Scribbler in Seville

I was inspired to make my blog a bit more visually interesting by a great new blog by another expat mum in Seville, digamama. The author has put some excellent Feria pictures on hers, and when I get a bit more adventurous I will do the same. For now, you'll have to make do with some photos of flowers in the garden which I took at the weekend. The poor delicate flower is already kaput, but near my house there are entire fields of the things, stunning bright red, like someone chucked a load of scarlet paint on the grass. Next time I pass, I will try and remember to pull in at the bus stop, jump out of the car and run across the road to take a pic, without getting so excited that I get mown down.

It's a moot point about spring here – officially it started on 21 April, but as usual we've gone from coats in the morning and fleecy sleeping bag on pushchair, to semi-naked and sweating, in the space of a few days. This is spring. Summer is lower the blinds and lie on the bed for most of the day, unless you have air-con in your house.

You know the weather has changed because the bugs come out in force: ants, flies, wasps and mosquitoes; lizards, to consume the above, and Paco dispatched a couple of snakes which he came across basking in the sun in the garden this morning. Only problem is, the moles will come back now.

This is the olive grove next to our house, where the wonderful gnarly trees are currently floating on a sea of daisies. They'll get cut down soon, so here's a photo.

Now that it's time for warm-weather clothes, us ladies have to think about depilation, the colour of our underwear and painting our toenails (bare nails in Birkenstocks are a bit too puritanical for me). But it's also time for lounging outside, letting the kids play with fewer restrictive clothes (or none) and spending loads more time in the hammock under the lemon trees (watch out for falling fruit). We're planning to build a verandah soon, so we can have more shade for eating etc, and then I don't think I'll be inside the house much, until it gets searingly hot.