Flowers in January

I'm Canadian, and seeing flowers in January continues to amaze me.  You see it's hot here compared to Canada, but it's not THAT hot, it's not tropical.  If you go somewhere tropical, you aren't surprised by flowers in January, but here, it is chilly...our high today was about 14º and the low about 5º.  OK, but Canada standards, that's pretty darned nice, and it is pretty darned nice, but not something that shrieks out FLOWERS!!!!

So I am utterly delighted when they show up....

There's only one of these irises, and I think they may be my favourite flowers.....

This bush is madly pumping out the roses, we have them in all stages, and they smell wonderful.

The lemon tree has more lemons than sense, which I suppose is to be expected, but really, it grows so many lemons that it gets literally doubled over from the weight of them.

Jasmine, we have lots of this too......

Another rose, these don't smell as strongly, but are lovely, we've got one bloom and some buds.
 

Such a treat.

holidays

These holidays are maybe a little boring, and maybe it would have been great to go and do something, like tour Italy, but that was not in the cards financially this year, and you know what? 

It has been (and continues to be) great...at least for me!  The Man and I have seen almost all of the exhibitions that are on in BCN (including a surprisingly crappy one yesterday), and I have read a book almost every day after the Christmas excitement ended.  Not doing much of anything, walking the dog, reading and doing the necessary chores.

It has been great.

Yesterday was marvelous

Really!  I had the most amazing start to the year!  Went for a walk in the hills with the dog and the man, went to friends and had a marvelous New Year's day lunch, read a fantastic book (The Martian), had a nap and went to a stunning concert here in the village.  The musicians were having fun, at the end they had santa hats on, or police hats (?) or barratines, they played a weird instrument they'd made out of bottles filled to different depths and lit and suspended.  It was fun, it was great music beautifully played, but the highlight was the tenor....OMG

It isn't a big theater and it was like a private performance.  Josep Fadó  I mean, good lord.  We even got to sing Silent Night, which was cool, I love that carol....but everyone was singing different words than me (in Catalan)...no big deal.....he sang this piece among others.  It was amazing, make your hair stand up on end.