Tiny Gems

It pays to get close to the ground. Some of the smallest plants are beauties. The pimpernels have such vivid colouring, but on this occasion, the close-up was more of a balls-up, and when I get a better shot, I shall replace this one. The shot of the red version was even worse...Edited to show a much better close-up of the blue.


The tiny Silene I found yesterday was all alone, and I couldn't find it again when I went out this morning to try to decide which species it was. For those of you who are not botanists, this is the same family as the Red Campion, common in the UK, but this is tiny, the flowers not much more than a centimetre in diameter and a pale, pale pink. I took this photo early in the morning, and the flowers, and the hairy grey leaves of the plant it is leaning over, are glistening with dew.

Edit I came across a Spanish website called Virtual Herbal, and I think I can now identify this as Silene Ramosissima. If you look it up on the Virtual Herbal and click on the link that says Imagen en el campo, it takes you to a photo that shows how hairy it really is.



Walking along the cliff top this morning, I took this photo of a large clump of helianthemum, a plant that at one time, grew all over The Bottom. When I got home, I went in search, and found this tiny specimen. I haven't bothered finding out which particular type it is, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I find more. Edited to say that there are more, in fact a couple of good sized clumps that I hadn't noticed until they flowered.The last one really is a weed; it grows rampantly all over the garden, turns up in pots, and even between the bricks in the walls; the ever present Herb Robert. Without anything to give it scale, it could be taken for a garden variety of Geranium.

First of the Orchids...

...and one of my favourites. The Mirror Orchid, OPHRYS ciliata. I've only found one surviving patch of these, near the Mastic bushes. They used to be a lot on the top of the slope, but there is very little vegetation, and very little soil left there now. Strimming has left the soil without anything to help it withstand the heavy rain, and at the moment there is only a scattering of coarse grass clumps. I can't get over how good a close-up I can get with this little Pentax Optio that 0j0 found on Ebay for me after I had a play with hers when she was here in December. It is a bit hit and miss though, as the screen is tiny, my eyesight is atrocious, and getting my eye level down to 2" above soil level isn't as easy as it used to be. I take half a dozen shots and hope for the best...

The Mastic bushes are in flower at the moment, and later in the year will be full of berries. The collared doves will gorge themselves and leave streaks of purple crap down the wall as they sit in a line on the telephone wire. The Latin name is PISTACIA lentiscus. It seems it is the same family as the pistachio nut; now I wouldn't mind a couple of those...Another little gem that has survived in pretty good numbers is the Muscari. I think the fact that it flowers so early, and that its leaves are in a ground-hugging rosette, gave it a chance to get some nourishment down to the bulbs before Ghengis Kahn got to work.

And finally for this post, I couldn't resist showing you this; a rogue freesia that has appeared right in the middle of The Bottom. I think the seed must have been dropped by the big ants that nest down there and collect a Winter store of seeds from all over the garden...more of their antics when they are active.

More Weeds...

...that I think deserve a place in a garden, cultivated or not.

The Field Gladiolus is one of these. I used to have drifts of them all over The Bottom, but this year, the majority are on the edges, tucked under bushes and sprouting from underneath edging stones where the strimmer blade has missed them. (If you are wondering why the second photo is so murky, it's because the first one was taken in the afternoon sun yesterday, and the other one before the sun was high this morning.) If the leaves are removed too soon, like most bulbs and corms, they don't produce much in the way of flower the following year, but luckily, these seed themselves and I hope will soon be back up to strength. There are a number of different species, according to Innes, with a variation in height and the amount of white on the petals.



The Cistus bushes have taken a battering. There are tiny ones sprouting again in odd places, but there are only two left of any size, and one of those is in a border on The Top. I think of them as Poached Eggs, but their official name is CISTUS salvifolius.



My third plant for this post is Cerinthe or Honeywort. I'm cheating here, because I haven't found any in The Bottom this year, but the seeds have spread themselves up the first bancale, and are flowering there, so will soon spread themselves around again, given a chance.

Broomrape

OROBANCHE ...arenaria possibly? This is fairly widespread, and if I can find out which plant it is parasitising, I might be able to identify the species. I'll post more tomorrow.
Edit: Having looked at the Virtual Herbal, I think it is OROBANCHE nana, as the plants that it parasitises are common on The Bottom.

