Until we lived here, I never really looked at soil. I guess it’s because here we are surrounded by fields which spend a lot of time bare, ploughed, recovering for the next crop, or seeded before the new shoots show through. I never appreciated just how much colour variation there could be: brown is brown, isn’t it? Except here, when it is brown, chestnut, terracotta, red, orange, dusty pink, rose, speckled with flecks of white like chalk, golden stalks of dead crops [below]…

Now the main reason for this must geological. The hills round here are a mixture of red sandstone, and white limestone. Water must be another influence, wet soil is darker, dry is pale.

Disturbance of the soil is another element to consider, ploughed or unploughed. Below, the untouched soil at the roadside is a pungent orange.

The thing is, the soil doesn’t just change its colour after a few miles, it changes on a hillside [below]…  

…. and sometimes within a field [below].

Sometimes, in mid-summer, the soil is so dry the colour seems to leach away [below]. The paleness is emphasized by the shading between each long thin parcela, a result I think of being ploughed at a different time, in a different direction, by a different tractor.

Although I don’t understand the reasons behind the colour variations, the effect is something I know Vincent Van Gogh would have appreciated.

5 to remember
la tierra – soil
las variaciones – the variations
el panel de interconexiones – patchwork
marrón – brown
terracota – terracotta [colour]