One of the first things I wrote in this blog is how rare rain is for our region. Well, guess what! This past week rain wasn't so unusual! Of course this is a good thing! And it was raining during the night, so we could work all these days, but there were a couple of days that work became a real adventure!
Luckily, we had a call from the plant nursery that they have to delay the delivery of the plants we have ordered, so we have some extra time, hooray! This is nice, it took out some stress! The weird thing is that the plants will arrive just before Christmas, which means that we will be planting even on Christmas day... On the other hand plants are part of the extended family, so why not?
We had already managed to finish about 70% of the digging and the formatting of the raised beds, which is enough in this phase.
And the biggest task of the last days was wood chopping! It is a work of love and hate... It is so noisy, that your ears whistle for days, but it is sο satisfying to see all these piles of pruned branches turning into a pile of yummy wood chips!
Branches of olive trees, carob trees and some bushes of the Schinus genus. We are going to cover the beds with it. It will keep the moisture of the soil and especially in hot summer it can do miracles. And as time goes on, it enriches the soil. Hopefully one day it will be full of earthworms! Till now, we have found just one. Even with this one we felt so happy :)
The branches were cut 1,5 months ago. This chopper can work with much bigger branches up to 3 months old.
We rented the wood chopper machine and we could only have it for two days. The work has never finished as it started raining so hard at the end of the second day, it even hailed for a while. At the beginning it was fun, we went in the car to have some cocoa and a nice break. After an hour it turned out to be a great adventure how to move this big heavy machine on the mud while it was still raining plus it was getting dark, getting it in the van and of course driving out of the field. I can't describe how we looked when we managed to get to the main road... Something to remember :)
This week water hoses have been installed (although not completely), and we started fencing with the help of a very nice and experienced guy from the village.
At least there is one that knows how to turn simple things into great joy!
Neither me or 
It is also a famous place for hunting and I know first-hand that an excited hunting dog can't pay attention to details such as small plants on his way :)
A dramatic scenery for closure...
and our beautiful view!
PS. I want to express my gratitude to #gardenjournal and Hive Garden! It is the first time I keep a real journal of the transformation of abandoned land to something else. I wish I had done it with all previous projects all these years, but it's never too late! Oh, and I wish I had some photos of how this place was before we started messing around with it... Maybe