I am waiting for the sun to go round behind the olive tree in the vegetable garden so I can check the new tomato beds. They were pea beds but we have cut down the first 3 plantings as they have finished, dug in the roots and today I made some sunshade canopies as it is too open to this hot sun for plants to start off with. As they get bigger and need sun to ripen the tomatoes, I can take the shading down. But first I want to check it's ok. We are eating peas from plantings 4 and 5 now, with the 6th in flower and the 7th coming up. Only half the tomatoes are going in these beds, the rest are going up on the top terrace but that's a morning job as it's shadier there then. In fact that terrace gets quite a lot of dappled sun rather than full sun as there are olive trees along both edges.

The material for the shading was bought last summer to screen the unfinished pool walls for privacy, but now that they're done - think I hear a cheer from John! - I'm putting the screening to another good use.

We've had lots of visitors recently, friends who own houses in Yator and have been over for a holiday and who drop in when out walking. Some planned visits, to join us for lunch followed by a swim - even nicer was the chicken salad that came too - and some just passing by in need of a cold glass of something. Last week we had family members of a local Spanish man who has land in Montenegro visit us and asked if they could please have a cutting from a geranium as a memento of their visit! As we have geraniums everywhere, that was an easy request. They live in Granada but were visiting Paco in El Golco, about an hours walk along the footpath (GR7 goes from Portugal to Greece)

Our adoption of abandoned fruit trees continues. This week we have given a little tlc and lots of water to a lemon tree, 4 grape vines and 3 olive trees. They are a different variety to anything we have, much smaller but with very large olives. The water deposit at the spring is still overflowing so there is no problem getting water to anything and we can keep all our storage tanks permanently topped up. The mulberries are in full fruit now so we have been picking every morning for breakfast plus the cherries that we've managed to get to before the birds. There are 2 mulberries next to the house, a white and pink, and a white, pink and red by the chapel. Our favourite is the red, so we pick on the way home from the morning walk. Monty and Pip eat the fallen fruit while they wait for us.

It's now 4 hours later....John came home with a friend (Meg) and her son, they'd left a camera here and cadged a lift from him to collect it (in return for a Magnum which was a bit melted - he had to eat it with a spoon!) and then walk back down. But we talked, looked at maps, he (the son, Blake) had a swim and then after they left we ate and then went for a walk with Monty and Pip.

So another day further on in life, tomorrow I'm hoping to plant out the largest tomatoes and leave the others to grow on a bit more, maybe a week or so longer.

The weather hotspot of last week has settled down to the normal temperature we would expect of the end of May, mid to high 20's in the shade.