The countryside – the story of Casa Azul

April, come she will

April 30, 2022 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

April brings asparagus to the veg patch, nightingales to the tree tops and colour to the countryside. And yes the cuckoo, although not really my favourite bird. Actually, I was beginning to fret about the nightingales. They always come by the first week of April, usually by the 6th. So when that day came and went without a tweet I hoped nothing was amiss somehow. It wasn’t until the 10th that we heard one off in the meadows somewhere one evening but nothing close by. However, there are a couple down in the valley now, again a first. So although they are not singing when I open the chickens in the morning or put them away at night their song in the valley is just marvellous and makes the dog walk even more enjoyable.

The garden is not without song, that’s for sure. It seems even noisier than normal, mainly the blackbirds, robins, chaffinches and blackcaps in the morning. Not having seen anything of the wrens which had made their nest outside the top door we mistakenly thought they had gone elsewhere until we realised that they had just been hunkering down on eggs. We were really looking forward to seeing the little ones fledge but they went one morning while walking Betty.

The asparagus deserves some kind of medal, I have to admit to not taking such great care over their bed but despite the neglect the shoots are coming through thick and fast. Richard had a go barbecuing some and they were delicious.

The earlier orchids are on their way out, and are being replaced by bee orchids, and woodcocks…

mirror orchids and epipactis lusitanica…

and plenty of others. So small and yet so charming.

The garden has appreciated the wet and dry spells and is also a riot of colour:

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Which reminds me the purple leaves of ornamental plum in the background here makes a lovely blue dye so must get the dye pots out again.

In the courtyard it not only looks nice but smells nice. In fact late afternoon you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into the ground floor of a department store so strong is the perfume from the orange blossom and jasmine.

We always say May is the nicest month for the countryside so we’re really looking forward to seeing nature at its best.

Fab Feb

February 28, 2022 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

There is a goldfinch singing in the willow tree; we can’t see it too well, the unfurling leaves of the quince are in the way. But along with the robin, serin, greenfinch, blackbird (nightingale, but not until April), chaffinch, ring-necked dove, great tit, wren, blackcap, golden oriole and thrush (and perhaps others) it’s one of the birds which we can now identify from their song. Of course there’s also the laughing of the green woodpecker and the drumming of the great spotted woodpecker. No doubt, along with being territorial, the goldfinch is singing because it’s another lovely February day. Like January it’s been a dry month so we really can’t complain that there’s a week of rain forecast.

We have a wren building a nest in the corner of the upstairs alcove. I set up the camera to try and capture its antics on film but it flies in and out so quickly there is only a blur. Some night time footage is clearer.

Unfortunately the nest has attracted the attention of the sparrows and these have been filmed on top of it and peering in, probably thinking of squatting. We know male wrens make a variety of nests before the female chooses which one she prefers but as they have now been lining the inside with some Jussi hair we felt confident it was going to be the des res. We haven’t seen them for a few days though, either the female is in there brooding or they got fed up with the bothersome neighbours. Alas Betty knocked the camera off the bin it was precariously standing on so until that’s fixed we have to keep a look out.

I still sometimes mistakenly call greenfinches, goldfinches. Indeed in the sun they are the most wonderful yellow colour. This little one knocked itself out on the window but recovered soon enough to fly off. After the sparrows we definitely have more greenfinches in the garden than other birds. They fight constantly over the bird feeder.

Our knowledge of birds is expanding beyond those found in the garden. Recent walks along marshlands means we are now able to identify the common sandpiper, turnstone, the different kinds of egrets and that these are black headed gulls, the one on the left is in summer plumage:

We are familiar with flamingoes from our time in Tunisia but these were a delight to see especially as they were with spoonbills (but not in this photo), a first for us:

We also know that this is a leucistic greylag goose (a reduction in melanin and other colour pigments making it patchy):

So from feathers to fungus, these have been spotted on recent walks. On the left is yellow brain fungus, and on the right are earthstars:

Not entirely sure what these are called but they look great:

Otherwise it’s been a fairly quiet month. Jussi seems sort of fine despite her ever growing lumps, I think we’ll only worry once she’s off her food. She certainly hasn’t lost her appetite.

