Season of plenty

Summer is here, as I might have mentioned before. A little trip to the village today revealed the arrival of some of the 'veraneantes', which is the Spanish for summer visitors. Many of them will be people who were born in the area or who have family here. They will spend the rest of the year elsewhere in Spain, perhaps in their house in Granada, but come back to the Alpujarras for most of July and August - to this end many are actually retired but of course in Spain it is very normal to have at least a month's holiday during the hot part of the summer when you can escape either to the costas or to the mountains. So, a big welcome to them although they come back here and swan around as though they own the place - which probably they still do.

Also, more fresh crops have arrived. This week, hard at work in the vegetable bed, we have been harvesting potatoes, lettuce, carrots, courgettes, strawberries, raspberries, chard, and a handful of sweet runner beans. What to do with all this bounty? Well, the picture shows a delicious shortbread and fruit cake that William made.

Harvested from the wild this week has been oregano. The leaves of this popular herb are tasty enough but better by far are the newly opened flowers, picked at just the right moment. All around in the uncultivated fields and valleys, now is the right time. It is one of the many occasions when you can see the locals, with bottoms in the air, picking some valuable wild plant from the sides of the road. We've done our bit, as can be seen in the picture above, but there's more to collect.

News from the goat pen, Pastor has reinforced his enclosure, so, for the time being, I can relax my guard a little. Ella seems a more mad than usual and we suspect she has forgotten what to do when the weather gets summer hot, as it has been this last week. She still charges around the place and looks surprised to find herself out of breath and drooling from the mouth. She needs to learn from me, find a shady spot in some damp vegetation and wait for the day to pass.

Yours, from the back of the herbaceous border,

Fergus