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Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a few years may remember the great deck building series of posts from around Jun/Jul 2011 that got us our Code of Compliance cert. Since that time we’ve been pondering just what to do with the exterior of the place and finally got enough of a plan together that we could get one with it. Well, when I say “we” you should probably know that this time I’ve wisely not offered my services and we’ve got a gang in to do it all for us.

Today they arrived in force, with 4 vehicles plus a digger, and a small army of workers. Who promtly set about pulling up one of the decks that we’d so carefully installed way back when. Oh well. It’s done the job we needed it to. At least they managed to put in posts for the new extended edition at the same time.

And it was the pimento de padrons. Nine of them fried up in olive oil with salt. The saying goes that one in every ten is a hot one so I wondered if we’d get a goodie or not.

We started chewing through them from smallest to largest. By the time we’d got through the first seven with no surprises I was starting to doubt, but both the biggies were little bundles of hot goodness. Yum! Here’s to many more surprises.

We’re getting very close to the end of the summer break now and having not really accomplished too much to date it was time to roll up sleves and get into shoveling a heap of compost and whatever else smells strongly of pigs into the messy back strip that has mostly laid barren other than a citrus tree or two since we moved in. I’d managed to get motivated enough to get some edging in a while ago, but not bothered to fill in the gaps around it or sort the soil out. Or the weeds. Or the bits of timber lying around from the edging. Frankly it was all a bit of an embarassment.

So into it we got. First jobs were to fill in the gaps around the edging and to give it a bit of a dig over, and or course to pick up all the stones that magically appear everytime you show the soil a spade around here. Not too bad today. Only the 13.5 buketfuls to be carted away, but really that just made a bit of space available for the compost etc. Pity we’d picked a very hot sunny day to be doing all the heavy stuff, but there you go.

And so here’s the finished article. Much, much better. Now we just have to keep it clear of weeds, start watering it so it’s not as dry as a cracker, then work out what to plant in it. That can all wait for another day!