September in Spain 4

For the last couple of days we’ve been ‘working’ with Mary – not literally working with her but going with her on base in the mornings mainly for me to be able to go on line and to mail our stuff to the US. Today Flor was with us so we can go to the Gypsy market at noon during Mary’s lunch break.

I revisited Robert’s ‘European Experience’ blog yesterday and I was reading the post on their Fatima trip. It’s only now that I can relate because we’ve been there a couple of times.

On various trips here in Spain, we’ve encountered some plants that I thought were indigenous to the Philippines, the makahiya (mala-marine in Kapampangan) – in Ronda where it’s in pots at the house/museum of St. John Bosco.


And the aya, whose leaves (commonly known as bulung aya) we used to gather from the fields while I was growing up in Masamat. My Mom cooks it in mongo bean soup (balatong) or tinola. It’s green and it tastes like spinach. I found an aya plant in Arcos de la Frontera. With the two mini thunderstorms we’ve had, the lawn here had a chance to regenerate and it regenerated with a vengeance. I noticed a proliferation of some green plants and looking closer, I saw a bunch of aya plants.


They also have plants or bushes here that I noticed are the same as the ones that we used for landscaping our lawn in Greenfields.


And check out the pretty cactus flowers below.