I used to be grateful for any bit of sunshine.
In Ireland, you could lose half a Saturday waiting for the clouds to move. When the sun finally appeared, I’d abandon whatever I was doing and go outside. Even if the grass was still wet. Even if I had absolutely nothing to do out there.
You didn’t waste sunshine. That was practically a rule.
Now I live in Mijas and find myself closing the shutters against it.
There’s something faintly ridiculous about that.
Yesterday morning I was moving a pot of mint out of the sun when Miguel arrived. He watched me carry it across the terrace, put it down, reconsider and move it another two feet.
“Too much sun?” he asked.
“Apparently.”
He looked up at the sky.
“Spain,” he said.
Very helpful.
A different sort of gardening
I’ve been thinking about how much my relationship with sunlight has changed since I moved here.
In Ireland, I planted things where they would get the most light. Here, I spend a surprising amount of time working out where the shade will be at three in the afternoon.
The lower terrace gets a little protection from the wall. The upper one is exposed for most of the day. I’ve learnt this through a combination of observation and killing things.
Not deliberately, obviously.
The lavender is happy. The rosemary couldn’t care less. The mint has been a continuing embarrassment.
I wrote about what I stopped watering this summer, after Miguel pointed out that I was giving perfectly healthy Mediterranean plants rather more attention than they needed.
I’m beginning to suspect I have been doing something similar with the sun.
Trying to manage something that has absolutely no interest in being managed.
The house has its own opinions
By eleven o’clock, the kitchen is usually brighter than I want it to be.
There’s a particular patch of sunlight that moves across the floor, reaches the bottom cupboard and disappears just before lunch. Max follows it on cooler mornings. In July, he avoids it altogether.
I’ve started doing the same.
Shutters down on one side. Windows open on the other, if there’s a breeze. The air conditioning comes on when I finally admit defeat.
It took me longer than it should have to realise that the house has its own little climate, just as the garden does.
I spent months working out why the soil on the lower terrace stayed damp after heavy rain, yet somehow hadn’t paid nearly as much attention to which rooms were getting baked every afternoon.
I mentioned this to Miguel over coffee.
He said I should think about solar panels.
I told him I was thinking about keeping the mint alive.
He said I could probably manage both.
All that sunshine going to waste
The thought stayed with me.
Not because I’ve suddenly developed an interest in electricity generation. I haven’t. I still struggle to understand the settings on the washing machine.
But I have started noticing the roofs around Mijas.
Once you look, you see solar panels everywhere. On villas tucked into the hillsides, on newer houses down towards the coast and occasionally on buildings where they seem to have been fitted so neatly that you hardly notice them.
I found Costa del Sol Solar while looking into what installing panels around Mijas might involve. I haven’t gone any further than reading about it, but the idea appeals to me.
After years of trying to protect the garden from too much sun, perhaps the house could make some use of it.
Of course, there’s the question of the roof, the cost and whether it would actually make sense for my electricity use. Those are things I’d need to find out rather than guess.
For now, it’s simply another possibility.
Miguel will be unbearable if I do it. He’ll claim it was his idea.
Which, annoyingly, it was.
What the garden has taught me
When I first arrived in Spain, I thought gardening here would be easier.
More sunshine. Longer growing seasons. No frost to worry about for much of the year.
I had a rather romantic picture of myself wandering through a garden full of flowers, carrying a basket and occasionally picking a lemon.
The reality involved hosepipes, dead seedlings and discovering that some plants can look perfectly healthy at breakfast and be beyond saving by teatime.
Gradually, things changed.
I stopped trying to recreate an Irish garden in southern Spain. I began listening to people who had been growing things here for years. Miguel, naturally, had opinions. So did Elena and Mercedes.
I wrote about how other people gradually changed my garden. At the time, I was thinking about plants and the small suggestions people make without realising how much they matter.
But perhaps it’s happening with the house as well.
I’ve lived here long enough now to stop thinking of the weather as something temporary.
The sun isn’t going anywhere.
I might as well learn to live with it properly.
A little shade
This morning I sat outside earlier than usual.
The rosemary was warm already, although the terrace was still pleasant. A few bees were moving around the lavender. Max had found his usual place near the wall and was pretending not to hear me calling him.
I looked at the roof for a while.
Then at the mint.
The mint was looking miserable again.
I moved it six inches to the left.
Some problems are easier to solve than others.