Preparing for spring...

On Monday we went to Sevilla and ordered the wood to build our new pergola which will go over the jacuzzi/hot tub in our garden.  Some of you might remember that back on the 28th February 2013, which is a holiday here as it is el Dia de Andalucia, we had a heavy snow fall which brought down our existing pergola.  I say 'brought down', but the 'unusual for here' weight of the snow on top, actually broke it completely in half!!  We weren't here at the time as Brian and I had gone to the coast for a couple of weeks, but Brendan awoke to see the damage and sent us these photos...

You can see below that the metal cross beam at the far end is completely broken in the middle, and the one this end is just being supported by an 'acro' that Brendan put in place temporarily!! 

This was one of the 'upright' corner posts, which as well as being bolted into the ground, was also attached to the wall of the house with metal brackets!!!  

So for two years we've been looking for 'just the right' pergola to replace it, as without shade we can only use the jacuzzi at night when the sun can't shine on it and damage the fibreglass.  Because wood isn't used so much here, we've been quoted some very high prices for a simple wooden structure so we finally decided to order the wood and make our own.  It will be a standard pergola with 6 crossbeams.   The wood was delivered on Thursday, our hallway has been piled up with wood like an adventure playground for the last few days!!  The bag contains all the metal fittings!

And we decided to make a start on it today.  Brian has drawn up all the plans, he can't do the lifting but is the 'brains' behind the building, Brendan and I are the 'brawn' apparently!!!!  Not so sure, having lost more than 50 pounds in weight in the last year, that I really want to be known as the 'brawn' but it could be worse I guess :)

Brendan's face below, shows how not 'overly impressed' he was when I said that I wanted the corner posts shortened by approx half a metre....

Brian directs the procedings!!! Note those horrible matching woolly hats!

As the morning warmed up, Brendan starts to shed the layers!!

The metal 'shoes' go onto the corner posts...this is Brian's 'work room' with the open door...

Ah, here comes the Building Inspector....or Yoda as she's otherwise known :) ...

It's not often you see Brendan without his woolly hat in winter, but it was turning into a nice warm morning...

Drilling through the tiles into the ground...

In the meantime I got bored standing around waiting for my 'services' to be needed so I decided to do a bit of weeding and tidying up of the garden.  I filled three large sacks of weeds and leaves....just shows you how 'needed' I was!!!

I thought I'd share some photos I took of the plants.  Most have done well over the winter, some have done VERY well!!

The rockery plants are doing very nicely indeed, lovely and green.  Once I'd removed a lot of the weeds, you could see them properly!!  The yucca in the pot in front is usually standing behind the jacuzzi but we had to move it out of the way for the 'workers'.....we've had this some years now and got it as a tiny little 'stump' thingy!!!! It has sooo much new growth down at the bottom, but it does need repotting as it's got very top heavy and easily falls over.

Loads of lemons on the tree, even though I use at least one a day, thankfully they don't diminish very quickly!  They really are probably the nicest lemons I've ever tasted....and definitely the freshest! ;)  Am I prejudiced?  Maybe!!

This plant has done incredibly well during the winter, we bought it last spring and it's grown nicely in the pot...

This is our Hibiscus, again bought last year.  They can be very temperamental, but this one has done well in the cold as it's protected in this corner...

These two troughs of cactii and succulents are spreading nicely and filling in the spaces...

I don't know what this plant is called but it looks lovely in this old pot...the bottom of the pot is planted in the soil and has been since before we moved in back in April 2004, there is another photo of it further down...

The mandarin looks good and healthy now that we've taken it from it's pot and planted it in the soil...the stones around the base are to prevent the dogs from digging, which they like to do!

Another 'oldie', our cheese plant, normally a 'houseplant' in the UK, has been outside since we received it as a gift in 2006!

This palm will take over the garden if we let it, it was thoroughly cut back last year and needs to be done again very soon...

The mystery orange/lemon tree is producing lots of lovely fruit again.....even after almost 11 years living here, it's still such a novelty for me to have citrus fruit growing in our own garden!

Here you can see both the oranges and the lemons growing side by side in the same tree...

I love this succulent in it's pot on top of our garden 'plinthe', it always looks so pretty and healthy with it's green with red tipped leaves...

Here's the old plant pot buried in the ground that I mentioned earlier....we daren't try moving it as we're sure it'd just fall apart!! 

Some members of the family got very 'exhausted' watching the rest of us work!!!!  Suki, enjoying a bit of a sunbathe in her 'mummy made' furry coat!!!

 Whilst Chocco investigates (and eats) anything he can find!

 Yoda just looks at the 'whipper snappers' with contempt!

 
The other Yucca, also needing repotting...it has grown enormously!!

A few years back this large bowl was planted up with some small cactii.....now you can't see hardly an inch between them!

There's that old yucca again....oh and my lovely Lucy!

I got very excited when, having removed the weeds surrounding it, I found this plant in flower.....I thought my 'money tree' had begun to flower ;) only to realise that no, the money tree is next to it and as yet, no flowers!!  

This spiky cousin of the Aloe Vera has several flower stalks waiting to come up....won't be long now!

Why is it that grasses and weeds choose the sharpest plants to grow around....this spiky cactus is surrounded by 'stuff' that needs pulling up...

And finally a few photos of the doggies......Yoda

Choco in his usual 'upside down' pose!!!

And especially for Auntie Ronny, here is Kara, our tiniest little Chihuahua...

As for progress on the pergola, well the four corner posts are up and bolted to the ground, and two of the 6 rafters (one each end) are screwed in place....and this afternoon we had hailstones....so as the saying goes, tomorrow is another day!

