Sun, Food and Messing about on the River

My trip to the UK was great and seemed to revolve entirely around eating far too much but then holidays are like that! I managed to spend time with my sister in Blackheath who carries on the family great tradition of making sure we are all fully fed and for a treat we had pie and mash and eels too from our long time favourite pie and mash shop in the east end of Londonthe green sauce is called liquer and is made from the eel juice with parsley and thickening added. Yummy!!!!!!

Met up with James and Adela on Sunday, train to Bath to stay with Malc on Monday, met Ejock and Chris (friends from college days) for lunch on Tuesday and then train down to Cornwall on Wednesday to meet Richard and Jo who were on holiday in Watergate Bay near Newquay and a chance to relax and see Jo's developing bump which is looking gloriously abundant and to talk baby. Making me a happy egg!!! Did typical Brit holiday stuff. The beach was the best, watching as everyone else with typical British resolve unpacked their regalia to enable them to spend the full day, come what may, cowering behind windbreaks and getting sand blasted on the beach... Classic!

Also went to Padstow (locally known as Padstein because of the chef Rick Stein who has made the place famous). Loads of people and dogs and sunshine and famous fish and chips, which I have to say were amazingly delicious.

Richard drove us back on Friday with only one emergency stop to cunningly dislodge a rapidly melting chocolate domino drop from between the front seats using only a tree twig and torn sliver from a rice crispy box! Jo's bad but only because it missed Richard's hand as he was driving!!

Had a lovely meal out on Friday with the boys and Jo for my birthday treat and then slept over at James's place. So Saturday was my birthday and I cooked a huge brunch for the boys and we celebrated the fact that this was the first birthday for nearly 20 years that I had spent with them. Got roller coaster eyeballs trying to play Sonic 3D on James's huge TV and then headed for Victoria in Richard's new VW Golf, dropping James off on the way to buy a new panama hat ready for the summer frenzy of the world cup and barbecues on the terrace. Looks good too! Took the Gatwick Express to the airport and finally reached Faro in time for an evening birthday BBQ with Steve and Jenny. Thanks to all of you for making my day a great one.

So now back in the saddle after a profuse welcome from Fraser and the dogs and a plan to make the diet begin!

Here the world has turned warm and everything in the garden is growing fast after so much rain and now the sunshine. We are harvesting lettuce, leeks, beans, courgette, broccoli, beetroot, mange- tout, cabbage and cucumbers and the tomatoes, aubergine, suedes, runner beans, cauliflowers, sweet potatoes, parsnips and peppers are coming on a treat in the main patch.My potatoes in the old grass piles are forming now and hopefully next month I can harvest them from the straw.For the first time this year I planted sweet corn and blue corn. The sweet corn are starting to flower now and the acorn squashes are doing their stuff crawling along in between the cornstalks down in the field patch. Fraser has set up the 1000 litre water tub to collect the run off water from the top pond that is seeping down through the terraces and we are using this to alternately water the field patch and top up the pond.Our yellow and red cherry tree produced a good crop for us this year and we were able to net most of the deliciously sweet fruit from the birds. The wild strawberries, raspberries and loganberries have been doing really well and I have enough gooseberries now to make a crumble this year! We have been into fruit smoothies big time so having our own red fruits has been a tremendous plus!

We were able to pick lots of small black cherries again at our friends' Josh and Veronika's quinta so the cherry jam is now made and awaiting labels...after 2 hours of de-stoning and purple stained hands for two days. The rest of the cherries are in the freezer as well as the glut from the veggie patch so far.

At the start of the month we decided to create a Bugsy -proof front fence and after demolishing the existing mud brick construction... which had suffered from the frosts and rainthe foundations and footing wall were redone in concrete and Fraser put up the new wire fencing and made a new gate. Great...except that we have discovered that Bugs can still scramble over the gate so adaptations are on the drawing board as I write.

After all that work we decided to celebrate both our birthdays and to take a break from the manual work so we planned a trip on the river with friend Matt who runs Rock and River www.rockandriver.com.pt
We packed a picnic, took the dogs and had a great day exploring our side of the river Mondego from the water.
Fraser was in hog heaven... I started out in the big open canoe and despite my balancing fears switched to a kayak and never looked back!
Steve and Vanessa joined us for the day. It was exhilarating and I can recommend the experience. Matt is a great coach and even managed the dogs.
So now we are getting back into adjusting our days to compensate for the heat. The dogs wake us early and we work till about 11 am and then take the rest of the day to do our own thing.
Fraser continues to take great photos of local insects and our abundant lizard population, and the rest of the time we relax and hammock...

