Jackie

Long, hot summer

August 29, 2015 Jackie Comments 4 comments

Of course we wanted to live in a country which had a proper summer but I didn’t expect to live in Death Valley. Oh, stop complaining I can hear you say as the rain hammers against your window, but I can assure you being outside when the temperatures go over 40C really isn’t pleasant. May, June and July were hot too, with no rain to speak of, and the average maximum temperature for this month has been 35C, the highest being 44C. Today it’s 40C. It’s eerily quiet when it’s that hot. The village dogs are all asleep, the tractors, strimmers and chainsaws are put away and the birds are hidden deep in the bushes. The gentle breeze feels like a hot hair drier and, bizarrely, there’s a sense of claustrophobia as the heat engulfs you. We appreciate every day the thick walls of the house, no need for air conditioning, just a cooling glass of grape juice and to collapse, arms akimbo, on the sofa.

This has, of course, affected the veg patch. The heat has just been too much for so many things. Nothing from the cauliflowers, broccoli or buttercup squash. A poor show (after a good start) from the first batch of beans, aubergines, tomatoes and butternut squash. But mustn’t grumble! We have had loads of cucumbers, enough courgettes, sweetcorn from the second batch just as nice as the first lot, melons, runner beans and, for star prize, the peppers have been amazing. Red, green or yellow, Spanish padròn or chillies – they’ve all been fab. Three cheers for the peppers! (Richard has made three lots of delicious harissa.)

Meanwhile the leeks will be okay for the autumn and, fingers crossed, the sprouts too so not the end of the world. My biggest disappointment though is the tomatoes and aubergines, I really would’ve thought they would cope with the heat. I have managed to make a few batches of ratatouille and tomato passata for the months to come but not the amount as from previous years. I have a sneaky feeling that the lack of mulch hasn’t helped. I resisted doing that this year because of the vole problem, they like nothing more than sneaking around the plants unseen (and then eating the roots) but once I’d realised they’d gone I didn’t add any. Live and learn.

On a more positive note the figs are going to be great again, we’ve already had many honey-flavoured fruit. We’ve also picked loads of blackberries and grapes, I think Richard is planning on making some country wine. Soon we’ll be opening the elderberry wine from last year that has been silently waiting under the stone stairs. The sloes have also been picked to make our favourite winter tipple.

Meanwhile I’m off to perfect my rain dance, it really isn’t good enough yet…

The colour of straw

June 30, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

Crunchy underfoot, alive with insects and pollen, the land is slowly but surely turning a lovely shade of straw. Pale and interesting, hot and dry. It seems almost novel to us after last year’s green and pleasant land, but with no rain and scorching temperatures it’s a different story this summer. Most of the wild flowers have disappeared but hardy souls linger on including this yellow thistle, called a Spanish oyster it seems, and the fragrant, golden sweet yarrow that borders all the country lanes around us.

Many of the meadows have been cut, leaving unruly hay bales, reminiscent of autumns from yesteryear in the UK. Only the other day an old boy and his donkey cart tottered by. Meanwhile, the veg patch is also sporting the colour of straw. The first of the plums is always the yellow ones, not such a bumper harvest this year alas but we have put them to good use.

The courgettes as always put on a golden display, such a nice way to be greeted in the morning. Peaches and plums have been bottled.

My sister gave me some seeds for climbing yellow courgettes, these are doing well, as are the round lemon flavoured cucumbers. We’ve also been eating one of Richard’s favourite crops, the oh so delicious sweetcorn. It’s always a success and this year I have planted a second crop which should be ready in late August or September.

The final word goes to our faithful labrador, who is blending in nicely with the colour scheme:

Berry nice

June 23, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

The heat is on, temperatures have soared well over 30 for many days (and over 40 for a couple!) making gardening a morning task only. But while the weeding remains chore number one collecting raspberries with the sun on your back is not. The so-called summer raspberries are coming to an end although I’m still getting a large handful most days. The birds also appreciate them, huge locusts like a nibble too and the hens go mad for the manky ones I throw them. Most of them are frozen, they still make excellent jam. We’ve had them with our porridge, Sunday pancakes and with yoghurt. My favourite though, just nudging out raspberry ripple, is clafoutis, a simple French recipe that I look forward to making each summer.

