No exaggeration

Jiminy Cricket sheltering from rain underneath a leaf - Actually this was just a practice drill the other day when I watered the garden.  He was a great poser and sat very still so I could get my snapshot. Click on the photo to enlarge it and look at the water 'bubbles' on his body and legs.

IN CASE you thought I was exaggerating about the Terral - turns out it was the hottest night in the last 68 years which is the time they've been keeping proper weather records here (I learn something new every day).  Since then temperature has dropped slowly and tonight is blissful.  A cool breeze bringing in the rain.
We're on a yellow Meteo Alert for heavy showers and a good ol' summer storm as of midnight tonight.  I love thunderstorms just so long as I'm safely inside and not sheltering under a solitary tree on the hillside.
Electricity always goes out when we have a storm. It's mathematical.


Weather today: Overcast with some sunny spells. Felt a lot cooler, especially this afternoon. High 29ºC/84ºF. Low 21ºC/70ºF (what a difference).  Light westerly breeze 18 km/h. Pressure 1020 mb and descending. Relative humidity 87%. 25% chance of rain. UV Index 9. Snow above 3,700 m – and yes, there is still snow on the Sierra Nevada. Information source: AEMET. Silly comments: Yours truly.

It's the wisteria way

Before....

After

LIFE is full of surprises. Like this afternoon. I kept hearing a kind of cracking then stone-pinging noise coming from the terrace. Ting, ping, pang, ching - One, then another, then silence for a while, then another, then two or three. I had to cock my head and tune in to pin down the source. I saw some leaves russle over to my left just as I heard another paaang. It took me a minute or two to work out that the wisteria seed pods were bursting and sending seeds scattering over the ground and the garden. There were so many that you

couldn’t sit anywhere near the pergola without being hit. A horticultural battle field.

The wisteria is eight or nine years old and I’ve never heard it like today – with all the pods bursting one after another.

I ventured cautiously out to take a closer look and saw the floor littered with burst pods. Another one cracked almost overhead and sent its seeds flying, and me back to the kitchen. I never knew it was such an explosive affair. So I looked on the internet and came across this enlightening piece at
http://www.mastergardeners.org/publications/wisteria/wisteriaSeedPods.html.

Popping Wisteria Seeds Pods!
by: Allen Buchinski
It’s autumn, and that means my wisteria seeds will soon be popping! If you’ve ever seen this happen, you know exactly what I mean, but if you don’t have wisteria in your yard, it’s likely that you’re not aware of the phenomenon.
We all know that plants spread their seeds using different mechanisms; some of the most common methods are distribution by wind, water, and animals. But the most fascinating, at least to me, is explosive dispersal, where a seed pod pops open and flings its seeds away from the plant. The evolutionary explanation for this is to prevent overcrowding of seedlings around the parent plant, giving them the light and space they need to mature.The pea-like pods, unremarkable from an ornamental perspective, are often overlooked in a profusion of vigorous leaf growth, especially because they’re green until they mature into 4-6 inch long hard shells. The pods turn brown as they dry on the vine. It’s after that drying process is complete that the fun begins, that and a hot Indian summer day.
It’s on those hot days that the seed pods are most likely to explode, typically later in the day after they’ve had a chance to absorb the most heat. If you have patience, you can sit and watch it happen. Look for empty husks where there weren’t any before (next to a lawn or walkway is perfect for this), then sit and watch. In fact, it’s more accurate to say “sit and listen”, because it practically impossible to be watching one when the moment occurs. It’s kind of like listening to the first few kernels of popcorn pop, the noise is a sharp crack followed by the sound of seeds landing away from the plant. If the wisteria is near a building, you can catch the sound of seeds bouncing off windows or walls, when it’s near a driveway or street, you can hear the seeds skitter across the surface.
The force of the explosion is truly remarkable; enough so that I don’t look directly at the plant if I’m not wearing glasses. I’ve seen a seed come to rest a full 70 feet from the plant, starting no more than 8’ off the ground and landing in the street (which starts 35’ from the plant), coming to rest against the curb on the far side. It’s exciting to see!
So how does it work? Forces build up inside the pod during the drying process, and when strong enough, the pod pops. The best description I’ve seen states: “as a pod dries, tensions are set up in the wall of the pod eventually causing it to split along two lines of weakness. As the two halves curl back, suddenly released like a tense spring, they flick out the seeds inside in an explosive manner.”1
You don’t need a hot day for the process to happen, it’s just that those days speed the drying process. If you take the pods and set them aside to dry, it’s just a matter of time before they pop; inside or out. Or you can speed up the process by putting the pods into the oven. The photo above shows the result of doing just that. The twisted halves of the pod, demonstrating the forces that had built up, are clearly evident. It’s a bit like running a pair of scissors along one side of a ribbon, where the uneven stretching causes the ribbon to twist and curl. In this case it’s the drying causing it to happen.
Plants serve all types of purposes. And while food and decoration are the most common, it’s kind of nice to find one that also provides entertainment!

