To grow fruit and veg or not...?

We've just completed our second summer in Catalunya and we're getting used to the differences between our vast, terraced, sun-beaten plot here and the small north-facing back garden we had in London.

In spite of the chill, rain and gloom in London, we managed to grow a lot of produce outside our little ground floor flat - tomatoes, courgettes, chillis, basil, rocket, beans, cucumbers - even mini-melons. It took a lot of commitment, a drip watering system and a greenhouse, but we loved doing it - and eating the results (pics below).

I also became an expert in cooking and preserving damsons; we had three trees in the garden and one overhanging it (they were there before we moved in and we couldn't bear to destroy them). Each year we rushed to pick the kilos and kilos of hazy purple fruit before the wasps moved in to suck them dry. We had damson chutney (I've just started my last jar from 2010, and it's dark and rich and delicious), jam (not as successful), flavoured vodka (just damson, and a Christmas-themed one with raisins, cinnamon, allspice and ginger), crumble, sorbet, etc, etc.

When we moved here, we dreamed about how easy it would be to grow all the Mediterranean fruit and veg that taste so much better sun-warmed and plucked straight off the plant. But if you take a rational approach, there's a balancing act to be struck. We can get cheap, fresh and delicious fruit and veg from the groceries in the village, as well as from the little old ladies who, for a few summer months, open their garage doors and sell figs, tomatoes and peppers grown on their own plots. At the same time, we don't have mains water, which means that there's a significant cost to be borne in keeping everything hydrated during the dry summer (and sometimes, spring, autumn and winter) months. 

So last summer, as we'd just moved in, we didn't grow much - just a few tomato plants that the previous owner kindly left, some chillis and some basil in a pot. We had a lovely harvest of figs from the tree on the drive too. You can read about last year's harvest here.

Early this year, though, my (I won't call them green) fingers were itching to get started on some planting. I'm the most impatient gardener - I get frustrated if the seeds haven't germinated within 24 hours - but still I love it. I spend most working days indoors, on a hard chair typing away at my computer and it's wonderful at 7 o'clock to turn off the machine, stretch, pour a glass of cold white wine and go outside to soak up some warm sun and potter around with some seedlings and some soil.

More soon on our mixed successes with this year's fruit and veg.

Santa Tecla: La Diada Castellera

Tarragona's Santa Tecla festival is underway and we visited on Sunday 16 September to see the first day of the Castellera - the human castles.

Groups competed to see who could build the highest human towers of different formations. There is always a good, strong base of dozens of the biggest, toughest men, their waists reinforced with an enormously long, black sash that's wound round and round. These men form a giant, circular rugby scrum.

On top of their shoulders climb a group of about 12 slightly smaller men to form the next level. Then up and up they go - each new group shinning up the backs of the others - until we reach six, seven and eight levels. The penultimate level is of delicate teenage girls, wobbling as their ankles are firmly gripped by the men below them.

And finally a tiny child topped with an enormous crash helmet - a boy or a girl of no more than six or seven years old - climbs as fast as they can up the tottering tower to stand and raise their fist at the pinnacle.

Occasionally, they all crash down, but the mass of humanity below seems to cushion the impact.

This was the winning team with their single pillar, five people tall.

Forest fire devastation

The change of wind direction yesterday meant that we could sleep last night without fearing that the fire was advancing towards us - what a relief for us, but many other people would have been worrying about their homes and land.

We woke this morning to news that the fire had taken 3,000 hectares, but as the day went on the drizzle continued, the planes and helicopters continued dropping water, and there were no more headlines about rising winds, further devastation or evacuations.

This afternoon our friends who'd fled their home on Tuesday night returned to find their house miraculously untouched by the flames which had scorched leaves on the trees right outside the front door. Their cats emerged from the devastated forest unpeturbed.

Then this evening came an announcement that the fire is pretty much under control.

This is great news, but look at the devastation...

Cherry trees survived while the hillside burned
just a few feet behind

Scorched leaves but the olive tree is ok

Charred pines

Swathes of green are now black
(helicopter in the distance)

Wooden furniture survived although vegetation burned underneath

The fire came within inches
of our friends' house

A helicopter flies over blackened hillsides
dropping water where the fire is still active

Forest fire update

It's nearly 9pm now and the fire has taken 1,800 hectares. Reports say the smoke cloud has reached Mallorca. We've had a stressful day watching and waiting, but now the wind has dropped and is blowing in the opposite direction to our house so it doesn't look nearly as frightening as it did.

The planes are going back and forth over our house to the sea to fill up with water and back to the fire. Let's hope they conquer it soon.

