Yard

Here is a photo of our back yard. Surprisingly, the photo doesn't do it justice as it is looking quite good at the moment. Admittedly, our lime tree now just has two leaves on it and perhaps the tomatoes we planted most recently are looking a tad wilty, however the rest of it is looking good. Basil's peach tree is so full of peaches that we'll probably need to stake it. I don't like the way that the birds are looking at it though, I think they are waiting for the peaches to ripen before they attack. We planted another vine, and we'll plant a few more to climb across the wall. We also planted our prickly pairs. One that we planted earlier this year is going great guns at the moment. There is something that might even be a fruit that is beginning to grow. Given that the things grow like highly rampant weeds in the wild, it is not much of an achievement, but it's good to see something growing. The soil is completely different to that which we were working in a few weeks ago. It is now like concrete and Ian was having to break the surface with a pick. I now know why finding what we regard as spades is so difficult - such a thing just won't go through the soil. The spades that we can buy are triangular. Hopefully we'll be enjoying some tomatoes later this year and we achieve more than the three that we harvested last year...

Roland is Introduced to the House

We decided that it was time for Roland to be introduced to the house. He has been introduced slowly to all of the other animals - without any problems - so we felt that he was confident enough to come into the house. It took a few tries, as, while we had decided that he should explore, he had correspondingly decided that his all-time favorite place is the sofa in my workshop. However, once he realized that there was a sofa in the house, he seemed a lot happier in his new surroundings. We had wondered if feeding him might be a problem, as we cannot feed the cats on the ground as the dogs help them with their food! Instead the cats are fed on the cat tree (and even then, Bob and Tinkerbelle both try to climb the tree!). We picked Roland up and put him on the cat tree a few times, however he soon got the idea of things and now happily climbs the tree when he is hungry.

He is still quite nervous, but is getting increasingly confident. He and Pirata play a lot. I did think that we ought to put some of the bells that Ian refused to wear when we got Pirata onto a collar for Pirata and Roland, as they quite often 'look' for each other, and can't find each other even though they are just feet apart.

It rained heavily at the weekend - a shame as it was first communion and the children would have been celebrating their first communion at outdoor altars in the village. With the girls in their little white dresses and the boys dressed as navy captains. We would have gone to watch, however I didn't now what the contingency plans were. I bought the ones in my class who were celebrating this year an english / spanish dictionary. This was good as it formed the basis for half a class as I showed them how to look for words. I then gave them a task of looking for some words for the other members of the class to translate. True to form, the girl was looking for 'butterfly' and 'tiara', while the boy was looking for as many gruesome and bad words as he could find.

Scary Umbrellas, Twig Orchards and Summer

Somebody switched summer on last week. I think about 12 o'clock Tuesday morning, when all of a sudden the temperature ramped up and we started moaning about the heat. We've commented on this before, however there is no gentle easing into summer. It just starts. Suddenly.

Since summer started we have been using our new sun umbrella. This has resulted in unexpectedly quiet meals as Rosie is scared of the umbrella and hides behind the sofa when the umbrella is up. Just have to hope that we don't ever get burgled by a man with an umbrella. She has just about plucked up courage to come outside if the umbrella is up, but only by keeping her eyes firmly on the ground so she doesn't establish eye contact with the scary beast that hovers above the table.

Our twig orchard is coming  along nicely. We've now got a lime twig to go with our others. Within about 30 seconds of planting the lime all the leaves fell off, which was a tad disconcerting, however hopefully this was just shock at its arrival in its new home and not a result of exceptionally bad planting techniques. We now have a lime, lemon, peach, cherry and nectarine and two tiny olives, plus the three figs that we have grown from cuttings.  We have room for 5 more, so one will be an almond, we'd like a grapefruit, but not seen them in our local shop, perhaps a pomegranate, an edible orange and something else. 

We moved our vegetable patch this year. There is definitely something wrong with the soil where we had originally planned to have our vegetables. Nothing grows there - it is the one patch of the garden that is completely devoid of weeds. So we moved the chickens back into their pen - not something that I felt bad about as their idea of free ranging is to wander into the barn and stare through the gate at Rosie who stares back at them. A stand-off that could last for hours. They then wander back for a little something to eat before bed - in total ranging about 3 metres. Our chickens at Mineral House used to range for miles. We moved the chickens back because last year they nibbled the tops off the tomatoes when I planted them. I then planted tomatoes, peppers and some plug plants which we couldn't identify, by our trees, which should make watering easier. I learned by our mistake last year of spreading things that need watering in different spots around the yard. We can now put the sprinkler out to do some of the watering.

I have high hopes of harvesting more than two peppers and a tomato this year....

Tooth Fairy

Two of my younger students were telling me that the tooth fairy gives them 5 euros per tooth - which equates to one class. Given that I often think that teaching them is like pulling teeth, this seemed strangely apt.