Blue skies today! The clouds and light looked like they were painted. I walked all over town. Sadly the only way I found the tucked away Pantheon was from a series of McDonalds signs pointing the way to their location only 50 meters away.

After the olive harvest, we pruned all the olive trees and mulched the clippings (for this we use a mulcher, which is a machine that you pass branches through; they come out the other end as mulch). The result was a large pile of mulch. But as of today, we have an even LARGER pile of mulch: the olive press (where people bring their olives to make olive oil) brought us several dump truck loads of olive leaves.

One of several tractor loads of pruned olive branches… to be mulched.

Jackie feeds olive branches into the mulcher.

Here’s why-oh-why mulch is so very important:

After spreading compost, we must cover the garden with mulch; sun-exposed soil dries out and forms a hard skin that prevents oxygen and water from entering the ground, which makes for a miserable environment for soil life and plant life. Covering the ground with dry organic matter (aka mulch) keeps the soil open, protects it from harsh sun, and keeps the ground temperature down. In nature, plants create their own mulch by dropping their leaves, which cover and protect the area around their roots; we’re simply simulating this process.