Bossman has just asked if I fancy going to have a look at the Fallas before they burn tonight. Hopefully I can get some pics for 0j0...

Barbary Nut

GYANDRIRIS sisyrinchium (L.) Parl.
According to Innes, this is called Barbary Nut because the corm is supposed to taste of nuts. I just like to call it the Miniature Iris. We have never had these grow in great numbers, but they are hard to catch, as the flowers don't open until late morning, and they don't last overnight. I was delighted to find one this morning, and shall keep my fingers crossed that it is not alone...

Wild Garlic

ALLIUM roseum L.

This specimen growing in The Bottom, isn't quite open yet, but this one, growing in amongst the freesias in The Top, is.

Weeds or Wildflowers?

Bossman and I have had an ongoing battle for the past twenty odd years over what we call The Bottom. When we first arrived here in 1986, it looked like this:


Three months later, it looked like this; by the simple expedient of doing this:
After that first trial by fire, it was left pretty much to its own devices for months, but the following Spring, I was amazed by how many different varieties of wild flowers sprang up on this patch of hillside. I added to them over the years by collecting seeds from plants I found growing further up the hill as I walked with the dog. The Mastic bushes that had been razed to the ground all sprouted again, and the Black Caps found them ideal nesting places. When we had The Top more or less gardenified, Bossman started itching to turn The Bottom into some kind of regimented Council Park, and attacked it with a large heavy Flymo borrowed from a friend. The Battle commenced...and we came to a compromise eventually: The flymo could be employed once a year after the main flowering season was over, and the seeds had had time to set and scatter, and the leaves of the corms and bulbs had died back. From time to time we felled a pine tree for firewood, or because it was getting too close to overhead cables, but in general, this truce held firm until the arrival, two years ago, of Ivan the Bulgarian, the Ghengis Kahn of the gardening world, and self appointed chief hatchetman to Bossman. Anything that grew out of line was ruthlessly cut back, regardless of where it was in its growing cycle, no bush got a chance to flower, in the Bottom or the Top, and if I happened to be out when he came, out came his strimmer and The Bottom would get a short back and sides. Bossman would look sheepish and assure me that he tried to stop him but he doesn't understand my Spanish...

This all came to a head last Autumn, when I walked Bossman round the garden, pointing at bare bushes and bare soil, asking Do you remember when this had flowers....when there were roses here....when this was a field of wild gladdies..? We fixed Ivan up with two other gardens and a pool to look after, and bade him goodbye. Compromise was again reached; the path from the Top to the bottom gate could be mown, but the rest would be left to recover. I have been waiting to see what survived Ivan's onslaught, and although there are some species missing altogether, there is still a good variety. I have always had it in mind to keep a record, so I am starting to take some pictures, and will add them here as I get myself organised. Just to wet your appetite, a general view of The Bottom as it was this morning, and a closer view of the commonest flower at the moment; the coltsfoot. I'll post again in a little while when I have this morning's photos in some kind of order. I have three books by Clive Innes; Wild Flowers of Spain. I am using these as a starting point for identification, as I don't know if my old Flora will have Spanish species...

Wednesday Water

Wednesday Water

Tags

There are a lot of Tags, Awards and Meme's going the rounds of Blogland, and a lot of them I ignore, but when one comes along that is fun, I usually play along. This one is to enter "(your name) needs" into a Google search box, and list the first five results. I had multiple results come up that had Needs as a surname, so I only listed the first of them.

1. My poor Josephine needs some attention. She’s been sitting in the stairwell for way too long.

2.Clearly, Josephine needs help, perhaps from a shrink. Alas, the Jungs and Freuds of her daughter Olive’s generation are not there to probe her psyche

3.Josephine Needs - Australian Electoral Rolls, 1901-1936.

4.Josephine needs a loan to purchase additional ingredients and food items to sell. She cooks food as well as selling vegetables to earn a living.

5.Josephine needs glasses. I'm perfectly fine with it, I think she looks absolutely adorable in the pair of glasses we chose... Josephine is NOT fine with it.

Well I know i'm not on the Aussie Electoral Rolls, but all the others fit!!

