Well, I thought it must be white laburnum, but I’ve had a look around the web, and find that it’s probably a black locust tree, which is also known as false acacia.
Category: spain
bird watching
The cat in the picture – who, I’ve just realised, was one year old yesterday – would, presumably prefer to have dinner on the wing than settle for the supermarket kibble we bought last time.
The birds actually built the nest directly above the cat-house where the kittens were being nursed last spring, which seemed a little fool-hardy. I assume it’s the same pair that have come back this year and refurbished it.
If I thought long enough, I expect I’d come up with a pun on ‘swallow’, but since the blog has been a bit neglected recently, maybe I’ll leave that up to the readers.
religious education?
On a recent visit to Madrid I spotted the Colegio Arzobispal in the photo:
I think it’s fairly obvious that not all the children who study there grow up to be archbishops, but do you have to have studied there to be considered a candidate for such a post?
It clearly is a school, not a theological college, as the yellow traffic sign in the wider view shows:
Continue reading “religious education?”
spring lamb
Wriggle-tailed and spindle-legged:
a lop-eared lamb, too young to know
which hoof moves next. He chooses
all four simultaneously.
(notes for a poem)
‘when daffodils begin to peer’
In fact, of course, the daffodils in the garden were ‘beginning to peer’ a month ago, but the ones in the photo are a far more local species.
From looking around the web, I think I’ve identified them as narcissus pallidulus.
What isn’t clear from the photo is just how tiny they are.
The fact that they are as pale as their name suggests, and that the petals tend to curl right back rather than standing out, star-like, around the ‘trumpet’ – which is probably no bigger than a single lily-of-the-valley bell – means it’s quite easy to miss them altogether, although they are now about in their thousands in the pine woods along the river bank.
don't confuse the narrator 