A great family to have around.

Meet the Bignonia family.
It's proper name is: Bignoniaceae

Let me come clean: I am going to describe a family of climbing plants that grow quickly in this climate and don't need much looking after. For a new garden in a Mediterranean climate they are a great choice.

This reddish-orange flower in the two photos above is from one of the Bignonia family of climbing shrubs. Its name is Tecoma (also called Tecomaria) Capensis or Cape Honeysuckle. The flowers are about 7 cms long and the leaves are wavy-edged pinnate with five or seven branches. The flowers tumble together in a cluster. For this way of describing plant leaves I have to thank the Royal Horticultural Society's A-Z of Garden Plants. Left to myself I would say that the leaves consist of smaller leaves (or leaflets) arranged opposite each other in pairs plus one leaflet at the end of the stem. And there are either 5 or 7 leaflets on each leaf.
There are also, by the way, other plants growing over the pergola including a Passion Flower - in one photo you can see its bright, starry shape rising above the rest of the growth. This invader has somehow seeded itself somewhere in the foliage.

Another Bignonia family member grows beside and over the front gate. This one I am pretty sure is Tecoma Apricot although it has grown into a small tree with several narrow trunks reaching higher than the 1.5 metres given as its maximum height in the A-Z.

There is one photo here. This plant has appeared before
showing its vivid flowers strewn on the driveway after a storm in the 2008 blog At home on the Costa Blanca in the piece for the month of October entitled 'The 'Gota Fria'.




The third member of the Bignonia family in our garden (in both of the last two photos) is unidentified. The A-Z does not mention a species with this pale blue colour *. I am hoping that some experienced gardener or plant expert will read this and identify the species. If not, then I am going to call it Manchestericeae Urbis (the urbis is genitive case, mainly because urbis looks nicer than any of the other cases of the Latin 'urbs' meaning 'city'.)

*Addendum: The colour of the flowers is pink, not pale blue. I can now identify the plant as Pandorea Rosea, another genus of the Bignonia family.

How could I get the colour so wrong?
When I was writing about them I went outside to look at the flowers. In full sun in the middle of the day and against the sky they seemed clearly pale blue. When I was publishing this piece some time later I went to photograph the flowers and again did not notice their true colour. It was not until the photos appeared on the website that I realised I had made a mistake.

Unfortunately therefore, Manchestericeae Urbis (Manchester City) cannot be created and will never be a member of the Bignonia family .........but, of course, Manchester City F.C. will remain a Premier League team playing in pale blue shirts.


Summary: I wrote about three species of ramblers from the same family (Bignonia). They were
1. Tecoma Capensis or Cape Honeysuckle, orange in colour
2. Tecoma Apricot, apricot in colour (or a bright orange)
3. Pandorea Rosea, pink in colour.
Two were of the genus called Tecoma and one was of the genus called Pandorea. 'Cape Honeysuckle' is the common name of one of the Tecomas. I have not come across a common name for the other two species. (I learned a lot writing about this family)

Soundless Flashes

The night of Sunday 9th August, 2009 the windows of Casa Kaduna lit up with vivid white flashes. Grandfather and Grandmother Bear went outside to enjoy the glorious sky. Was it really lightning? There was no sound of thunder. Across the high wide sky to the north came continuing flashes at intervals of seconds. They illuminated the shapes of clouds, and backlit the Montgó mountain - you can see its dark silhouette under the clouds in the photo below.

Father Bear and Mother Bear, with Senior and Junior Teenager Bears, were staying with friends in Gandia on this particular night of their Spanish holiday. Meanwhile back in Casa Kaduna Grandfather and Grandmother continued looking with amazement at the white flashes in the sky inset with the narrow zigzags of the lightning forks. Grandmother Bear said to Grandfather Bear, "How far away is that storm do you think?"
"France," he said, "I'm certain it is a long way off."
But Grandmother Bear said, "I don't think so, I think the storm is in Gandia where our family are staying tonight!"
Whereupon Grandfather Bear declared grandly,"France is 600 kilometres from here and Gandia is only 30! We would hear from Gandia."
As if that settled the matter.

The next day Father Bear, Mother Bear and the two Teenage Bears returned to Casa Kaduna.
Grandmother Bear immediately asked Father Bear, "Did you have a storm last night in Gandia?"
"Yes, we certainly did. We had thunder, lightning and a downpour. We were drenched when we got back to our lodging."
Mother Bear said, "And I warned Father Bear that we should not go out last night as there was going to be a storm. But he said it would be all right!"
"Well, it was all right, we got wet but it was all right," responded Father Bear.

