Thursday 10 April 2014

Lots of Green, and a Little Blue



From the garden out back you can see the landscape to the west, beyond the mimosa trees and the chicken hut and the wall that breaks the wind.

I started installing the irrigation out there today, the water hoses that make veggies grow all summer. Nothing like putting in a water system to make the sky open up, except maybe washing a car.

I never wash the car, but my neighbours do. They are why these fields out beyond the wall are bright lime green. They wash their cars, they spread fertilizer on the heavy clay ground, and they put seeds down at the same time. The combination works its April magic. All the way to Sahagun the ground is covered in a quilt, its patches made of every shade of green. And the sky, so clear and blue all day, week, and month, this afternoon as gray as gunmetal, but with the fields still in full sunlight in the foreground. There´s a rainbow out there somewhere, you just know it. 

Paddy is painting a version on the patio wall. We are working outdoors in the long daylight hours, planting things, putting out the patio furniture, sunning ourselves and petting dog-heads. Bruno is open, so we see few pilgrims now.

I contemplate Enough. That this little life, lived pretty much in this little corner of this little town, is enough for me.

I am ambitious. I want more, I want to change things, make them better. I want to have friends I can meet for coffee and hang out with. I want to speak Spanish really well. I want to write more and better books. I want to be important and respected, but I also want to disappear, I want to be happy in my semi alone-ness. I want all the seeds I plant to germinate, and grow on, and produce beautiful fruit. I want people to come here and help us eat them, but I don´t want them to stay too long.

Things do not work out. Maybe half the things I start ever come to anything. My favourite cousin on Dad´s side died three years ago, and now the favourite cousin on Mom´s side is having radiation treatments. People are sometimes friendly to me, but I do not make the next move to turn them into friends... most of them speak only Spanish, and Spanish is exhausting to me after a couple of hours. I will never get Spanish.

I do have Malin. We went horse-riding on Saturday, to celebrate my birthday. I was involved in a minor collision, I hit the ground pretty hard. I am getting too old for riding, I think. I cannot afford to feel so beat-up, this many days later. It´s encouraging, though, to hear Malin and her English friends speaking Spanish. They´ve lived here a long time, too, and their Spanish is not so great, either.

So things are somewhat sad-making, if I let them be. But then I pet a dog-head in the sunny patio, and I see the swallow dive through the barn-door. The swallows came back early this year, on my birthday. I spent Sunday at O´Cebreiro with Laurie, a woman I have admired for years. She is full of history and wisdom, her house is beautiful, she has a wonderful scruffy dog she bought from a beggar, she lives alone and she lives very well.  She gave me a great armload of hydrangea cuttings which I am planting in my patio, I do hope they will grow!

I hope for half. Even half a hydrangea is pretty spectacular. Half a hydrangea, and a gun-metal sky behind a mimosa tree, and a dog-head that needs a scratch.

That oughtta be enough for anybody.    

8 comments:

Warren said...

If all of us could see the downside to MORE!! as you do, the world would be a better place. Remember Bogart in To Have and Have Not when he tells the gangster "You want More." We all have the MORE bug...Sounds like you're semi-cured

Anonymous said...

…sure do love and miss you, Rebekah Scott…
xo, k

ps I don't speak ANY Spanish

Christine Adams said...

I know how you feel with the Spanish. After a three week sojourn in the South, I'm absolutely so exhausted with speaking almost nothing but (and not well) that I can't even remember the Spanish word for exhausted. You're a trooper. Take heart though, I have met several long time expats, English, German, and Swiss, all living in Spanish and being completely fluent. You will get there too.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your beautiful honesty.

t2andreo said...

Wonderful blog entry! I like your writing style. In your blog, you laid out perhaps two good books; not fictional novels mind you. But good books based on your experiences living on the Meseta. I can think of several more ideas to pitch to you. We will talk more when we meet in a month.

Ingrid said...

I always love it when you describe the "view" from your place, I can just image, the Spring colours of the land coming alive. I love Mimosas, they were in my bridal bouquet with daisies. One day, you will wake up and wonder why you get a bid down with your Spanish... it will simply be there. I wish you good luck with the hydrangeas.. I loved the walls of them walking in the Fall. Epson salt bath, anytime you take a tumble from a horse... I know, sometimes it is hard to hang on... to horses and other things. Light and Love Ingrid

Heda said...

I know I know. It's all about learning to live with reality. Your existence sounds blissful to me regardless.

Rsgoldfast said...
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