Long time... no post...

....but not much happens around here that is not craft related, and that gets written about over there. I did think though, that I ought to mention the weather; 140-175 kph winds hit us over the weekend. Personally, we suffered no more than a few tiles off the roof, but others around us were not so lucky. Many trees were uprooted, and one unlucky house on the main road had three centenario pine trees fall, each one of which hit a different section of the roof. The picture above shows our friends' house after a neighbour's pine tree split down the centre and fell the wrong way over the fence. It has taken the left hand corner of the roof away completely and dislodged many tiles on the right. He is not best pleased because he spent rather a lot of money having the whole roof re-tiled this Summer. Luckily no one in Calpe was seriously hurt. Very large chunks of tall buildings were dislodged. The main sign on the top of the Diamante Hotel ended up a couple of hundred metres away on top of a car in the carpark of another block, and most advertising hoardings are now crumpled heaps of metal. We were without power for most of Saturday. It was only when power was finally restored around teatime that we found out from the TV that a high tension line had blown down and started a fire at La Nucia, this fire had spread rapidly because of the wind and the inability of the firefighters to fly their water planes and choppers. Between 14 and 15 thousand people had to be evacuated from the area, and the animals of Tierra Natura were in danger of being smoked out. By the time darkness fell, the fire had spread up the flanks of the Puig Campana. Thankfully the wind died down overnight, and as we drove past the next morning on our way to the airport, the waterplanes and helicopters were damping down the last remaining pockets of the fire. If you follow the last link, it will take you to the local paper's website and to some of the photos sent in by readers. All we could see was the thick black smoke billowing over the mountain and a lurid glow in the sky.

Not the only blog...

I've noticed that if I comment on someone else's blog, usually of the crafting variety, and they come to my part of Blogland to see who I am, they often arrive here and leave a message, rather than going to my craft blog. Do I need to put a big flashing arrow somewhere? Even one of my daughters only thinks to check this one....

Good Book

Every now and then, you come across a book that you want to shout about. A book you want to read again the minute you have finished it for the first time, then squirrel away for a time in the future when you need to be totally absorbed...

Such a book is The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, published by Penguin.

Here comes Summer....

...and I'm not ready. After months and months of unsettled, unseasonable weather, the thermometer has hit the mid 30s, and I still have a wardrobe stocked with trousers and fleeces, and my drawers are full of sweaters. Tomorrow I shall get down the boxes from the top shelf in the hall cupboard and replace trousers with shorts and skirts, and sweaters with thin tops. I'll spend a morning washing woollies before packing them away until October, and probably have to fill a couple of bags with clothes for the charity shop when I find I can't fasten last year's waistbands. As most of them came from there in the first place, I shan't be much out of pocket. When I shall actually get to the Charity shop is another matter. The nearest weekend to the first of July is when the main body of tourists start to arrive. Parking space will be non existent as few of the blocks in the town have their own car park or underground garage. Blue zone street parking will fill with cars from Madrid getting dustier and dustier as the month progresses, the pile of pink parking tickets getting thicker under their windscreen wipers, as the parking girls make their rounds. The police tow truck is too busy trying to keep pace with the double parked cars and avert the frustration of the drivers of delivery vehicles who can't get through the congestion, to worry about towing away cars that don't have a valid parking ticket, but are not actually causing an obstruction. The local constabulary will get an extra 18 or 20 new recruits for the Summer season, whose sole responsibility will be to guard the yellow loading and unloading zones and keep them free from private vehicles and clear for deliveries. A visit to the PO to collect the mail will become a weekly rather than a daily event, and shopping will be restricted to an afternoon visit to the nearest supermarket when the hoards are on the beach or taking a siesta. Roll on September...and in the meantime I'll leave the car at home and use the bus pass...

Back to normal...

...well, more or less; a Repsol tanker arrived to fill their petrol station tanks on Saturday morning. I'm not sure how the other one is doing as they have only had bio-diesel since the Friday before last, but at no time thought to put up a notice to let customers know they were wasting their time there if they wanted petrol...

The supermarkets haven't had much in the way of fresh salad or soft fruit all week, but the Saturday market had everything in abundance. All in all, it has turned out to be a relatively painless week for most people, with the exception of the dead and the maimed among the striking transportistas.

