We were pleasantly surprised at how the plot and the hut had weathered over the five months of winter. There was a thin layer of dust everywhere, which you would expect. The land was overgrown but actually looked very pretty, with all the meadow type flowers. We now just had to decide how much and what we did first.
The weather for the first few days was very changeable, so difficult to know what to do. When we arrived it was lovely and sunny the next few days, seemed to go from one extreme to the other, rain like you have never seem it to lovely warm sunshine.
Teresa started by tidying the inside of the hut and I got the Honda strimmer serviced and running again, then started the cutting of all the grass and weeds on the drive. By the Tuesday we had cleared the second level terrace and Teresa had done a great job on removing the next lot of old vines.
One really nice thing to see was the few flower bulbs hat we had planted last autumn had flowered and we had timed it about right to see them at their best. We will definitely be planting more later this year, a small success and our first plantings.
Over the course of the two weeks, we did clear / strim the whole plot again, it really does look nice when it has all been done.
The one thing we did decide to leave was the stream. In the past we have spent time clearing the stream of all the weeds etc, but in the summer when the hot weather comes (hopefully) the stream dries up and the weeds die. It then just takes a couple of hours with the strimmer to run up the stream and clear it all. So we decided that maybe we would leave it and see if the same happens this year.
Watch out for the summer posting to see if this is the case or if in fact we have a forest to try and remove.