July looks like:

Photos are better than many words.
We have tons of both. Lots of company, lots of conversation, plenty of music and things to celebrate.

Friday the 13th was our ninth wedding anniversary. Derek, a friend of Paddy´s from his Wasted Youth days right on up through the Fleet Street Wildness, came over with his very nice wife. And then came Peter Blanchette, one of the stalwarts of the Camino Guitars  program. And we all went together to the Grand Opening of the Bodegon Castilla de Moratinos, the restaurant built into the bodega hillside by the Milagros family. Superb roast lamb, carmelized leaks fulled with shellfish, Prieto Picudo vino, great company in a great town!

Moratinos in July, with sunflowers

And on the same day yet another stray dog showed up with a Canadian pilgrim. It was a little sheep-herding puppy who seemed to have lost an eye very recently. We took her to the vet (the dog, not the Canadian) and he used a rather medieval-looking instrument to take two long, sharp oat seeds out of her cornea! Yikes! No one knows who she might belong to. She has no microchip, nobody in Terradillos or Moratinos knows or seems to care.

Unnamed girly dog

This makes FIVE DOGS.
I don´t want to keep her, cute as she is. She hasn´t got a name yet. Her eye is much better. You want a dog?

The dogs are amazing these days, in many ways. So are the cats. So are the pilgs. And so are the summer skies, and the fields. The fields are spangled now with thousands of grinning sunflowers, always a sure sign that our wedding anniversary is near.

Momo stalks

Momo the kitten is getting long-legged. He mixes freely with all the dogs and cats. He fears no one and nothing, and every human in his environs has little claw-marks in the skin of their shins and thighs, from him climbing their pants-legs. He is a crocodile in a cat suit. 

Harry sleeps post-modernly

Harry is mellow, slender, svelte. He likes the new patio, because the tiles hold the daytime heat right past sundown. He is a most elegant napper.  

Peter plays his archguitar for hours each day, and in the silent wee hours of the night he is recording a new album inside our parish church. Santo Tomas is developing quite a reputation for acoustics for stringed instruments. The last album recorded there, by Duo Sonidos, has won several international classical awards, and recently was featured on the cover of BBC Classical magazine!

Meantime, the walls of the Peaceable overflow with dog-yowls and cat hisses, Bach partitas and Fenian plaints from Ireland.