For those of you who thought we were a bit smug last post will be pleased to hear it has been a very wet month. We have had 365mm of rain, this is compared to 274mm for October 2023. That’s 24 rain days over the month. Fortunately, this area of Portugal has avoided the awful flash floods and storms which areas of Spain are still suffering from.

One of the annual events we look forward to here is Laurear a pevide, an event hosted by various cafés and restaurants in Ponte de Lima. It’s basically a snack and a glass of vinho verde, from one of the many local producers, which everyone charges 4 euros for. It’s a great way to try out new places and see if we want to return. This is the third year running, it’s usually only for the month of October but this year the promoters were sensible enough to extend it over two months, we have only been to one so far! The phrase means something like chilling out. We’re hoping November will be drier.

On the subject of vinho verde there are a number of quintas in the area which make the wine. (The Minho region is the birthplace of vinho verde which translates as young, rather than green, wine. It can in fact be white, red or rosé). There is an old one near us, Casa do Barreiro, and as they had a sign up recently saying we could buy directly from them, and the doors were left open, we took the opportunity one sunny day to go and visit and perhaps buy a bottle or two. We were probably there half an hour, walking around the (overgrown) grounds and admiring the architecture and views. We were greeted by a couple of hens and ducks. No-one appeared and we went away empty handed.

The main project for us this month has been planting new shrubs and trees. We have visited numerous garden centres in the area and have bought far too many things to name here. I am really hoping the summer rain will return next August so there isn’t too much watering to be done. The month has also seen us pruning, weeding and generally ‘doing stuff’ in the garden, that is when the rain stops.

The rain hasn’t stopped us too much from going on our Friday walks. Everywhere is putting on their autumn colours, and it’s certainly not cold.

One of the big changes we have seen in the area is at the turning into our road. Back in 2021 it looked like this (Google street view):

If you go back in time you’ll see that the trees were planted back in 2014. And earlier this year they were bigger again of course. Then one day in the spring we noticed some of the pine trees had brown patches on. In next to no time it seemed more and more of the trees were affected, some seemed to be dead. The same was beginning to happen to the pine trees across the road. One afternoon we came back home to see diggers in the field and over the next week or two all of the pine trees were removed leaving only the eucalyptus and the oaks. It was very sad to see but they had been attacked by pine bark beetles and there is no cure.

Today the area is home to Winnie who greets us on our daily walk with a neigh as she trots towards us. She used to be very shy, walking away when we got near, but she is always keen to say hello now (apples may well have played a part in this new found friendliness) and have her nose rubbed.

Oh and what about Betty you ask. Well, she has made a complete recovery and is back to her usual self (annoying the local dogs). She’ll outlive us all.