Week 38 - jobs in the garden

I woke up unusually early on Monday and just caught this beautiful sunrise from the balcony. It turned out to be a very nice day and I got lots of gardening done, inbetween popping into the wikis, blogs and forum posts on the online course I am currently moderating.

I caught this kitten red-handed lying in one of the nesting boxes in the chicken pen!  Luckily Freddy wasn't around, otherwise there may have been a problem......

Lots more potting and repotting and planting of bulbs and generally tidying up in the orchard.  I try to give the fruit trees a boost by clearing away weeds, and then adding fresh compost around the trunk of the tree such as this olive tree: 

Pear tree below:
 

We have quite a few trees, comprising of plums, peaches, apples, pears, pomegranates, almonds, cherries, so it is a big job, and of course the 90 olive trees.  I can only tackle the smaller trees as it would take forever to spring clean all of them!

My cucumbers are still growing and this morning I made a cucumber and celery soup for supper tonight..

The peppers are also coming along nicely and I am picking them daily.

I have 5 tomato plants of a different variety growing very closely together at the back of the veggie plot. I made a mistake planting them so close together as they have now evolved into a huge mass with all 5 plants intertwined and linked and so they are too squashed and not enough light is getting to the fruits.  Mea culpa!!

The 'rockery' area is coming along well and I have interspersed false flowers amongst the sedum cuttings to give it more colour whilst the cuttings are growing.  A lot of weeds abound and it is a constant job removing them!

 

 A sedum cutting doing incredibly well below.

Below an 'Aloa Vera' plant growing really well from a cutting.  I used a part of its liquid sap to heal a cut on my hand and the effect was almost instant, with the balm soothing the pain very quickly.  I am happy to use what is in the garden as natural remedies....  One things though, this plant has very spiky edges and I have to be very careful when I am near it !!
 

Finally, for a bit of fun I created a certificate from a free online certificate maker that I had come across via Twitter a week or so ago.  Hard to believe I arrived in Madrid 35 years ago, ready to start teaching EFL at the Briam Instituto.  Where have the years gone?  How have I evolved as a teacher in all these years?  Do I still have what it takes to be an effective teacher?  Has my way of teaching evolved over these years?  I think I can answer yes to these soul-searching questions!!  I sometimes wonder how would my life have been different if British Airways had accepted my application to be a flight attendant....

Roll on Week 39!!