It's been a long hot week

going to bed with temperatures of about 30,  it's down to 28 first thing in the morning - by first thing I mean 6.30 to 7am, which is ideal for the dogs to get out for a run around before they retreat indoors and flop on the tiles.   Peak of the day is around 4pm when it's rising to 34 or so in the shade.

So it's up and about early, outside jobs, weeding, picking fruit and  veg,  watering  the vegetable plots first,  indoor jobs later on, usually a swim late afternoon and a cool drink in the shade of the olive tree or on the terrace in the evening.  Sounds so laid back, but in fact we are busy doing something somewhere most of the day. 

We've been out for lunch at friends houses twice in the last week and had them all here once.   We still have to get the regular jobs done before or after we go out,  I'm watering alternate days at the moment and if I miss a session, the strawberries and tomatoes look very droopy.

This morning I gave the pool a good clean - the water is sparkling but the floor was dirty.

Latest news from the vegetable garden:
The tomatoes are ripening and I've got 2 kilos  in the 'hot box' drying. We  had figs in there before that - not enough for a batch of wine so dried them instead.  We're  picking green beans and strawberries daily, the excess beans I'm freezing for the winter  and the pods that have got too  big  we are leaving on the bush to dry for seeds.   Pickled 2 jars of sliced cucumbers  yesterday as the cucumbers are growing faster than we can eat them.  We now have 9 jars of capers  and I changed the brine to 50:50 water and vinegar yesterday. The chilli plants are laden but we don't know what type of chilli we have.  Last year we grew from seed, this year they were so slow growing that we bought 10 plants from the almacen (15c each)  which he assured us were hot chillis.  And yes, they are hot!!!  Now, at last our seedlings have got going so we'll have even more.  7 buckets of wine brewing, probably will get pressed tomorrow afternoon which will give us another 35 litres or so of fig wine.  Had a little tasting session yesterday of the first fig, mulberry and pear - separate glasses!   The fig is drier than last years, the mulberry drier than I expected and the pear is very pear-y.  And wow, have they got kick!