DAYS AT MAROC GARDEN HOME

 

Days at the garden home usually begin before sunrise, when even in the heat of summer, the days begin with a cool breeze. The sounds of morning in the countryside are simultaneously soothing and invigorating, and regularly punctured with the strange and amusing calls of the peacock down the road. On this particular morning in June,  the ritual of building a campfire to make a cup of coffee won out over making use of every precious moment of cool working conditions. A surprise awaited on the coffee stroll-we had thrown out some old calabash seeds in one of the olive beds on a whim a couple of weeks previously, not expecting any results. Three had emerged from the thick layer of mulch! They will not receive the care they need this summer so it is doubtful they will survive, but it was still a nice little bit of encouragement that the improvements we are making are producing results. 

Then the day's work began. We finished digging the holes for the bamboo along the north wall, added more gravel to the middle section of the path between the olive trees,  finished the adobe berm around the bamboo palace, and started a secondary pathway around one of the trees. More river rock and adobe mud was piled around the spider plants to help hold water in place.