End of April

 30 April 2021

The end of the month.  Dave has had his first jab (AZ) and I’ve got an appointment for mine.  Dave has been working hard on the boat, changing the rigging to make it very easy for us to drop the sail or put in a reef.  He’s also started work on varnishing all the interior woodwork.  Yesterday he found that a stray cat has had kittens on the foredeck, under the stored dinghy.  We’ll wait till they’re a bit older and then relocate them ashore.  The garden is flourishing, although we’ve already had to start watering it.  Restaurants and cafes are due to reopen on May 3rd, so that will be exciting.  After a long lockdown winter, we are ready for a bit of summer fun.

Iris have suddenly bloomed around the pond

The Empress is back!  Maybe she was born here.

First water lily (showing how murky the water is at the moment)

Lovely little harebell-type flowers are everywhere 

This is an experimental mushroom bed.  It is full of straw, and the broken up oyster mushroom bale we had earlier in the year.  We’ve put it in a very shady glade, mulched to keep the brambles down, and we’ll see if anything grows.  It’s more likely in September, so we might introduce more spores at that point if nothing happens spontaneously.

After the rain

 21 - 29 April 2021

There has been rain, a rare and wonderful thing even at this time of year, so for a couple of days everything in the garden gets easier: weeding and planting.  Then the dryness returns.

This is the stone bank below the house.  It can only be weeded after substantial rain, so Dave and I tackled it with enthusiasm.  Somewhat extreme weeding, as the footing is treacherous, and an over-enthusiastic pull could send you flying.

My red queen from ‘Alice’ moment - painting the trees.  In this case, with lime to prevent crickets eating the bark and killing them.

The pomegranate, which I finally agreed to do something about.  I’ve been letting it become a bush, but we never get any fruit because, we think, the ants rob the nectar.  So I trimmed out all the small suckers and cleared back to only a few stems that can be sticky taped.

Not very visible, but a small dent in the lower edge of the car where Dave had a miscalculation with the edge of a road in Neohori.

A very lovely butterfly on a crazy seed pod cluster.  Google says it’s a female Common Blue.  Doesn’t look common to me!

The wavy-leaved monkey orchids reach their full glory.

This is a patch of purple vetch that has colonised the edge of the slab by the gate.  A lovely softening of the concrete, thank you, vetch!

So Many Treasures

 17 - 20 April 2021

 The garden treasures continue to amaze us. 

The orchids, four days later. 

In the pond, the carcass of a hatched dragonfly grub.  We had seen these once or twice flitting in the pond, but never been able to get a photo.  They are a scary-looking creature.

Lots of flowers are coming on the lemon trees.  However, we haven't been getting any fruit, so we will try to get some anti-ant sticky tape for the trunk to stop the ants robbing the nectar.

After harvesting the first artichoke, we rapidly gained another three.  Very pleased with this plant.

Never seen one of these before.  According to Google, it is a spotted fritillary caterpillar

A new baby moringa tree planted out in a protective bit of plastic bottle. 

Another new one: a fabulous shield bug.

One of our many bean harvests.  Lovely when lightly boiled or steamed for a few minutes.  Now we know how to get broad beans - plant them in October!

Dave in a purple haze

And a pink one.

First of the love-in-the-mist flowers has appeared.

 

Garden Treasures

 11 -14 April 2021

This is a very busy time of year in the garden, and one of our greatest pleasures is the walk around 'the grounds' every morning to see what treasures have sprung up overnight.

 

These little treasures are wavy-leaved monkey orchids.  I had their location marked with a ring of stones, as they are in the two new on-contour beds that are our embryonic forest garden.  When we dug in the swale paths, I made sure the orchid location was not swamped with earth (they are now in a little dip in one of the new beds).  Good to see they are thriving.

For once, I got the oregano harvest right.  The best time to cut is just before the flowers appear, as the plant essence is strongest then.  I have developed a technique where I swing the hedge trimmer over the whole bush, and then just collect up all the fallen stalks (which are left lying on the top) into a large paper carrier bag.  As they dry, the leaves fall off the stalks into the bag.  Clever, hey?

Houdini the chicken was at it again.  She spotted a new place where she could fly out of the enclosure and was happily pecking around in the long grass.  I would love to have the chickens out more often, but we would have to fence off large areas if we didn't want all our plantings eaten or scrabbled.

