Mothers Day update

As yet another busy week draws to a close, I looked in the diary to see where we'd been and what we'd done each day. I keep 2 diaries, 1 as a day to day record of life here - just brief notes on what, where and when and the other is a record of what we plant and where. I was given a very nice leather bound journal when I left work to come here (thanks Denise!) and am about three-quarters of the way through it with little diagrams of terraces, fruit trees and such like. The other day to day diary is - luckily for me - always sent for a Christmas pressie. As it's an English diary it has dates in such as Mothering Sunday! Dia del Madre in Spain is a set date and is on our Spanish calendar downstairs. That one comes from the bank and has every fiesta date on it, and there's a lot! Every day has it's own saint, every village has it's own saint/fiesta day and then there's the Andalucia holidays, the Spanish holidays.............!

So, this week. Monday was the final olive mill trip. A grand total of 2094 kgs for our neighbour whose harvest we've done for a 2/3 share and 495 kgs of our own. Ours we are having as oil - about 60 litres - and our share of his as cash. Later that day I went and emptied the mature compost heap and bagged it up ready to use as and when needed. It had made 3 x 40 litre sacks and 3 x 20 litre sacks over the year. I'm sure that won't be enough though!

Tuesday J woke up with a stiff neck, unable to look up or down, left or right. I reckon it was due to the snoring, he says he snored because he was sleeping awkwardly hence the bad neck. Whichever, he was chief cook for the day while I went to dig over previously dug veg beds which had got weedy, (although very colourful with lots of poppies) and sowed rows of brussels, radishes, carrots, beetroot, swedes, parsnips, leeks, more peas and a tub of coriander.

Wednesday we were back on the path that goes to our main water deposit, this we have been asked to tidy up, repair the dry-stone walls and remove any dead or over-hanging olive trees and take away - yes, more fire wood! We moved stones from walls that had collapsed and stacked on the edge of the path, dug out the soil from behind and generally got the path accessible.

Thursday the first section of wall had more layers of stones built back up and on Friday we made a bridge over a water channel so we have better access with the wheelbarrow to the rest of the path.

Saturday morning we started to cut and log an alder that had collapsed, split at the base and come to rest in an olive tree! We took 8 very full barrow loads to the car - each way 200 metres - the seats of the car are permanently flat nowadays and that lot just about filled it. Monday we will do the main trunk and I think we'll need to take the trailer to get it all back here. Either that or do more than 1 trip.

And today was our watering day again, filled storage tanks, watered everything, cleaned out next doors water deposit - gone very green with frogs in and rotting leaves, not pleasant especially as the weather is warm and it'll start to smell soon :( Not sure why they keep any water in it as they have never use it for watering. The whole point of having a deposit is to use it in-between your watering days and then refill it. When I say "they" haven't been here, it's only Miguel the son-in-law that comes anyway and although he watered some of the olives last year from June till August, never came to pick them.

More signs, or rather sounds, of Spring today. The Hoopoos are back and calling to each other during the day and the Scops owls are doing the same thing at night. I saw a hoopoo this morning but we've never seen the Scops owls. For some reason they seem to drive Monty mad and he goes out barking whenever they are hooting.