Letter from Espargal: 26 January 2018

The week started well, my blog week that is. We got a fair bit done in spite of some mixed weather -  sun, cloud, occasional drizzle and a pesky cold north wind.



Armenio came around last Friday to help me prune the fruit trees that he had grafted a couple of years ago. We thinned out the branches and snipped off the longer stems, aiming to keep fruit within easy picking reach.



On Saturday Slavic burned off the remnants of our earlier prunings after first chain-sawing into lengths any bits worth keeping for the stove. We regravelled a worn section of the circular drive.



And we transplanted half a dozen flowering succulents - although not the one in the picture. The plants start shooting from the main stem until one finds several new plants growing on the old one. It makes for serious congestion.



On Sunday two young men up at the talafe attracted the attention of the dogs. When Jonesy went up there for a sunset meditation, she found their unappealing handiwork spray-painted across the base.



She borrowed a can of white paint from our neighbour, David, and restored the marker to its original pristine state.



We've yet to repair the mess on the the garbage bins that we discovered equally vandalised at the end of the road. I shall suggest to the parish office that I paint the fronts although the authorities will have to replace the notices stuck to the fronts.


DELL OF NARCISSI
Monday brought the usual Portuguese lessons and a visit to the parish to obtain the stamp of the president on an invitation we are issuing to a distant South African relative. Obtaining a Schengen visa (if you come from what Potus would regard as a shithole country) means jumping through hoops. That's unless you have enough money to buy an expensive property in Portugal.



Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday left me laid low with the lurgy and living largely on Imodium. Jones was convinced that I was about to be upgraded to a better world and began planning for imminent widowhood. She's been much affected, as I have, by news from an old friend who has recently been diagnosed with cancer.



Apart from brief forays to Jodi and the pharmacy, we've stayed at home, I mainly unconscious in my recliner upstairs. I haven't slept so much in years, much of the time with hotties tucked in back and front. It's not a bad way to pass the day. Runs or not, the dogs would have none of it and dragged me out on walks. I kept them brief.



Thursday we emailed the vet with pictures of poor Sparky's swollen and congested right ear. She's forever scratching it or rubbing it on the ground to relieve the irritation that it causes her.  Our various efforts down the years to cure or at least improve the condition have come to nothing. The vet says only surgery will do the trick now. She's booked in for next Tuesday.



Thursday also gave us three mms of welcome drizzle. I wish it had been 30, or even 300. We're deep into the rainy season and our river still runs dry.



The sun sets on another day. Sorry, more dogs to finish with. They're everywhere. Old Mother Hubbard had nothing on us.

 

 

 

 

 

Letter from Espargal: 19 January 2018

Dawn rises over Espargal. (I'm thinking!)



This is an impressive avenue of cork oaks down in the valley where we often stop the car to take a stroll. We call it the cork walk. It's a restful place where, for a few minutes, one can let the world go by.



While I'm thinking you can see me here with Prickles. Prickles likes to come out in the car. He generally starts barking for a ride mid-morning. His erstwhile travelling companion, Ono, now spends much of his time asleep on the couch.



Although Ono still staggers around the hill with us most days, he increasingly feels the burden of his 17 years, not to mention the effects of a second tumble down the stairs. For some weeks we have been escorting him up and down. But he slipped out of the bedroom in the dark early one morning and lost his footing catastrophically.



So he didn't join us on a visit to Faro Beach. We left the car among the motor-homes in the extensive parking grounds that have been created between the airport and the estuary. A fine timber walkway now provides a secure pedestrian route to the beach, away from the traffic.



It's a good ten minute stroll across the mudflats, here covered by the tide. Walkers share the access with cyclists, mainly north European "retirees" commuting between their motor-homes and the beach.



The estuary is a haven for seabirds. The gulls are happy to pose for the occasional photographer as they gather their own thoughts. Apart from the channel, the water is shallow at full tide - around knee deep. At low tide, cockle pickers scour the flats for shell fish.