Betty is definitely fine although she seems to spend a lot more time snoozing.

The hens remain quite chirpy. This will be the first year Skittle has only four wives, and Hattie really is getting on a bit now, so we hope that’s going to be okay as we’re rather reluctant to get more. We get two or three eggs a day which is great for us.

Alongside the website we continue to knit and make beer. Let’s see what March has in store.

That was the year that was

December 31, 2021 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

So another month goes by, and another year. We finished last December’s blog with So good riddance indeed to a horrid 12 months. 2021 must surely be a brighter, less turbulent year. Not really. A year of more lock downs, a total lack of movement as regards our new house, and a general feeling that it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. We are back in a ‘state of calamity’ and there are yet more restrictions on eating inside restaurants.

The weather in 2021 has been good overall. Once the summer got going it was cooler for us than normal, lower temperatures meant there were no major fire incidences which is always positive, and the autumn and winter (so far) have been bright and sunny. And it has meant we have been able to eat outside a lot too, not only in the our courtyard or garden but also when we’ve gone to restaurants, nearly all the meals we’ve had have been al fresco. This is certainly something that has kept us going.

Today was another marvellous day for walking, something else we have been doing even more of. The countryside around us is lovely, with loads of documented walking tracks for us to explore. And we have yet to meet a single person on any of the trails we have taken.

We take Betty for a long walk every morning still, Jussi a much shorter one. She is doing fabulously considering she had a major operation in January, in fact it is Betty who is more reluctant to get off the sofa in the morning let alone give us her customary bark to get us up.

Skittle is now three and a half and continues to be a more reliable alarm clock. Sadly, we said goodbye to two of the hens, the two youngest which is annoying, but the others seem fine. We have just four now. Hatty, the biggest one in the foreground will be five next spring, but we still get a few eggs every day which is all we need. Having said that today we passed a farm selling free range duck eggs (the ducks were out and about with turkeys, hens, guinea fowl, geese and goats) and we bought a dozen for €2.50. We will start the New Year with those poached on homemade muffins and smoked salmon.

Richard dispatched all of the recent batch of roasties. We were a bit disappointed there too: having decided they were big enough not to be taken by a sparrowhawk and could be let out to enjoy the grass, a mongoose got one of them and we found its headless body in the corner of the field. I hate not being able to let them out so some serious work on the fencing is job number one for January. They seemed fairly happy together in the sun in the safety of the cage though. And we must do some more bird watching, January is such a great time to spot things. This redwing and great spotted woodpecker were on our old walnut tree earlier in the month.

We’ve had a bit of rain recently, not unwelcomed. One particularly sunny / rainy afternoon we saw the most amazing rainbow, the whole arc was visible. glowing against the grey sky .

Perhaps a sign of good fortune for the year ahead, we all need it. So wishing all our readers the very best for the New Year and 2022. Let’s hope it’s a good one this time.

Second spring

September 30, 2021 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

We’ve said this before about September: a few days of autumn rain and everything starts to turn green again, there’s bird song (where do the robins go over the summer?!) welcoming us in the morning and on the dog walks, and wild flowers too. It really does feel springlike.

You may remember the awfully cold January and I thought the plumbago had died. However, it’s made a full recovery and is providing some lovely autumn colour in the courtyard:

I mentioned the red / yellow peppers in the previous post. They have all been picked now, many roasted and marinated in oil for some delicious toasty toppings. The chillies have also been picked, some of those dried and others turned into chilli jam. And we’ve had the last of the pimentos padrón, always a winner whenever we’ve grown those.

Those were all the last of the harvest, the raised beds have now been prepared for the winter: the plants pulled up and compost and chicken straw piled on top. There’s a few parsley plants here and there but that’s it for the crops this year.

Having said that the walnuts are almost ready, there are more figs to be picked and the prickly pears have been great so perhaps more jelly from them this year.

