Pots, Plants and Goat Dung

Big clear up time at the Mernissi House as we work from the terrace down clearing excess rubbish, while the builders work around us doing a fine job of touch up throughout the house, you know those little bits that niggle you for ages are suddenly put right. Been out and about as usual meeting, greeting old and new compadres. Trying to get Steven, a near neighbour, to meet Thierry, Fred and Isobelle also near neighbours has been trying, as through unforeseen circumstances i can never get them all in one place at the same time. I think we will leave that one for the time being and let fate and nature decide when we should all meet.

Having lots of visitors over this month so priority the last few days has been pots and plants to tart up the terrace. What a performance to get the pots filled, went to a garden centre with Ben and a local barrow boy who had commandered a Honda van. They insisted i needed 10 sacks of the premium goat dung black soil for plants at 25 dirhams a bag mixed with 7 sacks of low grade waste at 10 dirhams a bag. I ended up with tons of soil and a few plants to get started which all got stacked onto the van and ferried to the medina, transferred onto barrows and wheeled to the house and finally humped up 5 flights of stairs to the terrace. After all that couldn,t face filling the pots for two days.

Finally spent an afternoon with Ben doing all the pots after we had taken a trip out on the Ifrane road to a highly recommended pepiniere or garden centre where I picked up a palm, 3 bougainvillias, lavender, rosemary, jasmine and some other variagated leafy bush type thingies, cuddly toy, no scratch the last one . Finally we potted everything and looked great so went up to top terrace to look down on them and had a very tranquil hour watching the sun go down in an amazing pillowed cloud sky, before the call to prayer and the terrace lights twinkled on. It really is so special and at one point I stood stock still and looked up and I could almost feel and definitely see with the clouds so prominent the earth slowly moving on its axis around me.

I was brought back to earth with a bump as Ben had brought up a visitor to the terrace another new neighbour, Dominic who had bought a Riad just off Derb el Horra, my street. Turns out he was a Suffolk lad so just down road from Norwich and he is looking to do renovation, get into property etc so we had a few things in common. I must say all my neighbours to date have been fascinating as it does take a certain spirit to base yourself here i believe.

The other day spent a very good half day with Sandy of view from fes website met him in Recif and went to see Riad Zany, his lovely house in the medina still undergoing renovation a looking great, a real character place, loads of charm. We chatted for ages about my various plans for the house and Sandys suggestion of real Sahara sand in my Berber Basement could be a winner. Also chatted about the new rules and regulations that are coming into effect now for house owners wanting to rent out their places its something to seriously look into and get local specialist knowledge without baksheeshing your backside off. Also talked of Sandys fine new novel and the one he is now working on of which he gave me a brief synopsis that sounded absolutely brilliant being based in Fes, I will say no more.