Basking, baking and bathing.

All related to the hot sunny weather that we've got at the moment,  apart from a blip on Easter Sunday when it got blustery and then rained all night,  it's been glorious.   26 on the terrace early this afternoon,   I've been swimming twice a day - once just before lunch to freshen up and again later in the afternoon.

Far more birds around now too,  the swallows have been swooping for a few weeks and about a week ago we saw the first flash of gold and heard the song of the Golden Oriole - such a pretty summer song.  We have a pair of goldfinches nesting in our front garden olive tree this year too which we haven't had before.  We've seen them around but not nesting so close.

The dogs are on their summer schedule now as well which means up earlier,  walk before it gets too hot,  then lie in the sun  (how? black dogs?  surely too hot?)   for most of the day..... them,  not us,  lying in the sun that is,  although I do lie out to dry off after swimming.

The little  lizards with long greeny-blue tails that scurry around the terraces,  into the bushes or up the walls are also basking in this weather.  As are the geckos or salamandras which bask in the sun too.  They hang on the walls in the sun but move very quickly if anything goes near them. 

The vegetable patches are doing well in this warm weather too,  kohlrabi,  beetroot,  radish all  up and looking good.  The lettuces and rocket give us enough whenever we need salad,  even the garlic and potatoes are looking good and we don't normally bother growing them as they are so cheap (and better) than we can do.  However 2 lots of potatoes recently sprouted before we could eat them and the garlic did the same back in the winter,  so we plant rather than throw out.   All 7 Jerusalem Artichokes are up and healthy,  I planted out the 5 biggest squash plants this afternoon,  and tomorrow the first dwarf Borlotto beans are going in.  Eventually 26 out of 30 sweetcorn germinated and are planted out,  not sure what to expect,  maybe 2 or 3 cobs per plant?    The last pea plantation is still producing enough to eat and freeze but maybe not for much longer, not many flowers on them now.

Strawberries....over a kilo in the last 3 days and so many flowers, small fruits and almost ripe ones to come.

A tangle of peas.

Planting peas is quite straightforward,  dig the bed,  plant the seeds,   push in the canes,  add string round the outside and criss-cross the middle to support the peas as they grow.  Add more rows of string as needed.

But now the first 2 plantings have finished podding and we need the space for the next lot of summer vegetables.  So while John was busy doing his outside jobs,  I went up to the pea beds yesterday morning to take them apart.  I expected to be able to do a reverse job,  start from the top and take off the strings,  layer by layer,  pull out the canes,  pull out the finished with pea plants  and that would be it.  But things don't always happen as you expect. 

One pea bed had collapsed in the first winter winds and we'd had to re-string and re-stake,  this meant that it was all tangled up and took forever to get apart - knotted string tangled with pea plants and too many canes.  The second pea bed wasn't as bad,  but still ended up as a huge tangled mass,  after a while I managed to get the canes out and eventually de-tangled the string - some of it was so frayed and tatty that it's been thrown out, but some I've kept for another time.  The third pea bed was the easiest,  heaven knows why as they were all planted the same,  and all ended up the same height,  maybe I just got better at taking it apart.

By the time I'd done that it was lunchtime and after lunch that area is in full sun,  not my ideal time for re digging to make it ready for the next veg.  I sat in the sun out by the pool and  read for an hour or so - and watched John finishing his work in a very sunny hot spot -  but went back today to re-dig the pea patch.  It was just as sunny but with a breeze this afternoon which made it nicer to work in,  a couple of hours later the patch was re-dug, instead of 4 narrow beds I changed it to 2 wide ones,  with a path between them and plan on putting in dwarf Borlotto beans.  We have lots of climbing bean seeds but not enough tall canes to support them and I think we get more beans per square foot/metre  if we plant dwarf/bush beans. 

It may be early in the season,  but our strawberry plants are covered in flowers and also loads of small fruits.  We had our first strawberries for breakfast this morning,  with  toast (homemade brown bread)  and strawberry jam that I made May 26th last year.  To make jam that early in the year means that we had already picked a lot, normally we make jam when we have had enough fresh fruit to eat and are looking for other things to do with it....more wine? more lollipops?  more strawberry/almond crumble?  dried?  I have been looking at alternatives to the traditional mincemeat for Xmas mince pies and it seems that any dried fruits preserved can be used so maybe ours will be strawberry and fig based this time.

A thousand words or more

They say a picture is worth a thousand words,  so here are lots of words.....

enjoy!


Firstly some orange blossom

also blooming is the 'Mock Orange'  - Philadelphus -  which is close to the terrace and smells wonderful

They also say roses are red,  but not these...

 

 

And twisting and turning amongst the pink ice plants is the bindweed,  it climbs amongst the bushes,  twists up the stems of so many plants and is quite pretty.

Seeds, doing what they want.

What is it with seeds?  You do your best,  new potting compost,  clean pots,  warm weather,  lids for the night in case the temperature drops....  and sometimes green shoots appear within days,  other times - nada.  Nothing. 

And then as you are looking around at last years raised bed,  (the bottle garden)  and watering,  and   'oh! what's that?  looks like a cucumber,  and another'....

As you might have guessed, that's what has happened to us.  On the 1st April we planted lots of seeds,  maybe the wrong day? something having a joke on us?  but out of 30 sweetcorn we have 26 plants up,  40 home dried tomato seeds have so far produced 15 seedlings,  the squash are not far behind with 7 up, but the 6 cucumbers have done nothing.  Now 6 may not seem many but you never know how many will produce cucs  -  last year we had a glut from just 2 plants,  enough to eat fresh whenever we needed and the rest I pickled for out of season.  Still have 5 jars of sliced pickled cucs till this lot get going...

So today I planted 6 more seeds,  these from one of last year's cucs,  the previous 6 were from the packet,  and then this evening we were watering the raised 'bottle bed'  and I saw not just one but two baby cucumber plants!   I can only think that a cucumber fell off the plant last summer and got dug in,  and as John has pointed out,  if they have taken till now to germinate and grow,  there is still hope for our first 6 seeds,  and now I've done another 6 seeds....we may be completely overrun with cucs.

Reflections of sunset.

Sunset last night - a few photos taken over just a few minutes....


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