I hope you've enjoyed sharing my Sunday and wish you all a lovely week ahead. :)

A little Spanish garden.....

I've been meaning to take photos of our garden here in Estepa, Sevilla, for ages, and today I finally got around to it!  Our garden isn't large but it suits us perfectly because we spend so much time back and forth to the coast....we don't really want to leave our son Brendan with too much extra work!  When we were house hunting back in 2003 it really was the garden that sold it for me.  So many houses here in rural Spanish towns don't have gardens, they have patios and terraces, but I wanted a 'proper' garden!  So here we have it!  We do also have a terrace upstairs, which I will photograph another day.

The first part of the garden is actually a big square covered patio that is walled on three sides and entered from either the kitchen or double doors from another room in our house.  There is a full bathroom off this patio, which is really handy, particularly in the summer when we don't want to traipse through the house when wet from the jacuzzi/hot tub.  In winter, for protection, we fill the covered patio with plants that normally are in the main part of the garden during the spring/summer/autumn months.  However, at this time of year, it is plant free as the temperatures can get so high that they just burn up, poor things!

The main part of the garden is entered through a white stone arch to which we added a wrought iron gate.  Here you can see the garden from the archway.  You can also see our walls which are badly in need of a coat of paint...another job for later in the year when it's cooler!

The jacuzzi/hot tub can be seen on the right.  We have two large Yucca plants in pots standing either side of the jacuzzi.  The door you see on the left is my hubbys 'workroom', housing all his tools and stuff.  Originally, and many years ago, that room was an outside kitchen and has a very large, now unused,  chiminea inside in one corner.

We have high walls on all sides, which is great, it makes for an incredible sun trap!  We get sunshine all day long and well into the evening, which is lovely.  The jacuzzi/hot tub is invaluable in the hot months.  We used to have a pergola over the top of the jacuzzi as the fibreglass can be damaged by the hot sun, but it was brought down in 2012 by the heavy (for here!) snow fall, so we are waiting to have a replacement made.  I was hoping Dee's clever hubby Paul might fancy a holiday in the sun!! ;)

As you can see, the whole patio is paved in non-slip terracota tiles.  We have a lot of plants such as Geraniums and Hibiscus growin in pots, as well as some herbs such as mint and basil.  But we have planted quite a lot of things in the raised part of the garden, we also added a rockery, which we filled with cacti and Aloe Vera.  We've found that these are the best types of plants to grow here as they don't need quite so much water and are very hardy.  We originally had a small water feature in the rockery, but it proved impractical as the water was forever evaporating, so we removed it.   You can just see our little stone mosaic topped table on the right hand side of the garden, where we often sit to enjoy our elevenses because it's shaded until later in the day.

Our house is attached to our outbuildings, which extend right the way down the garden to the end.  The door you see on the left in the above photo is our laundry room, next is a storage room, the door is situated around the corner to the laundry room door, and then the rest of the outbuilding is another large storage room, the door is at the end of the garden.  The old chair above is on it's last legs, and is just used for propping open the laundry room door when the tumble dryer is on!!

I really like the plant above, I can't recall it's name but it has several different colours of flowers all growing on the one plant!  It loves the sunshine and the little flowers close up in the late afternoon when they are in the shade.

The above photo shows the back of the rockery and the planters full of cacti and succulents.  Also we have irises and more aloe vera!  The door you see in the background is the middle storage room which I hate going into as there are spiders in there!!!  Eeek!

Brian has tried to train the lemon trees to form a sort of arch over the pathway to the end of the garden.  In the main it works....except sometimes we walk through and get a hefty wack on the head from a low hanging lemon or orange!!!  The tree above holds both lemons and oranges.  You can just see the large area at the end of our garden which you reach via two steps.  At the moment we have artificial grass down as previously it was just concrete and extremely dusty, this area is a real suntrap and we dry our washing there (even denim dries in 15 minutes in the summer!) and we also have a patio table and chairs there......but after about 9am it's too hot to sit up there....although the dogs love to sunbathe there at any time of the day!!

Looking to the side of the garden again, you can see a large 'date' palm that we bought as a tiny little pot plant several years ago.  It produces little fruit in the spring but we don't know if they're edible.  Behind that is a rambling rose which is still smothered in small red roses, but a lot of them are perfectly preserved 'dried' roses now!  Also above you can see our mandarin tree which is doing well since we took it out of it's pot and put into the ground, it's currently covered in small green fruit which should be ready to eat come the winter.  

Here you can see the nectarine tree, behind that an apple tree and in the corner a low palm which was given to us as a wedding present in December 2005, it was a small pot plant and has now completely taken over the corner of the garden there!    There's honeysuckle clambouring for space at the bottom of the nectarine tree.  So far this year we've had almost 40 nectarines, and they are absolutely delicious, I'm still eating them each morning for my breakfast.  You can also see just how dry and dusty the soil is, typical Andalucian dust!!

Above is a close up of the combined lemon and orange tree.  

 Above, our small hibiscus plant produced a gorgeous saucer sized flower!

Above is another planter of cacti and succulents.

Looking up at another beautiful blue sky!!

Finally I thought I'd add a photo of when our jacuzzi was delivered.  Because of it's size, we couldn't get it through the house so it had to be brought in by a massive crane that was parked outside in the street, whilst the crane operator worked from our garden with his remote control.  I had terrible visions of it falling out of the straps and crashing down onto our neighbours house.....thankfully that didn't happen!!! 

So there you have a little tour of our Spanish garden, I hope you've enjoyed seeing it!!!