Luckily, we also have autumn raspberries and we’ll be having those in the not too distant future. Fairly fuss-free, reliable and spreading each year they are the perfect soft fruit to grow.

Our first flush of strawberries have come and gone although the later lot are tastier. And this year another good crop of gooseberries. We bought a small bush from a stall at a local monthly market quite a few years ago now. Only after harvesting the first lot did I do the research – there are dessert gooseberries and cooking gooseberries; the former sweeter and can be eaten from the bush, the latter more sour. Well, it seems we have the dessert ones which is just fine. I like making a sweet goosegog relish to go with our barbecued mackerel but this year most ended up as gooseberry and elderflower jam.

The redcurrants, after being fantastic last year, were disappointing but we still have the blackcurrants to come. I managed to propagate some baby bushes from last year’s pruning. So now we’re waiting for the big one: the plum harvest. Meanwhile I bottled some peaches from fruit growing over the wall (yes, I stole them from our neighbour’s tree) but that was How a Small Task turned into a Big Faff and is a story for another time…

The sun has got his hat on

May 19, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

The rain has decided to have a holiday and it’s been sun, sun, sun. This means mornings are spent watering the veg patch and evenings watering the garden. The well is still surprisingly full but with no rain forecast for the next ten days that’ll soon disappear.

I have finally discovered what has survived the relentless winter frosts. A week or two ago I would have said everything except the bougainvillea but even that now has new shoots. However, along with some of the lavender that is looking very sorry for itself, I fear we’re going to have to make some replacements. But overall I’m pleased that we didn’t really lose anything, even the lily in the pond has lots of leaves.

Frost-wise all survived in the veg patch too, even the runner beans that lost their first leaves are now climbing their poles. Another plant to survive the frosts are the lettuce. I bought a collection of them for one euro and they do very well. They are a fantastic cut-and-come-again plant, I can cut one every day and they’ll have grown back in no time.

But all is not well. One of the first years here I lost a number of brassicas but then boasted in this post from last year that I hadn’t lost any because I’d placed plastic collars around each one. Well, I did that again this year but alas I have already lost quite a few. One day the plants are all perky and the next one will look very droopy. Removing the collar you can see ants have made a nest under the plant although I don’t think it’s the ants themselves which are attacking the plant. There are moths that lay eggs around the base of the plant, which is what the collar is meant to prevent, but ants help them, like they do the aphids, because they eat their larvae, which in turn eat the plant. Something like that. I’ve tried to clear the stems of any bugs but they never look very good again. Very annoying.

The asparagus is enormous, and we have two beds of it. I wish I’d known how large they grow although in the intense summer heat they provide some welcome shelter. I have had to severely trim them all, it was impossible to walk past them.

Richard has been away and was due back yesterday but a cancelled flight means he’s back a day later. He has two jobs waiting for him: strimming and killing. The garden is becoming like the wild meadow from the previous post, sort of shabby chic with all the flowers, charmingly scruffy (actually a bit of a mess!)

The dogs will be pleased to see Richard but the roasties are making the most of the delay. Fat and lazy, they waddle around on huge legs, a far cry from their baby selves. There is one cock among them who has started a very pitiful crowing – he’ll be the first for the chop!

Finally, continuing with the floral theme, I have been busy doing inside jobs once it gets too hot outside. I have made some more soap with marigold flowers and, my favourite, some elderflower cordial. I’ve discovered another old house in the village with a large elder tree in the courtyard that catches the morning sun. How I’ve missed them both I don’t know. The flowers smell wonderful and the cordial is really the taste of summer. Oh, and I’ve made some strawberry ice cream too, we already have a bumper crop!

Time to sit in the garden with a glass of cordial topped up with fizzy water to enjoy the flowers (and ignore the weeds). Cheers!

The merry month of May

May 14, 2015 Jackie Comments 2 comments

It’s my favourite month of the year here. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too wet, not too dry. And the flowers, oh the flowers. Some of you will remember my lament a year ago when the old boy who has the olive grove at the end of our garden sprayed it with some horrid stuff. Well, it was a poor year for the olives and we haven’t seen him since and, remarkably, the flowers have made a wonderful recovery and thanks to equal measures of rain and sun have literally blossomed.

