I saved a baby bird last week who had got itself trapped between the two sections of our kitchen window. I had thought perhaps it had fallen down, but then I realized that the gap is too small at the top for it to have fallen down so somehow it must have flown up and got trapped.

I had to very carefully lower the bottom section of the window so it got past his body so he could then fly into the kitchen so I could then get him to fly out either through the window or out the door. It was nerve wracking as I had to be very gentle and do it slowly so I didn’t crush his wings – and the window is heavy, it doesn’t have any mechanism for raising or closing so it really was very stressful! Not helped by the parent birds who were flying around outside shouting instructions.

In fact it was the parents who had alerted me in the first place. I was sat outside and they appeared to be diving bombing me – then I realized it was the window they were flying close to and that’s when I saw the baby bird trapped.

He did fly away though – and I’ve seen what looks like a very similar one since which I hope is him!

It has been open, which has been fine, but it does mean that boars can come in for a wander – and also I personally didn’t like the fact that it was open as there was nothing really to say that it was private land and not a track leading to another piece of land (which it would have been originally).

So Ian built a gate and put up a fence. This will certainly stop any wandering boars and makes the whole garden feel more secure and private – and will mean we can use this piece of land more. We have discussed putting a sitting area behind the horrier which is quite s sunny spot.

This week we also cut back the bougainvillea which is buy the front door as took on a growth spurt and was heading for the bathroom window!

I therefore try natural fly deterrents, and when I saw the lemons and clove, I was quite excited as lemons are one thing we have a very plentiful supply of.

I didn’t have any cloves though and I had to buy some. I was delighted to find that the literal translation of the Spanish name for cloves is ‘odorous nails’.

However as delightful as that might be – the end result was unimpressive with I think an increase of flys coming in to see what the odorous smell is.

It reminded me when Ian designed a snail repellent which was like a strip of very fine spikes which was supposed to put the snails off going over it. It transpired though that the spikes perhaps were a little too fine as the snails appeared to very much appreciate the tummy tickler we had put down for them.

Horace Has a Haircut

and Horace had had a haircut. Unfortunately he had a seizure going to the vet and we had a bit of a debate in the vets about what we can or should do. They were suggesting we could trim him at home but that’s just impossible and while I can snip bits off while he’s asleep, I could never do a proper job. They also didn’t want to trim him that particular day which we also debated for a bit – eventually the vet who specializes in seizures and who oversaw Charlie’s treatment got involved and said it was OK for them to trim Horace that day and has given us anti seizure medication – the same as we had for Charlie to give Horace before he goes to the vet next time. He has to take it for 5 days before.

It’s clearly a bit of a problem if we ever need to take Horace to the vet urgently, but we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

I had tried just snuggling him down in duvet rather than in a carrier, which has worked in the past – but not this time.

Anway – here he is looking handsome after his haircut 🙂 – and how we know it’s warm as he’s not under the duvet!

We’d actually considered places to cycle as part of out house requirement list. I think that was one of the reasons we finally ruled out La Palma on the Canaries – MUCH too hilly!

looking at these pics it seems like the last time I cycled much it was pre-helmet days!

However this wall is FULL of birds. I don’t think I am exaggerating by any means if I say 100s as they nest in there so besides the adults there’s an ever growing number of fledglings.

I guess it’s a good place to nest, they are away from preditors, the wall is sunny in the afternoon so it will be warm, and it’s full of little holes in stone for them. And as the house is empty they are pretty much left undisturbed.

I wonder if all the nests make the house insulated?

As I saw one head back to the wall with beak full of some wool I had been dying, I was a tad concerned that it might look like I had been stuffing bits of coloured fibre into the wall!

We feed them so they do come and peck around our window – which reminded me that if we ever got another cat we’d need to be mindful of the birds and also the lizards that share our space with us!

This is our property from the catastro, the bit of garden we are thinking about is the bit I’ve marked in red. The carrot is where we will keep for vegetables and at the back of the house is where we have our orange, lemon and grapefruit tree and we’ll plant the avacado and probably the pomegranate at the back or side too.

We have a wall and gate which separates this from the main front garden which is the bit we use most and is the animals can get to with the animals.

The plan will be to remove part of the wall which separates the two bits of garden so we can use it more. At the moment it is weedy grass and we don’t really want a lawn, cementing it would be too costly , so we thought instead about planting a few hydrangeas (hence the cuttings) and other bushy plants to fill it up and hopefully make it low maintanance! Then it will be nice to look at from the kitchen window, but not take a lot of work . and we could still build in a sitting area if we ever wanted to in the future when we open the wall up.

That sorted the grass question, however the hedge then raised some questions. It’s overgrown and not particularly nice. Ideally we wanted to take it out completely and replace with a fence. The challenge though is that the hedge is along the edge of a bank down in to the road. We had a nasty feeling that if we killed the hedge the roots would start rotting and the bank may collapse!

