the story of Casa Azul

Tiled out

June 9, 2010 richard Comments 0 Comment

First up another video. (also see links right – Pages on ‘Casa Azul’, then videos). It was taken over three weeks ago so I am a bit tardy putting it up but I thought ‘what the hell’. Also, I’ve noticed the place looks a lot different now, so I’m going to have to get back down there to make another one – which will feature fully tiled rooms and an almost complete bathroom! Can you contain your excitement? As a taster here is the freshly tiled living room and tiled bedroom.

notice cleared area out front — notice newly cleared area in front of house

I am now counting the days (weeks??) until I get sick of courgettes as our four plants are going crazy and threatening to take over the veg patch. I thought bamboo was the fastest growing plant – this has been superseded by our triffids. Every time I turn my back a new green cigar has appeared and is ready for plucking.

Have you also checked out the ‘Recipe’ page? Jackie has put up a recipe for elderflower cordial which is great. We are also waiting for a batch of elderflower champagne to mature – hopefully the bottles won’t explode which is apparently a common occurrence. The elderflowers are almost finished but I expect there are plenty of them in UK at the moment. Although our cherries have almost all been taken by the birds, curiously there are two trees on an empty patch of land next door which are laden with the things. We’ve already had a delicious cherry clafouti (note to Jackie: get the recipe up on the blog) and have also experimented in making a kirsch which should be ready in a month or two. Meanwhile, our entire redcurrant crop was eaten in five minutes.

As we have about a dozen raspberries, methinks they will go the same way. Just wait till next year!

Tempo de churrasco

June 8, 2010 Jackie Comments 2 comments

The first of the courgettes and the last of the borage flowers:

Our daily veg

June 3, 2010 Jackie Comments 2 comments

Every day when we arrive there are new things to see, and eat! The courgettes will be on the bbq this weekend, and suddenly there are loads of peas – we have already eaten some straight from the pods and they are as sweet as they are bright green.

Flowers & showers

May 30, 2010 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

We’re been having the tastiest and most colourful salads – the nasturtium flowers have a wonderful peppery taste and the borage flowers are one of the few natural blue things we eat. Meanwhile the sprinkler does its stuff.

Plus: rhubarb goes in and the spuds and carrots come out.

Finally, some creepy crawlies:

insects — cabbage white and swallowtail butterflies / striped shield bug and longhorn beetle

Growin’ stuff

May 26, 2010 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

So a description of all the beds (for those who are interested)! There are nine, six running west-east and three long ones running north-south. Are you ready…

garden_may — There are lettuces, herbs, nasturtiums and marigolds dotted about too

Bed #1 has the legumes: dwarf broad beans (and the black aphids), dwarf purple french beans and dwarf peas (from Luis). All have flowers and some pods. Climbing up poles: runner beans and peas, and up the teepee: barlotti beans. Only the peas have no flowers.
Bed #2 is for the solanaceae: 4 cherry toms with lots of flowers, 8 yellow ones (golden sunrise) and 4 stripy ones (tigerella), these all need to be staked soon. Plus various peppers: red, chilli and very chilli, these are all small and seem to be growing very slowly. Finally, a couple of aubergine plants under a mini cloche which are now growing but not that fast…
Bed #3 is for the potatoes. We’re already eating the ‘Jersey Royals’ which I’m very pleased with, averaging about 600g per plant. The supermarket ones (the ones I bought from the supermarket and chitted on the windowsill) are ready to be pulled up and very soon the 16 plants that Luis gave us. Something, however, has eaten all the flower heads…
Bed #4 has 8 perpetual spinach which seem to double in size every morning, plus a rather weedy selection of sweet corn which I now wish I hadn’t bothered with having discovered that you only get one cob per plant!
Bed #5 is the winter brassicas: brussels sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli all doing well, plus the central row of turnips (although having thinned those recently there’s definitely something eating those).
Bed #6 is for the roots and onions. The first sowing of these have worked well and we’ve been enjoying the (carrot fly free) carrots but subsequent sowings haven’t worked. The red onions I sowed in a seed tray have at last worked and these are all in the bed now, fingers crossed. The four strawberries have suffered a bit recently (I think the fruits got sunburnt!) but have given us some delicious strawbs already.
Bed #7 is the curcubits. Squash, courgettes and cucumbers are growing well, have some melons ready to plant out but not sure where to put those yet, perhaps in the potato bed.
Bed #8 has 54 leeks (!) and 6 asparagus in a raised bed, all fine so far. The ferns are all a metre tall.
Bed #9 has cabbage, 6 more asparagus and loads of globe artichokes, again all doing well 🙂
In front, in various pots, are the herbs, some flowers, rhubarb, celery and I can’t remember what else. Our latest purchase was a hose and sprinkler which comes with a timer. It covers the whole area (although patches get left out if it’s too windy) and it’s just great, come 6 o’clock and on it comes, fantastic!