He explains it so well, doesn't he? Come spring we should see quite a few offspring.

Weather today: Warm, warm, warm. Far too warm for this time of year which is why the wisteria probably went mad. At 11pm this evening it was still a balmy 22ºC - that's 72ºF for you farenheit folk. Officially - Sunny with a High 22ºC/72ºF Low 12ºC/54ºF. Variable breeze 12km/h. Pressure 1015 mb. Relative humidity 46%. UV index: 3 (can still get burnt if you're fair-skinned).

Happiness is a spring onion

THIS could be hard to explain, but if you have lived in a foreign country you’ll know just how much people miss their home comforts.

Expats, when asked what they miss about home, always say (first, and with some resignation), family. It is, after all the expected reply. Then they say friends, and lastly they’ll reel off a short list, at great speed and with gathering enthusiasm, of their favourite food. Their eyes glaze over as they relive those sublime moments when they last bit into a freshly grilled Cumberland sausage or crunched the batter on cod ‘n’ vinegar-soaked chips.

It’s an age-old formula. And it’s true of any nation.

News had reached me that a large supermarket, stocked to the brim with British goodies, had opened nearby. I hadn’t been enticed. These places usually have the stock selection of Marmite, Cook-in-Sauces and Heinz soups. I can live without those. But a recent, long-overdue lunch invitation to my Spanish ‘in-laws’, (known in Spanish as familia politica which sums it up in a nutshell) sent me off in search of exotic guiri foodstuffs to knock their socks off.

I took The Artist with me to keep me in check. Our first trip to this temple of Britishness was surreal. Aisle after aisle full of expats happily torn between so much choice.
It’s sad I know, but I’ve waited almost 30 years to be able to buy spring onions in Spain and here I was living the moment. After that it just got better and better. Cheshire cheese, fruity herbal teas, sickly ice-cream soda, ginger beer! We came away laden down, me feeling hugely comforted by all these long-lost familiar ‘friends’and The Artist wondering whether he should get a Spanish girlfriend.

Yesterday I returned and in anticipation pushed the door open, ready to pounce again on the spring onions. It was then I noticed stacks and stacks of fresh eggs. Imported from the UK. I stood there for a minute trying to work out the logic of importing fragile eggs all the way from Britain when there are chickens just around the corner. But I couldn’t.

In fact, there were quite a few things that could be easily bought at Spanish supermarkets at a lower price but everyone is free to spend their money how they like. I’m not sure whether the cats here can appreciate the difference between Spanish cat food and imported Whiskas but it is on offer all the same.

I started to hone in on other incongruent items. Trawling the massive freezer section I came across the winner. Frozen vegetable and chorizo kebabs. Chorizo that had been made in Spain, of course. Shipped to the UK. Strung on a stick with veggies. Frozen, and shipped back to Spain to a British supermarket to be devoured by Brits, living in Spain. I’m still trying to figure this out, but coals to Newcastle is a phrase that keeps coming in to my head.

Still, I wish the supermarket a long and very successful life, which judging by the hordes of hungry Britons there yesterday, is almost guaranteed. We may be in the middle of a recession, but who can resist a little of what they fancy, from time to time.

