Between the steel fences there is gold, if you dare.

Over-sized building sites, unsustainable construction rates, a record-breaking drought and a village to reclaim.

It’s a stunning morning here on the Mediterranean coast, yet another uncharacteristically cold winter’s day, scratching the surface of zero. Tights, jeans, scarf, wrapped up warm to spend two hours photographing the delights of wild gardens crouched between the grass and shrubs on land, fenced off in a builder’s dream.

Ambitious councils sell the land off to developers. They build the streets. They plug in the streetlights. Every so many meters, a metal box encased in cement leans with the wire fence waiting for a house. Two years or five, eventually every plot of this hilly land gets scarred by constructors.

Houses of Lego in cement blocks and modern structures in wooden high-tech raise their roofs as fast as the birds wish they can fly.

The sign in yellow; Danger; Live. This beautiful wild meadow, mixed with deserted, forgotten almond and peach orchards, is wired up and ready to go.

Cranes dot the skyline, stubbing out the blue sky, one jigsaw piece at a time.

So many houses. Modern designer homes for people with expensive cars with wide tyres.

Absurdly there aren’t plans to expand the medical centre or the local hospital and the water supply is already seriously under threat.

A drought so severe, that upstream many a mountain inland, there’s a church they once drowned, to make a water supply for this ambitious coastal city, but the church now stands proud. The tower once again can be seen on the shoulders of the church on the small hill.

They are thinking they will leave its walls of stone to dry because there isn’t enough rain to justify the running costs of the dam. After all those tears to drown a valley that we drank dry! All those prayers to save the blessed village church, seventy years ago. A bit too late God.

Maybe the bell tower will sound again over the valley. Maybe new settlers will arrive and claim the new unmapped land. Or will the grandchildren of those who used to live here, return to fight for the land they see as theirs?

And here between the flowers and wild grasses the new houses, each with a pool of their own, might have to sit pretty as hollow sky-blue sculptures full of cactus in plant pots if it doesn’t start raining again like it used to.

I squeeze through the gap in the fence, the shape of a hole in the oldest of socks, onto rubble and weeds.

I kneel and take photos of straw. I’ve spent so many hours taking shots like these I know exactly which way to throw the lens and which old, dried out seed head photographs well in the early light.

It’s sunrise but the air is so dry the frost has escaped us again. Never mind, I’m here now. I make the most of it before my hands slow down with cold.

I am not unlike the wild boar, searching for vegetation on shrinking territory between steel barriers.

I look for a flower or seed head to photograph. Aware that I, or they, could forget the way out through the gap in three hundred meters of fencing. I sometimes worry I’ll meet one face to face on all fours. That I’ll give it a fright and it will attack in panic. With their sharp teeth. There’s no easy quick way out of these plots. It’s a boxing ring of a building site fit for a duel. But I leave the thought aside. My camera for comfort. Lost in time. I am in love with nature through the lens. It makes me feel whole.

I forget my tiny mat to protect my knees in my unconventional yoga poses but it doesn’t really matter, the ground is dry as bone and the light is gold.