Ten images of late springtime…

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Saturday 09 May, 2015 by Uncle Spike

Springtime is a time of big changes and long hours of hard work. In the orchards it has been a busy time, with pruning, spraying, fertilising and ploughing, whilst in the veggie areas it has been a case of harvest, process, clear, dig, fertilise, dig, then dig some more… then plant out, seed, water etc

In the gardens I’ve been clearing, moving a few hundred plants around, adding new stock from our previous years cuttings, hay-making, big-time weeding and most recently, grass and weed cutting for six consecutive days across the whole farm…. so yes, springtime IS lovely, but darned hard work.

Next I’ll move on to early summer chores, such as painting the trunk and lower branches of around 300 fruit and olive trees with a mixture of slaked lime paste, water and copper sulphate crystals, laying some four kilometers of drip water pipes, repairing pipe joins, and then cleaning the artesian pump and its various filters before test-checking the whole operation (walking up and down the lines checking for leaks). All of which must be finished by early June as the heat is rapidly increasing, and of course there’s Ramadan.

But in order to celebrate the ending of this season, I wanted to share ten images with you. They are in no particular order, and I haven’t selected any ‘favourite; that’s for you to decide. Anyway, here they are, and I hope you enjoy them, as much as I have done so in selecting them 🙂

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ONE: Sour Cherry blossom

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TWO: First leaves of a Jujube bush

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THREE: First colour

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FOUR: Flower beds make good bathtubs!

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FIVE: All the cacti have babies

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SIX: Broad beans are the last winter crop

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SEVEN: Strawberries are the first summer crop

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EIGHT: Large flowers of the Pomelo tree

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NINE: First of the peaches

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TEN: Wild shrubs add colour too

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