November - 2017

Auriel Roe

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MAJESTIC ROCKS, PART 2, BUT THEY ARE ETERNAL AND THE PARTS AS INFINITE AS THE GRANITE

Nov 28, 2017
1 min

MAJESTIC ROCKS, PART 2, BUT THEY ARE ETERNAL AND THE PARTS AS INFINITE AS THE GRANITE

I've always thought this rock looks like a child's drawing of mummy. The teacher might caption it on their behalf, 'Mummy sitting on the grass'. These were taken at my favourite time of year, spring. The rabbit-ear lavender and other wild flowers pop up and the bees go from bloom to bloom. That white flower has a dot of yellow or red on the petal and a strangely sticky leaf. The smell of this plant really deserves to be bottled and sold. The tree behind mummy is the jun

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Majestic Rocks

Nov 25, 2017
1 min

Majestic Rocks

Because the Spanish aren't particularly into hiking, you barely encounter another person when out and about around our house. We actually see it as an extended garden landscaped by nature, and apologies for how corny that sounds. Boulders like collapsing giant petrified loaves of sliced bread or exaggerated Christmas Island heads and all inter dispersed among pine forests and wild flowers. We bought the house before realising what an amazing landscape it was set within. A

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Recalling Emile

Nov 22, 2017
1 min

Recalling Emile

Just came across this photo of Emile who is still thriving at the time of writing. He came to us first as an adolescent cat about 15 years ago, appearing at the patio windows of our house in Germany, his ghost-white face staring in. He was skittish at first, semi-tame, but became demonstrative with the appearance of food. In fact, so keen was he on eating that his meow rather sounded like he was saying "A meal!" hence the name he soon was given, "Emile". When we left Germa

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The Evolution of Shabby Chic

Nov 15, 2017
1 min

The Evolution of Shabby Chic

We bought our Spanish house a couple of years before the worldwide economic crash and, when we were first shown around the place, the estate agent scoffed "You'll probably want to pull up that floor". Not at all, we replied, we liked the patchwork of tiles in the conservatory, and they're still there, 12 years later. Of course, the notion of shabby chic was yet to evolve, so these tiles were ahead of their time, or more likely an harkening back to a time when people had not

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Nov 12, 2017
1 min

The past is another country, they do things differently there...

One of my all-time favourite quotations from literature (The Go-Between by LP Hartley). Most of the contents of my house in Madrid, where nowadays I'm generally based, consist of things from elsewhere or from the past. For some reason, elsewhere and the past have always been alluring to me... an Egyptian stone lamp on a Turkish table, an old printing case, tins decorated with two-colour simple but effective adverts. I first went abroad when I was about 13, to a French chat

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Good Rubbish

Nov 10, 2017
1 min

Good Rubbish

For a time in the 90s when the children were small, we favoured black and white or sometimes sepia effect photographs, which now makes that period in our lives seem longer ago still. When I was ruthlessly decluttering last week - see earlier blog entry - it suddenly seemed much easier to do because my recollection of the children playing with most of the toys in the storeroom has dwindled, as if their fingerprints have gradually rubbed off the hundreds of little chachkas and

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The Joy of Fish

Nov 8, 2017
1 min

The Joy of Fish

When you buy 4 cheap goldfish about the size of those won at a fair, then plop them into your pond and, within a year, they become the length and width of your forearm, then you will experience the Joy of Fish. And when you stare into the pond and a myriad OTHER fish come into view, black fingerlings flecked with bronze, and you wonder where they have come from, only to discover they have sprung from the loins of your goldfish, then a new level of the Joy of Fish is attained

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The Old Mill

Nov 6, 2017
1 min

The Old Mill

In the vicinity of our house is one of my favourite ruins - the old mill. During the Spanish civil war, buildings concerned with food production were often targeted by the fascists, hence the mill's ruinous state and our house, which was once a farmhouse and was rebuilt from a pile of stones about 30 years ago. Dotted all around our serene countryside are remnants of trenches, look-outs and forts. If one were to dig down, then those people who fought here would be found. Th

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Decluttering

Nov 4, 2017
2 min

Decluttering

You have to be ruthless when you tackle a store room which everyone - mainly myself - has been using as a place to deposit the miscellaneous over the past ten years... "I have no idea where to put this so I'll pop it upstairs in the store room". The responsibility of finding a purpose is put on hold, which is a predicament many of us find ourselves in life in general. I went through this store room over the last two days and today I'm sore all over because it became like a

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Slices of Quince

Nov 3, 2017
2 min

Slices of Quince

Growing quite rampant in the Madrid area are quince trees. I had no idea what these were when I first arrived here and for some years afterwards - to me they looked like giant yellow apples covered in an unwelcoming fuzz. I appreciated the tree for itself, however, which never needed watering - always a good aspect of this sunny garden - and a hardy white flower with dense, fleshy petals for most of the spring. The numerous fruit swelled and dropped causing many rogue tree

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Succinct Succulents

Nov 2, 2017
1 min

Succinct Succulents

Continuing on from yesterday, a little note on succulents which are a godsend for our Madrid garden - barely any watering (none okay too) in summer and these little leafy rosette creatures pop out babies quite regularly so you can snip their umbilical cords and put them all around the garden. A strangely beautiful stalk-like flower will appear for a couple of weeks a year. You'll find them suddenly growing out of walls and I've got some growing on a bit of broken pot. Perf

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An Influx of Flax

Nov 1, 2017
1 min

An Influx of Flax

The garden is glowing with flax! 1st November, Day of the Dead, with these waxy bone-coloured blooms... In the acres we have here, we only grow plants that need no watering. For our first couple of years, we had pomegranate and apple trees and spent an hour per day lugging water around in summer. We learnt our lesson and now only have what is self sufficient here... grapes, juniper, Holmes oak, etc. The garden is glowing with flax! 1st November, Day of the Dead, with thes

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