Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Circus has come to town

At the back of our house there is a strip of land that we think is a part of a dry river bed. It is not officially a 'rambla' but it is on the town plan as a 'green zone' which means it shouldn't be built on. It has an assortment of almond, orange, olive and pomegranate trees planted on it, which I believe belong to a man who lives a few doors down from us, and it is crossed by several footpaths. It is a play area for local children and the home of many of the birds we see around here. Beyond it there is a wide, flat area which is really a dirt road, and we were surprised to see some big lorries pull up there yesterday evening. We can now see that they are a travelling circus and they have a show on three nights, Friday to Sunday. Today they were slowly unloading what I think is the framework for a tent, and a van went round the streets announcing the performances over a loud-speaker. It is very close to us so we could be in for a noisy weekend, but a man we were speaking to this evening said that there are so many villagers out of work that he doubts they will get many spectators.
Now for some more lovely flowers. This first one is in a pot in our front garden. We thought it was almost dead as when we moved in it had lots of bare twiggy branches and some yellowing leaves. But I watered it regularly when I did all the others, and one day I realised that each of the 'bare branches' was beginning to send out shoots and ended with a flower bud. I watched these buds for weeks and they were very slow to open, but this week we have been rewarded with these lovely pale peach flowers with such a pretty centre. I don't know what it is, but I shall ask around and see if I can learn its name.
The other flower that you see everywhere this month is the jacaranda tree. It has very few, rather insignificant leaves but loads of blossom in this beautiful lavender-blue. The round brown discs are last year's seed pods which seem reluctant to let go. There is a tree outside the town hall and a whole row of them along the bottom edge of the village. This one is somebody's garden and it looks so nice against the dark green palms behind it. As the open land is beginning to look a bit parched, and is mainly covered now with yellowing grass and thistle seed-heads, it is so nice to see these lovely clouds of blue in every direction that you look. I hope they don't fade too quickly.

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