February: Failing Equipment and Weird Dry, Frosty, Sunny Days

We're late with this entry, a thousand pardons. The hard-drive in our computer died suddenly just before the end of the month with loss of data and the large hassle of reinstalling everything, looking frantically for serial numbers, etc. So we're more or less back together but this will be a sorry entry as most of the photos from this month went off into the land of lost electrons.

Had overnight frosts and 25 degree temperature shifts during the day so we started off wrapped up and ended up in T shirts most days with glorious sunshine. But no rain which we desperately needed.

 
The drought continued until yesterday. The place was tinder dry for the whole of February, but that didn't stop people from burning the undergrowth. One of our neighbours did a controlled flame off opposite us. Was a bit scarey to say the least. He notified the local bombeiros (fire brigade) who sent a chopper just to check it out.
To add to the adventures this month our solar panel tube sprang a leak when the end cap cracked and fell off after the frosts. Much concern, but once the end cap was replaced, the panels drained and re-filled with water and antifreeze all is good once more...we hope.

The veg patch is now edged with black plastic, a new venture this year to stop weeds encroaching on the borders. Irrigation in place and about to plant out the first veg now that the rains have come. Irrigation is causing a bit more of a problem on the garden. Sylvi needs to strip it all out and re-do it to get maximum watering pressure. Ongoing right now.

We managed to get the Suzuki down to the lower section of the woodland terrace to pick up our logs which were at the end of a very soft and narrow path. First two trips..no problem. On the third the Suzi slid off the path and got a bit stuck. We managed to haul the logs back so Fraser had just enough room to manoevre. Could have been embarassing and dangerous as the offside wheels were on the slope down to the next terrace!

However we managed to get the logs back to the yard for splitting and stacking.

De-barking revealed lots of grubs in the wood from the dead pine.

Had great fun (NOT) squashing them.

 Fraser did a brilliant job, fitting a closet with REAL SLIDING DOORS in our bedroom after living for 6 years with a curtain covering alcove shelves that really didn't work well. Having the chimney breast in the middle and not square to anything was a challenge. But what a brill job!!

Sylvia managed to make two ugly but servicable baskets out of our huge pile of Willow withies.

Poor old Scraps had a bad day after too much running around and a tussle with Bugsy. She could hardly walk and couldn't climb up stairs. We had to carry her in from the field and we allowed her to have her dinner on the couch where we put her to rest up for the evening. She was much better next day, but we feel that her early abuse as a pup is really coming home to roost now.
So she as well as Sylvi are going on a DIET!!! Less weight less stress on the hips (that goes for Sylvi too!!)
And finally...we seem to have lost all the fish from our pond. They have either been eaten by the local pair of herons, stolen or died. Well since our neighbour recently had his dismantled beehive stolen from the terrace next to our pond Sylvi's theory is that the fish have been netted and nicked. We probably will never know.

Something like a bleak (ish) midwinter.

January.. nearly gone already and it's been pretty cold at night, but the sunny days....what a bonus. One of the ponds actually froze over this morning. Bugsy and Scraps were not thrilled about the idea...especially since they hadn't met ice before.

Ok, it melted when the sun got on it, but still....need to check our water pipes from the reservoir to make sure they are well lagged.

We had a fright at the start of the month when Bugsy got caught in an illegal lasso game snare while we were out for a walk to the river. We heard him screaming but it took about 5 minutes to find him half hanging in the undregrowth, luckily only caught by the paw. We had to untie the steel cable from the tree to get him out and his paw was not damaged but we were just so pissed off!

These snares are illegal and the stretch of forest down to the lake is not a hunting zone. We wrote a  poster to put in the local cafe explaining the law and what happened. (but not mentioning that we would like to hang the git who laid the wire by his balls).
Our local trained and licenced hunter Antonio came to see us and promised to walk all the game trails to check for more. He trains hunting dogs around here and hates these snares as much as we do.

Fraser managed to rotavate the veg patch (If there's a Hell it has rotavators) while the frost is still with us most nights which will kill a lot of weeds, yay! Sylvi just needs to do final hoeing and then we are ready for the veg once the frost has gone. Not shown in this photo but we have lined the edges of whole plot with black plastic to stop the rest of the field trying to lay down weeds so that Sylvi doesn't have to worry about the edges.

Right...on the family front
The Month got underway with the birth of a great niece in London on the 4th. Luna May Pilar Sumner is her name and Faye (our niece) is her Mum. We are looking forward to meeting her...eventually!

We felled another 4 diseased pines with Steve and Vanessa, so now there is a LOT of wood stacked up in our bit of forest to be moved over to the wood shed with the Suzy. Still appear to be more dying so watch this space.

It's been a dry month, weather wise and we (I hate to say it) could do with some rain. Having said that, February will now probably bring flooding... Anyway we took advantage of a really nice day a couple of weeks ago to give the dogs and us a bit of seaside time. We all enjoyed it a lot. Eat your hearts out...not another soul on the beach and just a beautiful day

So now, at the end of the month we're pruning anything resembling a tree...burning the brash and clearing round the bases of the fruit trees and mulching like crazy. This includes pollarding the willows - result being shedloads of withies. Here's Sylvi, as ever not wanting to waste a twig, working towards becoming a vagabond basket weaver...basket looks like crap but it does work.

 Meanwhile Fraser has been trying to regain his skill at cartooning, contributing to some on-line galleries like 'illustration friday' http://illustrationfriday.com/ which suggests a new topic every Friday. The results of his efforts can be seen on his drawing blog http://frasers-paintings.blogspot.com/

"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.