Oranges

I've been here 3 1/2 weeks and have yet to find an orange orchard that has a nice spot where I can paint.  I have been looking, but possibly not in the right place.  Silves, where I went to tour the castle a couple of weeks ago, is apparently the (self-appointed?) center of Algarve orange production.  Silves even promotes an "orange route" tour you can take to orchards in the area.  And when I was looking out at the countryside from one of the castle's towers, I could see a large orchard that was pretty close by.  At that point, though, my desire to paint oranges was maybe a 5 on a scale 1 to 10, and my interest in eating oranges was maybe a 3. 

I have to tell you both are at a 10 right now.  The Algarve produces the majority of Portugal's oranges and theories as to why they are so incredibly delicious include the soil, the sun and the lack of frost.  Whatever it is (for my money, it's that eating an orange a few kilometers from where it grew has to be a big part of it), I love the oranges here.  I love all varieties of oranges here.  Several restaurants in Silves had signs claiming they served Portugal's best orange juice.  It could be true.

There are roadside stands where there'a a truck and bagged oranges for sale, but the bags contain more oranges than I can eat while I'm here, so I've been buying them at the local market and at the larger grocery store and cutting them up to eat on my patio.

Bees like oranges too much for me to paint a cut up orange outside.  So I am still hunting for whole oranges in stores and for orange groves with a little spot where I can paint.  I've taken a lot of reference photos, every time I see an orange tree that the sun hits.  I've also taken photos of lemon trees but in spite of a deep, abiding love of all pottery painted with lemons, I find that I'm just in an orange frame of mind.