Friday, December 10, 2010

Puente de Diciembre

The sixth of December is Constitution Day in Spain and the 8th is Day of the Immaculate Conception (La Inmaculada), the patron(ess) Virgin of Spain. This produces some really great long weekends - in this year´s case falling Monday and Wednesday, so if you take off the Tuesday (forming the bridge or ¨puente¨) you get a 5 day weekend. Sweet! Next year - Tuesday and Thursday, so if you can manage the Monday and Wednesday - you get an ¨aquaducto¨.

So we headed back to the ruin. Met with Jose and gave him the go-ahead to start demo/cleaning/weed-wacking on the house and the barn. He introduced us to the original owner - a lovely old guy (90-something?) who lives around the corner and did a little circuit around the property with us. He indicated where he thought the well was, and sure enough - a couple of hours of hacking later we discovered it, along with another (4 so far) old cooking pot.
It´s all the way on the other end of the barn - the furthest side from the house. Not someplace we would have immediately considered. But, at last found.

That, and an old gas stove buried in the undergrowth.


Some time in January we´ll go back up to see what the place looks like without the falling rafters and tiles, and hopefully to meet with a few architects for the work plan. So in the meantime - any help with identifying the following would be appreciated.

These appear to be planted in a short row of 3, but I don´t know what they are. Spiny fruit trees?


Also - this is that fungus stuff. It looks terrible. Maybe I´m worrying about nothing.



Should I worry? Is there anything to be done?

3 comments:

  1. Hi Coco, the photos of your 'fungi' are lichens, one is definitely Stagshorn, that's the paler one, they are not harmful to the tree and only live in unpolluted moist air. The three trees look as though they are suckers from a pear tree root stock, the tree might be long gone, or might still be somewhere close by, suckers of pears always have very vicious thorns.

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  2. Thanks Anne! That´s a relief about the fungus-because it looks seriously icky (a technical term).

    How odd about the pear root stock. There are three 4´ trees, about 10 feet apart, all in a row. Hard to see how they sprang up from a mature specimen somewhere. But, on the other hand, mmmmmmmm pears! I guess we can rip them out without guilt.

    Your knowledge is invaluable - thanks again!

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  3. Our garden used to grow old gas cookers too! I think that they are a speciality crop in Galicia! Lichen is a good thing to have as it will only grow in clean air, another good reason for moving here.

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