Working Hard

Well its been a week of quite hard work for us, our new helper Greg(Canadian)  arrived safely and really is all his profile said he was, very tall, strong and loves hard work... a real lovely bloke too. We all have clicked very quickly, he and Rick really share the same sense of humour and joke all the time...
Already he has strimmed all the orchard terraces, cleaned all the ivy off the orange trees and spent a morning digging a drainage trench right across the whole orchard... we thought it would take him around three days of work... he really goes for it!
Ive been busy clearing the weeds from the stone walls and trimming back the old vines down there too, plus cooking to try to keep the two men stocked up with food..
The weather this last week has been gorgeous, quite cold at night but lovely and sunny and warm during the day, around 22º most days... Greg has even been in the POOL twice... its freezing... he says its refreshing!! To him this weather is wonderful... he finds it hot... so is really enjoying it..
We've a few more days work down the orchard to make it really finished, Rick went to work with Herman the cultivator and has turned over the whole area, to discourge the bracken and weeds, and the soil is excellent. So Ive bought a half kilo of Favas(broad) beans and I'll plant them down there and forget about them till spring... Ive tried them so many times in the main garden, pampered them, watered them weeded them.... and never get much at all... so I'll try the other way... willful neglect... Ive nothing to lose..

Ive also bought more winter peas , Ive already planted 4 rows, and they are up and showing .. so I'll plant more today. But the ones I bought today are classed as winter peas, but I'll plant them in the spring too, as they are the short variety and I find it very hard to get them during spring, everyone here plants the ones that grow huge... and I find they take up too much space and overshadow over stuff too much...

Well the lovely Ruth has done it again... and found me a Pasta maker on freecycle in her area and will bring it soon, she's so good to me, Im using the yogurt maker she brought last time and we had 'funny' yogurt this morning, I mixed figs with honey as flavouring Rick called it funny... yeah yeah I know...
So all my Pasta sauce I made and jarred up wont be wasted this winter... Im so pleased, and really looking forward to getting to grips with making pasta...

The dogs are well, Beesa is a absolute looney... she's so naughty... chews toilet rolls and scatters them across the garden, Ive found paw prints on my tablecloth ... she bin surfs if we dont move it out of reach.... she's a horror , but we love her to bits... she's just over 17 weeks now and as big as Bonnie... her feet are huge... so theres a lot of growing to do yet...