MANGUERAS AT DAWN: AND MAY BEGINS..

All has been rather hectic of late, with the arrival of new kittens came some rather horrid weather and more illness and creaky backs! So all gardening was put on hold and concentrating on getting well again became the order of the last couple of weeks.

The kittens are doing great. They are twice the size they were, at least, and are now showing distinct patterned markings, lovely. They all have their eyes open and are crawling about all over the place. As the weather warms they will all be moved outside and hopefully this time they will thrive better.

The cockerel is still in the coop! He is still enjoying attacking us as we go in and so his days are definitely numbered. We have no more animals at the moment apart from the two dogs.

So the veggies are all coming along well now that the rains have stopped for a moment. We covered all the young plants with 5 litre plastic water bottles (we don't have a greenhouse here) and they have fared better than the last lot. I have also managed to find, after enormous searching, some special pepper plants native to Mallorca called Tap de Corti. Here is a link with a little info on them:

Slow Food Foundation - Tap de Corti Pebre bord.

I bought half a tray of about 50 plants and C planted them in this morning.

51 Tap de Corti pepper plants now in

So May brings us to a lush green garden. The fig trees are in leaf again as are all the trees and bushes. The winter jasmine is dying back and the blossoms have dropped off the citrus trees. The bougainvillea is in bloom with bright magenta flowers and the fruits are beginning to grow. The Mallorquin Apricots are coming along as well as the nispera. I am hoping the pear trees will fruit ok, as I did prune them hard during the winter, they were such a mess!

Of course, with the wonderful green lushness around the island, everyone is battling with weeds. Many people spray them but we do it all by hand if we can! It's a mammoth task but we prefer not to use chemicals if we can help it.

The vines are in leaf now also but I need to do a little research on how to keep the fruit from being destroyed by wasps/flies and other horrid nasties, someone mentioned paper bags!! Must look into that.

The number of cyclists on the island has increased a gazzillion-fold! and the IronMan 70.3 is on the 11th May in Alcudia, so everyone is in training for that - except me!