Friday 31 October 2008

wet wet wet

We holidayed in Galicia during the last week in October before now and it rained like a monsoon for the whole week - doing the same this week so there is some consistency in the weather but the locals say it is all wrong compared with the weather patterns for last century. There has been a lot of snow in Asturias and the inland SE of Galicia - tempting to go and play in it but I need to get a new set of tyres on the van before we drive up and down hairpin hills in snow.

Our 200 euro stove decided to crack so that is going back and we will prob buy a slightly better one - it only had to last a few months to pay for itself (compared to the cost of bottled gas we would use on central heating) worth a gamble but I am not gambling twice so we hope to exchange it for a more robust model this evening. The opening hours of small shops here are extrodinary by UK standards more like the kind of hours Spar shops do; 9 - 2 ish then 4pm - 9 or 10 pm..even things like shoe shops and stove shops are open until 9 pm even estate agents stay open til 8pm - very handy but I would not like to work those hours. Sunday virtually everything is closed including big supermarkets and most shops are closed after 2 pm on Mondays too.

Next weeks task is to grapple with the transfer from UK Inland Revenue to the Spanish Hacienda re taxes eeek its a huge form and can take 9 months or more to sort out or so I hear...then there is importing the car and all that entails and oh dear my UK car tax runs out today and the insurance next month.. that needs sorted too - life does not half get in the way of living sometimes.....mucho papel y la mucha administración.

Wednesday 29 October 2008

courgette and ...

Weather is a bit cold at night now down to around 7 C but still 15C during the day during this cold snap and feeling a lot warmer than that in sun.
We grew courgettes in Cornwall but they were nowhere near the size of the one we have here..yes that is one plant; Jenny at one end Rowan at the other.

The hens are getting a bit too confident.


Wild mite is now gaining confidence and weight and re-named RRRRonnie.... Ronnie has a rolled R in Spain....we still need to work out if he / she is a boy or girl ..as the local tom seems to be moving in to our downstairs too and they are not fighting Ronnie might actually be not a Ronnie..time will tell.

Sunday 26 October 2008

praia Os Botes and club nautico


The boys much prefer to go barefoot these days, here they are walking down the road from Lisa's casa yesterday. Lisa's husband managed to spike my coffee with some clear innocent looking drink from Portugal, after two coffees I could hardly walk, after a third I could no longer work out what they were saying so we beat a hastyish retreat and I planted a wobbly hedge down the side of our garden and can't remember what else happened.

We headed out to Os Botes near Valdovino today...the sea was wonderful although a bit dangerous on the small beach at high tide....

so we went for a walk along the coast and played in the dunes.

Jose, Violeta and Alexandro arrived not long after we got home and not long before sunset but wanted to go kayaking at club nautico. By the time we got there it was getting very colourful and we had time for a half hour paddle. It was getting chilly by the time we got out the boys were just starting to feel the cold as we landed and Violetta was waiting on shore with Jenny and fed us with lots of chocolate. It is so easy to let time go by and not go out in the evenings but so worth doing. We are going to Jose and Vio's house for Samhain / hallowe'en. I think Vio said she was going to be a witch and make a witche's brew- they take the Celtic celebrations very seriously here as far as we can gather. We have a big marrow and some butternut squashes but no pumpkins or turnips as yet...ah well we will have lanterns of some sort. Weather is still very hot during the day - the thermometer says 18 but it feels like 26 or more in the sun..almost too hot for me but Jenny is loving it.

Friday 24 October 2008

wild mite and happenings in the hen house

Wild mite or wild thing or crunch the kitten has moved into our downstairs and shouts for food every few hours, he loves sitting under the lemon tree but doesn't venture very far from the house neither can we get close enough to touch him but hopefully we now have less mice than we might have had if indeed we ever had any.

He has a nest in the hay that must remind him a tad of early days in the henhouse at Rioforcadas ..talking of which it is all happening down in our hen house, snowbird was eventually allowed to share the hen house but not on the same roost as the other hens, she had to hide in the hay for a few days then was allowed onto a low roost and eventually onto a high one a few feet away from the others. Two days ago I felled a couple of eucalyptus trees and one landed close to the hen house, well actually it hit the fence attached a couple of feet from the hen house but anyway next morning snowbird is on her own on the roost previously occupied by the 4 red hens and the four red hens are on the roost previously occupied by snowbird - the latter being the roost furthest away fron the felled tree incident. When we let the hens out they run or sort of gallop towards our spinach plants aiming to devour the lot so we have to fend them off and herd them into the old cabbage patch. Lisa and her husband came in today for the first time - they live up the road and are ancient as the hills - they loved the hen run and were impressed by the veg patch but due to a slight misunderstanding (one amongst many) we now have to go visit them to learn how to cook chestnuts properly on saturday afternoon...I think that means boiling them in water and fennel leaves hmmmm. We managed to by a mandarin tree and an orange tree and an olive tree all for 25 euros at Moeche market yestrday so have started our little orchard. Weather is still hot during the day but getting cooler overnight now.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Callum's Birthday