Back at the ranch, between the dew and the drizzle, we have skidded, slithered and slid about the hills on our walks, not that the dogs are bothered. While I make my cautious way, Jones, who is swifter and more sure-footed than I, makes diversions to collect carobs from long-abandoned trees.



Clumps of narcissus line our route. We sometimes stop at the midway viewpoint for treats. In her eagerness, Barri chomped my thumb as well as her chewie and Mini later demolished what remained of it.



The seemingly insignificant visible wound gives a very poor indication of the intensity of suffering entailed. I confess to having been somewhat put out, the more so as there was no evidence of canine contrition. There was a time when our sufferings served to set free souls interned in purgatory but I think this unfortunate state has now been consigned to the theological dustbin, along with its archaic sister, limbo. So now we have to suffer for nothing. It does seem like a waste.



Our nights still dip down into shivery single figures. Places by the fire sell out quickly. One morning we organised a postbox for new neighbours. This involved several conversations, two post offices, a hardware store and a name tag supplier. Vitor the mechanic, whose workshop is close by, was kind enough to install it for us.



The posts themselves are installed by the parish and come with bolt-holes pre-drilled. The obvious spot for the new box was bottom right (below 324Z) but the protruding heads of the adjacent bolts blocked access. So the box has gone in bottom-centre instead - for the moment at least. The parish office suggests that we ask the owners of 322Z to let us share their bolts.



As you may have gathered, not much of historical note has taken place in Espargal this week, at least, not that we're aware of. Time to let the sun set on another blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter from Espargal: 12 January 2018

We're approaching the end of a damp and chilly week. The rain was welcome, all of an inch last weekend.



It was so special that Jonesy took some photos of it.



I scurried around with a brolly, doing useful stuff. When the cobbles are wet, doggy poos are potentially lethal.



The garden loved the rain.


ALGIBRE RIVER BED - EAST
In spite of the downpour, the Algibre still runs dry, its pebble bed stretching forlornly into the distance on either side of the bridge.


ALGIBRE RIVER BED - WEST
The water table must be somewhere down in middle earth.



It was too wet to work with Slavic on Saturday. Instead he brought a friend who had acquired (a Smart Watch G36) device that he couldn't configure. It was to keep track of his child. In preparation I did some research. Seems that just about every other purchaser had also run into problems. The accompanying instructions were both minimal and useless. I spent an hour setting up the man's phone with step-by-step Utube guidance - but I couldn't get the device to talk to it.



After lunch Jones and I paid a visit to Benafim's newly-established monthly market - on the 1st Saturday afternoon. A dozen stall-holders did their best to attract business. We returned with some home baking and two paintings, the work of community centre residents.



An outlay of €20 for the pair included a tip. That's what I call a bargain! It could easily be taken for a Van Gogh, perhaps from his pastoral period. Should add a little class to the south patio!



Jones bought a fetching blue knitted cap, I suspect largely out of pity for the vendor. Still, it ought to stand her in good stead if she ever decides to join a hippy commune.



On Monday, during my English class, the vet phoned to say that Russ's lab results were through (at last). They showed that the dog did not have leishmaniasis as we had feared (good news). Instead his facial lesions were caused by a fungal infection.


HAND-FEEDING BARRI
After the lesson, we dropped by the surgery to settle the bill (ouch!) and obtain anti-fungal muti to be rubbed on.



Tuesday drizzled on and off, with occasional brisk showers. I hoped that we might settle for morning leg-lifters in the park. Long ago it became clear to me that I'm genetically inclined to be fair-weather hiker. However, Jones insisted on a real walk. So we slithered off around the hill. I kept it as short as I could.



My old green coat still does good service. Note my careful repairs to the right sleeve. I'd had the foresight to light the fire in the living room before we set out. We needed it. Minimum temps this week have been in low single figures. While not exactly weather-bomb conditions, that's distinctly chilly for the Algarve, especially when temps are iced by the north wind.



It's hardly necessary to tell you where the hounds spend the day camped out. Mello - right - will not allow us to remove the mud that attaches itself to her coat. But she doesn't mind Sparky doing it for her.


