No, no, NO!

Is this the calm before a disastrous cloudless storm? We fill another bag with roadside debris and try not to despair.

The farm is a carpet of green jewelled with wild flowers. The crowded high rise residencies - two Cyprus trees - are a cacophony of chatter. Sparrows, goldfinches, blackcaps, pigeons and chaffinches are back and forth with twigs, moss and other building materials for their nests. They seem oblivious, locked into the rhythm of seasons, life as ever was. Was....

Beyond the evergreen columns the balsa is only a third full, too low for the swallows, house martins and swifts to swoop to drink as they have always done. The well is all but dry. The spring is hanging on and we are crossing fingers that it can sustain us and the casa rural guests. Visitors will be rationed. Boar brazenly, desperately, tear up the ground around the house. Even the stoical olive trees show signs of thirst. The vegetable garden is mostly fallow, a shadow of its former self. We empty washing water onto plants. The car stays dirty. We have less frequent showers that are over in the blink of an eye.

Summer will be shuddering if the skies do not spill. Maybe by the time you are reading this there has been respite, a downpour lasting days, but there is no hint as I write.

And back and forth we go with other people’s rubbish mindlessly lobbed out of cars.

Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. Rachel Carson spelled this out in 1962 in her book Silent Spring, a brave and erudite attack on the poisoning of our planet and human wilful blindness to unsustainable, killing-field practices, to somehow bend nature to our will or trash it. 1962. Climate change was not the topic then but it is the dire consequence. We are now reaping the climate consequences of what Rachel foresaw and had the courage to challenge head on. Nothing works in isolation, yet for humankind the dense fabric of life is a carpet to be trodden on not weaved into, a separate irrelevant world unless we can take from it. Yet we are the aliens, our ignorance and stupidity falling way short of our power.

Who threw this can? Who leaves a trail of waste behind them? The evidence is f-ing everywhere in beautiful Catalonia. Who in their right mind thinks it is alright to persist with the simplest acts of disrespect and degradation of our environment which is fundamental to wellbeing and survival?

The idiot can clearly read, but can’t be arsed. How I would like to catch them in the act. For pity’s sake, we have to push back, educate, put up signs, prosecute, find the courage like Rachel Carson to shame and fight as if life depends upon it, starting at the heart of our communities. And, no, I will never relent.