The weather remains absolutely beautiful. Definitely fresh first thing and in the evenings but beautifully sunny throughout, like an early summer’s day in the UK. Temps still about 20-22C. I am still in short sleeves with a pashmina for the evening. We certainly haven’t felt the need to put any heat on in the house which is a blessing.

Yesterday I had another spa visit with Deborah, Pamela and Linda. It really is a great treat as well as a great bargain. Especially with the crazy Turkish lira exchange rate currently. An unlimitted bottomless booze lunch plus an hour’s massage and full use of the hamam and spa for just £20. Wonderful. We had a lovely time.

This morning the man from the local garden centre came up and fitted us a new irrigation lines controller so we can set up for automatic watering again. I don’t have to water everything this time of year but we will leave the fruit tree line which includes the transplanted olive and new plants on watering perhaps once or twice a week. Last winter was very dry here and if this was to be the same, they would need the water.

Marion came up for a last visit before we leave next week. She has found a new and excellent cleaner which is great news. It has been hard to find one over the last year and Marion has been doing it herself and roping friends in to help.

In the afternoon Bob went off to his canasta club. He’s really been enjoying it. I ran the watering lines a few times. We are having the balance tank for the pool cleaned out on Sunday. It has a lot of leaves on the bottom of it which are at risk of entering the filtration system. We have to lower the water in there and this time of the year there’s no easy way of doing this. In the summer we just would have the pool on overflow, turn off the mains feed to the balance tank and let evaporation, splashing etc take it down over the course of a week. That doesn’t work this time of year. I don’t like to waste the water so we’ve got a system where we turn off the mains feed to the garden watering tank and the balance tank. We run the garden watering quite hard – all right, it’s overkill in one way, but I can comfort myself that at least the water is going onto plants all round the garden. Then, we backflush the pool, out through the filters and into the garden tank until it is full, then we put the pool on overflow and let it fill from the balance tank until it is on the point of overflowing…. then we stop. This process has the effect of moving water from the balance tank to the pool to the garden tank, to the garden…… Eventually, the balance tank will empty because the mains feed is off….. that’s the theory anyway…. it does work. Bit convoluted I know but it’s not something you want to do very often.

I had a walk around the garden. There is a sort of autumn coming to the trees, some of them are drroping their leaves and there is a more yellowish tint to some. The lower garden which is given over to shade trees is definitely looking more golden at the moment.

Tonight we had a bbq. Lovely clear night but too chilly to eat outside.