Get out! It's snowing on my dog.
When we were searching the internet for our new home, the real estate ad for this property had several images of it covered in snow. Moving to somewhere where it snows was not at the top of the list, more a special treat. Something to imagine happened at Christmas while you warmed your well padded derriere in front of the fire.
Being from the land down under, I guess snow remains a bit of a novelty for most Aussies. Especially so when you consider that the laidback beachside lifestyle is one of its biggest attractions. Snow and beaches rarely mix unless you live in Southern Tassie or you perhaps live in an oceanfront apartment in Bondi.
Talk to a northern hemisphere expat over here, and that's what most of them covet about the land of Oz. When we say hi, generally we get a response like, oh your those crazy Aussies who moved to the other side of the world during a pandemic without even seeing the property or area before you arrived with belongings in tow.
Our Cortijo sits at about 1,150 metres above sea level. Most days we can actually see that Sea, being the Mediterranean, down towards Motril on the Costa Granadina. On a very clear day you might even catch a glimpse of North Africa and the Rif Mountain range in Morocco. To compare it to somewhere in Australia, we are about 130 metres higher then Katoomba (at 1,013 metres), which is located in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.
When we first met our neighbours, we quizzed them about the chances of snow, with most saying it was a good chance of falling in winter. Winter came and went, without any real white stuff. We had a couple of occasions were it was possibly sleeting but it could have been hail, frozen rain or ice blown off the mountains above our property. I don't know, and I'm not seasoned enough to make the call regardless of the amount of times I checked the renowned resources of Google.
In Spain the seasons follow the traditional timeframes based on the longest and shortest days of the year, so Spring has sprung. The migratory birds are flapping about, our 4 cherry trees are full of blossoms and we have started to wear shorts.
Monday and Tuesday of this week were real crackers, nice and warm in the sun, very little breeze, the perfect days to reinstate siestas after lunch and outside tapas before dinner. Wednesday's forecast called for some showers with gusty north westerly winds reaching 60 kms per hour (just a little less then that which blew off our solar panels).
Now that we have more grey hair, we are less governed by the alarm clock so we rise when we want, perhaps 9ish, perhaps its closer to 10.00am. But when sunrise is just before 8am and the mercury has struggled to push past 5 degrees, staying in bed is deemed acceptable or at least we deem it acceptable.
So, just after 10.00am on Wednesday following the awakening, the prebreakfast program consists of, making coffee, giving Perro his treats, checking the solar system is aok, checking the spring is flowing aok, making sure we still have 6 chickens, collecting any just laid eggs and finally rounding it off by picking some mint for our juice. All done in my thongs (not the underwear type but the sandal type). I guess you can take the man out of Australia but not the Australian out of the man.
As I stumbled back up to the property, eggs in one hand, mint in the other, little flecks of whiteness could be seen to be floating about in the air. I thought little of it, assuming it was our cherries blossoms falling away from the trees after being buzzed to the end of their days by the flotilla of insects that inhabit our patch. Upon closer inspection, I could tell that my face, hands and exposed toes were getting a little wetter and colder.
Get out, it's snowing on my dog. Perro, ever by my side, seemed noneplussed by the white stuff that was now resting on his snout. Being a Queenslander, I'm pretty sure he hasn't witnessed snow before but being a dog he was more interested in the egg in my hand then what was falling from the sky.
The childish excitement and pure joy of the moment I now found myself in was a little restrained until I messaged our neighbours for a sanity check to see if I in fact was witnessing our first Alpujarran snow fall. After receiving confirmation that indeed it wasn't rain, hail, sleet but snow, AJ and I raced about like little kids. Turns out doing a little jig in thongs is quite hard especially when your toes are getting colder and colder.
As snowfalls go, it was not going to turn our property into a winter wonderland of black diamonds ski runs through the olive trees. But the joy of the moment was seeing the white stuff float around in the air, there was even a still calmness for a while when you could hear the snow flakes landing on the cherry blossoms, making a elf like clapping noise as they came together.
All the snowflakes from Wednesday are now long gone, repurposed, to help our garden along with even the weeds enjoying the experience. Who knows, more rain is forecast later on, perhaps Perro will become more accustomed to being snowed on in the Alpujarras. But in 24 hours a lot can happen, shorts were back on for the Thursday foray into the garden.