Meanwhile we have been out enjoying the autumn sunshine. We’ve had a few trips to the beach for some seafood and we decided to pop over to Extremadura in Spain for a couple of nights with the dogs. This was our only holiday away this year.

The journey was fine but Jussi didn’t settle at night for some reason (all the excitement?!) and Betty decided to bark her way along the walks (all the excitement?!) frightening any wildlife we were hoping to spot. We did, however, manage to see some amazing birds though and back home recently spotted some stags and deer up on the hills.

Portugal has so far this year recorded its lowest number of wildfires since 2011, indicative of the weather more than any success with forest management. We had a long weekend of very high temperatures, those that I always complain about, but otherwise it’s been quite pleasant over the summer months. The morning mists have been with us for a while now, and the waterproofs weren’t actually put away, but fingers crossed for a few more spring weeks ahead.

Just around the corner…

June 21, 2021 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

It may be the longest day of the year but it’s also the shortest summer. We have gone from spring to autumn. It’s grey, wet and a bit miz. We are wearing jumpers. The idea that ‘the nights are drawing in’ seems a tad depressing. There have been some bright days but the barbie is covered up again. Unsurprisingly, we have been watching the footie: all those games in the sunshine! With cooling water breaks! Anyway, the resident meteorologist assures me, yet again, that summer is around the corner…

So let’s go outside and see what’s there. The strawberry pot, planted up in February, is doing well. We just have to move it out of Jussi’s way before she gobbles this lot up. The raspberries have come and gone (the blackbirds won) as have the gooseberries (having been turned into 2 clafoutis, 2 large bottled jars for winter pud and 4 pots of jam).

The plums, at least the yellow ones, are going to give us a bumper harvest. And the two linden trees were amazing with their flowers this year. Picking those for herbal teas was a sense sensation: the sweet, honey-like smell was quite overpowering, and the bees overhead buzzed incessantly. I managed to get, between downpours, a good few baskets for drying.

We have a pomegranate tree, or rather bush. It looks stunning now with its bright scarlet red flowers; we only get one or two fruit, they just drop off before maturing, but it looks lovely.

In the veg patch the runner beans are doing well, we have 6 plants and manage to get plenty for a meal every day. The aubergines, melons and peppers have shot up in the wet weather so hoping for a good year for those. The courgettes are also delivering the goods now: courgette fritters, stuffed courgette, courgette pasta… when they work they are fabulous. The salad toms, the ones that escaped the blight, have fruit although those are still green. We really need some heat and sunshine to get them going.

Meanwhile the rewilding of the garden has taken a different turn. It did look lovely last year but it’s a tad scruffier now with loads of grasses and brambles coming though.

It’s all great for the wildlife though. We mentioned in the last post that the hunting ban meant seeing more animals, and we continue to see deer on many of the dog walks. Richard came across a dead one unfortunately but he took the head and he now has a rather impressive skull to add to his collection. It belongs (belonged?) to a roe deer. The moth is a passenger moth apparently.

Meanwhile we can hear baby barn owls, always very pleasing, late at night. We were also excited that, after 10 years, we had an apricot harvest. Well, we got three! The joy of small things.

Sing a song

April 22, 2021 richard Comments 0 Comment

We are right into spring now. On my morning walks the countryside is a riot of green. The olive green is with us all year as is the green of the pine trees but now they have been joined by the green of a wide variety of oaks including holm, kermes and the ubiquitous Portuguese oak as well as the slightly different shades of the hawthorn and strawberry trees. As well as taking in the greenness of the trees we also have our eyes combing the ground as it’s also the orchid season and we always see at least a dozen species. I must admit to being a bit of a wild flower nerd as well and have compiled a list of almost 200 species of wild flowers found in these parts.

