I think I’m starting to get used to the sound of Spanish bins being emptied at midnight. The first few weeks it was like a clanging insult hurled at my sleep, but now I sort of… admire the chaos. Like the country’s gently reminding me: “you don’t have to do things the sensible way.”
This morning, for example, I had coffee with a neighbour I hadn’t met before — Julia, from Cádiz, who moved here in the 90s and still waters her plants wearing full lipstick. She told me with great authority that fennel is a weed and should be “watched closely.” Then she offered me a cutting of her wild fennel anyway, saying it was “the good kind, not the criminal kind.” I had no idea plants could have moral alignments, but I nodded politely and took it. She smelled vaguely of aniseed and Chanel No. 5.
My days lately have been quietly odd. In the best way. A sort of pleasant dislocation. I go to the same café every Tuesday — the one with the blue chairs and the terrible orange juice — and write shopping lists I never follow. I bought a straw hat last week because the woman in the shop said I looked like Lauren Bacall in it. A lie, obviously, but I wore it out of the shop anyway and kept it on for two full days.
There’s a boy — I mean, a man, but somehow I keep thinking “boy” — who sells herbs at the Saturday market. He looks like he belongs in a folk band. I bought thyme I didn’t need just to keep the conversation going. He told me to check out this page on Mediterranean kitchen herbs and how to grow them: Royal Horticultural Society – Mediterranean Herbs. I pretended to write it in my notes app but I was mostly just writing down his name so I wouldn’t forget it. Luka. With a “k”.
I still miss foxgloves. There’s nothing Spanish that quite fills the same space — tall, dramatic, possibly poisonous. But I’m learning. Fennel is flirtier. Rosemary grows like it’s showing off. And bougainvillea? She’s the flamenco dancer of plants — all wild pink frills and absolutely no shame.
The garden’s still more dust than dream, but I’ve cleared a patch for fennel now. Julia’s cutting is in a jar of water by the window. I’ll plant it tomorrow. Maybe.
There’s something satisfying about how nothing is settled. Everything’s sort of hanging in the air — me, the fennel, Luka with a “k”. And for once, I don’t need to rush the next thing.
I’ll wait. Water the windowsill. Watch what takes root.