In fact since taking this photo I’ve had to go out and cut a swathe through it, the path had all but disappeared. I’m not sure the dogs, however, appreciate the pastoral beauty…

Holes, voles and poles

April 26, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

It’s raining. So much for spending all day in the garden, let’s hope the little couve galega plugs will be all right until later. It’s been a busy few weeks in the horta, however, and things are shooting up everywhere.

Holes have started appearing in both the garden and veg patch. Big holes and lots of little holes. First of all, I noticed very tiny holes at the base of all the broad bean flowers, every single one was affected but not a bug in sight. Hmm. Off to the computer to find the answer: bumble bees. Apparently, they’re too fat and hairy to get into the flowers for the nectar so they bite into the base and get it from there. Which means the ants and other creatures use the the holes as well and the flowers have less chance of being pollinated. These flowers are amongst the first to appear which is why a bee-line (hee hee) is made straight for them but it will be less of a problem once there are others to tempt them away. We do have plenty of pods now so no harm done really but certainly a much smaller crop than otherwise.

Other holes have been appearing in the ground. We thought it was mice first of all, we seem to have even more than usual scurrying around, and they love the straw in the potting shed. But mice don’t make holes in the ground. Off to the computer to find the answer: voles. Initially, I was relieved, voles won’t come inside the house and make themselves at home. But it seems that they are far more destructive than mice in the veg patch, devouring more things. Hmm. With the barn owls around the last thing we want to do is use poison so we set up loads of traps around the holes, covered with upturned plant pots. Nada. We have caught plenty of mice and shrews in the boiler room but not a single vole has been caught in the garden. Nature though has a way of sorting things out. We have spotted a large ladder snake plus, this morning, diving under the holes in the olive tree, a weasel. Both of these eat small mammals. Whether they are responsible for the bigger holes (pictured) we don’t know. And I’m not complaining that a cat has been coming in at night, they’ll put the voles off too. Not to mention the mongeese which we know lurk in the undergrowth.

In anticipation of runner beans, climbing courgettes, melons, cucumbers, aubergines and of course tomatoes the poles are going up in the beds. It looks like an assault course at the moment. They’re mainly eucalyptus poles so they smell nice as well as being straight and sturdy!

What are we eating now? The leeks are finished and purple sprouting broccoli just gone so only the onions at the mo, and the first of the broad beans. We still have potatoes from last year though (and the frozen garlic which turned out to be a great success) but that’s it. It’s the only time of the year when there is such a dearth of crops, no wonder it’s called the hungry gap. Meanwhile, I’m not alone while gardening, there’s often a couple of supporters:

The colour purple

March 22, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

From the veg patch we have the first of the purple sprouting broccoli joining the asparagus:

In the countryside the early purple orchids (orchis mascula) are out and, if you look in the dappled light along walkways, tiny dog-violets (viola riviniana) are hiding:

Win some, lose some

March 16, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

We have a friend who sometimes says on her Facebook page that she has lost a day. Well, for me I lost a whole month. I mean, where did February go? January seemed endless and yet here we are mid-March. The horta, however, has not weeded or pruned itself so I must have done something down there! Richard recently strimmed everywhere and it does look so much better, with lots of cleared, empty beds waiting to be filled.

But, as always in the gardening world, it’s win some, lose some. I dug up the horseradish recently. It has never done really well, and no fear of it spreading, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised to discover that the roots had gone rotten. It was just beginning to sprout but there was nothing edible. It seems to be one of the easiest plants to grow but, unlike most of the plants I shove in the ground, it wasn’t happy. There is a slight dip in the ground where it was planted and despite the good drainage perhaps it just got too much water. Ah well. I did manage to save a couple of small roots that looked okay and have put them elsewhere. We’ll see.

So on a more positive note the asparagus is shooting up, a mixture of great stocky stalks and thin lanky stems, all very tasty though. Plus, although I have always known that broccoli (calabrese) gives out extra shoots having had the main stalk cut, I hadn’t realised how long they do this for, and just how big the off-shoots become. We have been eating from plants put in the garden from the summer, a real cut-and-grow-again veg.

