Granada

And of course, The Alhambra...

Ronda

Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary

When the boy and I were gearing up for our big six week European adventure, we were anxious about leaving our new place behind for that length of time. During our years separate and together, we had amassed a collection of indoor and outdoor plants, that are near and dear to our hearts. One of the great things about our new dwelling, is that it offers us an outdoor garden space. Not too much, but just enough to make the gardening a real workout and to give us square footage to experiment with. That being said, leaving behind our little garden was a little sad - we did not know what to expect upon our return. A good friend came over a couple of times a week, to take care of some indoor and outdoor watering. But we knew that the outdoor plants were less protected and were subject to the great, wild outdoors.

This was what we found when we came back:

The snap peas did grow wild. Weeds were everywhere and the lovely lemon thyme that was planted in the ground was buried underneath more weeks. The bay tree popped off- it was two times bigger than what we had left and insurgent parsleys were sprouting throughout the entire garden.

We spent about four hours weeding, tilling, fertilizing and watering the soil. The end result was extremely satisfying. It was a beautiful, blank slate for us to work with.

We moved the mint- that were suffering with its limited growing space in the pots and planters to the space where the giant parsley had been. Now it can have all the space it wants for its roots.

We completed our garden overhaul with some starter plants and seeds. We bought 4 cherry tomatoes, 12 snap beans from Whole Foods and 3 Italian basils from Hortica. From seeds, we planted a row of Japanese cucumber, red peppers and 2 rows of carrots. The lemon thyme was moved to a nice, private space next to the bay tree and the planter box that used to house the mint, is now filled with cilantro seeds. There is some real estate left in the hanging garden that we need to fill as well.

Arcos

Jerez (the place of sherry)

Sevilla

Holy Toledo!

Madrid Faves

As promised, here are some pics from the big trip. Below are some Madrid favorites...

Back in Business

I've been out of commission (again) for a super long time. The boy and I have just gotten back from a six-week long trip in Europe. We spent three weeks in Spain and three weeks in Italy. Amazing trip and now that I've returned to my world and back at a computer, I look at my blog and see just how much I've missed during the past month and a half and how I even feel somewhat alien to the blog. Yikes!

We took lots of pics and I'll be posting quite a number of mine. I took about 700 pics (the boy took over 2,000!!!) and no, you will not be subjected to all of them.

The trip involved: flying into Madrid through Munich, from San Francisco. From Madrid, we enjoyed a day trip to Toledo. Then we went further south, to the Andalucia region, to Sevilla, Jerez, Arcos (day trip), Ronda and Granada. From Granada, we took an overnight train up to Barcelona, which was our last stop in Spain.

Our Italy leg started in Pisa, which is a puddle-jumper flight from Barcelona. We took a short day trip to Lucca, before heading down to Florence. We continued down a short bit to Siena, then took a train north to the Cinque Terra and then back down again to Orvieto, before going to our last Italian destination - Rome.

Ah! It was both a long and short trip. Exhausting, but memorable - every bit of it. It was a very special trip.