I CAN'T BELIEVE THESE FRUIT AND VEG!

The courgettes continue to quadruple in size whenever I turn my back. And I'm starting to hide from my neighbour now as he's talking about putting in more tomatoes in a protected area where we're putting in shrubs and trees, so that we have have Christmas tomatoes. Here is our very first melon and it was a wonderful feeling, standing in the sun, juices dribbling everywhere eating the sweet succulent flesh, not to mention the pip spitting competition!
The yellow plums are now ready to eat, just as I thought I'd cracked it with the red ones.

Good job we're having a pergola fiesta soon because it'll be "pick your own pud" in our jardin. Those, and bowls of water melon, should go down well. (Though lemon meringue pies will be hidden in the fridge as a surprise.

WOULD YOU GET A LOAD OF THESE VEG! 24 June, 2006.

A 20 minute pick this morning yielded these and now 3 carrier bags are ready to give away. The freezer is already crammed with courgette and onion friend up for a rainy day, plus bags of deskinned red plums. There's hardly a dent in what's left growing. No wonder my neighbour's been passing over the fence such huge bags of produce every year - it's overwhelming when harvest time comes.

Aren't pomegranate flowers beautiful? This tree was 1.5M when it was planted 2 years ago and it's doubled its size. At last count we have about 10 fruits - the Levante saw off lots of blossom. They grow wild here so I've tried not to kill it with kindness as I have so many others - it's been left to please itself. A bed of rocket (rucula) pomegranate, crumbled goats cheese and a light walnut oil dressing - delish.

GARDEN ART.

You may be wondering what the lone pot is doing. Well, I started writing about garden art and our interest in mosaicing. Somehow it got onto another blog page www.verdesitio.blogspot.com. If you're interested you could visit that and then continue with salamanderverde in the hope that I've found my way out of this maze and into some continuity of posting! Ha, fat chance.

Here's a stone table mosaiced last year. D is not happy with it: inadvertently we bought more bathroom tiles which were thicker, thus creating an uneven surface on the table. He is going to rip off the brown and substitute red to make a smooth finish. Currently he is doing the semi-circular benches in a bamboo design so more pics of this if this post works......

The final resting place - it's very heavy - and there is a trailing plant in it now, resting on gravel.

ESTUPENDO RAIN, JUNE 17TH





We have a bignonia (pink trumpet vine) which has now crept from the workshop, to the potting shed on the other side and will soon be over the new pergola. It's meeting up with an orange trumpet vine, which puts out suckers on the wall . We were warned it was very invasive, so will probably need to catch the big brown seed pods as well as get the machete out.

The pink trumpet comes out later and will be around until very late Autumn. There seem to be many varieties of bignonia. One with glossy fleshy leaves and creamy trumpets with pink centres is growing over the front trellis of the house, but it's very slow. However, the plumbago and honeysuckle have gone mad.

I am always mystified about what takes and what doesn't. I know we have high alkaline soil and I wished I'd known about putting sulphur with the soil when I planted a NZ bottle brush and watched it die. I'll try again with it in a large tub, as they are so beautiful. Watering acid loving plants with high calcium tap water in this area is the kiss of death, and I learned that the hard way by losing a gorgeous gardenia. Neither do I understand why our hibiscus always die - I'm determined to get more and keep trying.

Lavender loves it here and I've just put a new variety in.. (here we go again - the picture won't go against the text but always drops it at the top of the page).

What a fabulous storm we had yesterday. It was forecast but we didn't believe it, so hadn't prepared containers to catch the rainwater. Everything was fresh, green and glowing afterwards. Top right picture caught the scene. (The 3 houses in the distance went up at break-neck speed and were done in 2 months. One is now inhabited, complete with irritating 24/7 yapping dog!)

Production line day this week to do something with the fruits, mainly one of four plum trees. We lost many in the weekly Levante over the last 4 weeks, but still plenty for eating, bottling in brandy syrup, pureed, giving away (no, not again....please!) . I'd put Seville oranges whole in the freezer in February and made more marmalade with them this week, using the black treacle syrup as well as dark and light sugar, as well as the wow factor of a slug of brandy. It turned out as good as ever, so no worries in future about having to deal with loads of oranges in one go before they go off. Will have to think about a spare freezer for all this produce.

Speaking of which, it's hard to keep up with the runner beans, green peppers and, now, tomatoes. My "Cooking in Spain" has a great recipe for Tomato frito, so I may be in my kitchen for quite a while!

More when I can fight my way out of the fruit and veg!

June 3rd. Disappearing under melons and courgettes.....

Years of untilled ground meant we couldn't do a thing about veg until we'd got a plough in and we had to wait for that until he was less busy. So no potatoes this Spring....we'll have to wait until August.

But wait - here is what we do have and it was completely unplanned: tomatoes, 3 types; onions; aubergine; courgettes; melons, 3 types; strawberries; runner beans; sweetcorn. What a learning curve. Following our Spanish neighbour's instructions, these veg have become like newborn babies! We'd had lots of rain just before the seedlings went in, so we had orders not to water for 2 weeks. From there on the instructions became very complicated, so much so, I had to write a list.
Once flowers appeared on the veg, it was gung-ho to water, then feed, then prick out. I got very little else done.

We are now eating courgettes and have had to get creative (try courgette, onion, potato soup, pureed and Roquefort cheese added at the end, mmm). Beans also ready to pick and the nectarines, apricots and plums are scrumptious too. We lost many to the Levante last week, but still plenty left. I'll have to get the brandy or rum syrup under way to enjoy them later in the year.

Meanwhile, the pergola and brick path surround was getting built, all by hand and we can now enjoy a g. & t. out there and we'll have the first lunch for our neighbours soon.

If anyone reads this and can p.m. me about why my pics won't appear later on in the text I'll be happy.