Snow on Pico

On Sunday I had a walk with friends over on the other side of the island, it was no surprise to see snow on Pico as the last two nights had been very cold. Pico is the highest mountain in Portugal, 2,351 m (7,713 ft) and  many visitors come  especially to climb her. Sunshine, green hills, cows, the dogs playing and all topped off with a great picnic - how much better does it get than this:)

If you would like to see some of the available walks on the Açores click on
trails-azores to get info and download maps  - walk PRC2FAI is close to our house

The weather gadget

What is the weather going to be like? My answer, look out the window, because it is almost impossible to predict. One side of the island can be sunny, the other side overcast at times. However today my answer is look at the weather gadget. I am very impressed with the top right hand side weather Gadget on this blog - its just under the moon phase (which naturally is extremely accurate). For the last couple of days it has been predicting that today and tomorrow it would be windy, and it had a little icon of a bendy tree - well that's exactly what we have - had to go and stake down the Jublets condominium, in case it blew away. I am sorry there are no pictures, its still a bit dark outside, but I think you can imagine it  - if you are reading today 22 Feb look at the weather gadget - there is a bendy tree ;-)

OK here is the pic

Faial music

After the last post, I was in the workshop working and listening to Antena 1, - (click listen online to hear what I listen to in the workshop) and I thought I have to share this with people reading the blog, especially after the last post about SA food and the things from "home". The thing about living in a foreign country is that I feel we need to become the country, enjoy the food, customs and all that goes with that and I find myself really enjoying listening to Portuguese radio, and music, so had to share this band from Faial with you.


Bandarra -"Terra de Nenhures" from Tiago Pereira on Vimeo.

and this one

Bandarra - "Vamos à praia" from Tiago Pereira on Vimeo.

and while we are at it this one

Bandarra - "Tango de Neblina" from Tiago Pereira on Vimeo.

and this one filmed not far from our village


Bandarra - "Um dia eu saio de casa" from Tiago Pereira on Vimeo.


I hope you enjoy them and if you do, have a look at
http://vimeo.com/tiagopereira/videos/page:3/sort:newest

- I have dropped you into page 3 - have a look, some good stuff there and on the other pages. Enjoy the watching and listening, we sometimes spend hours listening.

A Taste of Home

Well today was brilliant, the weather not so good, but what made it brilliant, is friends popped round, and second -  they brought a taste of South Africa - if a South African goes anywhere in the world and they run into expat South Africans (quite possible because there as S Africans all over) and get talking to them they will say "where's the Mrs Balls?" - it happened to us, and if you don't have any they will say "How can you come here and not bring Mrs Balls for the SA's."  For those of you who arent SA's,  Mrs Balls is a Chutney - not just a Chutney, but as the website says mrsballschutney.com "Mrs Balls Chutney the best tasting chutney in the world." No argument from me about that! - there are recipes on the net that allows you to make a reasonable version of it, but it always lacks something. (If you are in the London area there used to be a SA shop at London Bridge Station - probably get it there and if they don't have it you could just settle for some Biltong) or try http://www.biltongstmarcus.co.uk/index.asp I can already taste it with some Sao Jorge cheese, or some Capelinhos cheese, I can also taste it on a Bobotie, but to make Bobotie takes a whack of chutney so this will be savoured on it but not in it. Another thing was Cat treats - Chloe and Zac Thank you, Angela and Andrew (Mwuvs - cat loves to you) and Marmite- There are always debates about which is better, Marmite or Bovril, and I suppose if you are Aussie -  Vegemite.

Marmite is the same whether you are in the UK or SA, but not the same apparently if you live in New Zealand. I don't think the USA has anything like it - its sort of an acquired taste BTW welcome new chickens home with some toast and Marmite - I am not kidding (ours lost out they were 2 weeks too early)
Marmite is great on Toast, with cheese or without and I can imagine it on a toasted Pao Flamengos.

Now to make Christmas come early I would like Santa to send some Boerewors- Spicy South African sausage, barbecued and eaten with Stywe Pap  - stiff maize Porridge, with a chakalaka  , or a tomato and onion gravy, or just in a buttered roll heated on the barbeque (Braai) , with tomato sauce (All Gold is a good SA brand, but here Guloso makes a good tomato sauce.) quite unlikely that Santa will bring any as I don't think it travels well. But we can dream -  
How can things get better than this?


