Ten year anniversary and Olivia Kish!

Today is the ten year anniversary of us moving to Spain...and my goodness the years have passed very quickly.  It was a bit of a culture change when we first came here, a whole new language to learn, new friends to make, as well as adapting to a completely different way of life!!  And I have to say it really has been worth every moment....I can honestly say that I have no regrets about coming to live here and certainly wouldn't want to move back to the UK, although it is nice to visit occasionally....but I'm always happy to return 'home' to Spain!!

I took some photos of our two lemon trees today.  Well I say 'lemon' trees, one of the trees was in fact an orange tree when we first bought the house, but after a couple of years lemons began to appear and now it is a mixture of the two!  Weird!!!  I would say that I still find it 'novel' to just walk out into the garden and pick some lemons....!  Although we do have far more than we really know what to do with!!  And the smell of the blossoms.....lovely! 

Orange AND lemon tree!

An abundance of lemons!

I also took some photos of Olivia, my Primavera Olivia by Helen Kish.  She's a 12" tall jointed plastic and vinyl doll who I've 'customised' a little bit by adding a wig that I made from Tibetan lambswool and adding some shine to her eyes and lips.  I really think she is such a pretty doll....I have had Kish dolls in the past, but I think I like this one best of all!

In the pink.....

My little brunette wider faced girl has been helping me around the garden.  This morning we picked up all the lemons which had fallen from the tree whilst we've been away.  Quite a few of them have seen better days, having laid in the sun on the floor for goodness knows how long!  Unless they appear any good for juicing, they'll go in the bin, and some are badly bruised from when they 'splatted' to the floor from the tree, but there are quite a lot which are unharmed, so they'll be used for various things......at some point!!!!  To be honest, we have far too many lemons to think what to do with them all....I really need to be more adventurous and find more recipes which use lemons as one of the ingredients!!!

We also picked some nectarines as they are ripe and ready to eat....I'll probably have those for my supper this evening.  And the grape vine is absolutely ladden down with bunches of grapes!  They're not ripe yet but I'd say in about two/three weeks, if the wasps don't get them first, we can pick them!  We were told by a neighbour that we'd probably not get much fruit this year because of the snow back in February, but it is nice that she was proved wrong!

And these are just the ones from the floor....the tree is still full of fruit in various stages of their growth!