Nariz's Outbox

We're threatened with it early this week to as low as 200 mtrs. As we live at 600 mtrs we're obviously in for it! Trouble is when it snows heavily here we tend to get snowed in for a few days until the snowploughs have finished making life easy for the valley folk and finally decide to help us mountain folk out. Ah well .... been shopping so the freezer's full and my partner replenished the wood store yesterday so we'll just cuddle up by the fire and wait it out.

My partner had a very clever way of getting rid of these people once and for all! If someone called tring to sell insurance or whatever he'd start by sounding friendly - exchanging first names etc, (not necessarily the correct name!) then as the caller launched into his reason for the call my partner would change the conversation around and start trying to sell "whatever" to the caller, who would then back out rather quickly and never be heard from again. I know we don't all have the "gift of the gab" but if you can sound convincing - it works!

Bomkers: I know there are some bad stories out there about purchasing from companies over the internet, but we've been doing it for years - CDs, DVDs, books, clothes, appliances - and we've not come a cropper yet! Give it a try. Go on!

You pre-empted me Bonkersbon. Precisely my thoughts. I guess we are very lucky here - we love to "stand and stare" and do it frequently at everything. So much beauty and knowledge can be ingested just by quietly appreciating what is here and now. Lovely poem Hywel.

Well done Wohlibuli, got it in one! I've met people like this and the best way to annoy them (and don't we all want to!!!!) is to ignore them and carry on being brilliant. More strength to your gardening brain Raquel!

Wonderful moonlight showing everything up almost like daylight! Our neighbours - Lebeniagos and proud of it (born and bred in the Lebeniago Valley) - always sow their veggies by lunar law and they do very well. In fact they are so immersed in lunar logic that they call round to tell me when I should sow my seeds. At some point I am going to conduct a little experiment with some veggies - sowing some when I'm told to my my knowleagable neighbours and others a little later or earlier, just to see what occurs. I'll keep you in mind, Jacque, and let you know the results.

So sorry Spritz! Do hope there's not too much damage and you get compensated by the farmer. Perhaps another visit from the Police may nudge him into securing his own fences. Then again, if he's hit in his pocket that may hurt most and things might get better for you.

I used to suffer from noise pollution from loud neighbours in one place I lived in Britain but here, when we're sitting on the balcony looking at the incredible mountain and valley views, my partner may say "hear that?" and I say "No. I can't hear anything." To which his reply is obviously "Exactly!"

Very nice Hywel! Also very nice is the view from your garden. My partner is Welsh, from Cardiff, and when we were deciding where we would best like to live, Wales came a very close second, but I know we're extremely happy with our lot here. Enjoy!

Isn't it so satisfying to see your garden blooming with stuff you've grown from seed! When I started gardening, about 13 years ago, I knew nothing and just bought plants I liked the look of from garden centres, but as I had little time to spare then all the plants were perrenials, until I eventually had a garden that looked after itself. Now I have a bare canvas and am trying out plants to see if they like it here I'm also collecting seeds like mad and happily growing them on. Such a lovely thing to spend time on - now that I have all the time I need. Looking forward to seeing the photos next year oif all your efforts.

Yes, kill the beetles, but watch out for the larva - they're the ones that do the damage. Plus they are the most disgusting things as they cover themselves in their own excrement as a deterrent to birds. The only way I could handle getting rid of them was to search each leaf every day and wipe the plants clean with tissues. Yuk! I stopped having lilies in the end - better things to do in the garden than deal with such nastiness!

My feelings echo all those above. This kind of idiocy is one of the things I was glad to leave behind when we moved here. Mind you, we're not yet speaking enough Spanish to understand all that goes on with their Councils, but so far everything seems to rub along nicely with common sense being the main reason for doing/not doing things. We shall see! Sorry you're having all this trauma over such a lovely place. I hope it soon settles for you.

Lovely photos Chris. Now I know where our usual October/November weather has gone!! Feel like sending it West back to us?

Unlikely to be a truffle - don't give up the day job yet!

I thought about puting out feed for birds when we first moved here but, quite frankly, they could teach us a thing or two about living off the land. Plus, of course, the feral cats would be a problem for them! The wall holding back part of the mountain from falling into our garden has a bank of wild flowers and grasses and is often heaving with flocks of Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Greenfinches etc, and the Black Redstarts that were born on a beam over our balcony last Spring regularly hunt around the garden. There is a patch of wild ground outside our back door where a cabbage self-seeded - the cabbage leaves are picked by our neighbour for her chickens, the finches grab anything with legs amongst the flowers and, as soon as the seeds appear we get small flocks of Serins camoflaged amongst the foliage making a meal of the seeds.

