A very special lemon

This is a very special lemonI I can tell you're not convinced. It is small, a bit speckly, but it's my lemon; my harvest. Yes this lemon grew on the tiny tree in my garden. It was an ailing tree in a pot until a year ago, when the previous owners took up a small square of the crazy paving by the back door, so they could plant it in the ground. That was just before we moved in. It had never had fruit on, but I fed and watered it, talked to it every day, and in the spring it produced a few flowers. Just a handful of these set tiny fruit, but one by one I watched them fall off. (As for most fruit trees, this is normal for all citrus trees.) All but one that is. Every day I checked and this little lemon hung on in there, so today I have my own little harvest. I shall make a lemon meringue pie with it for our 'harvest supper'! I read that citrus trees take at least four years to begin fruiting, so who knows, maybe I will have more lemons next year. I think the baby mandarin tree we planted in the front garden, may have a few years to go yet before it produces anything.

We had a surprise when we were walking the dogs last week. They are free to run around but they never stray far from us, but the other morning they shot off up the hill and totally ignored us when we called them back. Then we saw it; a fox, racing up the hill ahead of them. It was not like a British fox. It was much larger, grey/fawn rather than red, with a huge bushy tail. I saw immediately why people think our Foxy is half fox. It looked just like her. It easily outran the dogs and they came back to us quite happy after their chase. It looked fit and healthy. There are certainly plenty of rabbits in the campo so he shouldn't go hungry.

I haven't taken any sky pictures for a while. they are not as beautiful or as dramatic here as the ones we had on the coast when we were in our flat. But last night we had this 'flying saucer' of a cloud, floating over the green area behind us, and I managed to capture it on camera. The red sky signalled another lovely day, and it has certainly dawned clear and sunny.

We are just off to the vet now with Chico, Miki and Paco who are all going to be neutered today. They don't love us at the minute because they don't understand why they haven't had their breakfast! Destino should have gone as well but she has had an upset tummy and the vet wants to wait another week to do her. So we have a quiet day today with just Foxy and Destino for company.