This is August the first year, 2003, with the trees having been cleared up a bit. We'd had the harvest of plums and apricots by then; the almonds were to come, but were beginning to appreciate what a mammoth task we'd taken on!  

Here are our new citrus trees, with one lone lemon. We had to have an enormous trench dug then fill it up with suitable soil and manure before we could go ahead. The grasshoppers and flying bugs think it's the Ritz and as much as we hate spraying, we've had to do a bit. Wish we could find some horsetail seeds, seedlings to make our own environment friendly spray.  

2003 - CORNFIELD AND BUILDERS' YARD.

We fetched up at a windy corner of Cadiz province - Costa de la Luz: should be Costa de la Viento - and with the new house came a builders' yard and cornfield. The upside was badly-neglected fruit trees in the cornfield. Pear, plum, apricot and almond.

The builders' yard around the house had to be cleared, a membrane put down and then gravelled before planting out a Mediterranean garden....

I am all over the show with this layout, but you get the picture..... a lot of work!

We put in what we thought were indigenous Med. plants: plumbago, bourganvillea, agarve, lavendar and herbs like rosemary and thyme. Compare top left with top right and you'll get the idea. Great - until the hot Levante wind came along and sucked the moisture out of them.

All around us in the "campo" are Spanish gardeners growing every veg and fruit you can think of. They think we're mad to plant non-edibles. What flowers they have are tucked in between the veg (?companion gardening) . Our neighbours are knowledgable and helpful - not to mention generous with their surplus stuff - and in another post I will show what graftings of other fruits onto bitter almond trees have done.