That's if we can get the dogs out of them first!

May Days

Happy anniversary Scraps. She has been with us for a year now and is probably about 16 months old and slowly growing up but still adorably nuts.
Bugsy had his big operation last week and also had a rogue dew claw removed while he was under. He was really good about wearing the anti reach collar and despite a lot of noise and his low pain threshold has been a brave boy.The weather has gone ballistic now and both dogs are learning to like the water more and more although they don't like suddenly being out of their depth. This is so useful because it is a good way to cool them down in the 30 plus heat. This is Bugsy's first summer too so he does tend to feel it more.The river is the highest we have ever seen it and our usual walkways around the shore have disappeared so we are looking for alternative routes for our daily walksand at the dam the water is 10 metres higher than the maximum limit. A bit dodgy we think but apparently the powers that be are going to release the water this weekend. Surfs up!!!
The tadpoles are now tiny toads and the gorse and heather are out.Still doing repairs after two winters of heavy rain and frosts. The concrete flashing between the veranda roof and house wall has been leaking for two years so we decided to replace it with zinc flashing. So Steve and Fraser spent two days on the roof trying not to break too many of the old tiles since we have so few replacements, putting in the flashing sections and replacing leaking tiles.In the meantime Vanessa continued to re varnish the veranda woodwork that I started at the beginning of the month..and since she is as light as a feather and less likely to break the tiles than me she also gave the upstairs windows a much needed external coat too.We all finished off re-varnishing the rest of the veranda and I brush-painted the front wall. Couldn't use the rollers and tray because an enterprising Redstart had a brood of chicks in a nest on top of the tray, hanging on the wall in the baracao! They were just so cute. Anyway the veranda now looks the biz. Hammocks are back up and ready for hot afternoon siestas.

We put in more staggered steps down to the garden gate using up some of the old wood from the barn. Eventually they will be gravelled.

The weeding contines and we have masses of poppies this year. I think one of the bags of compost that I bought must have had a load of poppy seeds in and the back terrace is poppy city.
The pond is looking great and we are just waiting now for the waterlilies Final jobs of the month are to rebuild our front wall and put in a new metal fence and wooden gate and to sort out our water pump house once and for all.
The wall is down and the rain has come!!! so delays all round so I guess that will be part of next month's blog.
I am off to the UK on Friday for 10 days to meet up with family and friends and use up my transfered BA flight from Christmas. Volcanic ash permitting!

Abundant April

Well it's all happening now that the rains have stopped (yeeehah!) and the sun has come out to play. Must have been the effect of our boules and darts party which was great fun and everyone really joined in the spirit of the day.
Rules were adhered to (kind of) and there were trophies for the Boules and Darts champion teams. Thanks to everyone for bringing great stuff to eat and drink and for making it such a great day.
Another celebration was Fraser's birthday and our 25th year as a couple. Had lunch with a few friends and Fraser bought me a wisteria that actually flowers to stop me moaning about the one we currently have that is huge but flowerless!!Fraser has been busy again since we decided to completely replace the field fence as Bugsy was using it as an escape ladder so now we have this very sexy fence and gate and it looks great. Next job is to redo the front wall and fence. Watch this space. He also put in some steps up from the pond to the terrace above which look really cute and make it so much esier to water the Liquid Ambers on the terrace, and we now have graduated steps down the slope to the field gate too which will be graveled eventually. It has been a great way to use up the old beams from the barn and outbuildings.
I did some spring cleaning of the car which contained enough dog hair to build a new one from scratch
We took an afternoon off to visit Harry and Seana at their lovely new, Hacienda style house which isn't finished quite yet but we had lunch on the veranda anyway. It was a lovely break! Thanks guys.
But mainly this month has been all about burgeoning nature!!!! Everything is growing like blazes. Our kitchen is full of the scent of jasmine and the irises are out! Fraser continues to make a record of the flora and fauna around us.The bass that we put in with the goldfish are growing to a good size.

The carp in the lake are in close to the shore spawning we thinkand the tadpoles from the toad spawn fringe the entire line of the lakeshore. Nothing seems to eat them!!Bugsy continues to grow up but still needs a lot of training, but not as much as Scraps who continues to be blonde and a bit bonkers. But we love them both.

On the down side we have discovered a huge crack in our chimney, since a small chimney fire and the rain have done their work. So this needs to be sorted and luckily we are insured! But the mess is going to be horrendous!!
Best news for last.....

I AM GOING TO BE A GRANNY!!!!!!!!!!

Richard and Jo are having their baby in September. We are all so happy for them.
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