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Saturday April 12th 2008

A lovely morning. Lots of fluffy clouds floating across the valley but plenty of blue patches and warm sunshine.
We drive out into the campo to walk Rosie and Domingo our donkeys.
The recent rains mean the campo seems clean and green. The Sweet Chestnut trees without leaves since late November, have burst into life, and in only two days have changed the look of the campo. This hillside was quite bare in places, last time we sat here and looked across.
Algatocín is a lovely pueblo which we always enjoy walking around. Here's a glimpse though an oak tree.
A plant we've featured a few times recently. The Early Flowering Orchid. This one was about as perfect a specimen as you could wish for.
You don't see too many Hawthorn trees in the campo. They are beautiful trees. I remember them from the North East of England. Stressed by harsh weather and growing in exposed conditions they become gnarled 'bonsai' style trees silhouetted on moorland hillsides.


Domingo is a plant munching machine.
The campo is a little damp to sit in, also forest ants are quite big and are now active again. Jane doesn't like 'bugs' and chooses to sit on the concrete path that makes this 1:4 hill passable. (Key F11 toggles browser toolbars)
Lots of new growth everywhere, but this dead twig from one of last years plants is still standing and caught my eye.
Rosie's looking good, she'll soon lose her winter coat and always looks very patchy in May. But our pretty little burra was shining today in the Andalucian sunshine.

It's nearly two years now since we bought her.
We were celebrating buying Domingo in the Venta de San Juan, and lubricated by mucha cerveza ... Rosie's owner hearing we wanted to buy a donkey brought little Rosie to the bar. Rosie pushed her head under Jane's arm and wouldn't leave her side. Fatal, we guessed the next day when we came to collect her and we saw Pedro in the bar with a large brandy and a fat cigar that we'd paid a little too much for her. As it turned out Domingo who was a young two year old stallion followed Rosie everywhere which meant we could control the donkeys as Rosie was friendly and manageable. So no regrets, she's a pleasure to look after.
More Orchids appear daily.

Such a diversity of small wild flowers and it's just starting. Andalucía in the spring ... fantastic,  we are so lucky to live here!
A lot of the paper-like Rock Rose flowers looked a little rough after the rains. We thought that we'd seen the best of them. However they were flowering in greater numbers today and they looked wonderful. Each flower had at least one bug feeding on the nectar.
Plants can grow anywhere. I was amazed to see this fairly thick stemmed plant growing on the top of a boulder. It must force open a crack as it develops. It has small, brown, bell shaped flowers, not very pretty, but special, because of the places in which it manages to grow.
Jane often sees and photographs faces in trees, today it was my turn. This is my favourite, a scary 'Halloween' face in the wood.
The Genal Valley looks beautiful all year but April to June it is simply stunning.
I don't usually take any interest in our neighbour's washing ... honest.

A Clothes Horse ...


In the evening I watched Portsmouth v Newcastle United. We should have won but it was a 0-0 draw. David James saved a Michael Owen goal, purely by chance, with the top of his head.

Later we started to watch 'Cloverfield'. Set in New York, it's filmed on a hand held camera. It's 'The Blair Witch Project' meets 'Indepenence Day' with a touch of 'War of the Worlds'. A much hyped film, that some will love and most will hate. The first fifteen minutes is boring character building stuff. Then disaster strikes and it's crazy camera work time and as the only camera used is a hand cam, there's lots of spinning shots of pavements and crazy zooming in and out. We'll finish it tomorrow, my brains numb and my eyes hurt.