Dobleve

Our street is only a block long and too narrow for any cars to fit through.  It has a mix of houses and apartments as well as a convent.  All the buildings are attached and no one has a yard, instead we have a courtyard that is attached to our street, which makes a nice “private” yard for all of us to share.

The courtyard is paved with small stones, typical of the style everywhere in Andalucia.  It has a fountain, a statue, flowers and trees.  In short it makes a great place for neighbors to sit and chat, for dogs to play and to just take a break.  One thing has always puzzled me about the courtyard though – how in the world do the flowers and trees survive?  Andalucia is close to a desert and Shannon and I have had more plants die than I’d care to count, yet in our courtyard they do just fine.

One night about 11:30pm I was sitting in the courtyard with our dogs and I got my answer.  A young neighbor, maybe 17, came out of one of the apartments on the street with a watering can and spent the next 15 minutes watering all the plants in the courtyard.  Pretty amazing to me, my best guess was that somehow the city handled the watering.

The closer attention I pay to the goings-on of our street during the day and night the more surprised I am by the little things.  People stop and pick up trash that has been left outside the garbage cans and put it in the garbage cans.  People clean up after their dogs, say Hi to each other and generally we all know each other, if not by name and story at least by face.  Its pretty nice.