"It's Coming on Christmas..they're cutting down trees".......

In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell the logger/vandals have been out in force this month and created devastation and mahem along the riverside. The photos say it all.

Have to say that the Mimosa there were growing like weeds and so thick that you couldn't walk through them on the terraces. There is very little sense of "cut with care and clear the debris" here. We are hoping that they will actually come back and clear the brash eventually.

While I was in the UK the ruin at the back of our propery line was actually cleared and cut by neighbours although, again, cutting is one thing but collection of the cuttings is another. There is a 5 week time limit in Portugal apparently and then it can be reported...not sure what good that would do actually.

But on a cheerier note... we have our own olive oil this year thanks to Matt and Nita picking and taking the olives to the press last month. A first for us

 

So having left London and Lexa .......in festive mood

 

 We got festive at home... Christmas the tree  and lights are up and now it is Christmas!

We have had a quiet one together which was lovely and really needed. We are both pretty tired and I managed to hatch a stinking cold and cough on the journey back from the UK.

Christmas Eve lunch was shared at ours with friends and neighbours and after a neighbourly tipple on the day ..we opened our prezzies and Santa had been very good to Fraser....bringing him (via Rich and Jo) a really fun toy! And very good to us both. Thanks to everyone for their gifts

Scraps and Bugsy of course have taken it all in their strides.

So from us all here in sunny but cold Portugal to everyone that we know and or love... we wish you the very best of new years and hope that 2012 will be a happy, healthy and hopeful year for you all. 

Winter comes sliding in

Well, it’s been a rather wet November here, and after the weather gets done slobbering all over us it picks up its skirts and trips merrily up north to places like the British Isles…enjoy.
Picking our olives was handed over to friends of ours, Matt and Anita who rashly decided to volunteer, wanting olive oil from olives they’d picked themselves. As we really couldn’t face the huge amount of work involved we were more than happy to let them do it.

 

The weather swung between idyllic and hellish with heavy rain and wind. They soldiered on and got quite a few bags of olives – it was rather a bumper year for olives.

So here at the end of the month we now have that early Winter pattern of cold nights and (after the mist clears) warm afternoons. As we don’t have central heating, the first tasks of the morning are: get a fire going, make a cuppa, feed the dogs and us. Well not us at the moment as Sylvia is in England till the fourteenth on Granny duty helping Jo and Rich while they sort out a new nursery for Lexa etc. The dogs took a good week to settle down and get used to the situation, but will, I think, be very pleased to see ‘Mum’ home again. As will I.

Our Honda (car) decided that it’s clutch hydraulics should start leaking last week so that went in for service and the Suzuki Jeep will be needing a clutch transplant in the near future as well. Cars, can’t afford ‘em, can’t live without them.
We’ve been having visits from a pair of Grey Herons again this month and I don’t think there are many fish left in the pond despite a good covering of Water Hyacinth..Nature, red in tooth and/or beak.



As Sylvi is in UK I ran our Christmas stall at the gardening group in Coja with friend Vanessa's help and there was a lot of interest in her preserves and fabrics. She also spent weeks making a huge Christmas tree advent calendar for Lexa which hopefully is now hanging up in her room ready for the start of December.

Here are a few shots taken early on before it got crowded.

Our Stall

Hi there from Sylvia in London. I have indeed been spending lots of quality time with Lexa...what a little super angel and absolute madam at times but so full of character.

Here she is with the Advent Calendar Christmas tree I made for her.
We are continuing to settle her into nursery which she is starting full time for three days after next week. Richard has been travelling a lot and so I am also here as backup for Jo.

 
In the meantime I have had a couple of days with Pat and friend Malc who came down  from Bath. Had a great time window shopping in Central London and went to view our friend Saied Dai's exhibition in Cork Street. It was great for me to be able to be there.
Otherwise Christmas shopping is very much on the agenda!

Bugsy has befriended the shepherd's new dog, Tarzan(?) Tarzan is the replacement for poor old Feruz, who we feel ended up dying of neglect. Tarzan is a great moose of a pup, very friendly but you could make two Bugsys out of him, with some left over, so it's good that they're friends. Scraps, having been molested by Feruz when she was hardly old enough takes a somewhat dim view of any large male dogs and tells him off if he gets too close....

So winter is here and the dogs and I are keeping warm and waiting for Sylvia to get back!

Fall, Squampkins, Bikers and Broken Bridges

October.

Things are winding down toward winter. Time to do some garden tidying and the like. Trees to fell, firewood to get in, Turkeys to slaughter…no hang about, scratch that last. No Turkeys. Not this year anyway. 
It was decided that the first tree to get a chop would be the big Leylandi out front, so it got lowered by about a third. Ness had the ‘fun’ task of scaling it and hacking away.  