Callum had a quiet 7th birthday but enjoyed it well enough especially all the phone calls in the evening and a video skype with Kate and Luke. Liz and Graham came round in the afternoon for cake but our camera batteries went flat so we don't have a lot of pictures.

Present opening started the day and you can see our new 200 euro cast iron stove in the background what a bargain.

The cake was a shield with crossed swords although that may not be obvious from the picture :-)

boingy boingy

Rowan asked to be photographed while bouncing, trouble is our camera has a delay betwen hitting the button and taking a picture but we did get a couple of fairly good ones.

Jenny gardening in the background and ...


... a pic of how the veg garden is growing here too.

Three girls in a chorus line.

And wild thing amongst the girls.

Thursday 16 October 2008

knights and courgettes

The boys found scissors and boxes from the recycling pile. Rowan cut his hair again and they both make armour.....


Rowan likes wheelbarrow rides.


Our courgettes seem to turn into marrows overnight.

We keep hearing snippets about how the financial world is falling apart on a global scale but it seems a distant reality as we are not really following any news programs out here, there is something comforting about having enough land to grow a fair proportion of our food. At the moment we have far too much hay considering the only animals we have are our 5 hens. The general approach seems to be to burn the exess but although fires are appealing to the boys, that does not seem too environmentally friendly so we are letting a lot of it rot down for now. I keep planting mushroom spores in a mix of well rotted pig poo and hay.... no mushroms yet though. Hopefully next year we will have more of the garden cultivated and less grassland to deal with. The fig cuttings I took from a very productive tree down at Vilarrube seem to have taken, as has a hazel, some fuschias, bay, escalonia, and other bits and bobs. Lots of interresting looking seeds have arrived from http://www.jungleseeds.co.uk so we need to get planting and hopefully we will have a small forest of banana plants along with an arbour covered in passion fruit, lots of agaves, aloes and opuntias, massess of beans, chillis, aubergines and others to numerous to mention. It is time to move some trees around - an apple tree planted a few years ago in a very gravelly drive is really struggling and the young wallnut trees along the border of our land have to move too.

misty morning and vilarrube again


We had a lovely misty morning start a few days ago and a visit to Praia Vilarrube later in the day.


there are a great network of warm pools left as the tide drops.


This is how clean the water is.


This is how busy the beach is 28 C and no one about.

the snowbird is now allowed into the hen house by the other hens; it has taken some time they still chase her sometimes and she has to roost on a seperate perch but that is a big improvement on being left out all night. Wildthing the little black kitten is out and about feeding well enough but not making contact yet.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Stanley's Cumpleanos


Stanley's pre-birthday bash also coincided with Marina's birthday as you will see when it comes to the blowing the candle out bit. We will realy miss our friends in Rioforcadas :-( Hopefully the ferry crossing to the UK yesterday was not too rough :-)

Friday 3 October 2008

Oops and a shower

Our progress towards fluency in Castillian is progressing slowly and in Galego is not progressing at all although our friend's neighbors were impressed recently with my two Galician words 'que chove' - what rain..not very useful as we have not really had any rain until this morning. They were equally impressed with my stringing together of a whole sentence about how long we have lived here and where we lived. Hablas Castillian perfecto they said. Spurred on by this I hastened to try and tell them I only know a few words really and my marido is also just starting to learn. They didn't flinch and talked about Galicia being the best place in the world to live, meanwhile a creeping doubt settled over me and I tried out marido and esposa tgether and they confirmed esposa was for mujeres and marido for padres ..with a glint in their eye mentioned being very liberal in Valdovino and wondered if my two boys were adopted. Oh dear me that was not the first time I have mentioned my marido, ah well I won't be making that mistake again.

We had a touch of damp yesterday and a 30 second shower at about 5 am this morning - the third time it has rained since 14 Aug. The statistics show there should be more rain out here thatn there is in Cornwall, given the consistent rain all Summer in Cornwall this year we are begining to doubt that is possible but we are awaiting some sort of monsoon to make up for all the sunshine.