tile inspiration from Seville

We spent a few days last week exploring Seville.  It's one of those places I had been meaning to go for years just never got round to - but very glad we did as it's been my favourite place in all of Spain so far.

As is usual when I travel these days, I'm always looking out for ideas for things we could do at Amherst and Seville didn't disappoint.

I've always loved tiles and in Seville they were everywhere.  It was common for buildings to have little tile panels as decoration, they were on the walls, underneath balconies...

 

They were on the floor...

 

They were used on stairs, at the edge of ponds... and even on garden paths as flowerbed edging

 

But my favourite of all, they were used to make benches...

 

We were pretty limited in terms of our baggage allowance in what we could bring back, but we did manage to scout out a tile shop - Ceramica Santa Ana, in Triana - and buy enough to do the edging on two small benches at Amherst.  Here's the shop:

 

and here are the tiles we bought - we got 12 of the curved edge tiles, and 10 of the bigger ones:

Orchard mowing

Dad helps us out a lot, but he can't get up to work there as often as he would like - and when he does go much of his time seems to get used up by maintenance.  So, we decided to find someone local to help us out with the garden work - and were put in touch with Michael who is proving to be a godsend.  Not only did he do a brilliant job mowing the orchard, he sent photos!   :-)

Lillicur road was flooded

So it's been raining like crazy ... with the result that some of the driest parts of Victoria have been deluged by flood.  Our place thankfully is fine as it's on a hill, but on the flatter parts it was pretty wet.  I hadn't even realised there were creeks that ran across Lillicur Road until Vida sent me these photos - it's from Dad's last visit... thankfully he managed to get through OK but apparently it was touch and go for a bit.

even more ideas

Another collection of random things spotted that might one day be useful...

I love this concept for painting stairs from Maryam's blog... stencilling, with a different pattern on each.

Or how about a roof shingled in old vinyl? (via Treehugger)  It could be interesting for something like a carport where it didn't matter if it wasn't 100% watertight.  Apparently this guy just put a nail through the middle holes in the record and that was enough to hold it down.  (There's more photos at Treehugger site)

Perry Bird Pickets - a brilliant store in Melbourne that sells all kinds of cast ironwork to go on verandahs and fencing.  It isn't cheap, but is nowhere near as expensive as I'd expected either - in some cases even cheaper than wooden fretwork.  

Finally, a couple of my favourites from Martha Stewarts "50 tips for the kitchen"...  (yes yes I know - even though no-one could do all she suggests without a fleet of staff, she still has some brilliant ideas).  I like the idea of having glass storage positioned partly in front of a window so that you get light shining through it (tip 11).  And I really like these "birds beak" shelves (tip 2) - apparently it's an old carpentry style for adjustable shelving.  It's functional but also decorative.  

  

daily weather during 2010

Here's my 5th annual round-up of the weather for Maryborough (the nearest weather station to us), courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology.  For previous years see: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

Here's a graph showing the maximum & minimum temperatures reached each day, in celsius:



The hottest it got was 42.8 on 16th January 2010. The coldest was -2.2 on 28th June.

But the big news in 2010 was the rainfall.  We had a ton more rain than normal - so much so that I had to increase the axis scale! This graph shows it plotted cumulatively:



For the year as a whole we got nearly 1000mm of rain - 950.7mm to be precise.  This was a HUGE increase, nearly double the rainfall of 2009 which had already been a banner year.  The chart comparing historical rainfalls shows this vividly:



Overall, 2010 turned out to be the second wettest year recorded for Maryborough since records began in 1878.  It was beaten only by 1973 when there was 1022mm.  There was one record-breaking figure though.  In November we had over 155mm of rain in 2010 - the highest ever recorded.

We planted pigs ear

While browsing in Talbot's nursery earlier in the day I'd spotted a lovely succulent bush that was waist high.  The guy told me it would only take a couple of years to reach that height, so thought I'd experiment with putting them in at Amherst.  We bought 8 plants.

 

So as to protect from kangaroos and sheep, we put them in the orchard, in a sort of ring near the fence.  Although they won't grow fruit, they'll still look nice and shouldn't be in the way of anything as we can grow climbers behind.

It was a great feeling to actually get something new in the ground there - a very small progress step.  But even more amazing was to see the soil.  I guess thanks to all the rain it was really pliable - no need for tractors in digging, we didn't even need to add extra compost.  It was much better soil than I'd imagined.

To show you what I mean, here's a short clip of Dad digging a hole...



... and here's me putting in one of the 8 plants.

Mowing the orchard

Even though Dave had mown it in August, there had been such a lot of rain that the grass was crazily long again.  So although we hadn't planned to do any work on this visit, Dad and Vida pitched in to get it cut.

 

Meanwhile I climbed into the mulberry enclosures and cut back the overgrown grass to reveal some very bushy little trees - complete with mulberries!

 

We win some, we lose some with the trees

The bad news first... the wollemi's didn't make it.  Despite all the rain and the (too late) added sun protection, there's no sign of life.  It's one of the biggest disappointments we've had.  Hoping against hope, will leave them until Dave's next visit, then will replace them with some other kind of hopefully fast-growing tree.



However, on the flip side the lemon gums are looking magnificent.  

 

The peppercorn and almond trees are also looking healthy - there are even some nuts growing.  Although calling them trees at this stage is a bit of a misnomer, they're really still just the size of shrubs... hurry up and grow!