Just to prove...

...that not everything in my garden is blue or yellow...

Flickr Search...

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favourite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favourite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Credits:
1. A Tribute to the Lovely Josephine, 2. Hinamatsuri sushi, 3. 11980 - PRUSSIA COVE SUNRISE, CORNWALL, UK, 4. dandy drop, 5. Three little pigs, 6. vintage tea set with cupcake, 7. Main Garden, 8. cherry chocolate mousse, 9. 2 Ole Ladies, 10. Seeing...double?, 11. Glass Wall Wave (Sea Sculpture No.6), 12. Gaviota calpina en el Penon de Ifach (Calpe)

The first coat of paint...

...is on the wall.

Soggy Saturday

Was I the only one with my fingers crossed? I suppose the only consolation is that it is coming in from the sea, and the new wall is not bearing the brunt; Instead the newly painted rejas are...

...later the same day

...6pm to be precise;the inside plastered, and the outside having had a second coat of waterproof plaster. Now you all need to keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain until Monday...

Mañana mañana...

...is what they usually say in Spain; but not always. On Wednesday evening, Ignacio called round because he had promised to rehang the the gates the next time he was in the area. Bossman asked him what he could do about stopping the rain driving into and under the front door when it rained. The budget won't stretch to anything major, and we have been known to struggle to raise a sun umbrella mid-storm in an effort to stop rainwater swelling the old wooden door. Out came his tape measure, and after a little calculation on the back of his hand, he said he could build us a wall in place of the old steel railing that would be narrow enough to still allow us to open the reja door. A window would put up the expense, but was still an option. Bossman showed Ignacio his stash of windows and frames salvaged from next door's reformation, and they were deemed suitable. A rough price having been agreed, Ignacio went to his van, came back with an angle grinder, removed a section of railing, fixed up some props, wired the balcony section back in position as a safety measure, then went to move the gate hinge brackets as promised.By lunchtime on Thursday, the wall was halfway finished.
By Thursday evening, wall and window were in place.
By lunchtime today, inside and out had been rendered, and as I type, Ignacio and son are applying the second coat of rough cast to the outside and a coat of white plaster to the inside, all the while keeping an eye on the big black clouds that are creeping ever nearer. The plan was that if it stayed dry, we could give it a couple of coats of paint on Sunday, before they came to take down the scaffolding on Monday, but if it rains before Sunday, the render won't be dry enough. Plan B is a roller on a broom handle...

We are painting...

...the rejas, as even the ones on the South side, protected from the rain by the overhang, are beginning to rust. This year it is Bossman's turn to do the fiddly curly bits with a brush, while I flash up and down the straight bits with a 3" x 1" roller.Four down, and a lot more to go...

Totty likes to....

NWM has been tagged. She claims not to have enough bloggerbuddies to pass on the tag, but has coined the term "open tag" and thrown it open to everyone.

It goes like this: you Google “[your name] likes to” and then cut and paste the results.

So, in the order they came up, Totty Teabag (only I used my realworld name) .....

.... likes to wear masks.

.... likes to be needed, as well as to cherish and protect her loved ones, of whom she is somewhat possessive.

When she is not working Totty likes to sing.

.... likes to pal around with Drew's younger siblings

....likes to pair hers with a striped, darted, button-up blouse that shows off the best part of yoga pants - no love handles.

.... likes to shove needles through her nose.

On her spare time, Totty likes to travel and experience different foods.

.... likes to use as her medium thread and textile.

.... likes to paint.

.... likes to work at night, which is great for my schedule.

....likes to be tied up and teased.

.... likes to look nice and often combs her hair-cap moss.

This last one made me curious. I followed the link: It led to a story about Totty Moss, friend of Linda Lichen, and is a mnemonic to learning the names of common mosses and lichens. The pdf. in question is about teaching pre-schoolers about squirrels and their natural habitat. I quote;

Prepare a stuffed animal squirrel so that it weighs 4 hg. Let the children hold and pat the
squirrel. If you don’t have a stuffed animal squirrel, use a bottle with 4 dl of water instead....

.....very thorough, the Swedes...