Meanwhile the temperatures are hitting the high 20s, during the day of course. But those lovely clear skies are still giving us frosts at night, and more than just ground frost. This has meant every evening all the seedlings have to be put away at night, not a small task now that most things have germinated and been potted on. We bought one set of plugs, some beans, and I chose to leave those out. Well, the outer leaves have been frost bitten, I’m just hoping they’ll be okay. Then of course every morning out everything comes again. There’s something very exciting about this time of the year though, all those little seedlings bursting through the soil. I look at a tiny purple sprouting broccoli and glance over at the four sown last year, over a metre tall and almost ready to eat, and am always amazed.

Oh and we have also bought some more ‘roasties’ and 4 more ducklings, but they’re another story…

Plant of the year award 2014

January 8, 2015 Jackie Comments 3 comments

Mr Jack Frost has been nipping at our noses for long enough. Pretty the mornings may be but the constant sub-zero temperatures are giving many of the plants a hard time. The bougainvillea, flowering not so long ago, has black, shrivelled leaves. The lavender tips are drooping. The cactus plants don’t seem to be the right colour any more. So enough, no more! (I’ve just glanced at the weather forecast, looks like he’ll be around for a tad longer).

The chickens seem nonplussed, giving us 3 or 4 eggs a day. Huddled together in their hut at night their feathers keep them snug, it’s the high temperatures they dislike. Topping up their feed and cracking open their water leaves my fingers numb. The other day I realised I’d left my wellies outside the front door all night, frozen feet in an instant!

There is always a silver lining. Cloudless days have also meant lunch outside, walks on the beach and gardening in the sunshine.

Which has got me thinking about the plant of the year award (I know many of you are waiting with baited breath 🙂 !) The garlic call out to be nominated. This year, or rather last year, I didn’t buy any new bulbs but planted the ones which were beginning to sprout from those pulled up early summer. I’d planted loads, some were hung up to dry and others (I must remember) were frozen. We’ll be having them for some time yet. So 78 of the 80 planted are well up and good candidates they certainly are but I’d already chosen leeks for 2012, (you can find out why here) and I didn’t want another member of the alium family.

The buttercup squash also wanted the award, we have three left from a good crop, doing well despite the wet weather 2014 threw at us. But as I was pruning the redcurrants, black currants and gooseberries (good with mackerel!) I was reminded of how well they all did over the summer. The raspberries, now either cut down or tied up depending if autumn or summer varieties, also did well. They have spread and given us extra beds for free. The strawberries were large and luscious. We still have bags of most of them in the freezer (I must remember) including blackberries. So the award goes to the soft fruit. You need a little patience but once established it’s only a touch of pruning and mulching to keep them going. And what is nicer than eating raspberries straight from the bush?

I think the sloes are also included in this category (I know blackthorn is a member of the plum family but it’s a shrub rather than a tree) so will toast the fruit with a glass of our pink sloe gin. Cheers!

Is it a bird, is it a plane..?

December 16, 2014 Jackie Comments 2 comments

It’s a tree, our plane tree! Two years ago we decided to buy a tree for the courtyard. We wanted one that was deciduous so that the winter sun would fall on the other plants, and we wanted one that we would shelter us from the summer sun. It was to be, without doubt, a long term plan. We plumped for a plane tree. We’d seen many around and noticed that they seemed happy to be planted in pavements or cobbled squares, and that their roots didn’t didn’t create bumps on the surface. Well, if any of you are thinking about getting a tree and have little patience this is the tree for you – it’s grown amazingly!

A year ago, with our RHS guide in hand, we pruned the lower branches. Not all the branch mind, only half, the idea being that young trees need as much leaf coverage as possible to help them grow.

To be honest it became a bit of a pain. The branches grew so long and low (despite the pruning) that this year walking from the kitchen to the barbeque area has meant walking off the raised courtyard bit and onto the gravel. There wasn’t room to sit underneath it. It wasn’t so much a tree but a kind of Jack in the Beanstalk reaching every way which.

However, we are pleased to see birds in it and witnessing the new bright green leaves forming so close up is always a treat. Come winter when the leaves turn orange and fall off little poms poms are revealed.

Now we are at peace. The lower branches have been cut off completely and we know that next year we will have a proper, grown up tree in the courtyard – in just 3 years!

the story of Casa Azul

and a new life in deepest Portugal

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Author: Jackie