I think I’m maybe okay with the bins now. Spanish ones. The ones that get emptied at midnight like they’ve got a personal grudge. The first few weeks I thought they’d ruin me. Now I barely look up. It’s part of how it works here. No one complains. No one warns you either. It’s not wrong, just different.
This morning I met Julia — upstairs, from Cádiz originally, been here since ’93. She told me fennel’s a weed with attitude. That some of it turns. “You’ll know if it does,” she said, and handed me a cutting anyway. It smelled like anise and something old-school. Her hallway had those plastic runners people used to use to protect carpet. I hadn’t seen one in years.
Tuesdays I go to the café with the plastic chairs and €2 orange juice. Same seat. The table with the screw missing. I pretend to write lists. Sometimes I do. There’s one that says “find clay soil plants that don’t sulk” — that was after my attempt with echinacea. I knew better. I used to volunteer at a community garden in Kilkenny. It doesn’t translate well to this climate, not without a lot of trial and error.
Last week I bought a straw hat. The woman in the shop in Fuengirola told me I looked like Lauren Bacall. I didn’t. But I wore it for two full days like the lie might become true if I gave it space.
There’s a guy at the Saturday market in Mijas Pueblo. Luka with a “k.” Early 30s, maybe. Wears trousers that no straight line has ever entered. He sold me thyme and told me about the RHS guide to Mediterranean herbs. Said to look it up, but I just wrote down his name instead. I’ll find the link eventually. The thyme’s already in the ground.
Foxgloves don’t seem to want to know me here. The garden’s not quite forgiving yet. It’s rocky and sunburned and weirdly smug. Rosemary sprawls. Bougainvillea explodes whether you feed it or not. And fennel? Fennel’s biding its time.
Julia’s cutting is still in water. I’ve read you need to let it settle a bit. I will. Eventually.
Everything’s sort of suspended. The garden. Luka. Me. I haven’t signed up for anything — not clubs, not Spanish lessons, not life insurance. But I’ve started reading up on a few things. Just in case. Spain asks different questions than Ireland did.
And I don’t know the answers yet.