Art Week

22 - 26 Feb 2016

Every year in the quiet season Amanda, Jessica and I try to have a week of mornings for a painting intensive.  With the pressure on to plant trees, it wasn't too well timed this year, but it worked out okay - quiet concentration for four hours in the morning, followed by afternoons of pickaxing and shovelling to break ground for the trees.

 Dave continued whitewashing round the house (with a couple of breaks to go fishing)

 Afternoons digging holes, creating small watering circles filled with manure, built up on the downhill side.

 Art Party creative clutter in a corner of MammaMia restaurant (closed for the winter)

 Not quite finished, my little painting of Bella, Jonathan and the eternal city.

 More trees going in, about 4 a day, lots of hard work breaking the ground, clearing big clumps of grass, sorting out stones, building a little terrace wall to hold water, carting 30k bags of manure, wrestling the trees out of their overgrown pots ... phew, worn out just thinking about it!

 A good feeling, as the planted start to outnumber the unplanted.  I think it's going to be a lovely place as they all come into leaf (if we don't kill them first).  In this picture, from front to back: Flax (for tying up other plants), Sea Buckthorn (edible berries, nitrogen-fixing), Tilia Tormentosa (silver Linden tree with edible leaves), Nepalese Pepper bush (spice berries), Mimosa (nitrogen-fixing and bee attracting) and off to the left, Tilia Cordata (small leaved Linden, edible leaves).

And to round off a very busy month - Dave had a gig at Desperadoes, wearing the very silly Vietnamese hat that Robbie and Sue brought back as a pressie for looking after the dog.

Setting the scene

Sunday 21 Feb 2016

I'm not very good at remembering to do the 'before' shots for 'before-and-after' comparisons; so I made an effort and took some location shots of our battered field before the planting begins.

 From the left - facing east, grove of four mature olives.  Moving round, the annual veggies raised beds ...

 ... continuing round to two more mature olives, and two young ones (not very visible), towards ...

 ... the main forest garden area, behind the old pear tree in the foreground, and in the distance, the terraced beds for Moringas to the right of the track;

 ... and sweeping round to the scruffy area (still a work zone) in front of the house

 Lots of work done on the first terraced bed: below the log, I dug out an infiltration 'swale' - a ditch to be filled with mulch to hold water for the plants on the raised 'berm' a soil mound to keep the tree stems from rot.  First tree in is an apricot that we transplanted from a spot too near the track.

 Further down the bed, a tiny Moringa under a cloche (cut off 5 litre wine container); and two roses in the skinny end of the bed.

Another location shot - from what will be the main gate in the SW corner

Can't see the wood ...

18-20 Feb 2016

Back home, having endured another very early start, extended bus journey and tractor blockades: including having to get out of our bus and walk through the picket line to another bus for the last 10 miles.

Next day, it was wonderful to be out in our field, messing about with the outdoors.  Dave looked after the house, and I built the stone terrace wall for the first of the long beds that will hopefully support the Moringa trees if we can get them to grow and not be eaten by crickets.

 A sneaky photo of the tractor blockade - didn't want to upset them!

 Back on the land - building the stone terracing for the top raised bed

 Meanwhile, our experiment with shiitake mushroom dowels - fresh cut oak logs drilled and plugged.  It may not work, but worth a try.

Saturday morning, and the trees arrive.  They didn't manage to get many of the exotics, but a good selection of fruit, nut, and nitrogen-fixing-bee-attracting specimens: 25 trees, 14 shrubs.  The pressure's on now to get the basic landscaping done and all these plants in the ground.

Flight of fancy - a trip to Rome

11 - 17 Feb 2016

In a fit of madness a year ago, we'd said 'wouldn't it be fun to go to Rome to see the Italy-England game in the Six Nations Rugby?'.  It was fun, and lovely to go somewhere other than the UK, but there's so much to do on the house and in the garden at this time of year, it was quite a wrench to leave it all behind and try to relax.

Greece is currently in the grip of a Farmer's protest about eroded pensions, and they are blockading the major roads with their tractors.  This meant we had to take the very early (7am) bus to Athens to get off the island, and then take a tortured route avoiding the bottlenecks.  The usual 5 hour trip took seven hours, but we were so early we had the whole afternoon to go swimming at the airport hotel!

Our flight was seriously early as well, so that we had arrived in Rome and made it to our hotel before they'd finished serving breakfast, even tho' our cheapo hotel served breakfast in another building several blocks away.  Quite a bonus.  So we stocked up on carbohydrates, and set off to find Kate and Laurie in the smart end of town.

  Laurie and Kate from Nisos, in the posh hotel where everyone else stayed

 Our little room in the back streets somewhere - overlooked by THREE popes!

 Pavement cafe (in the rain)

 Lovely day on Saturday, walked along the river and explored a park.

 Jonathan and Bella arrived late Saturday, and settled in fast.  

With Rowan from Nisos and Simon, our glorious leader.

 Match day - Bella and I with our warpaint on

In the stadium, just before kick off

 Monday, time for some culture - a stroll round the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel, followed by sunset at St Peter's Basilica

For some reason, I felt very welcome in Rome ...

Me and my birthday panna cotta in a posh restaurant, courtesy of Jonathan.

Tree trunks

8 - 9 Feb 2016

With the first Moringa planted, and the terraced bed looking good, we pressed on with the garden re-modelling (we are also trying to get three coats of limewash all round the house, when the weather permits). 

The felled trees are mostly lying where they hit the ground, and they are huge: the largest is about 40cm diameter.  Rowan has said he'll stop by with Paris's cousin, Jake, to help shift them.  He also identified the three least knotty sections and we've put Jade to work stripping the bark from them.  Two of these will be used to support the roof at the back of the house, where we have temporary struts at present.

 Jade hard at work (she is currently trading an hours work for an hour guitar lesson from Dave)  Here she's stripping the largest stump so I can varnish it for an outdoor tea table.

 And these are the other trunks, with the three stripped ones at the back

 Meanwhile, I dug out trenches for the logs to sit in as the top line of the terrace beds on this slope.  Apparently logs will collect and hold water when it rains, and slow release the moisture into the bed below.  

 Rowan, Jake and Dave tackle the largest of the logs - it needs to be moved about three metres along the contour.  Not easy, but achieved by lifting one end at a time and zigzagging it into position.

Logs in place at the top of the lowest of the three terrace beds-to-be in this section.

Trial bed

1-4 Feb 2016

It's a bit drizzly, and the right time of year to do some preparation in the garden.  I've placed the order for our embryonic forest garden at the garden centre, leaving them a list of about 20 species of trees that we'd like, to see how many they can find.

Meanwhile, we have two tiny Moringa saplings (barely 10cm tall) that will probably do a lot better out in the real world rather than in their yoghurt pots, so I set about building this little circular terraced bed to house the most robust specimen.

 The end of day one - dry stone terrace in position.

 A couple of days later, in between limewashing the house, the bed has been dug over, a raised mound constructed in the middle, the 'moat' filled with manure, covered with cardboard and wood chipped, and it's ready for planting.

Dave spotted this interesting butterfly eating one of our citrus trees.