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!