Putting aside

There is so much that doesn't matter, you taught me,

But of course we would both misapply this lesson sometimes, we both knew that,

And yet as we climbed the hill, paths diving away to left and right,

It seemed desirable and honourable to stay on track

To the summit of our own preoccupations and not to agonize or fuss.

In the windows shadows on their way past

Or a wide screen spitting light; windows across the landscape, denizens sleeping or still out, shut in their living rooms with widescreen entertainment, sleepy children and wakeful overtired children coming back and leaving someone shouting and crying the banging down of a pan 

We drove for miles and miles

And we did eat piles

Of food and tea and things like that

And we did see a lot of cats.

When we went up the hill our ears did pop

But we didn't stop

Because we wanted to go down the other side

It was like a great big slide

The sea was blue

The sky was as well

We went for loads of walks 

And went to cafés with nice smells

We jumped in foamy water

And had to crawl out on our hands

And when we sat down on our towels

We cleaned off all the sand

And picnicked with Philadelphia,

It made us feel much healthier.

And when we took a selfie

It smoothed out all our wrinkles

And we thought that was quite good.

On our dusty trail back

We had a jumping contest,

Flying through the air,

One of us was best.

The sun went down, it made us frown,

We loved to watch it change from red

                to purple then down

And then we watched the moon come up

And out came all the stars,

And sat there in our wonderment

What it was like on Mars. The End.

(Poem by María)

littoral

Olivarda (Dittrichia viscosa). 

A perennial, woody at the base. At a time of year when there are very few other wild plants in flower, this very common plant is reassuringly blooming. "Olivarda" is just one of its numerous vernacular names in Spanish. 

It is strongly aromatic,  somewhat camphor-like. We relish the smell ourselves, but others regard the plant as a stinker and some of the names allude to this. (I'm not bothering to quote the English names that I've seen because I doubt if anyone uses them.)

Albardine (Lygeum spartum). A remarkable grass, each flower-head consisting of just a single spikelet that contains one or two flowers.

You can be fined for leaving litter on this land but if you have the right authorization you can level it.

In Europe

 

Trying to capture the sunset gleam on needles of Maritime Pine.

Breakfast: I had Portuguese sardine paté on Finnish rye crispbread. That's really the ends of Europe, Pentti!

European words for "peach" join hands. In Swedish it's "persika", in Portuguese "pêssego". All these words mean "Persian", the supposed origin (actually eastern China). 

Spanish goes off-piste with "melocotón", but anyway there are lots of words once you start looking. E.g. in Catalan:

El préssec, bresquill, auberge a o melicotó és el fruit del presseguer (Prunus persica).

(http://www.benremenat.cat/2012/09/melmelada-pressec.html)

More successfully catching the gleam on the sticky leaves of this Cistus species.

Maritime Pine (Pinus pinaster).

Pinaster: "like a pine", i.e.  pine in the original sense of Stone Pine.

Maritime: I suppose because its native heartland is Europe's southern Atlantic seaboard of Portugal, NW Spain and SW France. However, it is not narrowly or especially a coastal species.

Maritime Pine, a bit later.

The big cones open on the tree, cracking open in hot weather. It's hard to find an unopened one on the ground. 

According to the old tree book I found, it has the longest needles of any two-needled pine.

A pretty grass on this arid granite land.