HERBS:

This is Rue, known since Roman times and referred to in Shakespeare's plays. Some say if it's placed by your front door, it will bring good fortune, others that it will keep away the evil spirits (rather like a Rowan tree to keep away the witches). Whichever, I think it's a pretty plant and have bought two.

WINTER COLOUR: this was a present (regalo) from the garden centre when we bought the bark mulch and pots of herbs and gazanias. These lovely poinsettia are in all the shops now, early for Christmas. Both here and in Portugal they can grow into big trees.

We nursed one through the year after Christmas 2003, planted it and watched it double in size and lost it in the winter of 2004. We still have last year's but I'm holding back planting until next Spring.

FROM THE PINEAPPLE FAMILY:
Here are some bromeliads, which if they survive, will produce "pups" for more plants before planting.

Luscious naranjos zumo - juicy oranges, which are falling off trees at the moment. I am waiting for the Seville ones for marmalade, usually ready in January, but a neighbour called today with a bag from her sister's tree and they ARE the bitter Seville oranges.

Strange things are happening with crops this year - Gonzalo's pear trees are in blossom, so are our plums.

Yin, one of our Siamese cats (brother is Yang) is in her new favourite place on the table.

Colin of mediterraneangarden blogspot suggested that the process of mosaicing be shown, so here's the virgin pot and subsequent steps: the lizards and salamanders were drawn on the pot. Ordinary ceramic bathroom tiles are cut up, made smaller with special tools, shaped with nibblers or a grindstone and fixed to the terracotta surface with glue.



The background is meant to look like a tiled wall

Later fronds of greenery were mosaiced around the rim.












Grouting was added, squidged in, scraped and sponged off.

We applied a brown one and when it was dry, it was like pale chocolate - not the effect we wanted. The finished pot was placed on a plinth in the middle of the new circular path...

Some corrections to my previous post about

Echevarias....only the small one here with pink flowers, in front of the Agarve, is an echevaria. The other, with close up of the pyramid-like bloom is an Aeonium arboreum, known as Schwartzkopf. The pale green leafed one in my previous post is from this family. Apparently, the rosettes die after blooming, yet the plant continues to grow as long as it is not a single stem.

This is a very easy plant to propagate. Just cut off a stem and stick it in a pot. Treat it as any other succulent, let it get dry then give it a good watering. With the maroon-leafed variety, the more sun it gets, the darker the leaves. The one about to flower is the great-grandaughter of a mother plant originally owned by my friend, Vivienne, a wonderful gardener in West Penwith, Cornwall. She first introduced me to gardening on gravel and Zen gardening. The daughter of Schwartzkopt Vivienne sadly died (as did Vivienne herself) in a big winter in Cornwall. Luckily, I had given a grandaughter cutting to my cousin, who then gave me back the great grandaughter cutting, which we brought to Spain 4 years ago. The picture you see above is the result 20 years later. These plants originate in the Canary Islands and Morocco so you see, it is saying "thank you" to us for bringing it nearer home by flowering for us! I have more babies in pots to carry on the line.

Here is a selection of what's blooming:

pink trumpet vine
clematis
tacomaria
echevaria (I think). This is the pale green-leafed type and it's the first time I've seen it flower (the bees love it).



The other type, commonly known as "schwartz kopf" (because the more sun it has















the blacker the leaves) looks as if that too will bloom.

There were two dead plum trees with strangely-shaped trunks when we first bought this place that we saved them for an unknown project. We drank our way through a few cartons of an Arcos de la Frontera wine in the beautiful blue bottle and that's how this little bit of whimsy sculpture was born! We added different coloured bottles and, thinking that Blue Sapphire gin had a pale blue bottle, we bought that (just for the bottle, you understand!).

We have a few dozen more bottles and hope to create a bottle wall some time, which will catch the setting sun.

Here is the maestro at work on another pot. 

I came across the top picture accidentally, just after I'd take the current one below. Just the sort of thing to encourage us at a time when we feel there's no energy left to do more.

The pebble path , new centrepiece with plants and pots give us a lovely view when we sit under the pergola for a merienda.