This is another one of the Moringa trees proving it has made it through the winter.  This one is now in its third year - although it has to start from scratch each year, but hopefully the roots are well established.

Some strawberries starting to show up.  Well straw-mulched, like the name says.

We did some planting out of the things we started in the solarium a few months ago.  This one is New Zealand spinach, also known as 'Captain Cook's Cabbage' which is an edible leafy veg that forms a good ground cover and doesn't mind a drought.  Planted in a cut bottle to dissuade slugs.

This one is Krambe Maritima, or sea kale.  Not looking very strong, but I hope it makes it.  A perennial kale.

Pink sky at night ...  Strangely enough, to the south, from the living room window.  Lovely colours.

A big golden bucket of diluted worm pee from the worm farm.  Full of nutrients and microbes to feed the soil.  A big job, carting buckets all round the garden, but well worth doing.

Somewhere to plant the sweet peas.  Dave made a tiny raised bed, just to give us somewhere to put in a bit of compost over the hard stony ground just here.

 Filled and planted, next to the trellis arch, for them to grow up, we hope.

Weed management

 6 - 9 April 2021

 Our days are now spent in the garden in the morning, trying to get beds prepared for planting, and other maintenance tasks, and then we have lunch and spend the afternoon as we wish.  Dave works on the boat or goes cycling or plays music, while I have been using the time in my studio, doing more painting.

This mound is a huge pile of discards from the last two years' weeding in this area.  They have been left uncovered, and were clearly re-rooting and establishing themselves in the new area.  So we decided it would be best to cover the whole heap with some of the excess pond liner, to starve them of light, so they compost down.  Not the prettiest garden feature!

But just behind it are three tidy beds, ready for straw mulch and new plantings

This is the diagonal track that runs from the gate to the building materials dump.  We wanted to close off access by vehicles now, as this is not intended as a car track.  The old tree trunk was laboriously shifted round to leave only a bicycle or wheelbarrow track.

The other side of the tree was where we put these two ex-raised bed frames, with one of them full of the latest weed pulls.  I intend to try 'hot-composting' where the contents under the plastic cover are turned every other day and make compost very quickly. 

Some more of the pond liner excess went into this area that is very near the house, but has never been cultivated.  It is very rich - judging by the grass and weeds that are flourishing, so we hope to make some good growing beds here. 

This is the self-seeded nectarine tree in the olive grove area.  This year it is covered in blossom.

And this is one of the new artichoke plants, a different kind, with red chokes.  Our first one of the season.

A painting finished.  My take on Henri Rousseau's style.  This is a present for my son's work-from-home office.

 

Paying it Forward

 2 - 4 April 2021

We have friends who are putting up a little cottage and have mobility issues, so, with Amanda's help, we spent a couple of days putting three coats of emulsion on their walls.

Amanda and Dave covered the large areas

Although Amanda's using a tiny roller.  I did the masking out and cutting in.  This suited everyone very well.

Then back to the garden: kale looking very lovely as it goes to seed

This is one of the Moringa trees that we had last year.  Overjoyed to see little shoots beginning to emerge - yay! they survived the winter.

This is our pond-watching area.  To the left of the chairs is a broadleaf oak that was a scrubby little shrub about a foot high when we moved to the land.  It is now a fair-sized, umbrella-shaped bit of cover in exactly the right place.  The lavender in front of the chairs is constantly swarming with different types of bees.

This is the overgrown aloe bed, before ...

... and after weeding

 

One horse town

 1 - 2 April 2021

This is the third raised bed plumped on top of the existing beds in order to save the top soil that was where the pond was going to go.  After weeding, and cropping the few leeks still struggling on in it, I lifted the frame out, and raked out the earth.

Before weeding

After clearing the bed, lifting the frame and raking out the soil.  All looking very nice, but bare earth is vulnerable to weed seeds.

So an order of straw bales was called for, and rapidly arrived.

Meanwhile, we gathered proof that Nidri really is a one-horse town!

We were in Nidri because the booking had opened for Dave's age group for the vaccine, but the website kept crashing, so in the end, after a frustrating session on line, we went down to a pharmacy and booked his jab.