!

To say farewell, here are some photos of my garden from 2013.

The Generous Gardener

Crown Princess Margareta and Golden Celebration

Benjamin Britten

The President

 Salamanquesas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarentola_mauritanica

Winchester Cathedral

Crown Princess Margareta, honeysuckle, ivy, sage

Guirlande d'Amour

Looking forward to 2014!

 

Snake Charmer

Yes, I have donned yet another hat, or should we say turban?  The turban of a snake charmer...

O and I were taking Cookie the dog for a walk yesterday evening when we heard a neighbor's voice over a wall:

"Sir, could you please help us?"  She was standing on her front stoop with two small children, a girl and a boy.

O replied, "Sure, what's the problem?"

"There's a snake on our front patio," she pointed.

And, knowing my husband, I chimed in, "In that case, I can help you."  (O later told my mother on the phone that he couldn't possibly have helped since he was holding onto the dog's leash - yeah right.)

Apparently, they had been throwing rocks at a 3-foot-long snake all afternoon to try to get it to leave their sun-warmed stonework garden.  There was a metal rod in the yard, and by scraping it along the patio, I was able to coax it out of the stone wall, down the walkway and out the gate.  Her 6-year-old then presented me with a sharp-edged slate rock "in case I wanted to kill it".  Now, why on Earth would I want to do a thing like that?  I just stomped along behind it, and it slithered across the road and into the fields.  But, I got the feeling that this new neighbor of mine thought I should have finished 'em off.

It is now snake season in LaMancha.  Temps got up into the 90's this past weekend, so they're out in full force.  I sensed one moving in the grass while I was watering the garden on Saturday, on Sunday I saw another in the road and now on Monday the visitor at the neighbor's.  And it's not even summer yet.

In Spanish, these snakes are known as culebras bastardas (yes, you know that translation, don't you?), or Malpolon monspessulanus.  They are venomous, although their venom is only strong enough to stun small animals, and they can get big, real big, like 7-to-8-feet-long big.  And the big ones are tough as nails.  I've driven over a 4" thick one with my minivan (at night - didn't see him until I was on top of him) with all four wheels, then stopped the car and saw him slither away through my rear-view mirror.  I have even seen them jump in the air and climb the side of a brick house.  Nevertheless, what I have never seen them do is attack when unprovoked.  They literally just go off in the other direction.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the first time I came across a baby bastarda in my garden I didn't grab my cell phone with my left hand and a shovel in my right hand, crying to my husband on the phone that there was a baby snake in the yard and all I could think of was, "Where's Momma?!!"   For days, I was leery of letting my kids play out in the yard, believing that she was lurking in some corner, waiting to strike like the cobra from Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.  And, one day, I did come up against her.  And I didn't have my cell phone.  And I didn't have a shovel in my hand.  Actually, I didn't even have a breath in my body because I just went numb.  So, what did BIG Momma bastarda do?  She just went the other way (actually, she jumped a good 18 inches into the air, but she did go backwards).

I don't know if it is common in Spain or LaMancha in general, but in my village the norm is that if you find a snake, you kill it.  Bastardas eat baby rabbits, hares and partridges, and I'm sure they wouldn't turn their nose up at the offerings from a chicken coop.  So, it is understandable that in a farming and small-game hunting community, these snakes are the devil incarnate.  But, I myself don't keep chickens, nor do I hunt, and if there are a few less tick-bearing, rose-bush-eating, vegetable-garden-digging rabbits and partridges in my yard, then hooray!  Oh, and can we talk field mice, like the ones nesting in my basement and garage, nibbling on my hand-made almond soap to oblivion?  Less would definitely be more.  And let's not forget the bastardas natural predators: my friends, the eagles who live outside my living room window.

So, I may just be acting like "that crazy American woman" once again by not killing my neighbor's snake.  I could care less about what she may think.  What I do know is that yesterday I taught a little 6-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy how to get a snake out of their yard by dragging a metal rod on the ground and by stomping like an elephant.  And they didn't have to kill it.

Just call me the snake charmer.  Or the subversive teacher.  (oh no! another hat!)