Goats and the Garden

The title is Goats AND the garden and not Goats IN the garden thank goodness, although I did leave the street gate open the other night. That would have been fun, chasing goats out of the garden at some ungodly hour in still ungodly heat.

It's a jungle out there

This is part of our grapevine which hangs over the wall into the driveway of our english neighbours.  It often needs pruning or they would be driving through a forest of projecting vines.

The water from our burst pipes (still broken and pouring out water) flows down this driveway and the grapevine must be drinking up the moisture.  At the beginning of summer it looked as though we were going to have a good harvest of grapes.  Since then most of the bunches have withered and dried.  But the foliage has taken over as never before.  The vine must be putting all of it's strength into producing those leaves and canes.  Some of them are thicker than my thumb, a couple of metres long, very strong and hard to prune.

I have pruned what I can by hanging over our terrace but it's just too difficult. I can't get onto the driveway till they return because the gate is padlocked. Young grandchildren, who easily climb down there, are all busy working this summer and Poppi is training for a big national rowing competition in September.

 

Meanwhile our herd of goats trot down to drink water every morning and evening.

The piece of land further down is abandoned and was full of long dry grass, a real fire hazard.  The goats have trimmed most of that down and they've trimmed all the olive trees as well.  I reward them with bundles of any prunings from the garden and plants that would normally go on the compost heap.

Today we have a water cut because our local reservoir has drained dry. The whole area is without water. They'll keep the water off till the tank refills.  Don't know how that happened??? 

Of course when the water returns everyone, including me, will be frantically using it to wash dishes, empty toilets and have a shower. Ftoo and back to an empty reservoir once more. 

I had better fill up a couple of buckets  to be ready for the next water cut.