This morning: wind blowing smoke and ash over our house.
We feared the fire was advancing our way

In the middle of the day the wind begins to change direction

The wind is now coming from the east

The fire engulfs the mountain

Flames break out all over the cliff face

At last the sea planes begin work

Forest fire

There's a fire ripping through hundreds of hectares of forest in the valley on the other side of the hills from us. Right now the mistral is sweeping smoke over our house, the sun is casting a curious orange light and flecks of grey ash are swirling and falling around us.

The fire began yesterday lunchtime. News reports said about 25 hectares were affected, it was being dealt with and there was no risk to the population. One report said someone had been arrested for starting the blaze. Twitterers joked about Rasquera's planned cannabis plantation going up in smoke.

Then as darkness fell, the wind whipped up. Suddenly 100 hectares were consumed. The firefighters complained that the terrain was tricky and the gusts of wind were fuelling the fire. The news report about the arrest was redacted; it said instead that only a witness statement had been taken. There was no moonlight, so in the pitch black night we walked to the top of our drive and saw the orange glow of the flames in the distance. We could hear a roar and wondered if it was the wind or the fire.

Instead of sleeping we searched for news on the internet. Our friends in the valley fled their house taking their three dogs and their most valuable possessions - their daughter in the village updated us on Facebook. They believed they were leaving their home to burn. I copied and pasted Catalan news reports into Google Translate: 500 hectares were affected, they said, and 20 people evacuated from their homes.

By 4am we could do nothing but drop off to sleep. Now we've just learned our friends' house was spared - the fire has left a lunar landscape all around, but the building is unharmed. The wind is still blowing though and every new statement says more forest has been lost - the latest from the Agents Rurals say 900 hectares have gone.

Twitter: #Rasquera
http://www.tv3.cat/

And the unairbrushed version...

I've just realised that the last few posts about wild asparagus, fresh eggs and calçots may well give the impression that we're living some sort of soft-focus, idle, gourmet existence in the sunshine.

We are, sort of, and it's very, very lovely, but real life isn't ever quite as we portray it to other people, is it?

Perhaps one of the reasons that so many people suffer from anxiety and depression is because it seems to them as though their lives are never as perfect as everyone else's. The media fuel this by filling magazines with 'aspirational' articles featuring beautiful people with impossibly wonderful lifestyles, and TV sitcoms starring 'ordinary' families are filmed in unfathomably huge London terraces. Although I'm a journalist, I could never bring myself to generate this kind of soft-focus copy, which is probably why I tended to end up going to sink-estates to interview asylum seekers rather than hob nob with the celebs on the red carpet.

Now that I'm living a lovelier life perhaps it's begun to knock the sharp edges off my storytelling.

So, to rebalance the last few posts, you might like to know about the Week of the Sick Puppy. Koko (now seven months old and energetically fulfilling the puppy manual's entire list of what adolescent dogs might do to test your sanity) started the week with a wild chewing frenzy. She tore the stuffing out of her bed, chomped her way through a couple of socks before pinching the washing up sponge and consuming that. Goodness knows what else she put in her mouth because the next day she was very sick indeed, many times, until there was nothing left in her stomach.

The sick kept coming though, she was retching and retching and bringing up nothing but stretchy yellow bile. She wouldn't touch food, and barely drank any water. Her usual bounce disappeared, the naughty glint left her eyes and her ears began to point down.

We feared fatal poisoning from one of the let's-just-put-it-in-my-mouth-and-see-what-it's-like adventures. We know too many people who've had dogs die after picking up something nasty the hunters left behind so we took her to the vet; then took her again two days later when she seemed to be getting even worse (a v costly exercise indeed).

There, you don't get dog sick in many glossy mags, do you?

She's better now - back to eating everything, particularly other animals' poo.

Wild asparagus

The April showers (well, torrential rain and hailstorms) mean that what was once hard bare ground is now lush with bright green shoots of new growth.

Impending rain

Hailstorm, 14 April

Icy cactus

The brambles are once again making their prickly way over the garden, but the terraces that we've not yet tidied up are full of the bright colours of wild flowers - purple thistles, yellow cotton lavender, and lots of plants - pink, red and orange - that I haven't yet identified.

Best of all, there's wild asparagus. 

When we arrived in Catalunya in March last year we often spotted people walking slowly by the side of the road with big handfuls of long, slender spears. I looked out for it too, but never succeeded. After a few weeks of determined effort though this year I've got my asparagus eye trained.

It is much more slender than the asparagus in the shops, often very dark green, and, when it gets overgrown, all those little buds on the sides shoot out to become prickly branches.

Wild asparagus

After 10 minutes of foraging

I fry it quickly in a little olive oil and some salt. With a little bread it's a good starter. It tastes smokier than cultivated asparagus and somehow a little more green.

There's also wild garlic springing up now, hard green apricots and almonds are already on the trees, and the cherries are definitely on their way.

Little green hands: the first fig leaves in early April

End of the calçot season

Calçots are delicious: try them if you get the chance.

