Spanish houses have no front yard nor back yard nor side yard, but an inside yard with the rooms all around it. Thisinside yard is called a patio and it is often a living-room and dining-room for all who live in the house.

As you ride through Spain on a train you can see from the car window a very peculiar looking tree—different fromany tree that grows in our country. This is the cork-tree. The little and big corks we use for bottle stoppers don’t grow on trees as cherries or peaches do. They are made from the bark of a kind of oak. The bark is cutoff from the tree in large pieces and cut up into big and little corks. The tree then grows another coat of bark, but it takes nine years to grow a thick enough bark to be cut again. So every cork you use is nearly as oldas you are, or older.

Cork-trees live to a great age, much longer than people do. But another tree you see in Spain grows to be still older.It is the olive-tree, which bears a fruit that looks something like green cherries. It is said that olive-trees have been known to live and bear fruit for a thousand years! Olives have been used as food since Bible times andlong before that, and yet many people have to learn to like them. Olives are also pressed to make olive oil, which we use in salad dressing, for no other kind of oil is quite as good for food. In Spain they often use it insteadof butter, and it is also made into a very pure soap called Castile soap, which you may have used.