Friday 13th!

Supposed to be a date to be wary of, spoke to our neighbours today - Connie and Micha - a rat has got in through the original stone wall of their house and bitten holes in their main water pipe which runs through the wall into the house. They were having to repair it via the downstairs bathroom and as Connie said "we have a huge mess on the floor"

Since writing about the dragon hearts, we've eaten the fruit, dried some seeds and - hopefully - will be able to germinate them, dried the skins too and I've got them hung up in the kitchen for a splash of colour. About an hour later, we were outside and I said to John, just listen for a moment there's a roaring up in the Sierra - it sounds like a train in the background although our nearest train in either Almeria or Granada!! We know from experience that it is a big wind somewhere in the mountains and sometimes that wind comes here, but very suddenly. So if we hear the roar, just in case, we stack garden chairs, close shutters over the windows to keep dust out, close caravan windows (one snapped off once and although it is repaired, it's not so strong now) lay down the sun umbrellas, put away the rotary dryer.... and sure enough the wind came. It blew for about 3 hours or so - I still haven't found the towel from the outside sink which I forgot to peg down! It stripped lots of leaves from the grape vine and mulberry tree and we had lots of sweeping and raking to do the next day. The pool was covered in leaves too, some of which had sunk before we got to scoop them out. The day after I found a large triangular seat cushion belonging to Connie and Micha - our nearest neighbours - on the strawberry patch.

We've collected the car with it's nice new tyre, finished shelling all the almonds and put the shells into a bag ready for burning when winter comes, still picking and drying jalopeno chillis, a few aubergines left but that's most of the veg done with. The sprouts haven't sprouted yet, checked the seed packet and it says November through till January so there's time yet. We have taken some of the tops and eaten because... we have an infestation of caterpillars on the cabbages, so many that in 24 hours we went from a cabbage to just a stalk! But they don't swim well when they get put in water.

My idea of having a compost on each terrace is starting, I've begun 3 more this week mostly of leaves and the remains of vegetable plants from clearing patches of beans etc. They are just piles so far, two covered in black plastic and the other with old carpet, not pretty but functional. Anyway there's nobody that can see them!

If this all sounds bit disjointed, that's because I have next to me a very large glass of fig wine, vintage August '09 but wow, does it taste good! Lovely dark rose colour, beautifully clear and so much fruity flavour and kick! Hope everything else we made is as good. Nearly time to watch tv, don't watch much but HIGNFY is a favourite. Just time to top up my glass:)