FIRST ORCHID OF THE SEASON
Wednesday and Thursday were bitsy. A late and unexpected shower drowned my boots and the carpet that had been drying in the sun. We did a bit of running around, being pleasantly entertained and watching TV. Sufficient unto the week.


 

 

 

 

 

Letter from Espargal: 5 January 2018

FIRST MOONRISE OF 2018
Our new year has carried on where the old year left off. I hope that yours has made a satisfactory start. Astrophiles will have noted the super-moon that heralded the arrival of 2018. Jones, whose head is often in the skies, was determined to get a good shot. In fact she got several.



Here's the orb in all its glory. There's another full moon at the end of the month, both a blue moon and super-moon. What a month for lunatics!



On Monday Jones found a silver ring that she had lost a few days earlier. It's the one with the green stone inset. She feared that it had slipped into the bowl of washing-up water that we fling into the further reaches of the garden. That would have been bye bye for ever. There are a million cracks among the rocks.



But in a moment of inspiration she checked the vegetable basket beneath the kitchen towel on which she dries her hands.



And there it was, lying in the onion bag. Happy days! Although the ring's value is almost entirely sentimental, such sentiment counts for a great deal. Jonesy was thrilled.



Also on Monday we mulched half the pile of branches that Slavic had cut from the top of a large tree that was spoiling Jones's view. She's very particular about her views.



The first job was to separate the mulchable twigs from the branches that held them. The shredder won't take anything much thicker than my thumb. Indeed, it's quite fussy about what it will digest. On Tuesday we mulched the other half of the pile. The task took us some four hours altogether. You can see evidence of our efforts bottom-right above.



I have decided (yet again) in the interests of longevity to lose weight. In truth I also need to get back into my protesting jeans - and there might be just an iota of septuagenarian vanity as well; for I've taken not the least pleasure in the increasingly rotund figure that peers (or is it leers) at me from the mirror. Jones, who has borne my previous attempts to slim down, is not holding her breath.


FEEDING THE SPARROWS
On Wednesday we ran the car into Honda to replace various sets of bellows. I had no idea that cars had bellows until I was told they needed replacing. We took the courtesy van into Forum Algarve while the work was done.



There I bought Jones a new phone case as her current one was starting to disintegrate. I suggested pink as the most visible cover, given her phone's predilection for hiding away. But she thought that a bit loud for a woman of her generation. So we settled on the model you see. Another purchase was a modest box of After Eights for the receptionist at Honda, one Susana Jones - a Portuguese Jones - to mark the New Year or, at least, to support the Joneses.



To our surprise, sparrows at the seed bowl were interrupted one day by an azure-winged magpie. It was the first we'd seen in weeks. We thought they'd migrated.



Our meteorological neighbour, Nicoline, who sends us monthly and annual weather reports, says 2017 was the driest year she's recorded since arriving in Espargal in 2006. We had just over 420mm. Little wonder my trees are dying. 'Tis Thursday as I write. Friday is forecast to be wet and possibly Saturday too. Let it rain!


THURSDAY CLOUD CLAMPED OVERHEAD
Speaking of which, I tried to watch the movie Noah the other night. What a load of dog droppings! Fallen angels staggering around like Frankensteinian monsters.


TWO MAGPIES - GORGEOUS BIRDS
Wednesday afternoon, after getting back from Honda, Natasha and I visited the accountant in Benafim. There's only one I know of, and he's been looking after our affairs for years.


THREE MAGPIES - WHAT A TREAT!
For several days I've been pestering the vet's receptionist to chase up the laboratory that's processing specimens from Russ. In spite of an initial negative blood test, we suspect that he has leishmaniasis. Under my prodding, she phoned the Lisbon laboratory concerned.


RUSS WITH TYPICAL LEISHMANIASIS HAIR LOSS
The vet later called me himself to apologise and explain that the lab had shut down over new year, delaying things. The results probably won't be through until early next week. Russ should survive well enough until then.



Nothing more exciting in prospect than haircuts and a Lidl shopping run. That's it for this week, with a glorious Jones sunset to sign off.



PS: Friday afternoon. It's raining, really raining - and it's wonderful.