                                
This all went well and we then cut down two more of our diseased pines. Fraser cut and loaded the last of the brash.  

       

Down at the new pond the blue flowering wossnames had rather taken over, so they got replaced with Irises for next year.

We also had a shot at sealing up a leak or two in the reservoir up on the top terrace....still leaks. on to plan 'B'...whatever that is.









Friend Steve from the Algarve biked his way up to stay for a few days and make the most of the last good biking weather. Great to see him and he was on good form

Portugal has a financial crisis (like everyone else) but we also have a bridge crisis. Hundreds of bridges across the country that were built (badly) over the past 30 years or so have been condemned. The upshot for us is that, as we are between two rivers we meet bridgeworks across both of them no matter our direction of travel......BORRRRINGGG!

Crossing can take as much as 20 minutes if you time it wrongly.




















But we discovered that the little dog shaped water-filled barriers that they use these days to set out detours are brilliantly named.
Look closely...

CLASSIC!

Back in the garden Sylvi managed to grow a kind of hybrid butternut/pumpkin that grew out of the compost. We have called it a Squampkin...tastes great!


















New bugs appeared everywhere this month, hundreds of them which apparently are a pest which eat the pine nuts. We find them all over the place and when you squash them they smell strongly of peardrops....weird!

Our resident praying mantis has created her perfect nest on a sheet of insulation in our utility room/toolshed.. When they tiny mantis babies come out in the spring they are about 5mm long and perfect. Looking forward to seeing them next year.
This is the door of the utility room. This photo is specially for all Sylvi's  friends and students who know where this sign came from. Lest we forget...........

One problem darkening our doorsteps literally is the ruin next to our garden which, after 15 years of neglect is now so overgrown with brambles that it is a real fire hazard. The person who owns it is a nightmare...that is another story. Currently trying to get her to clear the lot. She has offered to sell us the ruin underneath for 1000 euros. That made us laugh out loud! Now waiting to see if she is going to do anything about it. If not ? Well we have another cunning plan 'B'!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the clocks went back but the Scraps and Bugsy don't care! Early morning wake ups in the pitch black .......We think the idea of quitting with summertime daylight saving is a bloody good idea. At least psychologically for us if not for our beloved canines.

Sunspot activity sadly didn't give us the spectacular auroras that have been seen around the globe but it did do us some great sunset skies.

Slipping out of Summer

Much cooler days and cold nights are upon us….hardly got a chance to moan about the heat and hey, it’s Autumn.
The month started off with me (Fraser) going back to England for a Memorial Service. I also got to meet the latest addition to the family and got to play Granpa for a while.

While I was gone, some of our new lilies put their heads above water and Sylvi took a shot for posterity.   Plus the pumpkins got ready for harvesting.

      


Sylvi got on with organizing the bathroom makeover. This turned into something of an odyssey due to previous structure needing removing and the general unsquareness of anything in this house.
Cris and Scott demolished the old shower stall

Poor old Cris had a real job on his hands, what with the difficulties of the room and the wild excesses of our ideas.  I did a lot of tile cutting to instructions from Cris who was doing the building work and coping with Sylvi’s hopes for the design!

In the middle of all this the tap in the laundry sink sort of collapsed through the board it had been mounted on…So, I’ll replace the tap, no problem, right? Wrong. Ended up redoing the whole area which also gave a lot more free space to the laundry which had always been a bit claustrophobic… shame I haven’t got a ‘before’ shot.

The demolition in the bathroom produced a surprising amount of debris…

But the final result made all the chaos worth it…

The bathroom is still pretty tiny, but it’s cool. The floor of the shower is now grey nonslip tiles…still have grout stains to clean off. A surprising side effect is that the shower is now quiet…nothing for the water to drum on – unless you count my empty head…

James came for a week long break from London

and helped out with some of the work, cutting and stacking firewood, clearing the bathroom debris and field debris, sorting out the open store at the back that he had already sorted out last year…just different shite to move around this time and even did some grouting which he hates doing. So thanks James for the helping hand…and the barbie. We did, however manage to catch a few World Rugby Championship matches….
.                   
                                 
Adela came for the weekend, met the dogs… 
 

                              
   

Went wine tasting at the Cabriz Adega in Carregal de Sal, buying shedloads of great wine for them to take home and some for us..(thanks James) and celebrated Adela’s forthcoming birthday in a great restaurant.
Was far too short a visit all round but a great way to end a hard few weeks of graft.