Gardening

Nick and I were both woken up by the heavy rainfalls and the sound of dripping on the ceiling last night, as the roof leaks in a few places. We lay awake wondering when it was going to start dripping through from the ceiling, and eventually there was a deluge onto our bed. Panic stations everyone – I tried to catch some drips in my hands while Nick fetched a dustbin, and then I checked my craft room to make sure that there was nothing lying around which could be water damaged if the leak opened up in there, which it has done in the past. I went back to our room to find Nick lying on the bed, half asleep, with the dustbin between his legs. I had expected that he would move the room around to get the bed out of the way, but actually by that time the dripping had stopped. Unfortunately we were both wide awake then and couldn’t get back to sleep for ages!

Directly after breakfast I got stuck into the front garden. Prudy organized three bags of manure to be delivered to us about a month ago, which we just had not got around to digging into the soil, so I made it my goal for today. Thankfully the rain held off long enough to get it done, and I finished the front before the sun was shining there too brightly. Nick helped me with lifting the bags and turning over what he could with the fork. I also planted a little bush we’ve been nurturing in a pot in the back, which we didn’t want to plant until we had dug in the compost! So that’s done. Then I had the back to do as well, turning over dead leaves and grass cuttings into the banana tree garden, and then planting the bean plants which were top heavy in their little peat pots. It was very muddy doing all this work; my old shoes were about an inch taller with the caked mud. We also now have six sweet-melon seeds growing, same method as the bean plants. They have sprouted their shoots after less than a week. Who knows, we might actually get a vegetable garden growing after all. The papaya tree is doing very well, flowering at the moment with sweet-smelling little yellow flowers, and the mango trees are growing slowly, although one of them has mysteriously lost its leaves again.