And all right is what women bears always are.






For a further appearance of the Six Bears follow this link. Look for the blog of 25th August, 2009

Brits have a blast in Spanish holiday resort

The rocket shot off with a hiss leaving a red tail then a brilliant blue scattering light. Shouting and cheering the group of men from the rowing boat by the rocks near Moriara Marina charged the Tourist Office. In the darkness they hacked down the nearest defenders they found inside. The attackers with blackened faces, wearing bandanas and in bare feet swarmed over the interior as the remaining personnel ran off to save their lives. A tall man with long yellow hair marshalled the attackers, now sending them to join in the capture of a small supply ship in the harbour which had been protected by the guns of the fort at Moraira until this moment. He himself remained in the fort with one man and together they spiked the cannons, set a fuse to ignite the powder room, and ran off to add their efforts to the capture of the supply ship in the harbour. As they left the fort a huge explosion sent the two men flying off their feet on to the rocks. The building they had just left had exploded prematurely throwing debris outward and upward with a gigantic roar.

They get up and stagger off bruised and bleeding to join their men in the harbour.

The above scene is not the annual 'Moors and Christians' re-enactment. Nor is it a group of Northern European drunken tourist revellers having a Saturday night out.
What used to be a fort in Moraira is now the Tourist Office, just to make that point clear.
But exactly what is going on? Well, it is just before dawn one morning in the year A.D. 1801 ......

During the night a Royal Navy sloop arrived off Cabo de la Nao to the north of Moraira. Its yellow-haired Master and Commander, Jack Aubrey, had been given orders to capture any supply ships with cargoes useful to the Royal Navy and sail them to English Harbour, Mahon, Menorca. (A cheeky British version of Mayonniase sauce!)
Two of the sloop's boats filled with men set off to row in the dark before dawn towards the shore while the parent ship with a skeleton crew rounded Cape Moraira and opened fire on the fort before them on the shore of the bay. One boat headed to the harbour, the other towards the fort. When the men reached the shore a rocket was ignited to signal to the sloop to hold fire. Then having taken the fort, Jack Aubrey and his helper blew it up with its own gunpowder and narrowly escaping serious injury they joined the other British sailors in capturing a supply ship in the harbour as dawn broke.

The story above is my version of an incident in Patrick O'Brian's novel 'Master and Commander' , Chap 7, (see a review of the book in which the incident occurs at 'Non-new Book Review' http://non-newbookreview.blogspot.com/). O'Brian often put his fictional characters in real incidents taken from Admiralty records. Something like this description could well have occurred in the opening years of the 19th century as the Royal Navy was blockading Toulon, the French Mediterranean port. The period ended with the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 when the Royal Navy defeated a joint French-Spanish fleet.

Incidentally, the fort at 'Almoraira' (nowadays 'Moraira') was described as "square". The restored version as you can see in the photo is not square at all!

Local bars and grilles

"Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage"

The photo does not show a hermitage but I hope it looks tranquil rather than punitive. I have quoted the words that every schoolboy now in his third age will know - of Richard Lovelace (1618 - 1657). The photo shows an entrance to the lower part of our house from outside, and the stair rail ending there. It is not quite a hermitage, but it is a bedroom with another entrance from the room above.

The photo on the right is a view looking up from the lower terrace where three uses of the iron bars meet (i) on a window ((ii) on a balcony with a blind called Juliet and (iii) as a stair rail from the upper terrace.







And on the left the railing around two sides of the pool gives the swimmer a view of the village. Balustrades would have hidden most of it.

The garden-in-the-sky is supported by a metal structure. Two of the verticals are in the photo. Our neighbour, Vicente, who built the structure advised using metal rather than wood. He said it was easier to maintain in good condition than wood especially as we are close to the sea. I was also lucky enough to have a German neighbour who was a specialist in paint. He gave me several tins of a special black paint which he said would last for 25 years. I thought at first he meant that I should leave it in the tin. But he was insistent that I painted the metal with it. I was sceptical but could not look a gift-horse in the mouth. That was 12 years ago when I painted those vertical iron bars and it looks like he could be right. There is no sign of rust so far.



A small window with a grille (called 'una reja' in Spanish). This design was made locally and is typical of the area: the elaborate scroll shape of the lower sides and the curlicues on the top.





Wrought iron gates, of course, at the front of the house.

All of the features shown on this page are to be found in other houses in the area.

Here is the rest of Lovelace's poem, the lines now forgotten by those schoolboys in their third age

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty