"Leading us up the garden path ............."

Feeling very pleased with ourselves this week as it feels as though one side of the garden is almost complete!!!!! The last few weeks we have been laying the footpath which runs from the front gate, down the centre of the garden and along the front of the house. It will continue to run from the centre point of the garden along the side of the house; the concrete base is laid in preparation to lay the marble.

The pergola is almost finished, the tiling of the concrete pillars in the traditional portuguese tiles is done and now we have four passion flowers plants planted in the hope that they grow quickly for shade.

Just to remind you how the garden originally looked like, we are posting a "before" picture!

An earlier blog in August shows more pictures of other parts of the garden.


Next month we shall be sowing the grass seed (or whenever we can see rain being forecast!) in the area just in front of the garden bench and also in front of Rob's "Great Wall of Portugal" on the vegggie side. The "other side of the garden" is for planting veggies. With the help of friends we shall be rotavating the ground and preparing the raised beds for planting.

GETTING READY FOR WINTER!!!

This month sees a lot of the locals buying or gathering their supply of logs and fir cones in readiness for the
Winter months. Unlike back in the U.K., Portugal does not have a mainline gas supply so there is no "flick of the switch" for instant gas central heating!!!! So today we had delivered a ton of logs and after spending an hour handballing the logs to their new home (under the veranda) we flopped down exhausted!!!! At the moment our only means of heat is from the open fire in the lounge which is quite scary as the weather in the winter can be quite extreme, warm in the daytime and cold at night!

TIME OFF FOR FISHING

Rob is looking forward to taking time off to enjoy his favourite pastime of fishing (once he has his gear on site!!!) and we have been checking out suitable fishing locations. The Marateka Dam seems to be the one he favours the most as he has been told it is full of huge carp and I too like the look of it as I can take the sunlounger to relax, read, and take a swim too. Lots of waking to be done too, if I have any spare energy! The Dam is huge and the landscape is beautiful with lots of wildlife to be admiring so looking forward to having the opportunity to get out there and fish!!!!