Waterworks

"> Despite two nights of frost and falling temperatures we been having a mild but very wet winter, so far - I'm about to evolve webbed feet in a human - me. The amazing mushrooms through the Autumn are still coming up. With the recent relentless rains the river/ reservoir has come up about ten metres and when you consider the vast area that it covers, thats a lot of water.

We also planted a few more trees and Sylvi has been planting acorns all over the terraces....One day this will be a small paradise for squirrels...and pigs.

Great weather last week which was just as well as we were re-digging irrigation channels and rebuilding two of our own reservoir walls!

One up on the top terrace and the other at the front of the water mine. We hired in Steve, his work partner João Pedro and Steve's girlfriend, Vanessa.The first day was spent hacking back the surrounding cane and clearing the vegetation that had grown in the reservoir. Then it was on to digging out a few cubic metres of mud to get to the original bottom.

Finally the new wall was built and the reservoir allowed to refill.

Meanwhile Sylvi and Vanessa were re-digging a couple of regas - hard work. Poor Vanessa ended up with acute repetitive strain injury in her right wrist. Too much work with the enxada (pronounced enshada)

So now we can irrigate the trees we plant up there without endless bucket lugging, yay!

The water mine also came in for a makeover, same story, lots of mud moving! The water lilies were taken up and chucked in the pond for the duration.

This is the entrance to the water mine, partly cut out of the living rock, amazing piece of work. I had the fun job of clearing six inches of silt from it - this part goes back about four metres, the main tunnel goes on under the terraces for another ten, all beautifully dressed granite slab construction. The old boy who used to own this piece of land told us that no one knew how old it was. Some water mines in the area are vast, going for kilometres underground and having very big vaulted chambers. Some are believed to be Roman in origin.

We put in a new pipeline from back in the actual mine all the way across the field to the tank. Fortunately the soil, being soft with all the rain was relatively easy to trench...

The boss... Scraps had a great time 'helping' and getting slathered in mud. Scraps weight is now steady at 16.5 kilos, though if she had her way, she'd probably be over 20... Just lately she's been a total pain at night going off on barking fits at the drop of a leaf. Hope she grows out of it soon.

Off to London for Christmas next Sunday... Which will have the good effect of getting us away from the endless chores for a couple of weeks!

And here's December's 'tasteful' roundabout from the other side of Tabua. We thought the irony of the juxtaposition of the armed soldier with the message 'Good Celebrations' was probably lost on the local mayor.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Much Processing in Mosqueiro

Produce , produce, produce. So much of it that the whole month is really just given over to sorting and deciding how to save what has either been given or grown. I have frozen everything from the garden that it is possible to freeze or made chutney, pickles and jams.
After the success of our November 1^st barbecue where it rained like hell but only after everyone got fed, we were left with lots of gifts of nuts, fruits and veges which needed to be 'processed'. It's an interesting prospect when there is only so much jam and chutney that you can eat. So after long stretches finding recipes on the web I ended up making pickled pumpkin, pickled watermelon (don't ask!) pumpkin, ginger and walnut honey (honey because it is very runny!), frozen pumpkin soup and just frozen pumpkin chunks, chestnuts in Whiskey syrup and tangerine marmalade. Great stuff! Fraser even got to make our own Jack o Lantern which was really cool.Our fields are full of huge parasol mushrooms and horse mushrooms and on the terraces and in the surrounding woodland there are fungi of various sizes colours and shapes everywhere. We haven't been able to record all of them this year, but will start to do so next year. The weather has been particularly wet and humid so I am guessing that this had an effect. It certainly has made for wet boots! The rain has put paid to a lot of outdoor work but Fraser has started strimming the terraces and I planted out 43 acorns on the top terrace as a continuation of our reforestation plan. If a third of them germinate we will be happy.
We picked two of our olive trees for the best and plumpest black olives and I have processed them for the table. It's a bit of a business but worth it. 15 days in water, changing the water every day and then bottling in brine with rosemary and garlic.The rest of the crop, which was relatively small this year, has gone to the neighbours again for pressing for oil at the local community agricultural adega. Fraser climbed up into the boughs of the olive trees by our garden to open them out and they are now nicely pruned. We borrowed friends Josh and Veronika's shredder to shred up the smaller branches for mulch and what a great machine it was! We are hoping to borrow it again in the new year when we trim the rest of the olive trees. He is also continuing to work on our wood supplies and had a near miss when the chain came off the chainsaw and caught his jeans. Luckily with no damage but ballistic trousers are on the shopping list.

Scraps had a re-visit from The Dude who paid her a lot of attention when she was on heat. They spent the day playing and running around the field until he finally went off on his way again after a handout. He's a friendly young dog but obviously a stray.

Scraps has developed an absolute obsession for the rubber ball that Jenny gave us and will spend hours running to catch and retrieve it until she drops and can't concentrate on anything else when she has it. She can sniff it out from wherever we hide it even if it is on the floor above where she is and just goes ballistic whining and barking for it. So we have taken to hiding it in a sealed plastic container in the armazem (utility room). She has also taken to sucking her feet as a kind of comfort zone. So we have decided that she is definitely ADHD (attention deficient hyperactive dog) and COD (compulsive obsessive dog). I did order some natural therapy stuff aptly named Stroppy Bitch Remedy to help her with her hyper behaviour but it never arrived because of the postal strike. I am trying Bach Flower Remedy. She loves the taste but I don't think it is doing much for her temperament. We keep forgetting that she is still a puppy and not even one year old yet! She just has so much energy and has become a chew-aholic. One of my Mexican rugs has suffered as a result!!!! Grrrrrr!

