Right at the start of this Blog, I said that it was about a
place, where hardly anything ever happened, and that’s as true today, as it was
when I wrote it. That’s perhaps why I haven’t been as prolific about writing
about the place as I’d hoped to be.
However, something has happened this week, and I’ve got the
‘fotos’ to prove it.
It all started with the trundling of a JCB down the camino! Its’
hopper was filled with well rotted goat manure, and it was headed towards Andre’s
huerta (vegetable garden); but not before Heth had bravely stood there to halt
it, so that she could shovel out some, to feed our roses.
Next day I took the dogs for their afternoon walk, down the same
camino. We went past the huerta, where Andre and Isobel had been joined by
Antonia and Antonio for some 'team' potato planting.
Their mattocks were being skilfully wheeled to start the creation of the
ridges that the emerging potato shoots needed, and the furrows, that would
collect the water, from the balsa, to swell
the tubers.
We went on by the balsa (a water tank fed by natural spring)
and up into the closest almond grove. The almond blossom has all but
disappeared now, but the emerging spring flora in the alpine meadow more than
compensates.
Once there; I just sat on a rock in the spring sunshine, to
peruse the valley below and watch the activity in the potato field. Everything
was coming together according to experience and craft, learned and passed down
over centuries.
Meanwhile, the dogs did their usual things.
Holly raced up the mountain to chase rabbits, real and
imagined, returning wild eyed and breathless.
Millie just mooched around, fascinated by the lizards
starting to emerge from hibernation, that scurried between the clumps of
esparto grass.
And all the while, down below, probably the most perfect little potato
patch in the world was emerging.
