So we now knew that we could actually grow plants in our “soil”. The first crops were a bit sickly partly due to the soil and somewhat irregular watering with a hose pipe. Other pests started to appear, amongst them, slugs, snails, ants and Portugese millipedes. Admittedly the latter two didn’t seem to be detrimental to the plants but they made the maintenance somewhat unpleasant at times. This was added to by flies (including sand flies), mosquitoes, wasps (more of those later) and the ever… Continue

Just received this from a friend. If it causes any offence I'll gladly remove it.



In the beginning God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, with green, yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.



Then using God's bountiful gifts, Satan created Dairy Ice Cream and Magnums. And Satan said, 'You want hot fudge with that? And Man said, 'Yes!' And Woman said, 'I'll have one too with chocolate chips'.… Continue

As we were still somewhat overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge, we decided that a vegetable patch would be the sensible thing to start with. This would enable us to test the viability of the soil and also obviate the necessity for any design skills which neither of us pretend to be endowed with.

Each swing of the pickaxe penetrated about six inches so I dug a couple of square metres to this depth, removed the spoil to one side… Continue

It was now time to get cultivating. The first job was to examine the soil and decide how to make it productive. To call it soil is somewhat of an overstatement. It's a red, sandy and very stony substance that you would normally drive on in this area.

Ever the optimist, Margaret collected a sample and tested it with the little litmus type kit she'd bought with her from UK (bless !!). She declared that all was OK as it tested alkaline… Continue

Prior to attempting anything that might be construed as "constructive", we'd realised that having walked round the "Estate" a few times, there was quite a bit of attractive vegetation that was either growing wild, was left over from the days when it was a nursery or had been deliberately planted by previous occupants. This included various varieties of lavender, the usual Rosemary and Thyme etc. Margaret frequently fills vases with wild flowers she finds on site in the season.…



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