GARDEN BLOGGERS MUSE DAY:

There is peace within a garden, a peace so deep and calm,
that when the heart is troubled, it's like a soothing balm.
There's life within a garden, a life that still goes on,
Filling the empty places when older plants have gone.
There's glory in the garden at every time of year.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter, to fill the heart with cheer.
So ever tend your garden, its beauty to increase.
For in it you'll find solace. And in it you'll find peace.

(sampler at London's Museum of Garden History)

Hello my lovely garden blogging buddies. I'm off to northern Spain tomorrow so won't be around to follow your doings. Will see you in a week.....

GROUTED POT:

Here you can see the four facets of the pot, in different styles, freshly grouted in black. Yin has just given it her seal of approval. Mathilde has been keeping a close eye on the proceedings and has now wandered round with an antique pot with the request "mariposas por favor" - butterflies please. So, mariposas it will be. As regular readers will know, Mathilde is not a woman to be trifled with!

After that it will be a big cubed pot for a dear friend, who wants her cat on it. I'll leave that complicated bit to el supremo, while I do the other three sides in abstract, in different shades of blues and white with a splash of girly pink.

MOTHER DUCK AND HER DUCKLINGS:

(this is for Yolanda, who loves all creatures great and small)

Gonzalo has fastened a little cordon around her to keep the hens and other ducks away and added a large beach umbrella and paddling pool for their comfort. Aint they cute.

BUDDLEIA (for Becky).

We waited for this to open, not knowing which colour it would be....and here it is. The bees love it, but as yet no butterflies. In fact haven't seen any butterflies in the garden at all yet.

POMEGRANATES AND PEACHES

I just hope all the blossoms on this pomegranate remain intact and that we have good fruits this year. The Levante managed to demolish most of the flowers and dried up most of the emerging fruits last year. We have yet to have a harvest.

The nectarines and apricots in contrast are laden with fruit and I can see that once I've exhausted the neighbours' patience with my organic fruit packs, I'll be in the kitchen to do a lot of bottling with brandy syrup. It's very satisfying eating the results in
winter.

And I haven't even thought about the plums - large yellow ones and a small sweet one like a damson. We were over-run with these last year and after bottling, we realised we needed another freezer to store the overflow.....this is now ready and waiting.

Early morning here is heavenly: one of next door's ducks has hatched 6 ducklings and she is sitting on seven more eggs. They are nestled right up by our boundary fence, so Gonzalo has created a hay screen to protect her from the sun, and built an enclosure to keep the hens, other ducks and possibly wandering cats from upsetting them. I rounded up a monster batch of snails from the osteospurmum so that the non-mums of the poultry could have a treat.