spain – Page 89 – don't confuse the narrator

of branches and bunches

Half the people in the village this morning were carrying bunches of flowers and greenery, which reminds me that it must be Domingo de Ramos – Palm Sunday.

Ramo and rama are words I can never get straight. Checking today in the on-line Diccionario de la Real Academia, I see that rama is a branch emerging from the tunk or main stem of a plant. Ramo, on the other hand, is a secondary level branch that emerges from the rama madre, or, perhaps, a rama cortada del árbol. If branches change sex the further they get from the trunk or once they’ve been cut from the tree, no wonder I’m confused.
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lilac-time

Swallowtail butterfly on lilac — but oh, so far from London!

At this time of year, my garden in the Gredos foothills makes me long for Kew, though I doubt very much that they have the same butterflies there.

(The Barrel Organ by Alfred Noyes can be read here.)

inconceivable

I’ve always found typical Spanish names a problem: who’d call their daughter Dolores, for example, given that it means “pains”? Or Sagrario, which, according to your reading, may be “shrine” or “monstrance”. Or Purificación or Inmaculada Concepción?

Of course these are traditional Catholic names which are also reflected in dedications of churches and church schools around the country.
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cherry white

Having mislaid the cable to connect my camera to the computer I find my blogging is somewhat hampered: it’s easy enough to find things to write about, but I don’t want to make the page all text.

Fortunately, the cherry trees were in blossom last year, the year before and the year before that, so I’ve cheated and found an old photo to illustrate this Housman poem which pretty much describes the countryside round here at the moment. Mind you, I don’t really expect to have another 50 years to “look at things in bloom”, so I’d better get a move on and go out and look at them this spring.
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early spring

After a few grey days in Madrid, I returned to the village to find that the almond trees had blossomed and the apricots are well on their way.

Two days ago, the sky really was that blue and it was too hot to have lunch on a terraza. Today dawned grey and damp and feels rather more like I’d expect for St David’s. I hope that honey bee has a nice warm hive to keep out of the wet.