In many traditional Portuguese houses the ground floor was often used for non-living purposes: keeping animals, storing foodstuffs, making wine etc. The house next to our rented one was full of their produce: onions hanging in plaits from wooden beams, potatoes supported in hessian sacks, wooden boxes full of eggs, buckets and buckets of dried beans; it was choc-a block with goodies and cobwebs.

This house, Casa Lima, used the ground floor for making wine. It contained huge wooden barrels, which we have spoken about before, and a massive granite tank for the wine. There were also a couple of smaller granite tanks and wooden storage boxes. Once the roof and ceiling above had been removed the question was what we wanted doing with it all.

Richard was adamant that we should have some kind of pond. I wasn’t too sure but the builders dismantled the large tank and took everything outside where it all stayed while we ummed and ahhed about exactly how it could be put together.

I’m delighted to say that Richard’s perseverance has been well rewarded. Somehow he managed to put his vision across to the builders and a hole was dug, concreted over and then the mammoth (a couple are 2 metres long) blocks were put in place.

Then one of the smaller tanks was placed next to it and a vertical block for the tap was added. You can see why we have called the area the ‘wasteland’.

This was mid April. And now? Ta dah! We have a tank full of water (and duckweed), and a water lily but no frogs, yet. We have a lovely brass tap, which we bought from a local market, for topping up with mountain water and a super ceramic feature a friend kindly made for us. We did have a solar powered fountain but it was useless! One of the smaller tanks has been filled with the gravel left over from the builders, and potting compost, and then planted with a range of cacti and succulents.

You can see how the weeds, I mean the wild flowers, have grown everywhere. What you can’t see is that the second smaller tank is in the field below and is connected to the big one at the far end. We can fill up the top tank and at the same time empty water out to fill up the bottom one which is then used for watering the trees etc in that field.

We’ll put some more pond plants in, they are very difficult to find round here, and then look forward to hearing the friendly croak of frogs of an evening. Ribbit, ribbit.