In this region there are Vulture feeding stations! When a farmer has a death amongst his herd, as long as it was from old age and not from some disease, he transports it to a designated area and the Vultures deal with it. Now that's what I call feeding the birds - and for less than "Twopence a Bag." Job done!

Not sure if this stands for Britain, but here in the rather chilly (at the moment) village in the mountains of northern Spain there are two fig trees. One is on the land of a rather lazy guy from another village and he does virtually nothing to his tree - just lets the birds peck away at the fruit and the figs are getting smaller each year with the 20ft tree looking lank and pale-leaved. The other is in the garden of a hard-working man who cares for his tree by pruning it back hard every two years and this year the fruit is wonderful and the 15 ft tree looks healthy and bushy. I leave you to decide which route to take with your tree!

Thanks Wohlibuli and Steve, I feel better now. Curry tonight!

Well, apart from the ever-present deer and the threat of wild boar falling off the edge of the wall and dropping into the Brussels Sprouts, we have viscious 4" long Tyrranosaurus wall lizards, gigantic snails and 4" long black slugs, as well as the double-fanged territorial Swallowtail butterflies. Then we always get a dreadful ticking off from the local Robin as soon as we step into our garden and dagger-like stares from the sheep in the compound next door. Oooooh, it scares me! NOT! :o))

TT you made me laugh out VERY loud!

Did any of you see the delightful series "Christine's Garden?" What an absolute delight! I have longed to have a "Reg" ever since. We watched it avidly each week and it always left us with a feeling of well-being. If ever there was a "gardening guru" who extolled all that is best in gardening it is Christine Walkden and her mate, Reg. Carol Klein's good on enthusiasm too.

Are we, perhaps, the only non-cat-owning gardeners? I realise I might receive the wrath of all you cat lovers but ... I don't like them. Sorry! Being a gardener and loving to get my hands in soil I don't like suddenly coming across a pile of something extremely nasty just because MY soil is soft and dug over and the cat's owners don't do gardening! Nor do I like their sneaky ways of dispensing with our feathered friends. We must be the "other side of the coin" as we love watching birds from our balcony (including the raptors - Short-Toed Eagles, Vultures, Lammageirs, Buzzards etc. - as well as all the small birds, especially as a pair of Black Redstarts decided to raise a brood on a beam over our balcony.

We would love to have a large dog, but we want to travel around our adopted country and owning a dog wouldn't allow us to do that. Still, our neighbour has two dogs who regularly pop over for a chin rub and also greet us enthusiastically when we return from an outing, overwatched by the feral cats who live in a barn and scowl at us from on high! They keep away from us!

The whole point of a garden, in my opinion, is ... enjoy! Who cares if colours clash? Let them! If YOU enjoy your garden no-one else matters. Have fun!

We, too, had a bare canvas for a garden and feel very proud of our achievements over the last two years. Your garden looks lovely! Enjoy!

Do scale insects attack cyclamen? I had experience of them on a small citrus I had in a pot and the problem you have sounds very similar. I'm sure someone who knows better than I will have the precise answer.

Lovely photos! Wonderful Autumn colours! Fantastic layout of plants! Beautiful!

Pinks are another flower that won't germinate here, along with penstemons and delphiniums, much to my regret.

That's one of the things I love about living here Spritz - not a sign of Christmas anywhere yet! Apart from the snow on the mountain range of course, but then no-one ever managed to rein in Mother Nature.

Spritz! Did I spot a word puzzle on one of your newspaper pots not done??? Dreadful waste of a bit of brain exercise! Shame on you! Of all the things I thought I'd miss when we moved out here, my daily brain work out on the newspaper puzzles is the only one, so now I have a Soduku book in every room!

Hi Bilbo, sorry to hear of your loss. I had the same problem once when I lived in Britain and it turned out to be a disease, probably brought in by one of the birds who loved to have a bath in the shallow end and had probably bathed in another pond already holding the disease. I checked it all out with the lovely people who ran the "fish shop" nearby and then, after draining and refilling the pond, gave treatments to the water at certain intervals. Can't recall exactly what the disease was called! It was like a fungus and the fishes' scales opened up. Anyway, while treating the water following the disaster I never had the problem again and, after starting with six fish, I ended up with 28 so something must have been right! Good luck!

What scares me is that they think there are people out there who don't know!!!!! If there are .... where do they live?