Odds and ends and a ruin or two

The weeks are passing quickly. It may be because we are waiting for our shipment from the U.S. and each week we marvel that it still has not arrived. Or perhaps it is because we leave a week from today for a trip to Korea and have been mindful of all the things we want to get done before that trip.  

Regardless, time really does fly when you are having fun!

Happy Sam

This week we had two rainy days. Rain is something that always brought a wave of depression for me when we lived in Oregon; I knew that once it started, it would not stop for nearly nine months. But here in La Alpujarra, rain is welcome after many months of sunshine. And so we rejoiced with the locals, and honestly, I loved it.  It smelled like "home," and it was cozy in our little cortijo with the rain falling outside, and the next day when we were enveloped by the clouds that resisted leaving.

The view over the edge of our property on Thursday

When the clouds did lift we had the most wonderful view of the snow covered mountains. I have always loved snow and I could look at this view for hours without tiring. In fact, I spent several hours waiting for the clouds to lift because I knew what was waiting for me.

A view that will never get old

We had a day in Granada and an evening with friends new and old.  A British man was here for a trek with our friends who run Spanish Highs Mountain Guides; we had met him in February when he was here for a winter climb and he was surprised to hear that we had moved here since we hadn't mentioned that to him in February - we explained that, in February we had not planned to move here!

And we have taken some lovely hikes.  One of the things about hiking here is that we constantly discover ruins scattered about the hillsides.  The house we live in was one of these ruins before it was restored several years ago.  And each ruin has an Era, or threshing circle - a feature that I find especially charming about this part of Spain.

An Era from times past

Ruined window

Approaching a ruin on one of our hikes

I want to know about the woman who cooked with this oven

Pantry shelves

View from a ruin

Sometimes the ruin is a car!

And sometimes we find interesting bugs on our hikes.  Today on the way home we spotted this Wolf spider on the road.  I thought it was just a fuzzy spider but when we got home I shared the photo on the Wildlife in Southern Spain Facebook site and discovered that the "fuzz" is actually baby spiders, hundreds of babies!

Female Wolf spider with a back full of babies

We leave for Korea next Saturday so I probably won't blog for a week or two. Thanks for following and I'll be back in November.