Well, unfortunately, there has not been any time to do any gardening this week - except a cup of coffee in the garden and a quick word with all the flowers to see how they are getting on.  I always find that the flowers/plants/bulbs I talk to grow better than the ones I do not talk to - strange you might say - but a harmless past time you might say (or not!!!)

Other things had to be done this week such as making the Christmas Cake, Christmas Pudding and, of course, putting the tree (not a real one) up.  As usual we lost the lights - borrowed a couple of sets - finished putting the tree up and then....found them.  Nevermind - we can put some on the olive tree at the front outside for a change....

I have a lot of lemons too so have been making lemonade and, if the chickens start laying again, I will be making some lemon curd.  Funny things chickens..but they are another story!!!

Well I will have to finish for tonight as I must write some christmas cards too......

Well the long awaited rain has arrived with avengence - no blue skies for 2 days now and it feels like the end of the world!  I do not know how I would ever manage to live in UK again - although I do miss the beautful flowers and trips to the garden centres - my favourite was Pole Hill.

I just remind myself that at least the plants will have grown about 2 inches by the the day after tomorrow and the last lot of olives will be nice an plump and ready for picking.  Let's hope we can get them picked by Christmas - we do everything ourselves and are very particular - each olive is picked by hand....when we take them for pressing the are no leaves - not even a stalk left on them.  This gives us the highest quality of oil - normally 0.1-0.2 acidity level which is the best!!!

This is the time of year we harvest the "Kalamon" olives - the tree is heaving this year.  These are special - we hand sort these into barrels - cover them with brine and seal with our oil - leaving them to mature for 6 months.  Usually they are ready for Easter.  But we will have to wait for the rain to stop - probably a couple of days.

The views in this weather are amazing from the house - you can watch the rain coming in across the sea - then slowly Kalymnos diasppears, then Tingaki, then Zipari and then, all of a sudden, we are in the rain storm clouds and can not see a thing.  Gradually it starts to clear and you can see Kalymnos again - amazing.  Whatever the weather the views are incredible and I would not swap them for the world....

Well, it is the 4th of December 2011 - the weather is amazing - 20 degrees - nearly 70 degrees in "English"!!!  It has been a busy day today - the garden takes a lot of work.  The tractor ploughed the land around the Olive Trees yesterday - in preparation for the rain - making sure the olives get plently of water before the long, dry summer starts.  The olives produced here are totally natural - they do not get watered all summer or sprayed with pesticides so are totally organic.   This is why we produce such excellent quality extra virgin and virgin olive oil - very high quality soap and washing machine detergent and last not least - St John;s Wort oil.  I must say, so far,  it has been a fantastic winter - it has actually been like spring since October.

Today I started cuttings off of Geraniums, Australian Basil (that grows into a very tall bush), Sage, Oregano, Lavendar - could say it was a herb day today!!!  As the land had been ploughed though it was really easy to get the soil - which made a change - normally you need a pick axe!!!  MInd you it was easy filling the wheelbarrow but I could not push it - had to get my son, Stephen, to do that....I even found some celery growing in some of my flower pots so I transplanted that as well.   I must have done at least 30 plants - a good start...

It gets dark quite early now - about 5pm - so I knocked off at 4.30ish to go and collect some dry twigs to light the wood burner for the evening.  Last night I started the fire with dry lavender twigs - the house smelt beautiful.  Tonight I have collected dried lavender and sage - amazing aroma - beats airfreshner any day!

So much to do and not enough time....I really need two more hours of daylight!  I still have loads of cuttings to do - 2 trees to move, start planting the natural borders around the property (4000 sq mtrs), still a lot of weeds to clear and, of course, the leaves to clear up and start the compost heap.....

I will have to go and get on with all the things I did not do - ironing, washing, cleaning (lust boiling lavender and sage on the wood burner to clean the furniture)!!!  I hope I will be able to keep this diary up and I hope you enjoy reading it.  Gardening in Greece is hard - it is trial and error.  I have tried everything and made millions of erros I can assure you.  One plant I can not grow is a Gardenia and I can not work out why???

If anyone has any suggestions - email me.Well, after looking into this a bit more - I suppose that this is the best place to put the diary..not quite got the hang of all this yet - trial and error - like the plants really!!!