The end is in sight

May 21, 2010 richard Comments 4 comments

Well maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but over the last week there have been visible changes to the house. In addition to plastering all the interior walls the men are finishing off the exterior and all the floors have been cemented ready for tiling. Also the units in the bathroom and kitchen are being made and they are waterproofing the flat roof. And they are finally getting rid of the builder’s rubble lying outside the house. All this is being done by an expanded workforce of up to 7 men rather than the usual 2 who have done the majority of the work.

In addition we have also had the carpenter round who will do all the interior doors and the blacksmith who will be making the spiral staircase and the grills on the upstairs windows. It seems that our continued earbashing of the builder is finally paying dividends!

lounge with cemented floor and plastered walls and ceiling

Rubble disappearing — builder's rubble is finally disappearing and the surrounds to the windows are finished

Meanwhile the veggie patch is benefiting from a week of all out sun. We’ve had some carrots and I was amazed at how much tastier they were to bought ones. The salad leaves continue to sprout and Jackie even managed to leave a few strawberries for me. The beans and peas are coming through as well.

Compare the picture below to the one from the post on 21st April.

Given that there is so much action on the house at the moment (adding to the noise is a lot of pneumatic drilling to get rid of a few pesky big rocks outside the French windows) it is surprising that a couple of Black Redstarts have built a nest in the old letter box. Well actually they built the nest a few weeks ago. Well now the eggs have hatched and there are 4 fluffy chicks inside. We were a bit worried that all the noise would disturb them but they seem to have thrived. Here’s two of them waiting to be fed.

I think I mentioned a while ago that two wrens were building a nest on the balcony at our rented house. I think I neglected to mention that our adopted cats managed to grab and eat one, right in our living room :-(. However, two more must have moved in or the widow(er) found a new partner as the new couple have also managed to rear four chicks and these have recently been seen flying in and out of their tiny nest.

We’ve got video footage of the redstarts which you can see on the video page.

A year ago today

May 12, 2010 Jackie Comments 3 comments

As our intro says we found Casa Azul one wet Monday morning in May 2009. That was May 11. But despite the pouring rain there was something about the place we both liked instantly. Returning later on in the afternoon, and in the sun, we decided to go for it. A year later and identical weather. I arrived this morning with a brolly and returned in the afternoon with a camera. So some pics from that first day to this one.

A brand new bathroom with loads of light

outside_kitchen — The kitchen entrance onto the patio

living_room — The living room was once a windowless barn for the animals, and then a wine-making cellar

entrance2 — After the building work started and now

And as building work started January 11 that’s exactly four months too – we really hope to be in before July 11. The builder seems to think that’s possible, fingers crossed.

Amazing asparagus

May 10, 2010 Jackie Comments 1 comment

From super spuds to amazing asparagus! The asparagus crowns were put in the ground a week ago. Yesterday was the first lovely day after lots of rain so it was time to check up on how things were going. Amazingly, there were loads of asparagus spears, some 15cm tall! I somehow thought they’d stay dormant until next year but they’re up and thrusting (as it were) already. Now we just have to wait until 2012…

Meanwhile there are fewer Jersey Royals to be eaten. Not because my sister sent loads to me but because the island has had the worst drought in 34 years, so all the more reason to savour ours.

