It’s been easy to feel frustrated – there’s nothing doing on the house at all as we’re still waiting for the plans to be finished. In many ways the glorious weather has added to our exasperation – it would be so much easier getting the roof done in the sunshine. No doubt the builders will start as soon as it rains… anyway, it’s important to realise too that we have achieved such a lot already. We now have two compost heaps, one for leafmould and one for normal compost:Don’t laugh – we are taking this very seriously!

Secondly, there’s been a lot of chopping, sawing and general tree bashing. We have two saws (one which is already bent) plus a horrid chainsaw, but at least that means we have plenty of logs for the wood burning stove to keep us warm during the cold, winter months.We have one neighbour – Sr Luis and his wife Laurinda live in a new flash house opposite us. There’s nothing Luis likes better than leaning on the wall and giving us advice, basically telling us what we’re doing is wrong. In fact, there is something he likes doing better – and that’s popping over and helping out. So he was in his element with his big orange tractor helping us to remove all the huge stones in the land. And then we couldn’t stop him from knocking over the old pigsty (or whatever it was) which is now a big pile of broken cement blocks.It was Luis who got Tony round (they’re both 71!) to pulverise all the weeds and brambles with his big red tractor.One area is now home for the raised beds. These have been covered with carpets pulled up from the bedrooms with the aim of killing the weeds (although we have yet to find someone who thinks this will work) and so our next task is to find some manure… At the end of the working day we usually find ourselves in a little bar (at home with the other workers in our dirty clothes and big white truck) downing a bottle of Sagres and a pastel de nata or two. Today we celebrated buying 82 square metres of terracotta floor tiling for 7 Euros a square metre, surely a bargain?We have also found time to visit the different local markets, numerous construction material sites and garden centres, and go on a long walk into the hills and forest behind where we are staying for the time being. Oh yes, we also went to the local festa where the main attraction was… tractors. Ah, country life!