Chappies and the jingle, Wicks Chewing gum, Ouma Rusks, Cream Soda fizzers, or Cream Soda Sparletta, and milo bars?

Chamarrita

Chamarrita can refer to two different types of music and dance, one from the Azores and one from the Rio de la Platta littoral region in northern Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.
The chamarrita from the Azores is a dance to a 3/4 rhythm traditionally played on the fiddle with or without accompaniment.

Last winter we attended Chamarrita  classes and now it is back again. Come  summer time, we will be able to participate in the dance held during the festas. It is a lot of fun and a great work out too. Many young ones attended this weeks group - take a look.

Garden Club

Garden Club started last year September and is still running. It is only held once a month and we gather at one of the members gardens.

 The meetings are like the gathering of bees, everyone gets chatting and are so pleased to see one another that it can be rather difficult bringing everyones attention back to the garden.
 It  has been wonderful to go home with new plants that the hosts have been happy for us to take home. Topics of raised beds, orchards, ornamental gardens, self sufficient gardens, have been discussed in the past.  Our latest visit we saw how Manuel and Elena have worked hard to clear a plot of land  and set up a garden. They have a lot of volcanic rock and had to import soil in order to grow vegetables but have made use of the volcanic rock to plant grapes and fruit trees, which have done extremely well.

The stone walls that you see, were also built by Manuel. The afternoon ended in his stone adega with a glass of wine and some lovely treats made by Elena. Some useful information I walked away with - when you use fresh laurel (bay leaf) in your cooking, the spine of the leaf should be removed first. The next garden meet will be at our house.

Garden Thoughts

Where to start? When we arrived it was one big field, long grass, plenty of mint (and not the kind that is very useful) wild ginger and a lot of bracken and bramble. I visited other estrangerios gardens and was totally overwhelmed - where do I begin, is it possible to get where they are. I had to close my eyes to the rest of the garden and start with one chunk and immerse myself in what I was doing and not even think about what was still to be done. Man it was a lot of hard work, especially as I decided to start round the back of the house and this is the area they used for the pig and to throw all their household rubbish. As I pulled and dug, I found old shoes, medicine bottles, broken glass, old broken roof tiles, you name it. Many bucket loads were carted off, rock and earth was moved, just trying to make sense of it all. If you ever have to remove a lot of bracken, let me warn you to hold it as close to the base as possible before pulling it out, otherwise it breaks off and the broken part is sharp as a knife and slices fingers superbly.

Garden before

The lawn had been cut, things had been cleared but what were we going to do with this space, we had never gardened or farmed before. Friends brought round cuttings and we stuck a few things in but still there was this great big open space. I told Nath this space is calling for a labyrinth and he thought it was a pretty cool idea. We started to lay a couple of big rocks and then said this is going to be a bugger to keep the grass short, so that idea went out the window. Next brain wave was to use wine bottles, inverted into the ground and as we have such amazing sunsets at No 32 I liked the idea of the sun reflecting light through the bottles..

Bottles, bottles and more bottles were collected from friends and cafes. I started to dig them in but it didn't look and feel right. To confirm that feeling a friend had just returned from the UK and saw the bottles and said this is absolutely disgusting, so all the bottles were hauled off to the bottle bank, neighbours must have thought I was a secret drinker and that I had been lying to them (I don't drink alcohol)

It was time to get serious and from the labyrinth idea the circular garden was born. I started with one circle and then they became addictive, one more and now I have 4 circles and have raised these beds with the mucking out from the horse riding school. So far so good and now we are leaning towards planting more by permaculture methods ie: companion planting, certain flowers in between for protection from certain insects.

The garden first gave me anxiety and stress, just trying to keep up with the ever growing grass and mess every where and now I see it as the best therapy out there. Planting fruit trees, medicinal herbs and vegetables.

Key is to bite off bit by bit, and enjoy the moment, it slowly evolves and turns into a huge reward.