Nice Socks

Frost and Storks

We had the first frost on the roof this morning. The weather is very clear during the day, but this has meant the temperature has dropped a lot at night. It has been very mild.

The weather is perfect for cycling, in fact, I think this is my favorite time of year for cycling. It is nice that I can go any time, whereas during the hight of summer, there is actually just a relatively short bit of time in the early morning or evening because of the heat and in the autumn it is still hot during the day, but gets dark early so it's even more limited. Yesterday I did a round trip between here, Usagre and Bienvenida, I wore Ian's florescent jacket as there is a lot of hunting going on at the moment, and I didn't want to be mistaken for a wild animal. I am enjoying my new bike a lot, it's fun to ride and a lot more comfortable than my old one. I definitely made the right choice.

Apparently it is also perfect asparagus weather. The front page of the local newspaper featured a man from Monestario with a big armful of asparagus - two months early. I've kept an eye open, but not seen any yet. It did remind me that I wanted to make an asparagus bag for my bike.

We went to Merida today to do our Christmas shopping, which was basically a wine shop as we are trying to buy what we can in the village. We did need to stock up, however, on some nice wine for the festive season. We did make sure that the posh red wine we bought for Christmas day was local. We wanted to try something different so we picked one with an understated label, thinking that the money would go to the wine and not the packaging. On the way, we saw a flock of stocks circling. I tried to count them and there must have been over 100. They were all looping round in a clockwise direction, it was quite impressive.

Last week of classes this week before I break for a couple of weeks. I think we'll be having manualidades here on Saturday - crafts - as they all seem quite keen. That will be the usual mix of glitter, glue and over excited youngsters. Oh joy...

What a difference!

Here's Rosie now, doing one of her favorite things, which is making herself wet and muddy, compared to exactly a year ago when she first arrived.

2 Drips

Here is Anne, Rosie's sister winning a prize at a dog show in Galicia. It was for a category called 'gorilones' which isn't a word I know, however Galician is spoken in Galicia, so it could be a Galician word.

They say that Rosie and Anne are 'two drips', which is the same as saying that they are as alike as two peas. Two drips, however, is so much more appropriate...

Tiny Egg

Our chickens are very weird. They steadfastly choose to ignore the lovely snuggly bed they have, opting to huddle under it, rather than go up into it. I even tried putting the food up their. We then had to resort to picking them up and popping them in. However they just pecked at their food and then running down the ramp. They look so miserable huddled under the bedroom - however, as they say, you can take a chicken to the coop but you can't make him roost.

One of the chickens laid the tiniest of eggs. Here it is, compared to their normal eggs - which are small anyway - and compared to a euro / pound coin.

Bees Knees

There is a bee farm not far from us - we were interested to see that the hives are made from metal. I would have thought this made a rather nice little oven in the summer - but apparently the bees don't mind.

Happy Holidays!

The holiday season has begun. There are two holidays this week, tomorrow which is Constitution Day and Thursday which is Day of the Immaculate conception. There's then Christmas Day, which is a Sunday this year so Saturday and Monday will be normal working days as people aren't given a day in lieu if a holiday falls at the weekend, then New Year's Day, and then the Three Kings.

Some new decorations have been going up today - some rather splendid fairy light bell things, and not the paint sprayed footballs that were here when we first arrived. We went to Pepes at lunch time and enjoyed tapas of potato and roast pepper, while listening to someone at the bar whistling Jingle Bells with a Pasadoble beat. It was nice to have tapas that didn't look like some nasty remnants from an unusual part of an animal.

I am sure that the happy mood is no doubt due in part to the lovely weather. Huge turquoise skies and a bright winter sun. The fields are turning green again too. One of the nice things about living here is that we can go for a walk at 4.30 and the sun is still put until gone six. Just a shame I have classes most nights!

One of the saddest things about living here is that our cats keep disappearing. Tibs disappeared a couple of weeks ago. She is our last jumping cat, as the others are Pirata who would love to jump but can't see, Babbity Bumble who is too small, Miss Moppet who is too pretty to do anything so ungainly, and Schnukems who is, er, a little too chubby. We'd already agreed that we wouldn't get any more cats that can jump so we won't worry about them going out of the yard.