Walk among fruits and flowers

Do you remember the drawing (or art) lessons you had in school? Did you have those topics connected to seasons, representing nature and how it is changing? I do vaguely remember that we always had to paint or draw our memories from the summer vacations when we were back in September. Later, in October and November, we had themes around autumn and fruits, harvest, and December was reserved for Christmas, winter and snow. And it was going on year by year 😁

I was not really good at drawing and even started to dislike those lessons. The teachers were telling us that we have to observe nature and the things around us and put them on paper. That easy. Or look at the seasonal fruits we have, and draw them. Ok, apples, pears and grapes were what we could see, so it was not a huge selection. I got bored from doing the same all the time.

I remembered this while I was walking around last Sunday and saw that the olives are ripe and in one garden the owners were harvesting them. That would be a nice painting, to represent the work and how nature is giving us autumn fruits. But luckily, I am not in school anymore and I don't have to do it. What I did instead was catch some autumn details that we have here in Spain, mostly green leaves everywhere around (no, unfortunately, no beautiful autumn colours...) and some flowers and fruits.

This is the garden where the olives were harvested. I noticed the small tractor already had crates full of olives in the trailer. The people who were there (a family) put a huge tarpaulin on the floor, at the bottom of the tree. They were hitting the branches of the tree with a stick, and as a consequence, the fruits were falling on that tarpaulin. Later, they can easily recollect the olives from there and store them in the crates.

The loquat trees right now have buds and the flowers are ready to open. It is rare that a fruit tree has flowers in autumn and fruits in spring. Usually, we see the flowers of a certain fruit in spring and ripe fruits in autumn. With loquats, it is the complete opposite. This is what the buds look like:

When they open, the flowers are white and have a very pleasant scent. But they are just starting with that opening process. There will be more in November, and when you pass by an orchard full of loquat trees you can smell that sweet scent and see a lot of bees around. The trees are not very tall, but they are wide. The branches are growing in all directions.

On that walk, on Sunday afternoon, we entered the orange plantations part too. At the moment they are completely green and unripe. They need at least two months to be ready to consume. I am lucky to have one of these gardens in my neighbourhood and the opportunity to buy oranges and lemons directly from the owner. Still, I have to wait with that until December, when the green fruits will change into orange colour :)

In case I would be asked to draw the local fruits, in autumn, I would have to draw citrus fruits and paint them green 😁 That is what I see, in nature!

More of the fruits I saw that day....? Oh yes, quince. Again memories - my grandma used to make quince compote. One year she got a few baskets of that fruit from a family friend and I remember asking her to try it. It was very sour and pungent. However, prepared as compote it was tasty.

In one of the gardens, there was a papaya tree. It is not so common to see them here around. The leaves of the tree have an interesting shape and the fruits grow in a cluster, below them.

Avocado is more common already. From the other side of this wall, we see avocado trees, already with some fruits. Though, in the town next to ours, when we make a bigger walking route, we saw big areas, all planted with avocado trees. At the moment it is a good business, as the avocado fruit is pretty expensive.

I guess it would be enough of the fruit topic for my drawing teacher, so let's leave it aside. Also, orchards are not the only thing we passed by on our walk. To reach them (and get back home) we have to walk through a very calm and nice residential part of the town. Mainly we can see just the walls and all the vegetation that is growing. Tall palm trees, bushes, cacti, succulents, pine trees and some flowers too.

A huge pine tree... on the other side of the street, there is a small forest, and I suppose this pine tree also belonged there. The houses are built much later than these trees had grown.

One open gate... Who they were waiting for? I guess, not me 😂 but it would be cool to walk down to the house just to have an idea of how it looks like if the entrance is that long and nice...

{mini interlude - the art teacher could ask me to draw a house... I think I would draw a castle to match this entrance lol}

From this point, the sea can be noticed (do you see it?). So we walked a bit uphill. But when I am here, I already can feel that I am close to home. Just half an hour (or a bit less) walking from here, and I reach my doorstep.

And very close to this is a school. I knew it was the destiny of this post, to pass by a school. What a relief, it was closed.

But there is one thing I really like to draw, so I would maybe do very well in the subject, even now when I am not supposed to do it. Flowers. Cute, little flowers. I saw a few of them during this walk, for example, this jasmine. They have a strong scent.

The last treasure and drawing model that I will show in this post is another lovely flower, Brugmansia suaveolens. There is a fence that is covered with this shrub. So many trumpet-like flowers hang down from the stems, so I had to help it to show itself nicely. All in all, our walk was interesting that day, stumbling upon those fruits and flowers on our way.

So, what about you? Did you like drawing as a subject in school? What were the topics you had to draw? And do you still like to draw sometimes, even those little flowers as I do?