Autumn

Nice sunset.

The weather has finally turned, still great, but no longer hot and dry, I look forward to seeing this all under water in the next few weeks

Spring time

I took this photo around May this year while walking the dog, the house is just visible in the centre. Right at the foot of the trees you can make out a corner of the house, but of course what really stands out is Almanzor with snow, albeit only a sprinkling, still it was May

It's nice to see it all so green and fresh

Follow the yellow brick road

Para los que no sabéis llegar a casa

Si vienes por la A5 tienes dos opciones,

1. la salida 123 hasta Candeleda,
2. la salida 135 hasta Candeleda

(Si vienes por la M-501 es todo recto hasta el desvió)

La primera opción es mejor carretera, la segunda opción es menos carretera secundaria..

En ambos casos llegaras a la cruz AV-910 con la CL-501, desde ahí el desvió es 1.1 Km, desde el desvió hasta el camino de tierra es 1.2 Km, y desde que empieza el camino hasta casa es 1 Km  Si quieres usar google maps estos son los coordinadas 40.119483, -5.247038 solo tienes que introducir los en google maps

Sigue el camino señalado en amarillo "The Yellow brick road"

La primera parte esta "Asfaltada", la parte en verde es de tierra o baro si llueve :-)

Os animo a que llegáis temprano para disfrutar del campo.

La "comida" (gastronomía local) estar lista a partir de las las 2:30.

Solo tenemos 10 sillas así que si puedes, traer sillas, o si hace sol una manta de campo. Si llueve traer paraguas y botas de goma, la comida hay que comerla si o si :-)

Si os perdéis, llámame y haré señales de humo :-)

A wet January

At last after a very dry 2015, January 2016 has brought some serious rain, unfortunately who ever runs the weather station in Candeleda must have goon on holidays so the official numbers are useless but from what I can gather from neighboring regions we are talking in excess of 230 liters..these photos where sent to us by Aurora, wish we had been there

Missing - Mika

This is the last photo I have of Mika, we've not seen her since this was taken on the 9th of September 2015

We are all very sad :-(

This is what the inside of a hot water tank looks like when the anode has been eaten away

and this is what a wooden floor looks like after a hot water tank with a corroded anode looks like after it's had water pouring over it for about two weeks

yep, no floor boards

My favorite swimming hole

This summer I went to my favorite swimming spots around Candeleda.

this lovely spot is actually just outside El Raso, which is about 15 minutes from Candeleda. The great thing about this place is that it is close to the road, so not much walking involved :-) and it's big and deep and not full of tourists, yet!

As you can see the quality of the water is spectacular, no Photoshop here.

To look at it you wouldn't think we were going through one of the driest years in the past 10 years.

Great view

The other day I wondered into my local garden supply shop and while waiting to be attended I spied this photo on the owners PC

This is an aerial view of the Santa Maria where it meets the Tietar river (top of the photo). It was taken by Jesus Delgado last spring. it's a great shot, just a pity our house was not in view.

2014 the year that was

2014 is almost at an end, and I haven't posted anything yet, ahhh

so what happened in 2014, lots

from memory and in no particular order

• The faithful McCulloch 65530 lawn mower was replaced by a ride on Viking tractor/cart, No more walking behind the lawn mower for hours and days, now I get the job done in half a day which leaves me time to do other things, like walk with the wife :-)

• it Rained a lot at the start of the year especially,  In fact this year has been one of the wetter years, over 1000 liters which is above average as far as my statistics are concerned

• The lemon tree finally started producing more than 1 lemon a year, this year we've had a whopping 6, hopefully the trend will continue
• the "big shed is about to cave in, sounds expensive :-(
• new years was not celebrated in Candeleda, and won't be this year either, damn
• Mika is still going fine, despite someone having taken a pot shot at her with a slug gun, she has a single pellet embed in her side, we need to remove it but have to find the time to be with her after the operation
• Duna died, she had a tough life and was finally put to sleep by their owners
• The house was almost rented out and almost sold, a year of almosts

Nothing else comes to mind, hopefully next year I'll be blogging more often.

Happy new year

The Orchard

Having failed to keep this blog up to date I just realized that I never mentioned the fact that last year (2012) I decided to organize the fruit trees into an orchard.

I selected 15, more on that number later, fruit trees that where spread out all over the place and took me forever to water and moved them to an area just behind the shed where they had sufficient space, light and most importantly close to a water source so I could automate the irrigation.

Not much to look at, but it is the middle of summer

The list of fruit trees include:

Orange
Pear
Apricot
Cheery
Fig
Apple
Granado
Hazelnut
Pistacho (2, 1 male and 1 female)

Almond
Kaki
Azufaifu (Jujube)
Nispero (Loquat)

The layout is basically a 4 by 4 grid, the more astute will have notices that this makes 16 yet I only have 15, the reason for this is simple, in my grid there was already growing a Hawthorn and so I just left it :-)

Water is now a simple 15 minute job which is automated, I've saved myself hours, why didn't I think of this earlier. So far all the trees have appreciated the move and I plan to add two more this autumn, a walnut tree and something else, yet to be decided..... stay tuned

update - 26-4-2014
Added a walnut to the list :-)

The Great Audit - or the arboreal equivalent of the dooms day book

The Great Audit 

It's been another hot long summer here in Candeleda, nothing new there, but today the clouds partially cover the sun and that makes working in the garden somewhat more tolerable, tearing myself away from my newly discovered Chrome apps, learning to type is one of them ;-) I decided to count how many trees we had, assuming they all survive the summer.

To start with let me point out that I counted the trees on the basis of

1. I only counted mature trees, mostly anything over 1. 5 meters in height
2. to count as a single tree they needed to be clearly individual trees and not just a tree with multiple trunks etc
3. my numbers are precise but not exact

So  the numbers are

Pyrenean Oak (Quercus pyrenaica) -  249

Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)  48
European Hackberry (Celtis australis) 31
Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) -  14



The Majority are in the top half, which makes senses.

Some interesting observations, at least to me.
The Oak is by far the most common tree but it is also the one whose long term survival is most in doubt due to the disease they are exposed to, another has dries up this year

While there are more Hackberries than Ash trees, they are nowhere near as big so they are Ash trees and so the impression on has is that there are few of them

While the second most common tree is the Hawthorn, few are more than just shrubs, still I include them here as there are two or three examples well over  meters in height

I'll up date this from time to time, just to see how things develop, but I expect to see the oak tree numbers decline over the next few years, hopefully I'll have found a sustainable way of planting new trees