And we had been absent these last five years.
Recovering the garden after five years of absence is not a task for hurried people.
This being a terraced terrain, we have four levels and while the first two are rather ordered, featuring the house and a few well-endowed olive trees and the usual cetera, the two lower ones are... wild.
Here's the more picturesque part of terrace three :
So let's venture down there... tell me - should we cut these palm trees or leave them au naturel ?
We've been musing about it for a month now.
About turn - this is another side of terrace three, the one where we like to sit under the trees in summer with books or laptops or guns, enjoying cool sherbet and other unspeakable delights. You know.
There's a spacious clearing there, behind the apple trees and the juniper, and it really is a very secret place at the heart of our little garden.
No problem so far, the problem is still a level lower... so lets now get to the problematic area on terrace number four, that's into the trees, past the clearing, over the top, and into the realm of the missing skeletons and all that (how would I know).
You'll understand in a moment.
You see what I mean ?
Doggy is very sceptical... the brambles are on average three yards high and many more deep, and there's UNKNOWN HORRORS hidden inside that jungle.
After an initial hour or so of machete work we found a forgotten well, it's about three yards in diameter and of yet unspecified profundity...
Back to the sherbet for now.
Another day, another adventure. This is patient work; brambles need to be handled with great care, they can be a vengeful species. BUT ! We made passage, in fact the lower part of our garden is now a bit of a labyrinth, it leads...
...towards a jungle path and past a couple of Mandarin trees, in a circular fashion, to...
...a mysterious ancient stairway and thereby back to level three !
We have only penetrated level four by about 20% so far, and no idea where the monster limits are.
Such ignorance is known to have killed good people, so we tread with caution.
Doggy has already vanished uphill, and we'll spend the rest of the day in the house (where I found a suitcase full of ancient family pictures of generations long gone, many of which someone (?) had torn in frustration).
Never saw these before, and no - I'm not going to tell who these folks are ;)
I will have to do some restoration, there.
Sigh. It will yet be an interesting summer...