Laundry day
Spring blossoms scent the air;
the kitchen smells
of Marseilles soap and ironing.
April is not only the cruelest month, it’s also National Poetry Month. (Though I suppose that may depend on what nationality you are.)
Continue reading “april”
Well, Google tells me that it’s the first day of spring today, although to be honest, the sky is more wintry than I’ve seen it in weeks, if not months. So the photos aren’t from today – and they aren’t all from my garden – although they were all taken during the last week:
When I said yesterday that the forecast for the night was ‘sunny’, I should perhaps have added that that was the forecast for today, too.
And for tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, as far as the predictions go, though not, I hope, until the last syllable of recorded time.
The brimstone butterflies would be a better illustration of the hellish weather, but they won’t stay still long enough to be photographed. Instead here’s a peacock butterfly who couldn’t find any green to settle on. 
I don’t think there will be any daffodils in bloom for St David’s day tomorrow, but the apricot trees have suddenly burst into blossom. Of course, it’s far too early for them, but since we’ve had nothing but sunshine for weeks now, it’s hardly surprising that everything’s confused.
The river is as low as it usually is in summer and even when we get a frost, it seems to thaw to dryness and leaves the earth scorched rather than moist.
The locals have a theory about the drought: they say it’s because 2012 is bisiesto – a leap year.
I’m really not sure about the logic there, but who am I to come between el pueblo and their folclore? (Yes, that really is a Spanish word and it means exactly what you’d expect it to if you substitute a ‘k’ for the ‘c’.)
Personally, I was hoping bisiesto meant I’d get twice as many siestas as usual this year.
As is probably apparent from other posts on the blog, I tend to notice birds. I don’t actually like them very much, but I notice them and they crop up in my writing all the time.
This week I had to go to Ávila, a city that boasts more storks than any other place I’ve ever visited. Every church tower has a nest or two, and everywhere you go the great pterodactyl-like silhouettes wheel slowly overhead.
Here in the village we seldom get cigüeñas, although we have a pair of garzas that are nesting somewhere along the river. I find it odd how easy it is to tell a heron in flight from a stork. There’s the distinctive curve of the neck and something about the heron’s feet that always makes me think of ballet shoes.
Yesterday, though, my attention was caught by storks and a crane silhouetted against the sky. (The pun works rather better in English than in Spanish, where the construction crane is grúa and the bird is grulla.)
don't confuse the narrator 