We have started to hang our prints and paintings and Fraser's work in the barn. Fraser set up a wire rail to hang them from. He has an exhibition in the local Cultural Centre in March so we need to get busy doing simple frames for the canvases and boards. It's good to see everything up and thanks to friends Seanna and Harry I have a TV in there so I can do Yoga and Pilates every week from a tape with friends if they can make it. It's great to have the space with everything set up and my painting area is now almost there.

One rainy weekend we decided to go and visit the Medieval fair in Meruge which apparently happens every year. Despite the rain the participating locals continued to play their parts and the medieval style events took place in good heart. It was a great afternoon. Scraps was rather mystified by the pigs and donkey but she got a lot of positive attention from the people at the fair.

Friend Chris and wife Rosemary's son Chris came to stay for a few days on their way to pick up their furniture and belongings from their rented house in the village. It was great to see them and we are still enjoying the crumpets!!!!! So thank you guys.

We went outside last night and watched the space station go over us at 6.22pm. It was fascinating to watch it , the brightest thing by far in the sky. As Fraser said, it's not what it looks like as much as knowing what it is.

We have had a few easy last days since Fraser has come down with the first of his winter colds and we have been concentrating on indoor pursuits.

It is Barry's (Fraser's brother) 80^th birthday in December and Fraser is busy doing a painting of a South African Crowned Eagle ( a really beautiful bird of prey that features on aerogrammes from RSA) for him. I have started on a quilt for my sister's 70^th birthday next year and might even get on with a painting of my own.

Finally, for those roundabout enthusiasts who have been disappointed with the lack of roundabout of the month over the last few posts here is this month's offering. Just outside Meruge when we went to the medieval fair. Enjoy!!

Indian Summer

The autumn colours are begining to grace the garden but we are having an indian summer with perfect temperatures and enough rain to turn everything golden and green. The mist builds up in the mornings across the valley and we have had amazing cloud and light effects due to the altitude of the clouds. Sadly still loads of mosquitoes and flies which are making a nuisance of themselves, a meal of me and keeping us awake at nights. Put up the mosquito net and new screen door to the lounge and still they get in somehow!

Scraps is now coming out of her post op confusion. To stop her scratching a really incredibly bad shaving rash we had to cover her with calendula soaked bandages and put a stretch body bandage on her!! Sexy!!!!!For two weeks she was behaving as if she was either pregnant or had had pups. Apparently this is quite common after spaying, while hormones are still raging around. She cried a lot, gently carried a favourite toy (pink plastic dumbell with lost squeaker) all over the place looking for a dark corner as a den to keep it safe, or a hole to bury it in not quite sure. To this end she tried to dig up the floors in the house, under the stairs and in the various baracao areas and to top it all started producing milk. So she has had tablets to help dry that up and gradually she is getting back to her old self. I boxed in her summer cage; which she used to sleep in during the day on the veranda, with insulation so it would be dark and warm and have put old sheet and cushion in there to see if she would like that as a den. Still not sure! But she goes in there sometimes. She is more or less back to her stubborn self though. So puppy training begins again.

The concrete floor has been laid in the baracao now and the walls are rendered. Just need to let everything dry out and then we can paint walls and seal the floor and I will mosaic the steps. I used the remnants of the tiles we had and beach pebbles to surface window ledges in the barn so I will give the step the same treatment.

We started logging our dry timber from our February felling this month. Fraser spent several mornings splitting the logs.... and we worked to gether to take off the forest bark for mulching and I stacked the wood. Scraps helped of course in her usual fashion.
Unfortunately for Fraser tennis elbow set it (again, and I don't even play tennis!) so Steve, Vanessa and Joao Pedro came to the rescue with their new electro-hydraulic log splitter. We were well impressed. So much so that we went and bought one since they were on sale 50% off.
We had to cut down another 20 metre, 30 year old pine tree which was dying and probably had long horn wood beetle. The Portuguese authorities were supposed to visit each area and identify sick trees and then demand they be cut. Well they did get down our track because we saw evidence of white painted trees marked for cutting. But they never came to us. Anyway we had been watching this one pine gradually turning brown and decided that it was time to take it down.
So Steve, Vanessa and new workmate Joao Pedro came over to do the deed and by pure luck managed to fell the tree along the edge of the forest without damaging any other trees! Within the day it was down, processed,trims and pine needles burned and the logs transported and stacked.
So we have now processed the majority of our dry wood and are now starting on the wet, with the aid of the new log splitter. We have rigged up a rain shelter for the new wet logs to maximize the air flow around the wood so it can dry out and also because our woodshed is now full of dry wood. We are determined not to be cold this winter.
The garden is looking pretty untidy but still is putting up displays to keep the spirits up. I (I and me, the tame muscle) have created a new flower bed along the barn wall on the track side and it is just so wonderful to have this area done after so many years of storing building stuff, sand and rubble and gravel there.Hopefully by next year it will have started to settle in.

We took a break day out to visit our nearest mountain range, the Caramulos which in some areas at the summit of the range, really is like visiting the past since there are antique ruined buildings high up that look like they have been hacked out of the hillsides, which of course they were!! It is strange though up at the top of this range, it feels unfriendly and bleak and it is where one of our local wind farms cuts the sky line and is bizarre but beautiful.To top off the month I discovered that the sweet potato plants that have been growoing and spreading for the last 4 months have actually produced spuds!!!!
I am really chuffed!To celebrate we are having a hello November Barbecue on Sunday 1st and it seems that 35 people are coming, so I guess I had better dig up some more!!