Hot and dusty.

We've had rather a mucky dusty week, every day different,  but  so glad to get in a long hot shower and wash out the dirt at the end of the day.

Monday we started to finish the new vegetable areas - six years ago when Manolo and his friend Pepe planted there, they spent ages rotavating, digging water channels, making raised beds and planting the tomatoes and aubergines before opening the acequia gate to water everything in.  Unfortunately they hadn't noticed that the land ran slightly uphill away from the acequia so the water didn't do what they wanted.  It took a lot of rearranging  to flow properly and it wasn't easy with the plants in place.

9.30 and the start of the first water channel.

We decided - actually it was John's idea not mine - to make water channels first, get the water flowing well and then do the raised beds inbetween.  He set off with the narrow blades on the machine and I followed, raking out the soft soil.  Then as the water flowed it was easy to make sure it got to the end of the channel.  We left a bigger space for a raised bed and made another channel, another bed, another channel.....finishing off by rotavating up the middle of the wide beds.

By then we'd done 4 hours of work, at first dusty from the dry soil, then muddy as we got the water going.

1.45 and the water is flowing.

Just after lunch Mariano came to see if we'd do a bit of work for him so after a clean up we went up to his cortijo.  These old houses are built from stones and mud, rendered,  then painted and don't have damp-proof courses so need regular repainting.    Mostly wire brushing the loose paint from the bottoms of the walls,  filling cracks, repainting internal and external walls,  replacing a couple of broken floor tiles, "tidying up" the inside of the inglenook fireplace followed by a big clean up.  And before Easter please.

Tuesday, I was dusty from wire brushing loose paint and J from chipping out the cracks before filling them.  Wednesday was pretty much the same for him although I had lots to do here - watering the broad beans, picking and freezing, squeezing oranges for juice, mounding up the raised beds which didn't get finished on Monday, clearing out the acequias which go to the plum and peach trees....  Thursday was a painting and filling cracks day and the start of the clean up and J made a start on the fireplace.  Over the years it's been painted, had cracks filled, painted again over soot and now it needs to be taken back to the original stones and started again.  The only good thing about working in  there is that he can do it standing up whereas I was painting at floor level going along on my hands and knees all day, getting further and further into the depths of the house. And the deeper you go, the cooler it gets.  Outside, lovely bright sunshine but not where I was.

However I made up for the lack of sun on Friday as I had a day here cleaning the pool.  We've emptied it this week, had the water running into the new vegetable patches, round the olives and fruit trees and it needed cleaning before the dirt dried onto the walls.  It wasn't really smelly at the bottom, just green and sludgy, a definite welly boot job!  Six buckets of sludge, umpteen buckets of clean water and a lot of scrubbing later, the pool is now gleaming  in the sunshine.   And I have the most amazing strap marks on my back as once the floor was clean, I worked in shorts and t-shirt to make the most of the sun.

Next week we need to sand down any loose patches of paint, re-paint and then it can be filled for the summer.