But this year I’ve also been trying to attune my ears. A couple of years ago I couldn’t tell the difference between the song of the Robin and the Blackbird so I made a concerted attempt to identify the common birds we get around here by their calls and songs. The tea-cher, tea-cher of the Great Tit and the calls of the Wood Pigeon and Cuckoo are obvious but there were many birds I could hear on my daily dog walk and without seeing them I had no idea who was making the sound. I therefore made a real effort to remember and if possible record the songs I was hearing and then check them on various websites when I got home. Fortunately there seems to be a progression from winter through to spring. Winter is pretty quiet on the whole but we get a few thrushes who are winter visitors to mid Portugal and they are the only ones singing, certainly in February and luckily they have a distinctive and clear song.

Thrush singing

The Robin is famous for singing all year round but on my walks in March I was hearing loads of them and they are not shy so you can often see them singing as well which helps. Later, another group of birds started up. After concentrating on this song, I identified it as the Chaffinch. I think of its distinctive call as reminding me of water tumbling over rocks rising to a crescendo. We don’t get many in the garden but this at least told me there were plenty in the countryside.

A week or two later I started hearing another very distinctive song. This turned out to be the Wren. It is supposed to be the most common bird in the UK. A bit surprising as you don’t see many but its song is so distinctive, once you hear it, you know it’s the little bird with the strong voice.

Wren in its nest in our courtyard (2018)

Another distinctive call we hear is the Green Woodpecker. Almost never seen but its call can be heard from distance with its distinctive laugh, or yaffle. I remember Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss (UK TV series from the 70s) and remembered it was a woodpecker.

Jackie’s favourite is next. They arrive within a few days of 1 April every year and are of course distinctive for singing at night – the Nightingale. This year when I take the dogs out last thing at night, I can often hear three of them. Although they often sing from the top of a tree during the day, if you get anywhere near, they disappear so are also rarely seen (by us at least). Also at night, I nearly always hear the Barn Owl with its distinctive screeech. Again rarely seen (as they are out at night!) but I was lucky enough to see one at close quarters a few years ago perched on a wall right above me. I know they live in the abandoned house next door so hopefully we will hear the higher pitched screech of some youngsters sometime soon. We also hear the distinctive Twit, twooh of the Tawny Owl but these always seem to be quite far away.

rare spotting of a Nightingale in our garden

Lately there is one songster that has been loudest of all on my daily walk but I never see him. He repeats his call which is very distinctive. Jackie thinks they are singing, “I don’t want to have lunch with Ed Meeeel iband”. Strange that we don’t see them in the countryside as they are highly visible in the garden – the Blackcap.

Every year we get Blue Tits nesting in our nest box and I know we have already got some eggs this year, however, I have never identified their song. Listening to recordings it just seems like a high pitched tweet but I’ll keep trying. Lastly but not least, the one bird we always hear in the garden rather than on our walks is the Blackbird. They are around all year but have only just started to sing. No doubt they will already be building nests in the garden. And after all my research, I think I can finally distinguish it from the robin.

If you want to check out the calls and songs there are plenty of websites out there but I have found the Britishbirdsongs website and the rspb to be very useful.

A month of two halves

February 28, 2021 Jackie Comments 4 comments

It rained this month. Goodness, did it rain. Our dog walks were turned into river crossings and we were always hoping our waterproofs would be dry enough for the next one. To add to the slight feeling of gloom constant rain brings (we felt like characters in T C Boyle’s novel A Friend of the Earth) Portugal was making the headlines for all the wrong reasons: The Worst in the World label felt very grim. We discovered one of neighbours spent 12 days in intensive care having caught Covid (she’s on the mend), the boiler man had caught it and a local wood man too…

The garden, having had such a cold January, has not been looking it’s best. There have been casualties. The geraniums are no more. Plus the plumbago, which normally gets frost bite, has gone completely black and all the plants in pots wondered why I hadn’t put them away this year.

Then while Jussi was making a great recovery, hurrah, Betty went and got a hole in her side (chasing something through a hedge we think) so yet more vet’s fees! (You’ll see she’s wearing her plastic hoodie in the top photo).

