It's dry but it's pleasant

Year 13, No. 04

Greetings,

To sum up these last few days of March is done best by horribly misquoting an Alanis Morissette song in saying, "We're dry but it's pleasant."

By this I mean that the weather is exceedingly enjoyable and you'd hardly know that it's just recently officially become spring... but then you see that the buds have not just burst on the vines, but there's so much growth it looks like harvest will arrive in July. Yikes.

While it seems nearly apt to get out the patio furniture already, it's important to note that this comes at the cost of it being very, very dry. Spain in general has low water counts right now and in Catalunya we're at a mere 27% of our reserves in our "rainiest" season.

The only place it's worse is in Axarquía by Málaga where they're at 10.5% of reserves. But this has ceased being "people water" as it's being used to grow avocados and mangoes. Thus the crux of our problems in Spain.

In the starkest of contrasts, my native California seems more like the Pacific Northwest…