2010 and All That

Happy New Year to one and all.

Sylvia writing.We had a great Christmas in the UK despite the BA threatened air strikes which prompted me to book Easyjet and forego the BA flight until next year, then had Easyjet canceling our outward flight from Faro due to UK snow and having to book yet another flight with Monarch! Cost over £1000 all in all although we will get £93 back from Easyjet.....eventually. But the expense was worth it.
Before we headed for Faro we hosted Fraser's sister Jan and partner John overnight as they were traveling by car down to Lagos for the Christmas period.We then met up briefly with John's son Josh, Fraser's niece Hannah and husband Steve and their two sons Finlay and Ruben, when they arrived at Faro Airport to spend Christmas with Jan and John.
Then having deposited Scraps into the capable hands of Steve, Jenny and Skaigh we flew to the UK in time to see the snowy landscape!
We stayed with my sister in Blackheath and caught up with family chat and shopping before heading for James and Adela's in Willesden Green for a Czech style Christmas Eve and then Christmas Day. Richard and Jo were there too so we had complete family, thoroughly spoilt with oodles of prezzies, great food, booze and lots of laughter and games in a totally chilled atmosphere. Just how Christmas should be.
Boxing Day we decamped to Richard and Jo's flat for the day, while James and Adela headed off to Wiltshire and after a lovely pub lunch treat and watching the latest Wallace and Grommet movie on TV (which was ace) we topped off the festive season by going out in the evening to see Avatar in 3D. Mind blowing and thoroughly enjoyable. More fairy tale with allegorical storyline than science fiction and a real visual delight.
So a huge thank you to the boys and their girls for looking after us so well.

The day after I met up with brothers, inlaws and family at my sisters house to celebrate our Mum's birthday.

Brother Dennis, me, Sister Pat and Brother Don with Great Nephews Greg, Kieran and Nicholas and Great Nieces Kelly Marie and Caitlin.

I met great - nieces and nephews that I have rarely seen and the house was packed with my grown up niece and nephews and it was a rowdy and raucous event. Just like always!!!! My best friend from College days and the boys' godmother...Malc come up to London to share in the bustle and stay over! So Happy Birthday Mum!

We had a couple of days with my sister to re-coup and be spoiled even more, before we headed back to rainy Faro to see how Scraps had fared without us (which was very well indeed) and to spend New Year with friends Steve and Jenny........ and Jan and Martin, whom I hadn't seen for 9 years! Watched the fireworks on Albufeira beach, despite the rain. So all in all a lovely Festive Season and lots of thanks to Steve and Jenny for looking after Scraps and us so well.
Meanwhile back in London the boys and girls spent New Year dressed as superheros and notable characters for what looked like a great fancy dress bash. Guess the characters!
I miss them all already!
Handing over to Fraser now for the rest of the news about the start of our new year.

Came back to Portugal to discover it was still raining (a lot) and still cold. The field resembled a rice paddy - minus the rice and water buffaloes. The fruit trees were standing in water as well and we can only hope they recover.

Two weeks ago Sylvi spotted this -
on the local e-want adds. Another foundling needing a home, so.... convincing ourselves that what Scraps really needed was a playmate, we brought him home. He's got blue eyes and will probably grow to be larger than Scraps (which she should bear in mind when she's bullying him) and has pale blue eyes. As he's a little bit of a gangster he's been dubbed Bugsy, after Bugsy Malone... The two of them seem to be bonding well and he's growing apace.

And yes, Scraps is sucking her foot in that last pic... Bugsy is much more laid-back than Scraps. He's also an accomplished thief and escape artist. Interesting times ahead, methinks.
A lot of time has been spent this month, framing my paintings for a one man show in March at the Casa Cultura in Santa Comba Dao, just north of here. I don't expect, knowing how tight money is, to sell much - any would be good - but it's good to give them an airing and see what people think of what I do.
On Sunday we went up to Steve and Vanessa's Village for the St. Sebastian day airing of religious statues accompanied by the local Philharmonia -marching band. St. Sebastion was well peppered with arrows, one of which looked excrutiatingly painful!



This week Steve, Vanessa and João Pedro are pruning the Olive trees with a bit of help from us. We're hoping to plant some more trees in February as the ground dries up a bit.
That's about it for this month. Stay tuned

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!

