Source material

A change of valves and pipes and we have left the world of town water and bills behind; and will now be on spring water until (hopefully) next summer.   It always feels like a momentous event. As if you are getting back in touch with the mountain in a very direct way.

Our tank up on the hillside is already half full.   Not bad for August when the spring used to dry up completely.   But now, thanks the elaborate and very professional work of capping the source this month, we seem to have three little springs close by that drip into the tank.

Naturally the first thing I did to celebrate this fact was to spend an hour and a half watering the vegetable garden, the soft fruit, the grasses and anything else I spied from the end of my long hose. It’s marvellous fun; especially as there is a feeling of almost autumn in the air (only 22C so far today) and the belief that nature might just take over this watering chore from me any day now.

In the meantime I am working through my list: potting up the strawberry runners.   Heaps of little runers here and I went down with twenty pots to capture them. In a month or so I can sever the runners from their parent and find space for them.

I also waded into the area below the plum trees and tried to cut down most of the suckers that have sprouted from these trees to the ground.   I’ve never seen so many suckers from a tree before.   Well, the sycamores in my parents in law’s Scottish garden perhaps comes to mind.   But I have to try and catch them now before they turn into trees.   This bank needs work. And ideas. To my surprise and delight one of the little teensy olive trees is fruiting.   But I have to come up with something esle to cover all the weeds and detritis. It’s rather good soil as most of the last terraces in the group down a mountain are.   So perhaps I could come up with something over the winter.

Time for tea and something to put on all my stinging nettle attacks. Pruning and cutting back: it’s never fun.