Busy busy.

I have been meaning to write for a few days now but the day just seems to go so quickly.....

Every morning  something needs doing with the wine,  testing the sugar or stirring the latest brew or making another batch or straining the last one....then the strawberry plants need picking and watering in the morning so any fruit that gets wet has all day to dry off in the sun and heat,  I have found some that have rotted on the wet ground if I water them at night.  Evening watering is everything else - sweetcorn, peppers and chillis,  cucumbers, celeriac and squash - all 2 of them at the moment :(    And no courgettes at all yet.  Very odd.

Of course there's always some housework,  minimal if possible,  a quick sweep and mop,  shake the bed sheets and maybe a quick dust and polish.  And before the sun gets in because then the shutters need closing and it's too gloomy to see,  of course that also means you can't see the dust so why bother cleaning at all?  Habit, I guess.

John meanwhile is checking the plants in the side garden and all the pots.  Because things got off to a slow start, they aren't coping well with the summer sun and heat,  the plants in the raised bed wilt by midday,  so he has made a cane framework then the shade-fabric that we have gets moved from the side to the top,  then later on over to the other side and eventually comes off for the late evening sun  to shine on them.  And the next day it all happens again.  Lots of man hours,  but without that I think they'd all die.  The other half of that vegetable garden is even more exposed and even the cucumbers are struggling in there,  so now we have put our plants into large pots which we can move from direct sun to shade as necessary.

Luckily we have lots of large pots,  about 5 years or so ago we were taking the rubbish to the recycling bins and behind them someone had dumped piles of black pots,  quite large, they hold about 20 litres of compost,  so we  took about 30 or so.  Also there were starter trays stacked together - the sort that baby plug plants come in from a garden centre or nursery - plastic not polystyrene,  and we took about the same number of those.  I think each one holds 48 plants.  Of course all these seed starters need space so the potting shed has had to be reorganised and tidied up as the plants need the brighter sunnier end.

Tuesday however we managed to organise ourselves for a day out to get some shopping.  It means doing more the night before and making sure all the plants are shaded  and watered for the time we aren't around  to check on them. 

When we built the water deposit/pool,  the pump we bought to use for cleaning it wasn't specifically a pool pump,  it does the job but only has a small filter so after the dreaded big winds which blow leaves and grit onto the floor,  I spend more time cleaning out the filter that I do actually sweeping the floor.  It can take anything up to 3 hours and is something I put off doing.   So of course the pool floor gets dirtier and then takes even longer....Also after 7 years of use the pump doesn't seem to pump as much water as it did.

While we were out we went to Bricomart - a large diy store down near Roquetas and bought a new pump.  A swimming pool pump with a huge filter and much more power and suckability.   Normally we clean it early in the morning but this was a new toy and I couldn't wait till the next day - we were home by 3pm anyway,  and while I put away the shopping John unpacked the pump and tubes and plugged it in.  Amazing what the right piece of equipment does!  Just over an hour to do the whole pool - and that was including stopping to go and get Marie Carmen and Miguel from next door to show them  (they have problems getting their pool clean - someone's given them an old pump/filtration system which doesn't seem to be working,  Miguel spends more time fiddling with it than it does working)   Anyway we thought they'd like to see it,  he had a sweep and was as impressed as us.  I'm not sure they'll be buying one though,  he is another casualty of el crisis and aged 51 is now out of work. 

So the pool is now gleamingly clean,  I'm sure having white painted walls and floor make it look more sparkly than the neighbour's blue pool.  Not quite sure why that should be,  our water looks blue after all - something to do with water absorbing red light I'm told - and the deeper the water the darker the colour.  But clean it is and so that's where I'm off to now for my afternoon swim.

Hasta luego.