We are delighted to announce that James and Adela are engaged. Following his huge success as best man at Richard´s wedding and obviously with the ambience of the occasion still in his mind James proposed on Friday 2nd May in Milan and Adela said yes!
Congratulations and all our love to you both and thank you for making our name month so happy!!! Now we have another wonderful wedding to anticipate probably sometime next year according to James.
And on the home front we lots has happened on the quinta over the past month.
Garden First!!
Despite weird and wonderful weather we have an amazing selection of wild flowers all over the place (some of which we still can´t identify) and some of our cultivated flowers have brightened up our unseasonal wet weather. Here´s a small selection of our photographic record....
WE KNOW THIS ONE..... 
AND THIS ONE
NOT THIS ONE...
NOR THIS...
NOR THIS...
The vegetables in the various patches are growing fast ...
and I have been working hard to develop a new rockery at the front of the house next to the barn conversion.The rockery before...
And now...
The garden areas have become overgrown like blazes because of the unseasonal rain and as fast as I weed and clear one area I have to revisit others. So gardening takes up most of my time these days. 
Also the Elders are in full bloom
so I have been busy making Elderflower cordial along with marmalade from the early local oranges. I have decided to make labels for all my preserves to make them look a bit more special. Here are a couple of examples.
It´s great fun and it´s a nice way to celebrate the hard work of making!
We also have done a lot of field work, fencing and tree planting, not to mention planting round the pond, plus we have loads of bugs and critters in the pond too...Over to Fraser
Well, the pond is blending in well, due to the vast quantities of rain making the surrounding vegetation grow at a phenomenal rate. The fish, now expanded to 7 due to two small brownish jobs escaping mission impossible style from the reservoir via a 3 foot drop and a pipe into the pond... we'd have 8 but, sadly, one didn't make it. 
The colonisation of the pond is also going at a fair lick. We have resident salamanders and newts making homes in and around the waterlilies. Our local dragonflies have found it and are industriously laying eggs. There are a lot of species, think I need a book on dragonflies. Here's a few.
We get quite a few birds of prey around here too, including what we think was a booted eagle being harassed by crows over the local town. Then there's this one I photographed over our house in 2006. At the time I thought it was one of our Black Kites but looking at the photo now...
If anyone can help with identification leave us a comment please.
We'll catch up on barn and land developments in the next blog...once it stops raining! Aaaaarrggh.