They are a giant Catalan spring onion which are cooked until black in the flames of olive prunings, then wrapped in newspaper for a while to continue cooking in their own steam. When you can wait no longer, you unwrap, burn your fingers while peeling off the charcoaly outer layers, dip in salbitxada sauce (ground almonds, tomatoes, peppers and other things) and stuff them in your mouth as the hot juice dribbles down your chin. It's a messy process - see pics below...

Now the season is coming to an end - time for summer sangria!

Three eggs today

In January we fulfilled one of our living-in-the-countryside dreams and bought three chickens.

After David had eyed up expensive, finely combed Basque fowl and we'd considered the pros and cons of a cockerel (he looks after his girls but might have your eye out with a claw) we eventually settled on three point-of-lay bog-standard red hens from the local garden centre. They were only about five euros apiece, but by the time we bought a coop, some food, a feeding trough and a water dispenser it's going to take a year or so to repay our investment.

We tucked them up against the freezing winter winds with generous piles of sawdust and stacks of straw bales, bought 'Chickens for Dummies' and hoped for the best.

Eventually, one morning around Valentine's Day (the traditional start of the laying season) we found our first tiny brown egg nestling warmly in a corner of the coop. After that the eggs became bigger and bolder, but only ever one a day which seemed to signify that only one chicken was in lay (unless they were taking it in turns).

Then last week one of the hens shuffled herself down into a big pile of straw in the chicken run and began to make a nest. David predicted the second egg of the day and he was right - we got a little brown speckled one. We celebrated with eggs for breakfast on Sunday.

It was all going well until Sunday afternoon when the chickens were pootling around happily in the shade of the pine trees. (They have their own run, but usually escape and wander around until we put them back.) We'd forgotten that the puppy was off her lead. There was some barking and clucking, then a lot of squawking, flapping and pounding of paws. The puppy isolated one of the chickens and chased her down down the terraces into the forest, David chased the puppy, I tried to herd the other two chickens into their coop, David rugby-tackled the (very happy) puppy in a gorse bush and dragged her back to her kennel, and eventually we pulled the miraculously-not-dead-chicken out of the forest. Only one egg the next day.

But then today we had three eggs - hurray!

Winter's end?

Most Brits cheerfully chuck out their winter coats when they move to Spain. But it can get pretty cold here too. A couple of weeks ago I hung out some washing at 10am and by 11am it was frozen rigid. That night my money plant and geraniums suffered a bitter - and probably fatal - northerly blast. And the next day I spent 5 euros on a fake - but very warm - fur coat at a local market.

Our little house is well protected against the weather with its thick stone walls and sturdy windows, and we've got a big log burner to keep us warm. It's certainly lovely to be tucked up in the glow of a flickering olive wood fire, but reality doesn't quite mirror the woolly romance of the Toast winter catalogue. You can't wear a floaty knitted scarf when you're chainsawing firewood, and a handwash-only lambswool jumper isn't the most practical attire for sweeping the ashes out of the hearth. Nevertheless, a fire fuelled by wood out of the forest is cheaper and greener than central heating.

Now it looks as though spring might be on the way. The almond blossom has been trying to get going since early January, and suddenly this week fields of uninteresting brown twiggy trees have been transforming into swathes of scented pink beauties (see below). We had a lunchtime barbecue a couple of days ago, I spotted some swallows back from the south, and at least one of our three new chickens has started to lay tiny brown eggs (Valentine's day is traditionally the start of the laying season).

Let's hope I haven't spoken too soon.

Mules, mutts and mice for Sant Antoni

No sooner have we recovered from Christmas than the village has launched into another fiesta.

Sant Antoni kicked off yesterday with a procession of gegants i cap-grossos (giants and big-heads; see Wikipedia for background) accompanied by the village drummers. It was rainy and cold so there weren't that many people out, but they made up for it later by practically blowing up the village square. A spectacular firework display began with a flaming rocket zooming down the street suspended from a wire hung between trees and lampposts and concluded with giant fireballs. (Sorry, no photos of this bit, I was cowering in a doorway with my hands over my ears.)

Gegants i cap-grossos, and a sort of caterpillar

Then today was the big celebration of Sant Antoni Abat (Sant Anthony the Abbot), the patron saint of domestic animals and traginers ('beasts of burden' - mules, horses and so on) as well as our village. 'Tres tombs' saw animals of all shapes and sizes - beautifully groomed stallions, manky old mules, cows with ribbons in their horns, bulldogs with choke chains, toy dogs in pink babygros, canaries and mice - parading three times around the village, culminating with them being blessed by the priest.

Here's a selection of animals and their handlers...

And the blessing...

The queue for the priest (lots of barking)

Our puppy dodging the holy water

After mass, vermouth and prawns were served in the village square.