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!