Week 11 Morning all, Another overdue update. My excuse is it has been too hot. Boy, when you think it won’t get any hotter, it does. We had temperatures of 38 –39 and I am talking about in the shade now, the weather forecast predicts even hotter for the end of the week. We are struggling to keep our veggies alive, some having to be watered three times a day to keep them going. Work is hard in these temperatures but we keep slogging on. Nigel and Kim’s groundwork has been completed ready for the woodwork. I have had to dig a bit more for our house, this came to a halt when we hit solid rock and Nigel and I decided we have had enough chiselling away at granite. Quick decision was made and I decided to build up my dry wall higher to compensate for the lack of depth at one end – the slope is fault – and I dug out the semi circle from the lower platform of our house and Ines and Kim have already sifted and separated stone from earth. Since then the dry wall has come along nicely although I was a bit nervous of building a drywall over a meter high and to build a house on it. But as you know I did read the book !! Looks okay and I am pretty happy it. Nigel has been busy driving the trooper up and down the hill collecting tons of stones for the wall, which I am very grateful for as I would not liked to have carried each one up the hill! The feather girls have been laying three eggs a day and Ines makes sure that they are looked after and collects all sorts of treats –grasshoppers, beetles etc. to keep them happy. Bug news –we have received our Praying Mantis eggs and we are now waiting for them to hatch. We also received our compost worms, alas , they were all goners due to the heat. We probably should have not ordered them now, the dealer should certainly not have sent them. We will wait until it gets much cooler before ordering more. We have been able to harvest loads from the garden and zucchini is on the menu every day! The cucumber plants have taken on themselves to conquer the garden and they are doing it pretty well but only as we water them three times a day, as midday they look extremely sorry for themselves otherwise. Peas have been picked, corn on the cob is doing really well and hopefully the tomatoes will produce soon. The grape vines are heavy with grapes and we look forward to making wine with them. (only cos we cannot eat them all at once, of course!). The olive trees are starting to form tiny olives but not on all trees. We are not particularly worried as we will have more than enough from 22 trees. Quinces have been attacked by some kind of worm so are going to be no use this year. It is frustrating to get all these pests but we will have to learn how to deal with them without chemical warfare. The garden will take a while to get back to health as the last owner did not do much the last years and what with a horrendously wet spring and the neglect, it has suffered somewhat. But we are getting there and have mulched heavily again to keep in any moisture we can. We are after horse poo but due to lack of horses here, we have not found any as yet. Nigel and I went to see someone,s solar set up as this is another project we need to get sorted. Pam and Mike live up in Penamacor which is about 60km from us and they showed us around their place. Both have been working very hard to get things tidied up and in working order. This way of life is lovely but it means hard work initially and they have obviously been working pretty hard. Solar was interesting and we shall be tackling (Nigel more) this project soon. We took the Volvo in to get looked at and the Portuguese mechanic fixed it pretty quick. Costs €20,- ! Makes life much easier and Ines and I will be going “camping” with my daughter end of July without having to hire a car! We all decided a day out would be great so we packed a sparse picnic – lack of bread, forgotten ham and cheese - and drove to the river Tejo which is the largest river in Portugal. It is only down the road but we have not been there yet. After a rather large tour of the region we finally found a place to park up and had our picnic. A local picked ripe figs and we tried them. Not unpleasant at all. We tried our luck at Fig fishing which was fun and Lugh got soaked as the sprinklers suddenly turned themselves on in the middle of the day. We moved on to another spot that was beautiful and Nigel and Kim went for a swim, the water was apparently freezing so I declined! Ines had a paddle too and Lugh, - he had a bit of a water day, fell into the river, forgot he could swim and I had to drag him out. I would have loved a photo of his face but it did not seem right at the time to snapshoot him whilst he clung to a rock looking like a drowned cat! We will certainly use the spot again for a picnic and it was clean and tidy, a similar spot in UK would certainly have looked like a tip. The Tejo is lovely and anyone coming to Portugal should see it. There are also hundreds of drawings from prehistoric humans, which we will visit next time. Mally has been to the vets again this week but is on the mend again now, thanks to the help of Hubertos the vet. Prices are way different from UK and it makes you wonder why in the UK you get ripped off. Think with Antibiotics and tablets and treatment Nigel paid only around €40,-. Nigel and Kim have started to refurbish one of the horse boxes into a bathroom for our first guests – not everyone’s cup of tea having a wee in the open- well hidden from others though! It will have a shower, toilet and wash facility with a lockable door!! –reckon it will be very nice when it’s finished. Gearing up for even more heat this week I wish you all a stress free week and hope you enjoy this week’s update. Adieus!!
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 10:18:14 +0000
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