A matter of life and death

We have a relatively large garden in Culebrón. Lots of fruit trees, flowers and all sorts of shrubs and bushes as well as a rather fine collection of extremely hardy and vibrant weeds.

The soil is good, the sun shines so with the adition of a drop or two of water everything bursts into life. The weeds for instance seem to be able to undo the work of the most potent herbicides known to humankind in about two weeks and reach heights of 30 to 40cms without my noticing. However, take away the water and lots of the stuff that doesn't really live here justs wilts, withers and dies. The fig trees, the olives, almonds, the pines, the oleanders, rosemary and palm trees for instance just plod on with or without a drink but things like the vines and the tomatoes just admit defeat and go gently into that good good night when they go thirsty.

We have an irrigation system. A system of hosepipes that run around the garden with little spigots dug into the pipe at various intervals. The water dribbles out and waters the whole garden (well it misses a bit actually but we use a hosepipe connected to an electric pump to drag water from the rain water cistern, or aljibe, to water the rest). Some of our irrigation hose has split so we bought a couple of hundred metres of new hose to replace the dodgy bits. It's a nasty little job but the system really does work well so it's worth the maintenance required.