Winter is here

Flew back to the UK on the same flight as the family..Lexa was brilliant all the way.

going home on the aeroplane

My time in the UK was very busy, mainly being with Jo and Lexa whilst Rich was in Asia

trying on granny's slippers

Playing going to the airport

and then having a few days to catch up with early Christmas shopping for the family and managing to spend time with James and having an early family meal (sadly minus Adela who was still in Burma) with my sister Pat.

Malc came up to London from Bath.Sadly most of the photos were rubbish but here are a few!

Delicious dinner..Thank you Aunty Pat

feeding the ducks at Aunty Pat's with uncle James

Malc and I went to see the Cutty Sark on Monday morning........

So good to see her again

Cutty Sark

Joining the Figure Heads

 and later in the afternoon I met my double great nephews...Riley and Alfie  and  William and Jacob for the first time. Sadly no photos received yet.

 

I also got to meet up with my friend who was my ex Deputy Head from Prague, Catrin and husband Robert and their twin boys Owain and Gwydion.  So all in all the trip was laden with babies! Any excuse for a cuddle.

   I got back from the UK on 20th November to find the landscape quite changed. Fog and rain and now it is freezing cold and frosty.

The months seem now to just be dissolving as we watch and everything turning colours and leaves everywhere! 

We did nothing with our olives either but there were very few this year.

We have done very little else this month except catch up with preparing for winter. So now it's fires to light and preparations for Christmas.

October, Turning into Autumn

Started the month off with a visit to the Beach at Mira with the dogs,who were doing their “Are we there yet?” bit…it was a lovely day break and we should do it more often.

I did a couple of water colour workshops with one of the students from Sylvi’s drawing class and Sylvi did two days of patchwork and applique with the mum of a friend who was visiting from England. She made her first patchwork applique cushion cover and hatched an idea for a shabby chic advent calendar.

The big event of the month was, of course, the arrival here for a break of Rich, Jo and little Lexa. Sylvi had been planning and having fun for weeks turning the whole place into a Nursery School! (Sylvi here…well it was only the barn really as she had to have somewhere to play and paint and spend time out of the wet and cooler weather…my excuse anyway!

Oh and she needed a reading and comfy place in her room in the attic so a fantasy reading tent seemed a good idea too.)

Lots and lots of thanks to Matt and Jo who loaned us lots of toys and gates and fire guards and books and the cot. Such a great help thanks so much.
So we have had a busy time, walking to the lake, studying frogs in the pond, getting to know the dogs  (Scraps is very nervous and Bugsy a bit barky and bouncy but every day is better than the last) and just being out and about as a family.
So here is a selection of pictures from some of our adventures over the past week.

Getting to know the dogs has been a big part of the week and Lexa loves them…when they don’t bark!  She also spent time helping Grandpa find the ball at Scraps’ ball playtime!

We went to Coimbra to enjoy the walk around and it was a bonus to have lunch there and buy Lexa some new shoes a new hat and bracelet!!!!! She also made a friend in the shop!

     

   At home we hunted for frogs in the pond 

At Santa Comba Dao..there were helicopters and a painted cow all in one go….

Puppy on daddy’s head helped to keep his pate warm!

Rich here….We have had a fantastic time staying at the Quinta, seems incredible that it’s been six years since we were here last. Granny and Grandpa have made Lexa’s time here so special, from the reading tent in her bedroom to the expeditions into the field to visit the frogs and the trip to visit the helicopter in Santa Comba Dao. Seems like the week has just flown by but we’re sure that we’ll be back soon to visit, especially since Scraps and Bugsy are fast becoming Lexa’s best friends!

Flaming September

September got off to a hot start. The fires got rather closer, just across the river. The first couple of weeks were spent wandering around in a haze of smoke, with ash falling like snowflakes in our back garden.

With help from Steve and Vanessa we dragged our big petrol powered water pump over the field and up the terraces to pump water from our irrigation well down to the holding tank in the field so that we could then hook up the fire hose to the pump and defend the house if the fire got to our section of the forest. Luckily we didn’t need to use it.

From my point of view, there was one plus point to the fires – the non-stop airshow. Since we are so close to the river where the aircraft and helicopters fill up they were flying over the whole day and I took some really close shots from the Tábua bridge.

In all 100,00 hectares burnt and 6 People died in the fires, Bombeiros (fire fighters) and civilians and all due to ‘human agency’… One of the fire choppers crashed as well, due to an engine failure, fortunately without serious injury to the crew.

You can see more about this at this site if you are interested

http://bombeirosparasempre.blogspot.pt/2012/09/helicopteros-kamov-cessam-operacoes-de.html

The drought continued until last week when we finally got a few days very welcome rain. We need more but at least it reduced the fire risk back to something like reasonable!

Despite all the excitement we still had a lot of fruit to harvest – Bugsy amused himself burying dried windfall peaches around the place…we are hoping for a peach orchard in the future.

When she was not doing her fabric work Sylvi got very busy making chutneys pickles and jams from the produce.

The big house project this month was tiling the front Armizem and Laundry floor.

We were given a load of unwanted tiles, courtesy of friends Josh and Veronika so down they went to cover the dusty and very uneven concrete floor. It was backbreaking work and the floor was incredibly uneven. Of course it also meant planing quite a strip off the bottom of the Laundry door. It was worth it though as the whole area looks so much more finished and stays much cleaner. I tidied up the sink area by closing in the open framework and making a door to fit. Sylvi is very pleased. Brownie points all round.

I also re-did my modelling area in the studio by buying a really cheap computer desk and relegating the old 2 meter school desk to a work bench, so now I have a rather more compact area to make a mess in. Also put down some very thin bright blue carpet…model parts are normally either bits of wood or grey plastic which, when dropped will be rather easier to find on the blue…

As it is the time of year for the grape harvest our friends had our grapes this year to help boost their limited crop and we were surprised at the amount we had. Matt, Anita and Phil came over and picked them and they are now crushed and in the fermenting vat at their place waiting to be pressed and finally processed. It’s great to be able to share produce and not let it go to waste.

So now we just have to transport the firewood from our forest patch split and stack it ready for winter and pick the olives in November. But that’s for another blog.