The ugly bug ball

May 7, 2010 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

One of the nice things about being a gardener is that you’re happy when it rains! Well, kind of… Meanwhile I’d hate anyone to get the impression that all’s growing splendidly in the garden. There are certainly some problems, but not what I’d naturally expected. Aphids, yes of course. They are stuffing themselves silly on the dwarf broad beans and, despite the ants, keep multiplying – where are the ladybirds? When I was at Luis’ the other day I saw his crop was infested too. Oh yes, he says, I’m going to spray those soon and then I’ll do yours. Er, no thanks Luis – we’re trying to be organic! The plants seem to be growing ok and there are certainly plenty of flowers so fingers crossed. A new bug for me is the flea beetle. As the name implies it’s a beetle that leaps into the air when disturbed. The brassicas are covered in their tell-tale little holes, they love ’em. My organic gardening book says you can avoid these by planting earlier or later (which of course isn’t what the seed packet says). Kale and cabbages are growing everywhere in the fields nearby so I must have look and see if they are infected too. If not I suspect they’re being sprayed… however, the plants are growing valiantly and I’m hoping that once the flea beetle season has gone there’s enough leaves for the plants to survive!

pests1 — Black aphids... and flea beetle

There are pretty patterns appearing on the leaves of other broad beans and the peas…

Here is a picture of a parsnip, no problem there. But where are the others? I sowed three rows and only one worked! Mice? Bad luck?! But most disappointingly is that I have just discovered that our quince tree is suffering from quince leaf blight. It was looking very sorry for itself last year, hidden under giant bramble branches and triffed-like vines, but after rescuing it we were rewarded with loads of lovely flowers. Alas, having done some research, the reason the fruits last year were a bit strange was because it had blight then. The website I found tells me this: As with nearly all fungal infections, good hygiene works wonders. Rake up and burn the leaves and cut out any infected shoots and burn those also (never compost infected matter). Spray your quince tree with a copper based fungicide immediately and then again in spring just as the leaves open. But all the leaves, which are now open, seem to be suffering and all the ones fallen from last year have gone in the leaf mould cage – ready to be put on the beds to improve their texture in the autumn! Suppose I better find out what copper based fungicide is in Portuguese.

pests3 — The lonesome parsnip... and the dreaded blight

Good news is that, for some strange reason, there have been no slugs or snails on the beds although I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. Time to console myself with some more delicious strawberries. Oh, and did I say it was raining?

From Jersey to Portugal

May 3, 2010 Jackie Comments 1 comment

This morning I made a list of things to do in the garden which was basically to decide where the rhubarb, melons, asparagus and leeks were going to go and prepare / make some beds for these. My dad had written that he’d posted the asparagus on Friday from Jersey and although it was only Monday I decided to go for that first as it seemed the most work and despite the sunshine it felt quite cool so perfect working weather. My first choice of position had to be abandoned – the sunny days have made our clayish soil rock hard already so there was no way I could start another bed. The only bed available was earmarked for the leeks but it was weed free and workable so I set about making an asparagus raised bed. The edging bricks are rather ugly but I’m planning to put some herbs and flowers in their holes. I’d just put in the manure and taken a photo when blow me down the postie pulled up with a large bag of asparagus crowns! I covered the manure, plonked the spiderlike plants on top and covered them with soil and lots of water. The compost they were in was still slightly damp so I’m hoping they’ll be fine, will let you know in two years’ time!

Meanwhile I was getting a bit concerned about the Jersey Royals. The potato plants that Luis had given us were now twice as tall and covered in flowers even though they’d been planted weeks later. After some googling last night I discovered that flowers aren’t always present, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any tatties down there. It also seemed that if you leave the Royals in the ground too long they start to lose their waxiness and become floury. So with some trepidation, and excitement, I rummaged under one of the plants that had looked rather sorry for itself last week (although it was now looking much better with loads of new leaves) and found a potato – a perfect looking good sized potato. So I pulled enough out to have for lunch and picked some mint too:

To be honest I wasn’t sure how they’d taste. They hadn’t had the seaweed mulch they get in Jersey, and other websites I’d been on said they’d failed. Well, I’m happy to say that with some butter and mint they were lovely, perhaps not as fantastic as the ones I’ve had in Jersey but delicious never the less and well worth the effort. Thank you, sis! And sorry, Richard (again!) For those wondering why I’m not sharing these first harvests with Richard – he’s back home and I’m sure enjoying some Manx kippers. Back to the garden…