Thursday, 28 February 2008

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  Summer at Alentejo III

  Weekly Photo Challenge

  I keep posting previous Weekly Photo Challenges!
  
  Some pictures I took last summer at Alentejo seemed to me suited to most of the Photo Challenges. But only now I have the time to post it!
  I hope you keep enjoying traveling to Alentejo, the south interior region of Portugal, one of the most forgotten and, thanks to that, well preserved in their traditions and way of living. One of the strongest and well individualized culture of Portugal.
  
  
  

  Enchanted

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: BookWormExtreme
  

  
  My granddaughter and grandson sitting at the front door,
  as my daughter before them, me, my mother and uncle, my grandfather…
  

  Because of a circumstance on my parents life, I became the proud owner of my mother's family home at the age of 12…
  My mother, over the years, explained me all about her family, a quite wealthy southern traditional family, in a time when Lisbon, Portugal capital, was as distant as Paris in France…
  In fact, to my family those days, Lisbon was more remote…
  One of my grand-grandfather brothers went to Paris at the beginning of 20th century to study painting and became a well known modernist painter, thanks to who my grandmother survived by selling paintings to collectors and museums after my grandfather dead.
  

  
  Still Life, Manuel Bentes (1885-1961)

  He was one of the members of the first modern generation in Portuguese painting, like Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Almada Negreiros.
  
  " We want to be free! To escape to the teaching dogmas, to the imposition of the masters and whenever possible, to the schools' influence, because we believe that artists have only one school, Nature! One unique dogma: Love!"

  Manuel Bentes

  Family stories made me feel that house as an enchanted place to be and over the years, in childhood and adulthood, with my family, friends or alone, I always felt this way there. I still do.
  As if the house have a soul and good memories, crossing generations, are part of walls.
  

  Fungi and Wild Flowers

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: TheSunnyC
  

  
  

  I swear, even in my time, the garden didn´t always look like this…
  

  
  

  But since I don't go there often, Nature took over the place.
  

  
  

  Next to the olive tree that my mother seeded with an olive, now grows another tree that we can't possible know where it came from… probably from another seed, blown by the wind...
  

  
  

  Snails sleep peacefully…
  

  
  

  Huge wild cactus flowers open at night, filling the hot summer darkness with its sweet perfume.
  

  Fruit

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: Poetinme
  

  
  

  In the fresh mornings, the air smell like lemons. Even in the time I had a lawn and cultivated flowers, it was the lemon tree the king of the garden as he has fruits all year around, no matter if it's spring, summer, fall or winter. He just bloom all year.
  Thanks to that, we always were sorrow to cut his branches so he spread freely in all directions.
  Best lemons are (as usual in life…) those far from reach that grow in the sun at the top.
  

  
  

  Because of it, he grow lemons in almost every size and shape, and we, not having a stair, just pick those we can get and smile…
  In Portuguese we don't have the word "it", so I keep telling you about the lemon tree as "he" as we do. It's so much more appropriate as he has such a personality…
  In fact, if garden and trees are male, houses are female, like wombs are.

  
  

  Lemons aren't the sole fruits of my garden.
  

  
  

  I wander… how many wings were tested here, before reaching to the real sun…
  

  Up, up and away

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: Photographics
  

  
  

  Up! Up! Fly away… to the open sky!
  

  Undermining Authority

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: Sezwick
  

  
  

  A family of roof cats, not used to people at my garden, watch all our steps below…
  

  
  

  Go away cat, go away! Trees are for birds! I cry... But after all, who am I to say so?
  Cats are the real owners of my garden…
  

  Alien

  Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by: Gitarezan
  

  
  

  Eyes on ground can also be an extraordinary experience at my garden… as in the morning when I saw this huge spider.
  Spiders of this kind are rare at Portugal, most of them come from tales, dreams and stories, such as the one my mother saw in her childhood, the size of a man's hand, crawling to a wall…
  I was very careful touching the spider, first with a stick…

  
  

  Only after a while observing, I bravely decided to grab her!
  And here am I, with all my expertise and technique on how to catch by the nose a… rubber spider!
  

  
  

  From the windows of my enchanted house I can see the castle, the church tower, the sunset, the infinite distances of Alentejo. Even future.
  All as if I close my eyes and look through the window of my heart.
  

  I hope you enjoyed this intimate voyage to Alentejo, a microcosm where all the tragedies and comedies of life take place, as everywhere else…
  

  Next on Photo Challenge:
  Junjie1800 (In your Bowls)
  Butterflyxlife (Dependance)
  Slocyn (My best friend)
  Enigmagrl (Dreams)
  Closethippie (Water for Recreation)
  ThePorchSwingpoet (Nuts)
  Eneventure (Through the Glass)
  Czolya (Future)
  Assipassi (Art in Nature)
  

  I hope you keep enjoying your visit to Alentejo!
  It's my pleasure to take you in this travel!
  

  

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