I had no idea how much work it takes to keep it clean and tidy. We’d been out once before, with a bunch of volunteers, picking up litter. On Saturday, we were in the La Vallesa woods near where we live, shifting branches and small trees.
Tidying up the woods at La Vallesa |
Taking some of the trees out lets the others grow more strongly, with less competition for the scarce resources in this not hugely fertile soil. Then, using the felled branches to provide further feed, strengthens them still further. Besides, and this is one of the main aims, the organisers reckon that thinning the woods reduces the danger of disastrous fires. These woods have had plenty of them, even if nothing on the scale of Australia, but then that’s just the fate we’re trying to avoid.
The relatively small fire at La Vallesa in 2014 |
Some were helping us, but others were with the group of children who'd come with their parents and who were planting other trees, oaks and chestnuts, in the hope of introducing a little more diversity in the woods.
That was the start of the day. In the evening, we went to see the celebration of the Chinese New Year in Valencia city itself. There’s quite a large Chinese community in the region, including a small but growing Chinatown with some excellent restaurants and shops, and an area out by the airport where Chinese companies line up along the road with their warehouses.
The Chinese New Year parade working its way through the Valencia Chinatown |
The streets in which they do that are decorated with large sculptures in highly inflammable material. So, if it’s inflammable, what do you reckon they do with it? Yep, that’s right. On the last night they set fire to them, while filling the sky with fireworks and the ground, naturally, with yet more crackers.
A sculpture burning at the Valencia ‘Fallas’ |
Valencian drummers in Chinese costume, enjoying the parade |
Afterthought
There were a few, very few, face masks being worn by people in the crowd at the Chinatown parade. I’m not quite sure what they were trying to protect themselves against. Did they think that merely being at a Chinese New Year event would expose them to coronavirus?
At any rate, I’m glad to say that, to my knowledge, there wasn’t a single case of infection from Wuhan at the celebrations in Valencia.
Well just maybe they wore a face mask as they had recently returned from China and wanted to protect others? It will I am sure become a pandemic but at only 3% death rate it’s not so bad let’s hope it is contained and doesn't mutate.
ReplyDeleteMy hope too...
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