But all bad things come to an end. First of all the incessant rain has stopped, temperatures have risen and we’re having lunch outside again. It’s incredible how the sunshine lifts our spirits. This has meant getting the gardening gloves on. The plane tree has had its annual snip:

I never really like doing it, not that the task is difficult, it’s just that it always looks so sad afterwards. It’s incredible to think that the new branches grow more than 2m in a year, and there will be birds nesting in it again.

We have been to the garden centre and bought some flowers and strawberries to cheer the courtyard up. The hens have been moved yet again to a new field.

And the end of the garden looks just marvellous again:

I’m particularly pleased that the ornamental plum seems to have made a full recovery, it really was looking a bit sad towards the end of the summer. Not only is the blossom so cheerful but the leaves make such lovely blue and green dyes for my yarn; I knitted a jumper with all the different coloured yarns I have dyed over the last few years:

But, along with the sunshine, we have had some good news: Richard has at long last got The Letter stating that he has been accepted for Portuguese citizenship. We went to the Council office to get his card but were shooed away and told it was non-urgent, we’re hoping we can get that done in March, just two years after he applied!

Plus, drum roll, we also got The Letter from the Ponte de Lima council saying that our plans for the house have also been approved, almost a year of waiting there! We have sent these to a builder we met last year and now we are hoping we can afford the work that’s needed to be done. (Rather ironically the Penela council had a meeting yesterday in the village to discuss the naming of the streets, it’s been infuriating not having either house number or street name. They’ve been promising to do something about that for at least a decade).

So small steps forward. It doesn’t look like normal life will return here until after Easter, but as soon as the restaurants are open we hope to celebrate the light at the end of the Covid tunnel and getting the moving up north back on track.

Meanwhile we are enjoying the countryside in the spring sunshine. The wild flowers and orchids are starting to come out, the birds are singing and the mornings are lighter.

Rewilding

June 30, 2020 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

The countryside, very much like our garden, is unkempt. This year many of the hedges and meadows have been left to grow and flourish, wildflowers abound and there is an explosion of colour (deep yellow yarrow, lavender-blue chicory and pale pink mallows galore) and overgrown hedgerows. Our garden too has turned into some kind of wild nature reserve, places are impassable as the flowers battle with the grasses. The reason for this rewilding is not the same for both places. In the countryside the folk have definitely stayed at home; fields that normally would have been cut back by now have been abandoned to nature so that strange new wildflowers we have never seen before have emerged and we have to duck under bushes on our dog walks. This is all simply because the local Portuguese have taken the strict observance of mask wearing and social distancing to heart, and they have been nervous to venture too far from their homes. No surprise really as most of them are on their last legs.

We however, have other reasons. One is that the bother of strimming and ‘keeping on top of it all’ has become increasingly challenging. The second is that we want to have as much wildlife as possible in the garden and leaving areas untouched seems the way forward. The idea is to let nature take care of itself. We are alarmed by the shortage of bugs, and therefore bats and birds, and are doing our bit to help out. We have had a renewed interest in the flora and fauna of Casa Azul and are delighted we have a couple of greenfinches nesting in the plane tree in the courtyard now.

One benefit has been I don’t need to stroll around the neighbouring fields to find the plants I need for dyeing, they are all in our garden now!

It looks charming in a sort of run down cottage garden kind of way. No idea how it will all look over the next few weeks. Meanwhile in the veg patch good and bad news. A real disaster with my Sicilian broccoli and cauliflower which was a bit depressing considering how much time and effort I put into those, the cucumber plugs I bought have turned into water melons (don’t ask) and all the flowers of one set of toms, also bought as plugs, have all simply died. Anyway, on a happier note we have green beans, or rather stripey red beans galore, and the bush toms are well on their way…

plus loads of brightly coloured courgettes:

Richard was pleased that the chicken lady at the local market had returned so we have another batch of ‘roasties’ enjoying the sun. Skittle and co are fine as are the dogs. So all’s well here and hope it is with your and yours. Stay safe.

