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.