Septembering

I´ve been snapping pictures all week, when I´ve not been driving. (I try not to combine the two activities too often.) With the world economy teetering on the brink, the USA elections coming up, and the demise of Paul Newman hogging up all the printers´ ink, I am left with little of significance to tell my readers, (´cept maybe get your money out of the bank NOW and hide it somewhere no one will ever look. Millie Benson, a cunning old lady of my acquaintance, throve through the Great Depression because she saw it coming, got her money out in cash, and stashed it away safely in the tubes of her xylophone.)

Anyway, this week included the fiesta over at San Nicolas, complete with three giant paellas and several botas of very nasty wine:


The boys from Barrunta catered it, and as they traveled down the street to the teleclub porch, the fragrance brought out the citizenry in droves! The pipers played, the paella was et, and I met a couple of guys there from Saldaña. Their sister lives in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. You can leave the Burgh, but it never leaves you!


Signs of the changing seasons are all over the place. Victor over in San Nicolas is stripping out his beehives, spinning the honey, drying the wax to sell for candles. The grape harvest starts this weekend, and the vineyards are being watched-over by scarecrows of many apparent ethnicities and stripes. The farmers are wonderfully creative, but I don´t think the crows are fooled for a minute. (It´s startling as hell when a windy day blows down a scarecrow or two into a ditch. Viewed from a distance, well...it´s scary!)
Paddy´s off to London in a couple of weeks, with plans to visit lots of old friends. This is why I need to take lots of pictures of our house, and upload them to Picasa... so they can see what Paddy´s been doing, and so he doesn´t have to take the computer along with him when he goes! I am envious, but it really IS his turn to take a break. Here are some of the nicer ones, of critters enjoying Their Favorite Things:




Meantime, we met up with a law professor from Illinois (now a pilgrim) over in Leon and went to see San Miguel de Escalada, a breathtakingly old and lovely monastery out in the middle of nothing at all. Such a treat, having thousand-year-old things around!


And then we went back into Leon and ate pizza!
So it´s been a whole spectrum of goodies, under a sky amazingly blue. Somehow it makes me miss Libby and Philip, my children. And nachos. And the Pittsburgh Steelers, my football team. And Mom. Just a little.
Just until someone asks if we want the last bits of paella.