Sow and sew

April 30, 2020 Jackie Comments 2 comments

For Christmas I treated myself to a new cookery book: Made in Sicily by Giorgio Locatelli. With over 400 pages it’s a wonderful recipe book as well as a travel guide, full of information about the island, its people and its food. And with only 12 recipes for meat it’s packed full of scrumptious vegetarian and fish dishes. I bought it to remind us of the lovely holiday we had there, but also to renew my enthusiasm for cooking which has waned a touch. There are lots of recipes for broccoli, cauliflower, aubergine and courgettes… but while reading I noticed there was a recurring theme: the broccoli from Sicily was different to what we know, ditto the cauliflower. He reckoned their varieties all tasted nicer.

So a number of hours were spent on the Internet trying to find seeds for these amazingly delicious vegetables. With the help of google translate I tried in vain to find where to buy the seeds. I eventually found a blogger who also enthused about these particular Sicilian vegetables and I wrote to him (he was called Salvo – we are Montalbano fans too!). He put me in touch with someone who sells the seeds and hurrah, a few weeks later I get 2 tiny packets of seeds in the post: sparacello di sicilia and cavolfiore violetto di sicili. The broccoli are in one of the raised beds now (with protective plastic squares to keep the moth away that lays eggs at the base of brassicas) , and the cauliflower, which promises to be a lovely shade of purple, will go in soon. So a renewed interest in both cooking and gardening.

The latter just as well, what with The Crisis I was worried at one time that we would be relying on what we grew ourselves and lamented that it was all happening during what is called The Hungry Gap ie when nothing much was available. Broad beans aside there’s not much to be picked now that the early purple broccoli and asparagus is finished.

Here in Portugal the State of Emergency is coming to an end, two months on, and we’ll be entering the State of Calamity which to me sounds just as bad. We have to admit that for the most part we have been unaffected. With over an acre of land, and the heart of the Portuguese countryside on our doorstep, we have not been in lockdown in any way. In addition we have honed our social distancing skills (friends? What friends?) and have been working from home for the last 10 years. So, to assuage some guilt, I volunteered to make some masks for a local organisation. The old Bernina was dusted off, perhaps 50 years old now, and the kitchen table taken over in the manufacture of PPE.

Other than that we appreciate more than ever the birds and the bees, the flowers and the shrubs, and the sheer pleasure of being outside. We know we have friends and family who are going through a tough time now and we don’t forget them while spotting the orchids or taking the dogs through the meadows. Never more have we looked forward to greeting visitors here at Casa Azul and enjoying a home cooked meal and sharing a bottle of local wine. x

Spring has sprung

March 26, 2020 richard Comments 2 comments

Spring has sprung so fast this year that we have forgotten to post pics of most of our fruit blossoms. The cherry, plum, almond, apricot and pear are already on the way out, the quince is looking really good and the courtyard is filled with the scent of orange blossom, only a week or two from picking our last oranges.

The best of the wild flowers is in May but already we have cistus and snapdragons showing off. Jackie does a tremendous job of picking the wild flowers and replanting them in our garden so we see both of these while out walking and in the garden.

Following on from last month’s mention of the orchids, this month has seen a few more including the woodcock, conical, mirror and sombre.

I’ve been busy in the courtyard. I’ve made another bowl…

and also been busy making beer. We can’t run out of beer in these troubling times. Although this is my eleventh all-grain brew, I haven’t as yet described or put up any photos of the production. I’ve got a sack of barley malt which provides the bulk of the beer. To this I add some speciality malts depending on the type of beer I want. This is then steeped in warm water (mashed), the sugary liquid (wort) drained out into my Robobrew and then boiled for an hour and hops added. When the liquid has cooled to 20 degrees, I pour it into the fermentation vessel (a large plastic bin), add the yeast and leave it to do its job over a few days. Once fermented, it is bottled, conditioned and drunk. From sack to glass the whole process takes less than a month.

weighing the grains and boiling the wort

brewing is best in the sunshine. You have got to taste the product when brewing

Jackie has also been busy trying to make best use of the ever increasing number of eggs produced by our small flock. A new one for us but a staple of pubs throughout the UK – pickled eggs!

the story of Casa Azul

and a new life in deepest Portugal

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