Autumn snow

Yesterday we drove home from Zaragoza. The views on the way through the mountain pass of Monrepos were striking; the peaks of the Pyrenees had their first snow. My photos are all speckly because they are taken through a dirty windscreen.

It's amazing how small the mountains look in photos when they seem so enormous from the car!

Clouds

Yesterday afternoon the sky looked spectacular from my house.

Looking south-west

Peg-legged angel

An old photo of my favourite Romanesque capitel, the peg-legged angel. Nobody knows why an angel has an artificial leg. Maybe he's not an angel but a man halfway transformed into an eagle....just an idea-I keep thinking about it!

October

It's mid-October and still quite warm. The leaves are changing colours but we don't have any spectacular views of autumn changes yet. There's a mushroom growing on my front grass; I've no idea if it's edible or not.
I gave up on the poinsettia; I couldn't keep up the discipline of  putting it in the dark and taking it out at the right times.
It's got to rain. There's a drought and the reservoirs are low. They've said for Thursday.
Last week I took a group of Japanese tourists on a little guided tour in Jaca-mostly the cathedral. They were very apreciative, and knew about Romanesque architecture, but there's an interesting cultural gap; although they could do the architectural bit, they (naturally) had little or no knowledge of the Biblical characters and stories which for most westerners form part of their background-at least that was the case in the past.

Project Poinsettia

I'm doing an experiment to see if I can get my last Christmas' poinsettia to turn red for this Christmas. Apparently you have to make sure it's in complete darkness for twelve out of twenty-four hours every day for three months. I've put it in the dark for three or four nights now; strictly 20.30 to 08.30. We'll see what happens.

Where is this?

These surprising images (for those who don't live here) are of the Aljaferia in Zaragoza. It was built more than a thousand years ago as a Moorish palace, and has gone through various transformations and restorations. For example, there is a deep dry moat which was added to the defences in the late 16th century and later filled in, to be restored in the 1980s. As well as a tourist attraction, the Aljafreia contains the  very modern Aragonese parliament.

Jupiter tree

It's all gone now, but last month the jupiter tree was in bloom; at least I think that's what it's called....at least it is or might be in Spanish. Anyway, it's a lovely little tree planted on a roundabout down the road from us.

By the time I took the photo it was past its best. The figure on the right is the statue of a dancer. There are four of them in the garden on the roundabout. 

Footnote: in English it's crape myrtle or  crepe myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica, belonging to the 

loosestrife Family. Pity. Jupiter tree is such an evocative name!

Here's one I found in Cambrils, called plumbago. It's a beautiful colour.

Also called leadwort in English, the alternative names in Spanish are celestina, jazmín del Cabo (Cape jazmine) or jazmín del cielo (heavenly jazmine). Prettier names for such a pretty flower.  

2014 Here's this year's tree.