Sprekelia formosissima

That's what it is - thanks to Titania, here who has the most amazing exotic plants in her Australian garden. Aztec lily or Jacobean lily are its common names and in northern Europe it's usual to have them as a house plant.

Mystery plant from Mathilde

I've popped back over because this appeared suddenly in a little patch under the trellis. Mathilde gave me 3 or 4 bulbs last year, saying they were "Fleur de Lys". They are a vivid scarlet, really beautiful, but I can find nothing in any directory under Mathilde's name for them.




However, it does look like

"Daylily" or " Day Lilies"
Latin name: Hemerocallis 'Autumn Red'

The colour is different but the leaves are the same. It's a stunning little plant and I'm off shortly to find out more about it.

But not before I tell you about a comical week having a tube well drilled. Diego, the water diviner and driller, came and pointed out the spot and said about 25 metres down....sure enough it was. Then the plumber with a long submersible pump with cables and tubes; a bricklayer next to make good all around the well with a nice square chamber and a little caseta to house the control unit and keep it weather prooof. We await the electrician to couple all this up but we've had wind and rain and no-one works in those conditions. All this conducted in the incomprehensible local Spanish, translated by neighbour Gonzalo in his slower, clearer Spanish while he wanted to do hands on work in all the trades. It has been an exhausting and stressful week as we rushed around buying materials.....I'm sure we understood only half of what we've been told. We only hope the whole thing works, even though with the amount of rain we've had lately we're unlikely to need it until next summer.

A change of Direction

It seems I’m not the only one thinking of winding up their gardening blog: I’ve read of two or three others intending to do the same thing. I’ve sometimes felt a bit restricted when I’ve written about other things , as if they shouldn’t be there. So after 5 years of gardening blogging, I’m about to diversify. The main gardening projects we’d planned have been finished: it's been a hard slog creating a beautiful area out of a wilderness and there is always more to do.

I may be back here now and again and I will certainly be visiting my blogging buddies from time to time. But for now it’s Adios from here and on to pastures new to ramble on about Everything and Nothing, as the fancy takes me. See you there…..maybe.

Long time gone

Returned from UK after my niece's wedding a week ago to find a water crisis in the area. All of us are outside the town, drawing water pumped from our wells and they're all dangerously low. Our friends some 10 kms. away in the hills just had a muddy splodge at the bottom and as they return to Spain from their summer visit to Wales this week, it was all hands on deck to get something improvised for them. They had a disused swimming pool so we all pitched in, scraping, cleaning and mopping the bottom, had 10,000L delivered and used a huge black awning to cover it. Meanwhile, back at our casa we were coming to the end of our rainwater depositos that we use for the garden. Here they are - 3 x 500L and 1 x 300L and the lone one of 500L waiting for new guttering down that side of the house.




We have three corners of the roof that act as a funnel for rain and have spotted some robust plastic water containers in a DIY store with lids and taps, about 350L capacity. Only 35€, so we'll give those a go too. All our shower and washing up water is being recycled but the laundry-to-do is in danger of walking out of the basket on its own......it will have to wait.

Apologies to all my blogging buddies for my silence on your blogs. The phone connection disappeared last week and we waited almost 5 days for the repair. All those little jobs that get put off in favour of getting on line were completed, plus the cleaning up of old files and pictures on the PC and generally streamlining stuff ready for when we were back on line again.

So, I'm gradually catching up and look forward to seeing what you've all been up to.....