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!!
I thought I was over the worst on Sunday and had had a good day, but Sunday night was sleepless and full of coughing, and I woke up on Monday feeling quite rough, so I had to finally admit defeat, and off I went to the doctor's in Civitaquana. The very nice and sympathetic temporary female doctor listened to my breathing and looked down my throuat and told me I had a chest infection, and laryngitis. She prescribed a course of strong antibiotics and I duly starting taking them. This week has been full of restful periods, but also I have been trying to get to grips with a new online course and system. Because I was still feeling under the weather, it was a bit of a struggle at times, but I think I managed to keep up with everything, thank goodness.
Inbetween working, my focus has been on planting bulbs! I bought over 100 bulbs in the local supermarket and decided I would get them planted as soon as possible.
The bulbs included special trays, and I thought it would be good to see how they work out and so I treated myself to not just one but three trays of mixed colours and varieties.
Below two of the planted up pots with green meshing and an ornamental cockerel on top of them to keep the cats away!
Two curious kittens looking on...
This Fluffy look-alike kitten below in an old paint pot looks quite cute! He seemed quite happy to be in there. Maybe we should name him Max after the Max Meyer paint pot!
I also started repotting plants, and taking cuttings of sedum, which always 'takes' beautifully.
I gathered lots of fruit, including plums, grapes, apples, pears and figs and then made lots of bowls of fresh fruit salads for puddings, with icecream.
Finally, to finish off this post, an image of a souvenir of a San Gabriele souvenir jug I bought for my beloved grandmother many years ago, and which I was able to keep after she passed away. I now keep it in the kitchen and put my basil in it....
The past couple of weeks have been very quiet, but I am now finally looking forward to being back to my normal self, ready for Week 38!
On inspecting all my collection of Bombonnieri on Monday, I found that most of the sugared almonds had gone off and were of a very sticky and inedible nature, so I disbanded all of them and will use the bits and pieces for craftwork and hence recycle things. The little flower stems have been added to my tub above which now contains lots of parsley seeds. I am not sure if the seeds will grow as it is unseasonally wet and a bit cool at the moment, so we shall see.
Below a motley crew of furkids, at one point 5 of them all squashed together during a bad thunderstorm. Raymondo is the prominent white kitten and he is very cute!!
As of Tuesday things didn't go too well. I wasn't feeling too good, just generally under the weather. I had Samantha and Victoria lying side by side on top of me when I was resting on the couch. All of a sudden a mega cat fight broke out between them and I ended up being bitten on my index finger on a very soft part of the skin. It hurt a lot!! I noticed that my finger had become all red and swollen and very painful.
I decided I didn't want to reach out to Dr Google to see what it would say about being bitten by cats and the consequences. I vaguely remembered reading an article about someone who had died after her pet cat had bitten her,
but I really didn't want to think about this, so I ignored it.....
Wednesday and Thursday I had to do a lot of preparation for an online course starting next week and I simply overdid it on the computer and my eyes got very tired. In addition I had come down with a very bad cold and an annoying cough, so I took to a bed in the spare room.
I whiled away the hours listening to the Italian radio and a parade of cats peering in from outside the window checking to see if I was ok, kept me occupied.
I also managed to read a few chapters of a book called Stay Positive!
It helped me to put things in perspective about my temporary 'down period'. In life, we all suffer minor setbacks and we just have to deal with them!
On Sunday (today) I feel much better and I have decided to venture out again into the veggie plot that has been totally neglected for the past few days.
I received a beautiful Jacqie Lawson ecard from one of my dear colleagues and this really cheered me up and spurred me on to get back to normal. Thanks, Carol!!
http://www.jacquielawson.com/
Cat bite update
I have just succumbed to my curiosity and looked up 'consequences of cat bite' on Google and as I feared a cat bite could lead to a severe infection, hospitalization, many courses of antibiotics and ultimately and occasionally, possible death!!!! I still can't bend my finger properly,
but I think it is definitely getting better and is not so red and painful now, thank goodness, so I will monitor the situation and go to a doctor only if it gets worse.....
I am keeping positive, so I am sure my bite (or puncture wound) will go away of its own accord......
We are now halfway through this project and how time has flown!! It has been fun doing Project 52 together with Sue, and I feel inspired by her posts.
To mark the occasion, I have created a tagxedo of this blog. I just typed in my blog address and this is what it came up with. I had fun trying to remember when and why I had used the following words, which include 'Facebook'. I can't recall writing about Facebook these past 6 months, so that is a mystery why it is included!
This week I was delighted to see a reference in Shelly Terrell's wonderful slideshare presentation called Virtual Makeover: 15+ Ideas to Get Students Actively Learning Online This was part of the Teaching Online MOOC, which looks very interesting!
One of Shelly's slides with my 3,2,1 Introduction screenshot in the top left hand corner:
In the middle of the week, I was inspired to do nothing for 2 minutes after reading Ana Maria's excellent blog post called 5, 4, 3, 2, I Relax.....
Below a screenshot of the message I got when I actually followed the instructions and did nothing. It was very relaxing indeed, and I should do nothing more often!! Try it here!
Kittens have been crowding into my pots to sleep in at night time, and last night there were 5 squashed in. I only managed to take a picture with 2 of them in. As you can see, my sedum plant and Snapdragons have been well and truly squashed!
At the same time I managed to take a photo of a creature on my potted pea plants. As you can see, it is extremely well-camoflaged!
Last but not least, a picture of a kitten wrapped round a statue of a dog, fast asleep and purring away to its heart content....
Next week I won't be online much as I have family visiting from England, so I will be very busy. Hopefully I can take a few nice photos to share here.
Fluffy has been recovering from a few cat fights and he is now feeling a bit better. Photo taken by K.
The kittens continue to have lots of fun and here's one with their mum.
This one is very lively and mischievous!
...and is also known as the 'food sweeper' kitten!
It was very hot on Friday 13th and in this image, you can see 3 kittens and Olivia and Socks all having a cat nap.
That night I got a picture of the full moon but it looks a bit blurred....
Gardening..
One of the pot courgette plants in flower
K has given me some of his old CapoNord motorcycle tyres to recycle, and I have used them as a container for my Sedum plant below and more courgettes in the veggie plot!
K's old boots have been recycled and now they are unusual plant pots!
A very ugly toad caught in a dark corner of the garden. He nearly scared the life out of me! He is so cleverly camoflaged, it was no wonder I didn't spot him. He then proceeded to hop onto my pots, as seen below. I have to confess I don't like toads at all, but recently the snails have not been visible, so that is a good thing a toad does, eats them all up!
This huge lizard was caught by one of the mummy cats to give to her kittens. She is feeding them very well indeed! I guess this is a lizard who had an untimely exit.
The fields opposite are full of bales of hay, waiting to be collected by the local farmers. The weather is very hot, in the 80s!!
Of course we can't afford a professional baler, so this is what my gathered hay looks like! It was very hard work in the hot sunshine..
Only a third of the land has been worked on so far, but not bad in a day's work! Before it used to take us a week or so to do the same amount without the cutter!
My cap, garden sack and raker is all I have to do this sweeping-up job!!
Whilst out with K in our jungle, I came across thousands of cornflowers along the path K has created! Their beautiful bright colour is so eyecatching. These are purple, as opposed to the usual bright blue, so I may be wrong calling them cornflowers....
Naturally I picked some and added them to a vase!
You can read more in wikipedia about this flower- Centaurea cyanus.
I have enjoyed working in the garden so much this week! It was really high time I devoted myself fully to helping K out with keeping things in shape.
I sometimes wonder at how life has changed, from being a city girl, to being a temporary land worker in 2014!!
