Strawberries planted

Season for 'Diguenes'

Diguenes are a parasitic fungus that grow on 'coigues', 'hualles' and 'robles' - native trees in the south of Chile. They have a texture similar to mushrooms but the taste is very different. My Chilean family go nuts for these forrest treats, which appear after Chilean Independance Day (18th Sep), through to the start of summer. We are lucky to live in an area that has such an abundant supply!

They can be eaten alone but most people add them to a salad or even fry them in a little oil and make Empanadas de Diguenes (small pies). 

Sowing seed

Finally, runner beans, broad beans and peas have been sown! As per local tradition, I've been waiting for a full moon - apparently this has an impact on the size of the produce - go figure!

The first bed in the right of the picture has the runner beans; a drainage trough/walk way separates it from the next bed which has the broad beans and peas. Fungicide was used to kill off unwanted worms and the soil was enriched with a furtilizer mix.

'Ulmos' trees in flower

The bright yellow bloom of the Ulmo tree is a sure sign that winter is definitely over, and warm days ahead. In fact it reached 20c today, a perfect day for the '18' Independence of Chile celebrations.

Ready to Lime

The vegetable garden has now been fully dug over and is now ready to lime - being close to a volcano, the soil is quiet acidic! However, it should be ready to start sowing the first crop by the end of September.

Fenced-in

A few weeks ago I made start on digging over the soil in preparation for planting in the coming spring. Our dogs thought this was great and promptly began to contribute to the digging by carving out burrows to lounge in - amongst other things! Ummm my vegetables don't stand a chance; fortunately my friendly neighbor agreed to build this fence for me - I supplied the materials and encouragement ;-) 

Closet in 5 days

Over the weekend I set myself a challenge - fill the space pictured above with a closet by Friday August 26!

I purchased the materials on Monday and began to dimension the interior of the closet on Tuesday. I used the over-head beams as logical divisions for the closet. The closet doors and frame were pre-purchased many years ago - so I hope it fits!

Below is the result as things stand on Friday; I got a bit distracted with other projects like my lattice tower and fencing for the vegetable garden so its not 100% complete, but I'm nevertheless happy with the closet.