POTATO PLANTING UNDER DURESS.

I'm on my hands and knees weeding, enjoying the sun and breeze, and Mathilde appears out of nowhere to tell me the potatoes must be planted today. I imagine she thought that tidying and prettifying the garden was low down on the list of priorities.
So Gonzalo wheeled his big rotavator round, tried to persuade me to have a bigger plot of potatoes than we wanted (I held fast!) and set to. It was done in no time. Out he came then with a large carrier bag of potatoes. Correct me if I'm wrong but in UK all but one eye of the potato would be rubbed out, cut in half if there were two eyes and planted deep. Not here, and not for the summer crop in particular. From one potato, about 5-6 pieces were cut to plant, totalling 130 pieces. At a yield of around 3 kgs. of potatoes per piece, that's a lot of tatties for two people!

The pieces then have to be left in the sun to dry before planting. Why, I don't know and I haven't the language skills to discover the answer. We managed to use only half the bits before collapsing for an afternoon siesta.

It was 24C here during the day.

Saturday, 17th. The rain is back again and my friend in nearby Medina tells me that the swallows that build a nest in his porch are back for the third year running - two months early.