It is olive tree pruning time - so here is a picture of the front "lawn" with all the trimmings from last weekend - I have to do some more this weekend. On Monday I burned the olive branches, which is probably metaphorical for something but is what everyone does around here. I took the worthwhile branches to turn into logs for the fire, but the majority was thin weedy stuff that isn't any use to anyone so it went into a (very) big pile in the back garden for major pyromania. Even olive trimmings that were alive the day before burn ferociously.
I used to be rather hesitant about pruning my tres in fear of damaging them, no longer. Apart from digging it up wrongly or exposing it to a few consecutive nights of frost there is very little that will kill an olive tree and hacking off half of its branches is most certainly not one of them. The problem is that if you hack too much you end up with few or no olives from that tree the next winter - I believe I have been cunning enough to ensure that sufficient branches remain to keep us in oil next year.
As always click on the photo to see it enlarged and go here to see the last Friday's image.