Too big for its boots

Since this orchid was moved out to the snug, it has gone from strength to strength. Its aerial roots have infiltrated the space between the inner and outer pots, they have grown down the outside of the outer pot and circled around the drip tray, and a few stray roots are making their way up under the window ledge. As you can see, this year there are three flower spikes. I haven't bothered to count the individual flowers, and a dozen or so have already dropped off, but last year there were 29 flowers on the single spike, and they lasted from June through to August.

Edit: Yesterday I uploaded a crop of this picture using Picasa. For some reason, it has flown off into cyberspace, so here is the original un-cropped picture uploaded the conventional way. Thanks for letting me know, Eve. I have now counted the flowers. There are 49, not counting uncoloured buds, or the dozen or so that have already fallen off.

More blue and a little lemon

My tulips have failed this year. A few impoverished leaves, and no sign of a flower stem. I'm blaming Ivan the Bulgarian and his need to tidy away straggling leaves before they have finished their work of replenishing the bulbs. He won't be satisfied until the garden is a bare earth and gravel waste that he can control with herbicide and a pair of secateurs. The yellow Jasmine has no flowers, and the Bottle Brush has no brushes, thanks to his trimming at the wrong time. Enough of the griping; What do we have? We have this:


I can't remember what it's called, it lost its label years ago. The flowers open a saturated purple, then fade through blue to purest white. it sits in a pot on the other side of the blue door from the Clematis.

Some of the largest plants in the garden are the sage bushes. On average they are two metres in diameter, and at the moment are densely covered in the pinky-purple spikes that the bees love. I like to deadhead these bushes with the secateurs, cutting each stem back to a leaf joint, and taking out old wood. The lavender on the other hand, responds well to a haircut with electric hedge clippers, just after the flowers have gone over, and soon sends up a new flush of flower spikes from its neatly trimmed dome.


Here's the lemon from the title; the first of the lilies has opened. I have tried growing these in the open garden, but they don't like it. They are happy in their spot at the back of the house, where they catch the early morning sun, but spend most of the day in the shade. They grow in an odd assortment of pots. Most of them are ugly black plastic garden centre tubs rescued from skips, but there is the odd terracotta or ceramic container, and their drip trays are mostly round aluminium pie dishes from the Euro shop.
Just in case you were expecting to see lemons, I shan't disappoint you. Here on the right are a couple of this year's fruit, and on the bottom left, one of the larger maturing ones from last year's flowers. Did you know that a lemon takes two years to reach maturity, and is quite happy to be left on the tree for longer?

Border Incident

The house next door has been having major renovations after being sold a while ago. The English agent who sold it has been acting as project manager for the absentee landlady, and has employed a gang of Moroccan builders to turn the ground floor into a self contained apartment. This has now been rented out to a Dutch couple and their family, and work has started upstairs with the replacement of the windows and doors. There is a large rubber tree obscuring our view of the entrance, but Bossman remarked that he was sure that the body he had glimpsed through the foliage, carrying windows down to the skip, was female. With the remark that he was just going to feed Chancy, he went off to investigate, and came back an hour later to report that she was indeed a female, and of the pretty Rumanian variety that are quite at home wielding hammerdrills...

This morning we heard loud male voices having an altercation in Spanish in next door's driveway. Mehdi the Moroccan was throwing ineffectual punches at the über-übergroß English agent and telling him just what his opinion was of said agent's perfidy in employing someone else to do a job that he, Mehdi, had quoted for. We are not too sure if he objected to having lost the job because his quote was considered too high, or if his pride was hurt because he wasn't considered pretty enough.

Introducing Malcolm

He's a gentle soul. I found him in the Dog shop and bailed him out for 50¢.

More purple than blue

The clematis has changed from dead twigs to glory in the last few days. As you can see, it grows in a pot, and is on the north side of the house in the shelter of an overhanging balcony, otherwise it would not survive a Spanish Summer. For years, the surface of the pot used to be covered in blue pansies, and the door paint was a perfect colour match, but for some reason, the blackbirds have decided that the pot is a good source of food, and dig around ferociously, flinging lumps of compost in all directions, so the pansies are no more. I hope they are eating the slugs that have been nibbling away at the clematis flowers...