RAIN, HAIL AND TORTOISES

Yesterday was a good day in the garden. I located both tortoises in the garden after I had not seen them for awhile, so we decided it was time to make a home for them. We dug out a small area next to the wall and sloped the grade up a bit to the entrance, graded the dirt outside of the  entrance down to get rainwater flowing away, made walls of brick cemented with mud, laid a divide board in the middle, rough planks for a roof, and covered them with a salvaged piece of thick plastic. More mud was added on top of that, a few more planks and then we covered the whole structure in straw. I placed the tortoises where you see them here, walked a few meters away to get a lawn chair so I could eat my lunch while watching to see if they would go in and in the few seconds it took me to get the chair, they had already almost completely disappeared in the burrows. A light rain started at that moment, and I did not have hope for much but within a couple of minutes it started coming down hard, then came the hail. It was a magnificent summer storm, and I loved every minute of it.

 

GREEN THINGS

In spite of the ants, green things are growing in the new garden beds. I have no idea what these are, but I am happy to see any green at all. Kawtar and I also transplanted a couple dozen spider plants from the Marrakech terrace, in the continuing efforts of soil building.

 

Kawtar mixing up the mud and straw for the small berms around the transplanted spider plants.

ANT ARMIES

 The assault came from four anthills, and it was relentless. It was an amazing thing to watch, all of those ants taking every seed and bean and kernel they could manage and hauling it "home." It was pretty funny too, watching hundreds of tiny beings undoing the hard work of three giants with thwarted plans.

WORK RESUMES

 We  came up with a lot of seeds to try and jump start new planting in the garden beds. Bird seed, beans from the pantry  as well as seeds, and a few packets from Germany courtesy of the ever-wonderful Manu made up the mix. We just threw handfuls in every bed (Manu, Kawtar and me) and after several hours of raking away straw mulch, spreading manure, tossing in the seeds and covering the beds with a new thin layer of much, we sat down for a break. That is when Manu noticed some activity in the beds...

APHID EATERS!

 Earlier this summer, I saw a praying mantis in one of the olive trees. I have never seen a yellow mantis before, but a google search found that the color of the adults is related to the environment in the habitat that they chose in their last molt. Yellow mantises have finished developing between litter or dry straw, while the bright green ones have remained among fresh grass during their last stage. No grass here, but plenty of straw so that makes sense. Praying mantises are ambush predators and feed on virtually anything they can catch, including aphids, which is good news. In some cultures, these insects are seen in a suspicious light, and viewed as a bad omen. In others, they symbolize good luck and prosperity.

ARRIVAL OF AUTUMN

The long hot Moroccan summer is on its way out, and activity is picking up at our garden home. Our resident tortoise has reappeared, and seemed eager to lunch on an over ripe nectarine. This Moroccan tortoise is Testudo graeca marokkensis, and the species was declared endangered and protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Experts agree that populations of the species have declined considerably in almost all areas since 1970. The tortoise is commonly traded as a pet in source countries such as Morocco and Spain, despite the illegality of this trade. Several years ago authorities in Berlin caught a man trying to smuggle three live tortoises from Morocco into the country.