About Me

We moved out to Portugal to live a frugal but better , simpler and peaceful life, our house is a very basic, semi ruin, up in the hills outside Figueiro Dos Vinhos, where we work our land, enjoy life with each other and our dogs, and hope to make the smallest carbon footprint we can,

Monday 18 April 2011

One of those days

One of those days…




I know a lot of people who read this blog think our life is a Bed of Roses, well yesterday felt like a bed of nails I can tell you.

It was one of those days when everything we touched turned to poo… and that’s my polite version for the Internet…

Rick had a days work putting up a couple of gates that he’d made for some people not too far from here, and we had a bit of fencing to finish off that we didn’t get done the other day… all together we should have been done and dusted by 1-2pm. All the rest of the work having been already done, and the gates assembled here at home… we realised we were one bracket missing, so had to trek into town with the trailer and all the tools to buy another… and from the moment we started those damn gates the day fell apart on us… It took three hours to do the first one… it was very hot, the garden we were working in was very sheltered and a complete suntrap, there was no loo as the house was all locked up… we hadn’t even taken lunch just some fruit… having believed we be home for a late lunch with the job all finished… All in all we didn’t get back to Figueiro Dos Vinhos till 6.50pm and we were shattered …

Neither of us could face all the effort of chopping kindling, and lighting the range, waiting for it to get hot and then making a meal that we’d not get to eat before about 8.30pm We decided to get Frango takeaway on the way home…. Except that the takeaway shop was closed…

Bugger it said Rick we’ll quickly get washed and changed and come back and eat out… we are lucky in the fact that you can get a three course meal in places in town, with wine and coffee for 6.50 euros each..

So… after getting washed and changed off we went… half way to town…. Pop … flap flap flap… a bloody flat tire… another delay while we changed that… by then I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry…

We arrived in town to find it like the Marie Celeste… empty… everywhere shut…

Pissed off wasn’t the words for how we felt….

We tried one last place… just outside of town… yeah… open! We had a wonderful meal and a bottle of wine and managed to get home in one piece… no mishaps…

Boy was I glad that day was over…



Today, we ate our first broad beans… yum…

I’ve a couple of enquiries for the cottage and one for the caravan, things are picking up nicely… only a month now till our friends Alik &Jan arrive from England, its always lovely to see them and we look forward to it for weeks before they arrive…

Ive potatoes popping up everywhere, and corn, beans and beets… the French beans and peas are looking poor, but they have another week and then I’ll start popping in more to fill in the gaps… we have such problems with mice…

I need to translant more lettuce… heaven knows how we’ll eat it all… lettuce soup anyone….

A lovely friend Pam arrived on Saturday and brought me some Parsnip seeds, so we’ll get them in asap… along with some more beets and herbs..