Asparagus!

We headed out with high hopes - and here's me picking our first asparagus of the season

However...

This was the sum total of our asparagus picking session. The warm weather and lack of rain has caused a dearth of asparagus this year. It has been very warm and it is also very dry. The countryside looks brown still, and when I go cycling, the bottoms of my trousers are grey with dust. Last year it was dry in spring, I remember as we commented how lucky we were when we were having hte building work done. However it had rained a lot the previous autumn, which it didn't do last year. Oh yes, the sunflowers won the first prize for costume at Carnival, robots second and fire extinguishers third.

Rolland

We hopefully have a new little cat coming to live with us next weekend. He's nearly blind, with one eye. They think he can sense light and dark with his eye, but not see with it. His other eye, I believe, was removed when he was a kitten. He is about the same age as Pirata, so hopefully they will get on well.

I think a rat is sharing the chicken's food. Since we no longer have Fibs, who used to treat the back yard as her domain (and she treated the chicken house as her palace), the rats are getting a free run. We may consider a barn cat - but we still need to think about that a bit more.

First Asparagus of 2012

feb_19, a photo by ian_pullen on Flickr.

We took a bit of a speculative walk around one of the nearby olive groves, with Bob and Bentley, to see if the asparagus season has started.

We found this piece and one other full size spear and...well that was it.

We'll have another look next week, though the dry weather probably won't make for a great crop this year.

Carnival!

Yesterday was Carnival. Despite our planning, we didn't go in costume. But we WILL next year. A lot of people dress up, a 'dressing up box' appears to be a standard feature in most homes.

 These robots are my class, Javi, Javier, Maria, Paula and Carlos. They won a prize last year for their costumes and had high hopes for this year - we left before prizes were announced so I don't know if they retained their crown!

 They had strong competition from the fire extinguishers. The tall flower in the background is also one of my class. Two of the other flowers are too.

 This is Fran, another one of my class. He comes with Amanda, below. He is the 'proper little boy' who upset the girls when we were drawing princesses and they had to take it in turns to say what to draw next - dress, curly hair, tiara etc. And then when it was Fran's go he said 'moustache' and I faced a mutiny!

 This is Olga, she is Javier's sister and another of my class. Fally was wearing a costume made from bubble wrap and packing tape.

 Tony was a ghost buster - there were a few ghost busters around.

 This is Lucia, she is one of the very little ones, who went from crying a lot to being annoying during the summer. She comes with Aitana who I didn't get a photo of.

 Amanda is the girl on the right. She comes now to classes with Fran.

 Pirates was the costume of choice from adults. There were a lot of pirates!

Palms

I use comparing traditions as a good way for the older students to practice speaking and listening. We've just started Easter and I have been aware that when I tell them about tradition of palm crosses at Palm Sunday they look pretty unimpressed - I think this is why...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pics

This was our cycle ride yesterday, this hills behind me are the Sierra de Bienvenida (the same hills that are in our blog header pic), we were going towards Llerena. It was a nice cycle ride and a track we hadn't taken before.

 The pups looking accusingly at us after we'd finished trimming them - as the weather turned cold.

 Tinkterbelle is in the bottom of this pile.

This is Bob and Sam snuggled up to Wilbs

Rosie still has a crush on Sam. Here she is looking at him adoringly, while he in return, is steadfastly ignoring her.

Changes

We have seen a number of changes since we've been here. The swimming pool, sports hall, padel courts, starter homes, street lighting etc. There is generally one big project a year and this year's big project looks like being a tantoria. This is a sort of funeral parlour, however it is run by the council. This is the first time that there has been any facilities here which is why people are buried so quickly. Although this new building will only hold one person, it does signify quite a change. Needless to say, this hasn't be universally welcomed, with it being seen as quite a major change in tradition. Again, this is a village run building project with people from the village doing the work.

It is still cold, but with lovely sunny days. The cold depends on the wind, with a biting wind coming down from the north, but when it changes in direction it suddenly turns warm. I'm wearing socks when I cycle at the moment, which is my indicator of whether it is cold.

We've bought some paint to give our living room a bit of a clean. We're going to paint the wall with the stove red and tidy the rest up with white paint. We had much too much choice with paint colours, had we just had the choice of one or two colours the choice would have been easy, however there were so many shades and hues, we were quite befuddled. Our choice was narrowed down eventually to red, blue, aubergine and a yellowy ocre colour. We went for red as we have red in the light.

We went for a cycle ride yesterday and I was keeping my eyes open for asparagus - it will only be another week or two before the season starts, however it has been so dry I wonder if that will mean that it is not such a good year...

Cold!

It has been very cold the last couple of days. It was the first time that the temperature has gone under freezing this winter and I think that this will have put pay to my pot plants which have been flowering in much better form than they did in the summer. There has also been a very cold wind, which is what has made it feel so cold, as once the sun comes out things warm up relatively quickly. Happlily I think that today is the last of the very cold weather.

I went out for a cycle ride on Friday duly wrapped and layered. It was quite bracing, but I enjoyed it. I've been lucky that since I've had my new bike it has only rained once or twice (but when it did, it was the rain that washed the road away - so quite major rain!). I got waterlogged then, as I wore much too many layers and none of them were waterproof. But since then the weather has been perfect.

Rosie is turning increasingly into a cartoon dog. Her job in life is to be a pointer. If she has been trained properly then she would go out with a hunter and point in the direction of things to shoot, or things that have been shot. She would do this by going rigid and pointing her body at what every it is. This is a trait that she exhibits, even though we haven't encouraged it. Last week there was a mouse in the garage and she spent several hours rigidly pointing for us to see. 
Part of the deal, however, is that she is supposed to get some sort of reaction from us. She has recently noticed the pigeons next door and, having spent a few hours pointing and getting no reaction, she has started standing on her back legs, jumping up and down and apparently pointing with her front leg at the pigeons. We could not make her any more cartoon like if we tried. She just needs a speech bubble coming out of her mouth saying 'they are over here...'.