Although everything is in flower in the Spanish countryside at the moment the time will soon come when the bright flowers and plants will die back with the approach of the fierce heat of summer.
When the plants turn dry and brown the farmers start their annual weed clearing but there is one plant that is left alone, the thistle. These sturdy plants can grow to four or five feet high and they are covered, as you would expect, in tough thorns. The flowers develop into tight bunches of seed – ideal bird food. And the bird the farmers value the most is the partridge. The partridges can feed up on all the thistles and other seeds and then they will be plump and ready to shoot when the hunting season opens.
The partridge must be a wily bird, however, as it seems that few shooters ever hit any. Often they return dejected from hours crouched in a hide without having bagged a single bird. That doesn´t seem to depress them, however.
Humans liking eating thistles too. The expensive artichoke so beloved of gourmets is, in fact, a thistle.
***
©Phillip Bruce, 2009.
When the plants turn dry and brown the farmers start their annual weed clearing but there is one plant that is left alone, the thistle. These sturdy plants can grow to four or five feet high and they are covered, as you would expect, in tough thorns. The flowers develop into tight bunches of seed – ideal bird food. And the bird the farmers value the most is the partridge. The partridges can feed up on all the thistles and other seeds and then they will be plump and ready to shoot when the hunting season opens.
The partridge must be a wily bird, however, as it seems that few shooters ever hit any. Often they return dejected from hours crouched in a hide without having bagged a single bird. That doesn´t seem to depress them, however.
Humans liking eating thistles too. The expensive artichoke so beloved of gourmets is, in fact, a thistle.
***
©Phillip Bruce, 2009.
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