YARDS & YAYO - a story for the A-Z Challenge

YARDS  Americans call a garden a yard and it always used to throw me. To me the word conjured up an image of an unloved space with a dustbin or two and marauding cats – not a lawn and flowerbeds and trees. 

But here in Tenerife a lawn is a luxury – it takes too much maintenance and has to be watered constantly. Also the majority of us live in apartments without a patch of dirt to tend, so we build little walls or plant flowers in pots and call them gardens.

This is our ground floor terrace garden complete with baby lime tree – (did I mention our apartment is for sale? Click on the Apartment for Sale page so see more photos) - 

-  some back yards and alley gardens in our neighbourhood -

- this one could do with more water -

and if you only have a terrace you can still create YOUR YARD IN THE SKY. Our neighbour likes the sun but he is very tall!

Here's a piece of flash fiction I wrote last year - a finca is a small-holding rather like a large garden, and the story is set in Tenerife. Yayo is another name for grandfather - its English equivalent might be Gramps..

YAYO

My cousin was getting married but I didn’t want my grandfather to go – the truth is I was afraid of what he might do. “Yayo – it is twenty years since you left the south and it will be a long day," I said, but he rolled a cigarillo with fingers stained by seventy years on the land and said, “I will go.”

Outside the church Yayo stood obediently for one photograph and then sat under a tree so peacefully that I relaxed, but on the way to the restaurant he said, “Now, take me to the finca.”

“But Yayo, it was sold years ago.”

“I am old, not stupid, Tomas – I know it will be different.”

As I feared, where his fields had been were only houses.

“There’s nothing left,” I said, but before I could stop him he’d unzipped and pissed against a figtree. “Yayo! People will see," I cried, mortified, but he was unrepentent.

“Let them – I planted this tree.” He plucked a fig, split it open with a horny fingernail and sucked the flesh. “The taste has not changed! In a good year this tree could yield a thousand kilos – Consuela made wonderful liquor from these figs.” He spat out the seeds and settled his hat jauntily. “Let’s go, Tomas – the party can’t start without me.”

MEETING THE FAMILY - 100 word fiction

Another story in 100 words prompted by a photograph posted by Rochelle http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/

MEETING THE FAMILY

We emerged from the tunnel to see mountain on one side and a precipitous drop on the other, but Raul said, “We’ve arrived,” and drove over the edge onto a narrow shelf cut into the rock.

“My ancestors fought the Conquistadores from here,” Raul said proudly.

The house clung to the cliff, chickens pecked, and a stream glistened to the sea through terraces where oranges glowed like suns. A distant figure waved a hoe and began climbing impossibly steep steps.

“Grandfather began this house,” Raul said, “We will live at the top when you marry me.”

“Is that a proposal?”

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Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in buying an apartment that is a little easier to access, please look at the page at the top of my blog.

KIWIS & KITTENS

KIWI FRUIT. I read in the paper the other day that some Tenerife farmers are adding new crops to their repertoire. One they’re experimenting with is Kiwi, which apparently needs cold to ‘set’ the fruit. So they’re planting them up in Santiago del Teide where the potatoes grow. I can’t wait – I love eating Kiwi fruit with a teaspoon like a boiled egg.

KIKA. In December 2000 we had been here almost a year and, deciding to continue our UK tradition, we had invited about 20 people for breakfast on the Sunday before Christmas. The day before, having bought the requisite sausages, bacon, and eggs, we were relaxing on the terrace with a coffee when we noticed movement on the terrace of the empty apartment next door. A cat and her four KITTENS had taken possession of a nest created by a coiled hose under a sun-lounger. We pushed some food and water through the railing while they watched us warily, and throughout the day they stayed there, the mother cat sizing us up.

In the small hours we heard noises outside our bedroom window, and the next morning we discovered she had moved her entire family onto our terrace behind some plant pots. Well, we thought, if they stay put through a noisy party it looks like we’re stuck with them. They stayed. The kittens were too wild to approach, but the mother was obviously tame – she even deigned to accept a roll of smoked salmon with cream cheese. With glasses of Bucks Fizz in our hands we christened her KIKA. The feline family adopted one of my planters as a litter-tray and didn’t leave the terrace for a fortnight – friends would visit just to watch the kittens’ antics.

Then came KINGS’ DAY. January 6^th – Epiphany – is traditionally the day when Spanish children are given presents, and there is the usual cacophony of fireworks that gets more intense as the day progresses. The kittens were terrified, scattered through the railing and disappeared. Kika was frantic. It took her – and us – all that day and half the night to round them all up again.

A month later we had re-homed the kittens, but Kika stayed. She welcomes us home by turning somersaults on the path, small neighbours stop to say hello to her on their way to school. Every now and then we hear a clang when she misjudges a leap through the railing and bangs her head, and she’s knocked a tooth out doing it which has spoiled her looks somewhat. She’s getting on a bit now - she’s given up even looking at the birds that hop along the railing thumbing their beaks at her, and she is increasingly fussy about her food.

But – she panics if the door is shut while she’s inside the apartment, she still has mad moments when she races from one end of the terrace to the other after a bougainvillea flower, and she refuses to drink clean water, preferring the toilet water or the mucky brown stuff in the bottom of the plant pots – there’s still a bit of wildness left in her.

KILO, KARATE & KARAOKE are the only K words in my Spanish dictionary, which just goes to show what they Spanish think of the “KICKING K”.