20. Spring album

Spring is sprung,
The grass is ris,
I wonder where my camera is!

That little ditty was imagined before the age of mobiles. Now no-one need lose that shot that proves he was there or that reminder full of colour and selfie smiles unless, that is, he forgot to charge the damn thing!

El Hierro is not grandiose like the Rocky Mountains. Its beauty is more intimate, on a more human scale, not only in size but also emotionally. It's not the unchangeable mountain reflected in an unruffled lake but the unpredictable response of life to the equally unpredictable elements life feeds on.

This year Spring is indeed strange. It was warm in January and the plums blossomed even before the almond trees. Then it was cold and windy and now the plums are blossoming again, rectifying their mistake. Our Wistaria brought out one early tentative bunch of blue perfume at least six weeks ago. Now it should be in full flower but it isn't. Just a few young bronze leaves. Then again, since October it has only rained less than a half of what it usually does by this time. Between them, the NAO, the Niño and Climatic Change are doing their best to promise us an interesting year, to say the least.

I'll be going out with my camera (if I can find it!) and my mobile over the next few weeks and will add new photographs to this album. So do come back to this post from time to time.

These fig trees will soon have tender green leaves and the first of their two yearly crops

The bright pink blossom of a peach reveals abandoned terraces

Clumps of some sort of daisy cover the high pastures in the west of the island

The giant dendelion endemic to El Hierro in the garden next to an almond tree with a few late blossoms

This year the most photographed field in El Hierro, at the turning to El Pinar near San Andrés

The birth of a new cane on a grapevine with a baby panicle which will become a bunch of grapes.

Small figs growing on last year's wood. These will be the first crop ripening at the beginning of summer. The second crop which ripens in autumn grows on this year's wood.

The wonderfully scented orange blossom. A suggenstion of fruit to come is on the left.

At last the Jasmin and Wistaria

The vegetable garden was earlier this time last year. Apricot in blossom on the left.

Freesias

Wild peas

12. Magic

El Hierro is full of magic. But like beauty, magic is in the eye of the beholder. I’m not talking about the magic of a spectacular sunset to the west but rather of the improbable pastel colours of the sky in the east at the same hour. Or the smell in the evergreen forest of leaf mold and wild mushrooms that throws you back to childhood, perhaps even a childhood of many generations ago. The pine forest, silent or, if there is a breeze, hissing with the sound of waves of air breaking on the pine-needles. The cloud-mist condensing into drops of pristine water on twigs and leaves, dewdrops on spiders’ webs, giant dandelions with yellow suns for flowers, vineyards on fire in autumn, the sound of a boy practising a folk melody on his flute or the primeaval beating of distant drums on Saints' days …

One of my favourite bits of magic is on the country lane that goes up from El Mocanal to the road to the village of San Andrés. I said "up" because it really climbs steeply past the houses of the hamlet of Betenama before arriving at a relatively flat area with incongruous palms standing high on the left. The lane then climbs again through abandoned walled fields and dispersed stands of evergreens - what remains of the laurisilva forest that once clothed these slopes. As the vegetation becomes denser, you’ll see on your right a wood of Canary “beeches”. On first sight it is a little disconcerting: the trees have straight trunks with no sprouts, quite unlike the beeches in the evergreen forest that look coppiced. The more you look, the more the little wood casts its spell on you. As your eyes become used to the contrast of light you’ll make out sheep grazing on the grass and ferns between the rocks and, perhaps, some way off and camouflaged by the play of light and shadow, the white mare. A scene worthy of Samuel Palmer.

The white mare has lived in the wood for many years, at least sixteen, and she is getting old. Her back sags a little from bearing a foal every year or two, sometimes white like her, long legged creatures that skip around her and disappear on the first weekend of June. When I pick up my younger grandchildren from the airport we always drive home this way. We stop and call out to her. Sometimes she comes but most often pays us no attention at all. I tell them she is a unicorn and only a pretty little girl can tame a unicorn. If a grandson says in petulance that she hasn’t got a horn, I reply he can’t see it because he doesn’t believe. I, of course, have seen her horn on several occasions.

The Unicorn in the gully between the road and the enchanted wood. If you can't see her horn, you know why!