I am sitting here nursing an aching back, again. (Yes, it is back to lugging heavy rocks around. More of that later), and thinking what a really nice Christmas and New Year we have had. The highlights being having Tristan and Cat coming from Australia and Harriet and Jon from the UK to stay with us. On top of that the weather has been glorious.
The run up to Christmas included an ice spectacular in Puerto (actually the ice was replaced by some slippery plastic material), a Christmas carol concert in the church in Antigua with lots of noisy parents and unruly children, a living nativity scene in the plaza complete with Mary arriving on a donkey - though the donkey did rather disgrace himself. So we were in the mood by the 25th!
Harriet and Jon prepared the veggies for our Christmas dinner. One of Wendy's teachers, Vickie and her daughter Alaxandra, joined us. I thought we all had a great time, though looking at this picture everyone looks rather glum! We were playing a kind of trivial pursuits game so maybe that is it, we were all thinking hard!
Goofy joined in the fun too though he wasn't sure about the Santa hat.
While Wendy had new woolly socks for Christmas, Goofy and Pongo had a rawhide bone each. Strangely, considering how they act like a couple of vandals most of the time, they were on their best behaviour and were reluctant to tear open the parcels.
Just to prove the point that they are not two little angels, we put brand new cushions in their beds in the casita and, guess what?
While Pongo gazes into the distance as if he is bored and has nothing to do with the mayhem and destruction behind him, Goofy is trying to brazen it out with a fixed stare into the camera. I reckon I know who the guilty one is.
I decided to start the Christmas tree project with 150 to 200 trees for the first year. The Afghan pine seeds arrived from a supplier in the US and are being stratified. This means keeping the seeds in the refrigerator to simulate winter conditions. Stratification, or vernalisation, is a way of kickstarting seeds into germinating more quickly and more uniformly. The seeds need to be kept damp, so I have mixed them into damp perlite. It is recommended to stratify these seeds for 4 weeks, so I will sow them around the 23rd January.
The greenhouse is still pretty full. I have some really nice Osteospermums with purple flowers which I have taken cuttings of and these are growing nicely having potted them on just the other day into large pots. I had no success with taking cuttings from these earlier in the year, and this has re-taught me a lesson about cuttings. They must be taken from plants which are actively growing, that is the mother plant must be in a juvenile state. Therefore the mother plant has to be pruned to encourage fresh growth and patience is needed to take cuttings at the time of the year when the plants are actively growing.
I have had problems with home made potting compost where I included some of the clay loam soil. It tended to stay wet even with added grit. So I am now using a peat compost (Bord na Mona) available locally at a good price, mixed with a little scoria if the plant needs really sharp drainage.
I am starting to discern a pattern with some of the plants. For example, my hibiscus plants had hardly flowered through the summer. Since December they have all started flowering, even the smallest. Lantana, on the other hand, flowered prolifically through the summer and now seems to have gone to sleep. Bougainvillea are growing and flowering well in January.
The pond is coming along nicely. The last stage in lining it was to put on a finishing coat of mortar. To prevent hairline cracking I added polyester fibres to a standard three to one mortar mix and trowelled it on.
This moved ahead quite quickly once David was back at work to help mixing up.
A week later it was time to fill it up and see where the leaks are!
So far so good. Now just the waterfall to finish building. This involves lugging heavy rocks into position, running round to the front of the pool to see how it looks, going back and adjusting the position, then removing it, putting down a bed of mortar and replacing the rock. There is a bit of guess work in trying to work out how the water will flow over the rocks when it is all finished. The important thing is to ensure the rubber liner is brought up high enough and sandwiched between the rocks so that there are no leaks when the waterfall is running.
Then just plumbing in the pump and return pipe to the waterfall. The pump is German, made by Oase, and delivers 15,000 litres per hour but drawing only 85 watts. It has a poor performance in terms of the height it can pump to, but this in not a problem for this set up as we only need about one metre head. A note of gratitude here to Harriet for accommodating it in her luggage (along with various valves and other devices). I then had the nerve to ask her to help me with lifting heavy rocks. So we both ended up on the Voltarol!
Despite my disparaging remarks about the dogs vandalising behaviour they have both been remarkably good about not going in the pond. Admittedly, they have only to go near and I growl at them. I caught Goofy lying on the lower stone of the waterfall the other day. He found it was the same size as his bed and was the perfect fit!
We are now moving on to the next project which is to start building path edges and small walls around the beds. It will be good to get rid of the stone mountain which has been sitting in the garden most of the year.
I have a new windmill!
Harriet gave it to me for my Christmas present. Here it is.
Actually I was with her when she bought it, and we were shown by the little old guy who made it how the doors open and he showed us the switch which operates a motor to make the sails go round. He told us that it comes with a lifetime guarantee. If you drop it or whatever, he said, bring it to me and I will fix it free of charge!
How about that?
Who said the Spanish know nothing about good service?