Chips and tears!

Normally, the Barranco is just so, so tranquil!

Sometimes, you can hear a distant chainsaw lopping almonds or olives. Sometimes, for an hour or so, the mattock gives way to the rotavator. Sometimes the local dogs get excited, over something only they can see, smell or imagine!  Young Christians’ afternoon visit to his ‘abuela’ (grandma), on his small cylinder motorbike; also interrupt the silence for a short while. Normally though, the only sounds, if any, are bird song or the soft tinkle of goat bells!

This morning was different though! Heavy machinery!  A  JCB with large mechanical bucket and ‘bulldozer’, was busy in the field below our Casa, cutting away the sloping bank to create more of a terrace and a much larger field in the process. What could be going on?

During the afternoon, Caterina came past our casa with her dog Tina. I asked her what was going on in the field below. She told me that Juan and Juanna were making a new olive grove. Sure enough, Juanna was busy with her mattock in the field above making sure the acequia was clear for the water necessary, for the olives. Unlike almonds, which can survive very arid conditions, the olive trees need a good soaking, a couple of time a year.

Catti asked me if I wanted some potatoes. They were too heavy for her to carry up from her casa, but if I wanted some, I should come to fetch them. Next morning I went down to her house.  Tina was dozing on a mat outside. I called for Catti and she shouted me in. A wood fire was prepared but she wouldn’t light it till much later. A bowl of shelled almonds were next to the fire – ready for toasting –yum!

She went to fetch me a big sack of potatos. Then she went off again and came back with a litre bottle of her recently pressed olive oil – very green and not very clear – but very delicious! Then she reached up to a shelf and produced an old small foto of her daughter (looking like a young bride) outside the local chapel at her ‘First Communion’. She asked if I could use my computer to copy and enlarge it, because in May she was going to Barcelona for the ‘First Communion’ of her granddaughter, and wanted to be able to give one as a little present!

A couple of days later she called around. This time with a bag of oranges from her tree!  I had the fotos ready for her, but as usual she liked to see the other fotos, I had scanned for her on other occasions.

….and then the tears came, as they always did, when she saw the old foto of her guapo Ramon, who died eleven years ago now.