pueblo – Page 4 – don't confuse the narrator

friends & strangers

This photo of one of the stranger bugs I have had the pleasure of meeting up close is dedicated to the friends – and strangers – who read this blog and occasionally leave comments or click the ‘like’ button.

on holiday

Last weekend, the pueblo celebrated the fiestas of the local Virgin. (Not the summer fiestas – those were at the end of August, and not the fiestas for the patron saint – that’s next month: the Spanish are always happy to take days off work and chase bulls through the streets or set off firecrackers.)

Fireworks, Arenas de San Pedro, fiestas de la Virgen del Pilar

Now there is a lull in the village as the locals close up their shops to go and join the vendimia or take advantage of end-of-season offers to take their own holidays.
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melon yellow

I commented last week that there are very few flowers in the garden at the moment, but it would be wrong to say there were none at all.

Each morning, I dutifully water the patch of ornamental gourds I planted in an attempt to cover some of the chain link fence between us and the neighbours. And each day I am amazed at the size and colour of the flowers.

Since the flowers first appeared a couple of weeks ago, a line of poetry has been running through my head. I’m not sure whether it’s triggered by the suspicion that gourds and melons must be related, by the brightness of the flowers or by the similarity of the sounds of gourd and gaudy…
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summer wilderness

It’s July, the temperatures are in the forties (or the hundreds, if you prefer), school’s out, and the village population has doubled in the last week as families return to their rural properties for the summer months.
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neighbours and other animals

When we first moved here, the village seemed to be home to a surfeit of satanic and unholy animals. Some belonged to neighbours, some were just wild visitors.

Emilio had a half a dozen goats and his lad used to herd them across the unfenced part of our land to graze in the olive grove: an enduring image is that of a sleek black goat poised, watchful, on a rock or stone wall, or up on two legs under an olive tree. ( I am glad to say that despite the ease with which he assumed this vertical posture, I never heard the horned one speak.)
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