a cat, some plants and a pool

Roley cat doing sleeping he is very tranquil just now and this is his favourite place. 

 Palms are doing well in their tatty pots they were seeds under two years ago almost ready to plant out now unfortunately I can't remember which are which although I can identify the trachycarpus fortunei in the foreground there are around 30 other mixed up ones I have no idea what they are but they are all going up at the top of the place that used to be full of eucalyptus. 

 Aloe vera starting to set a little flower spike most of the info on them says they flower in Summer, maybe it will be a slow growing spike although it seems to be shooting up really rapidly; there was no sign of it three days ago when I de-snailed it.

The bathroom is progressing although you would hardly think so from the pic.

Although progress is not as rapid as hoped, this is the source of that gurgling noise that was under the bath and the reason the walls are damp. Mixed blessing really it will be good to get rid of the damp but I had not planned to be blocking old drainage and constructing new. somewhere there is a join between this problem and the toilet outlet that has to be blocked I hope it is not buried under the concrete floor or I will have to redo far more than I want to.

bathroom

Sunday was hot so I thought well its time to do the old bathroom it won't take long then I can get into the garden. The sink came out in about an hour, could have done it in ten mins had I just started by smashing it up rather than pussyfooting around, very rusty brackets and mmm nice lead pipe work.

No sheet of damp plywood fitted above the floor level casing the tiny little bath in that takes minutes to remove, no not that easy just a solid wall of bricks and rock hard mortar.

So after another hour I went out and looked at some blossom...

Ahh plums in the making...

And peaches. 

Back to the bath, not only was it on a brick wall there were brick walls on all 4 sides and it has been set into the house wall too so I had to cut carefully into the walls all round the sides to free it, then found that the base had been settled nicely into wet concrete too rather than standing in the little metal cradles that all other baths I have ever had to remove have been on...another three hours and it was out to show a gaping hole in the floor full of sopping wet brick work ah so thats where the damp in the walls was coming from; the lead waste pipe has been leaking for many years I think and in a dead unventilated space there was no where for the damp to go. 

So its time to say- you can't make a tortilla with out breaking eggs.

UK and back again

After the hire car fiasco it was lovely to see the garden in Sussex looking like Spring is on its way.

 The day before I had to leave we had a trip to East Head where the beaches are long and wide, if a tad chilly although the boys ran around a lot and eventually ended up in their Tshirts.

 Good skimmy stones too.

 Lovely marshes but I missed the wild geese flyovers every time.

 It was not Tshirt weather in my opinion

 Classic Sussex coast scene

 Looking West towards Hayling Island and Portsmouth

 Back in Galicia and that huge pile of wood that took ages to collect now looks like a load of matchsticks

 Peach blossom is looking lovely

 Where the wood was...nearly ready to start replanting after a bit more tidying and strimming

 Wild flowers are appreciating the extra light

 as are the little oak trees

 Rhubarb is not usually something I like however this one was really sweet and tender after a week or so under a big bucket. I simmered it with some membrillo and bananas and added it to rice pudding.

 Anemones are flourishing

 One of my sculptures starting to settle in

 Hopefully this year we will have our first mandarins

 A walk down Vilarrube at night was an interesting excursion, the pictures were not purposeful but a few look ok; my torch ran out so I had to use the flash on the camera to see where I was going and check for wild boar.

Today got off to a flaming start

 Eucalyptus are slowly being cleared and the landscape is changing apart from the ones next to our house that should have been cleared in 2007.

18C predicted today, they said 15C yesterday and it got up to 22 so it might well be a hot one again.