Spain Nature

One of the delightful things about Ronda, and many other Spanish cities, is that the outskirts of town are often home to half-completed parks where I guess someone once thought it would be nice for kids and families to play. In Ronda, this is next to the abandoned swimming pool at the bottom of town.

Nobody ever goes to the pool anymore, it's been shut for a couple of years or more, so the park surrounding it is now only used by the local farmers to graze their animals, unfortunately nobody ever emptied the rubbish bins when the swimming pool closed, so vandals have trashed them (pardon the pun).

It's a sad indictment of our society that I can take a picture of a horse grazing amongst garbage, although to be fair to the horse it only wants to eat the grass, but why hasn't someone cleaned this up yet?

Yesterday saw us get up early for a walk in the Ronda countryside, there are some attractive wild flowers growing along the side of the road about 5km from where we live. Sadly most of them had gone, they won't be back until next year, but on the way home I stopped and took this photo. Believe it or not, we were walking along this very road and where it hits the base of that mountain is where we were headed. Hope you like it, summer in Spain can be gorgeous if you take the time to see the beauty around you.

This post is specially for one of my favorite readers, a lady who was telling me this morning she had a cricket running around her apartment. I won't mention her name coz she complains that I have no tact, but she knows who she is, don't you Jillian?

These wonderful creepy crawlies, the Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium aegyptium) hang out everywhere here in our part of Spain and make a heck of a mess on the windscreen when they fly across the highway. My other half hates them, she won't move past them and goes into panic lockdown mode whenever one is within a few meters of her.

She claims they're out to get her, like they deliberately fly directly at her, and I can't convince her otherwise. Poor we grasshoppers. Anyway they're quite distinctive don't you think? Lovely striped eyes and a ridge down through the shoulder blades. I don't have a more detailed picture to show the eyes but I'll keep a look out for one in the next few days. Hope you like it Jillian, oh, and thanks for using one of our themes. Check out Jillian Approved