Spanish dreams

I was so excited to find this presumed red tailed hawk feather on my run today (fun to carry it back tucked into my shorts) but perhaps it is a turkey feather as it is about 2 inches too long for a hawk plus I found it in a wooded area and red tailed hawks are out in the open

one of my butternut squashes. Lots of spaghetti squash too

marigolds

roses

Me and one of the Chosen Sisters at our last Mom's dinner. We have one tonight too. Normally I bring dessert but will bring a cauliflower crust pizza

In 1992 I watched the Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The marathon went through  La Rambla and Passeig  Gracia where many of Gaudi's buildings are. That's where I want to be if I ever got to Europe I thought. Ten years later, one of the Moms had a daughter going to school in Paris. 4 of us went out to visit her. I didn't want to spend the whole time in Paris so two of us took off in an overnight train to Barcelona. I went back a few years later with other friends.

But Steve has never been there and it will be our 40th anniversary in December. We made the arrangements this week to be there on our anniversary in the W hotel on a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean , no hostals for us this time. We will also be in Madrid and Seville, places I have been but he hasn't and I didn't see everything I could while there. For my 2nd trip there, I did learn a little Spanish as I kept encountering people who didn't speak English but later while learning Italian, I found the Spanish got me confused and so I tried to forget it. I am now relearning it on an app. I am allegedly 15% fluent according to some screening test I took. The principal language in Barcelona is Catalan which looks a lot like French (night is nit versus nuit versus noches) but sounds more like Portuguese but most people know Spanish even though all the signs are in Catalan. So this trip will make me less fearful of the doom and gloom of our winter.

First step, renew passport. It won't expire until 8 months from now but it will be less than 6 months when we leave, which for some stupid reason is unacceptable. When I went to Italy for 8 weeks, I needed to get a visa, buy health insurance and prove I have money .

What is the easiest flower to grow? I would say cosmos. They tended to overwhelm everything else I planted back at the old house but here, they keep dying. I suspect a cosmos virus of some sort. Too bad as they are so pretty. I did go to two nurseries yesterday with a friend to pick up some budget perennials which I planted today. More foxglove, delphinium, hollyhocks and bluets. We went by the huge field of sunflowers I had photographed days before. But alas, the heads hung down as it was cloudy.