In The Campo 2010

With all the excitement of living in our new house, I've completely ignored writing any updates. I'll put this down to worrying about the leaks, landslips and depressing weather. So far this year, up to mid-April, we've hardly had any of the usual clear sunny days. Instead we, in this part of Andalucia, have experienced lots and lots of rain. For example, the average rainfall for Manchester is around 850mm per annum. We had 1800mm in three months. The weeds are growing with abandon.

Although the rain was welcome, it does cause quite a few problems with the local roads and tracks. Our track is in a terrible state but its not worth doing much until early summer. Not one for ordinary cars at the moment.

We still have an ongoing problem with a leak from the balcony above the salon area. I've tried to fix it five times now each time smashing up terracota tiles, putting down more asphalt, bitumen paint, sealant and clumps of my hair that I'm pulling out in frustration! If I was to build another house, no way would I make a balcony over a living space. NO WAY!

Here are some pictures of the inside, two downstairs and one up.

We've done some work garden-wise. The planters around the house have been planted up so, hopefully, we will have a bit greenery around the house this summer. Things have certainly been watered in so we will see if they can survive the summer. Note the centrepiece is a cement mixer.

We had a few terraces scraped out in our fenced veggie area and then made up some stone walls to form terraces and gave it a good ol' fashioned digging over to remove the grasses, weeds, etc. We've got a few things going (lots of spuds, broad beans, red and white onions, garlic, broad beans, spinach, acelgas(chard), lettuces, tomatoes, aubergines, sugar peas, radish, carrots, courgettes) but have had a big failure with all types of green beans. The soil needs a good bit of manure but we were a bit late to get hold of some.

We now have a hen house or should I say Fort Choox. We need to be careful because of the local fox population and mongooses. So, proper 2m fence wire buried 30cm in concrete, secure inner sanctum and raised coop. Should be big enough for four chooks. Don't know whether we will be up to wringing their necks when the time comes. Perhaps I'll get a shotgun...

and one interested cat...

The Golden Oriels have arrived which means that summer is just around the corner so to speak. Very distinctive call that, along with cicardas are sounds of summer. The bee-eaters arrived a couple of weeks back. (Mid-May: yet more rain - we are up to 2100mm! Where is the sun?)

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