Planting.

Song of the day:...some sort of classic tune that has no lyrics and which I don’t know the composer of, darn it; it just keeps going through my head. Not Vivaldi’s four seasons, though. Hah.

It’s been a busy couple of days, and since the weather was downright splendid, it wasn’t a strange thing at all. Tuesday the sun was out, the wind was up from the North and the temperatures were chilly…but the sun was out so who gives a fig! Yay. I really hurried through the morning rituals, especially since I’d overslept (something is up with my alarm, it’s making funny noises, or none at all) got a massive load of laundry done and headed out into the yard.

Seriously, getting down to the lower terraces, which are really in the lee of the mountain wind, it took me less than half an hour to start divesting layers…all six of them, until I ended up with only a long sleeved T that did just fine while we started digging out the edge of the terrace.

The dogs really do not appreciate yard work, I tell ya; they would love nothing better than being right beside us, digging up dirt with extreme enthusiasm, if we let them. Since it would rather beat the purpose of getting a veggie garden going, we resorted to locking them up into the courtyard on center garden instead, which causes a bit of resentment at times. Poor doggies; here us mean humans are keeping them from wrecking young plants by barging through them every five seconds. Hah.

Over the years, erosion has been sending down mud and dirt, which means that there was a lot of stuff to dig out before we reached the sand/rock bottom. We’re going to put down the aqua duct soon, and that’s where it’ll be. We had fully planned to do other tasks in the upper yard, but the sunshine was really too good to pass up on, so we decided to get six trees and put them in the ground before going up.

Of course, by the time we were done putting them in, we figured we might as well finish them all off, and had the younger sibs take them down from grandpas place. It was actually a wonderful afternoon, all in all, and we did manage to get all the plants in. There was a discussion between all, where we went over our options, and in the end we all decided to just take the full risk, rather than just “trying it out”; big brother and I went out to the nursery to get another handful of trees for the yard.

Got a pear, peach, plum and several more citruses, which we put into the ground today…yeah, I know, getting ahead of myself there. Can’t help it really, I’m a teeny bit cross-eyed and bedtime is lurking about the corner and me wants it…bad! Hah.

But anyway, since we were out to get the trees anyway, big brother and I decided to make another rock haul trip while we were out anyway, and managed to pile in a small load. We were running a bit behind, though, and we didn’t get home until after eight, which meant that we had to hurry through dinner and get our butts behind the computer for the read-through edit of “W.I. The White Doves” fast. Ten pages got done, like today (…okay, getting ahead again, sorry) before time was up and we had to leave again for the scavenge.

For some reason we stumbled on the cops, Guardias in this case, who demanded to know what we were doing in the area. It was kind of humorous, really, seeing as fully unintended big brother and I ended up chorusing our responses to the questions asked.

Let me give a demonstration of the conversation, which was in Spanish, I might add.

Me: “Ola!”
Guardia: “Do you live here?”
Me (big brother too): “Nooooh” rather startled too, since we were in an industrial area and it took a moment for the old noggin’ to translate the question. It almost sounded rehearsed.
Guardia: “Where do you live?”
Me (big brother too): Up the mountain, over there-ish,” pointing vaguely north while mentioning the area. The copper’s interest dropped a notch with the realization that we were annoying foreigners who didn’t “do” the language. Hah.
Guardia: “What are you carrying?” while aiming his flashlight in my face and then at the back of the car. It takes us another moment for us to translate the words.
Me (big brother too): “Wood…metal…ehm, oh yeah, garbage.” All in Spanish, remember. I could almost hear the interest drop another ten degrees. He flicked off the light, muttered an, “Okay, fine. Go!”
Which earned him a chorused, “Oh, good. Gracias,” before I drove off, and cast big brother a questioning glance. So weird, felt rather surreal.

Well, with that eventful trip behind us, I crashed for the night, actually managed six hours and a half and woke to another semi-sunny day that was spent putting in the new trees and some strawberries. We also managed to find sweet Italian peppers, our favorite melon seeds and chamomile. All should be going in the ground soon. Hah.

Every available spot is no harboring a fruit tree, leaving lots of room for further vegetable patch. I’ve gotta admit that the lower garden is really starting to look interesting. I’m most curious as to what is going work well ‘round here, and what not.

Our friend came for a nice visit today, and enjoyed basking in the sun while were chatting and putting in trees and such.
Considering we were done planting the trees before the day was through, the younger siblings and I hauled rocks down to where the outside kitchen is going to be, and while the continued doing so, I started chopping out a gutter of rock for the foundation of the concrete floor we need to pour first.

Since big brother was repairing his office chair, little brother and I headed out with the car for another batch of rocks, and loaded up fully in the last beams of daylight that were getting obstructed by clouds again. It looks like there is more rain coming, which means that, grocery shopping will be done either tomorrow, or the day after. If the weather is remotely good, it will be on Friday, but if we can’t do anything outside tomorrow, well, then we might as well get to it.

This evening was spent on the W.I.s again…I really need to get back in swing with the edit, and doing that read-through is essential in many ways. I forgot to do this blog this afternoon, so I really had to squeeze it in at the ending, so hopefully it’s remotely legible.

Well, I’ve got to hit the sheets before the floor hits me, so I’m outta here.