Spanish Mountain Life
by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy
continued from the July Ezine...
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/September04/childbearing.htm
We also took walks on the mountain every morning, despite
the cold of that unnatural Andalusian spring. The breath
of the sierra wind was icy; snow and hail came in it often
enough. It was colder than anything that I had known elsewhere
in Europe, including the French Alps in February, or even
during mid-winter on the sea-coast beyond Istanbul in
Turkey.
The Sierra Nevada peasants said: 'This
wind enters the heart of the bones', and they would wrap
their woollen cloaks tighter around their lean bodies.
But Raflk and I had no woollen clothes, for I had expected
to find the hot Andalusian sun which I had known in the
spring in Granada two years ago. We shivered in our thin
clothes and were thankful when the evening brazier of
olive-wood charcoal was lit in our room in the inn and
we could warm away the cold of the day.
I could not forgo our walks despite the
snow and rain. For all the terraced slopes of the fertile
lower areas of the sierra were in blossom. Fruit trees
of every kind seemed as multitudinous as the sierra animals,
and the blossom lay lovely upon them, of all colours of
white and pink, from the ivory of pear flowers to the
darker rose hue of quince and almond. Green-white was
the most fragrant blossom of orange and lemon trees. Trees
in blossom, seen against a turquoise sky when the rains
cleared, are a fair thing, and later the carmine of pomegranate
flowers against the blue was the loveliest of all.
I knew some sadness when all the snow melted
on the sierra heights around Lanjaron, for the eternal
snow of the Sierra Nevada was on higher ranges, out of
walking or mule-riding distance of the molino Gongoras.
But with the melting of the snow came the wild purple
irises, tall as Rafik, beautiful banners of them along
the borders of the streams and waving upon the wet parts
of the foothills. Their scent was a delight and I gathered
armfuls of them for my room in the water-mill. They flowered
at Eastertime, the Semana Santa of Spain, and the peasants
told me that they represented the pain of Christ; certainly
the purple iris was much used in the church processions
of that holy week.
Later, the peasants also said that the white
Madonna lily- the azucena, so celebrated in songs and
dances of Spain represented the happiness of Christ, his
triumph over death, and that the white lilies would blossom
when the irises had died away. And that was so. So soon
as the irises had withered on the mountain, the madonna
lilies flowered thick along the border of the upper mill
stream of the molino Gongoras, and like the white of swans
were reflected in the sunlit waters of the stream. They
too then had their turn in the church processions, especially
the June celebration of Corpus Christi.
Spanish Mountain
Life (continued)
by
Juliette de Bairacli-Levy
http://www.ashtreepublishing.com/Author_Juliette_de_Bairacli_Levy.htm
to
to be continued....
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/November04/childbearing.htm
click
here for another excerpt from Juliette's Nature's Children,
"treatment of fevers"
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/july03/recipes.htm