Much Processing in Mosqueiro

Produce , produce, produce. So much of it that the whole month is really just given over to sorting and deciding how to save what has either been given or grown. I have frozen everything from the garden that it is possible to freeze or made chutney, pickles and jams.
After the success of our November 1^st barbecue where it rained like hell but only after everyone got fed, we were left with lots of gifts of nuts, fruits and veges which needed to be 'processed'. It's an interesting prospect when there is only so much jam and chutney that you can eat. So after long stretches finding recipes on the web I ended up making pickled pumpkin, pickled watermelon (don't ask!) pumpkin, ginger and walnut honey (honey because it is very runny!), frozen pumpkin soup and just frozen pumpkin chunks, chestnuts in Whiskey syrup and tangerine marmalade. Great stuff! Fraser even got to make our own Jack o Lantern which was really cool.Our fields are full of huge parasol mushrooms and horse mushrooms and on the terraces and in the surrounding woodland there are fungi of various sizes colours and shapes everywhere. We haven't been able to record all of them this year, but will start to do so next year. The weather has been particularly wet and humid so I am guessing that this had an effect. It certainly has made for wet boots! The rain has put paid to a lot of outdoor work but Fraser has started strimming the terraces and I planted out 43 acorns on the top terrace as a continuation of our reforestation plan. If a third of them germinate we will be happy.
We picked two of our olive trees for the best and plumpest black olives and I have processed them for the table. It's a bit of a business but worth it. 15 days in water, changing the water every day and then bottling in brine with rosemary and garlic.The rest of the crop, which was relatively small this year, has gone to the neighbours again for pressing for oil at the local community agricultural adega. Fraser climbed up into the boughs of the olive trees by our garden to open them out and they are now nicely pruned. We borrowed friends Josh and Veronika's shredder to shred up the smaller branches for mulch and what a great machine it was! We are hoping to borrow it again in the new year when we trim the rest of the olive trees. He is also continuing to work on our wood supplies and had a near miss when the chain came off the chainsaw and caught his jeans. Luckily with no damage but ballistic trousers are on the shopping list.

Scraps had a re-visit from The Dude who paid her a lot of attention when she was on heat. They spent the day playing and running around the field until he finally went off on his way again after a handout. He's a friendly young dog but obviously a stray.

Scraps has developed an absolute obsession for the rubber ball that Jenny gave us and will spend hours running to catch and retrieve it until she drops and can't concentrate on anything else when she has it. She can sniff it out from wherever we hide it even if it is on the floor above where she is and just goes ballistic whining and barking for it. So we have taken to hiding it in a sealed plastic container in the armazem (utility room). She has also taken to sucking her feet as a kind of comfort zone. So we have decided that she is definitely ADHD (attention deficient hyperactive dog) and COD (compulsive obsessive dog). I did order some natural therapy stuff aptly named Stroppy Bitch Remedy to help her with her hyper behaviour but it never arrived because of the postal strike. I am trying Bach Flower Remedy. She loves the taste but I don't think it is doing much for her temperament. We keep forgetting that she is still a puppy and not even one year old yet! She just has so much energy and has become a chew-aholic. One of my Mexican rugs has suffered as a result!!!! Grrrrrr!

We have started to hang our prints and paintings and Fraser's work in the barn. Fraser set up a wire rail to hang them from. He has an exhibition in the local Cultural Centre in March so we need to get busy doing simple frames for the canvases and boards. It's good to see everything up and thanks to friends Seanna and Harry I have a TV in there so I can do Yoga and Pilates every week from a tape with friends if they can make it. It's great to have the space with everything set up and my painting area is now almost there.

One rainy weekend we decided to go and visit the Medieval fair in Meruge which apparently happens every year. Despite the rain the participating locals continued to play their parts and the medieval style events took place in good heart. It was a great afternoon. Scraps was rather mystified by the pigs and donkey but she got a lot of positive attention from the people at the fair.

Friend Chris and wife Rosemary's son Chris came to stay for a few days on their way to pick up their furniture and belongings from their rented house in the village. It was great to see them and we are still enjoying the crumpets!!!!! So thank you guys.

We went outside last night and watched the space station go over us at 6.22pm. It was fascinating to watch it , the brightest thing by far in the sky. As Fraser said, it's not what it looks like as much as knowing what it is.

We have had a few easy last days since Fraser has come down with the first of his winter colds and we have been concentrating on indoor pursuits.

It is Barry's (Fraser's brother) 80^th birthday in December and Fraser is busy doing a painting of a South African Crowned Eagle ( a really beautiful bird of prey that features on aerogrammes from RSA) for him. I have started on a quilt for my sister's 70^th birthday next year and might even get on with a painting of my own.

Finally, for those roundabout enthusiasts who have been disappointed with the lack of roundabout of the month over the last few posts here is this month's offering. Just outside Meruge when we went to the medieval fair. Enjoy!!