So plan B is to strip all the brambles and nettles from the hedge and see if it will fill out again – and if it does if it will help to stop the brambles from taking over again.

So that is what Ian has started doing! The hedge is actually in better shape than we anticipated but some bits are better than others so if we do end up with gaps we’ll replant in the gaps.

I’m think we’ll propably stop at this point which is where we’re likely to put a fence at some point anyway.

The hedge has gaps in the bottom so it means that it’s not animal proof (getting in or out, but hopefully the gaps are too small for boar!), so the plan will be to fill the gaps either permanently-ish or temporarily until the hedge fills up again with some form of netting or something else.

Apparently there are!

These two flower in very different ways – I know I have at least one of each cutting but not sure how the ones that aren’t flowing yet will turn out.

I need to take another photo of the hydrangea that is flowering in a rather sparse way and see how it looks when it’s out in full bloom – is it any different to the other type?

We do have a big old one in the garden which I also took cuttings from. I really ought to label them so I know what to expect!

But just down the road from the supermarket is an old roman bridge and a little picnic area which we availed ourselves of last week.

Since we went there last they have put in what must be the shortest zip line ever!

And a plank for balancing on….??

But while this little spot is quite sheltered – obviously not enough as it looks like a tree had fallen down too since we last visited.

A couple of fish disguised as stones in the front center-ish of the photo!

This is a very nice spot and I guess the fact that there is a roman bridge there would suggest that romans were active near here….??

The result was ….. unimpressive!!

All out hydrangeas are white or slightly tinted, not deep colours so I don’t know what that means. I can’t remember what the flowers were like on the bushes I took the cuttings from, but next I will look for bushes with deep coloured flowers and see how they take and what the flowers look like.

Unsuprisingly I’ve got some prickly pear cuttings which are growing well. These little pads popped up over the weekend. I fully expect to see them out grow the pot in the next day or so!!! Having learned how fast they grow from the ones we had in Extremadura, I intend to keep these in pots and not let them loose in the garden, unless we use them for fencing – which used to be very common as they are nature’s barbed wire!

I actually don’t do well with cactuses. The one in the pic below is 20 years old – and is still the same size as the cuttings I took above which are just minutes (ok, weeks) old!!! And I don’t think it has grown more than a couple of cms over the 20 years.

It is at last though producing a few shoots so I’ll see how they go and maybe take those off to root.

These are my bournemouth cuttings. Daisy is staring at me trying to persuade me to throw a ball!

This is our avacado tree and I am glad the lady in the garden store told me to expect the leaves to change colour and fall off in June as otherwise I might have worried. Although there are a couple of massive avacado trees opposite us so I will keep an eye on those too to see what to expect.

and here’s a pic of Primrose by the rose cuttings I took last year. These are climbing roses and the aim will be to use those as fencing too. These grow wild so I hope they will grow well and be easier to maintain than the probably box hedge which we have now which is overun with brambles and is part dead so I guess we’ll need to dig it up (which is why we are thinking about the roses as fencing – to grow them along wires to make a fence – with some sort of netting to animal proof it).

The roof of the horreo was very curved – yet probably quite sound, but it’s obviously not improving as time goes on and some of the tiles are pretty big and would cause damage if they fell on anyone!

Ian has been talking for a while of removing the tiles and the strong wind we had recently reminded us that it was the best thing to do. It had quite a dip in the middle-

So Ian carried some of the tiles off and knocked the rest down

When he finished we had quite a pile of tiles.

But look at the size of some of them. My foot is for scale.

These tiles were massive and would have gone some way to holding the others in place because of the weight of them.

The massive investment in material and manpower that must have gone into making and maintaining the horroes reminded us that the horreos weren’t simply garden ornaments or fancy sheds, they would have been hugely important buildings which were necessary to life in years gone by.

So now the horreo is roofless! Next step will be to remove the wood and see how much of it is solid – but that’s not urgent – or at least it’s not at the moment, it depends if the slates were holding this all in place and whether the wood starts collapsing.

it’s a shame that our horreo has a wooden base and not a stone one like just about every other one around! If it had stone it would be easy to repair, but if the wood beams are rotten then it will be a bigger job.

Ian disturbed two bats who were sleeping in there, we know we have bats in the barn so hopefully they’ll just make their way in there.

This went quite well so maybe now we’ll try to take down the roof on the barn that’s collapsing.

It’s not completely apparent from this pic, however there’s a big hole which is sort of in the centre of the roof where it has collapsed. It’s not as dangerous as the horreo roof as if tiles fell from that they may fall on us or one of the animals – here the roof is falling inwards in an area of the building which we have blocked off however it would make sense to get it taken down. The challenge is the floor beneath it has collapsed, so it’s going to be a more complicated job.

This is looking into the barn and of course we shouldn’t be seeing daylight like this through the roof!

And this is a nice photo of the sun over the beach in the morning. There’s normally a couple of small fishing boats moored here so I wonder if they had gone out for early fishing!