Weather today: It's very early so it's hazy but the sun is up and it will probably be a glorious cloudless day. The rain in Spain is definitely staying on the plain today and forecast to miss the coast. High 29ºC/83ºF Low 19ºC/66ºF. Barely noticeable breeze 7km/h. Pressure 1014 mb. Relative humidity 58%. UV index: 7.

Hot July

AS YOU'LL have guessed by now, I am a bit of a weather friki so just had to include this snippet – and as the coastline is just heaving with tourists baring pasty winter flesh (yes, even the Spaniards) to turn a golden brown, I've included a snap from our very short holiday last week (more about that another time if you're unlucky...)

July registered the highest average temperatures in this area since 1949. Nine alerts of forecasts for temperatures of more than 40 degrees were issued by meteorologists during the month and the average daily maximum was 32.3 degrees. The average minimum was 22 degrees, just half a degree less than during July 2008.

Am I grateful for the aircon, or what…

Weather today: Hot and sweaty - High 32ºC/90ºF Low 23ºC/73 ºF. Early morning sea mist along the coast that was soon burnt off by the sun. Not a cloud in the sky. Light southwesterly wind 15km/h. Pressure 1015 mb. Relative humidity 51%. UV index: 10.

Living on three euros a day

WEEKDAY mornings usually start off with a wrestling match to tune the car radio in as I drive the Hockey Star to school. It’s a fight for either the local thump-thump-tonka-tonka rock station or the news analysis discussion programme. No guesses for who chooses what. The Hockey Star has the advantage of not having to keep his hands on the wheel and, quite frankly, I’m not much up to a fight before my second coffee. So we have the seat-vibrating stuff on the way there and the political post-mortem drone on the way to the office.

Today, after ten minutes of button-pushing even My Boy admitted there was nothing worth listening to, so I got lucky. We tuned in just as they were asking, what would you spend your money on if you had to live on three euros a day? Ho, I thought, a coffee is one euro – and I need two to get operational – which would leave me with a euro to eat something – one euro of food for the whole day? I’d have to cut out coffee so I didn’t fade away. Gone would be the days of dribbling industrial quantities of olive oil over a toasted bread roll and a steaming hot coffee for breakfast. That costs over two euros.

We listened some more. A lot of people interviewed said food, many others would rather starve and buy cigarettes. One hygienic chap couldn’t live without a toilet roll. It started us thinking. Bonzo said he sometimes buys a bread roll and a couple of slices of something porky from the supermarket next to school during break time. That costs 60 cents. You can get a 1.5 litre bottle of water for around 25 cents. Not much of a breakfast but it will keep you alive and leave you with 2.15 euros for the rest of the day.

On the home front we’d be sleeping in the street on and under cardboard we’ve found in the rubbish containers – so no costs there. We could also get one free hot meal a day and an occasional shower at a homeless shelter. I don’t think there are any costs for showers – but there might be. I told the Hockey Star that I’d seen a programme where a reporter lives rough for a month. She’d filled up a small plastic bottle she found with liquid soap from a public bathroom (so don’t say you don’t know now). Same soap will do for bod and hair. So by now we’ve had breakfast, showered and had lunch and still got 2.15 euros. Free meals involve a lot of queuing but we can cast our eyes over a library book or a discarded newspaper. Both are in abundance and keep us culturally up with the best of the property-owning capitalist bunch, err like you and I for instance.

I think you get the gist. Clothes from the bin or from the church and so on. It can be done if you pare life down to barely an existence. Sadly millions cope like this every day.

Street sleeping and a tramp’s life means hardships beyond my imagination but I think the idea of trying to work out how to live in Europe on a ridiculously small amount of money is an instructive exercise that can highlight just how much we spend on unnecessary things. And talking of unnecessary things, now that I think of it I shall do away with Bonzo’s pocket money. What’s he need it for anyway?

Weather today: High 18ºC/64ºF Low 9ºC/48ºF. Sunny. Light southerly wind 11 km/h. Pressure 1017 mb. Relative humidity 73%. UV index: 3

Weather today

• High 15 °C /59ºF



• Low 12 °C/54ºF



• Overcast with showers, heavier rain later in the day.



• Light south-east wind 17 km/h.



• Pressure 1021 mb. Snow above 2.300 m. Relative humidity 85 %.