Spring again!

I have been away for 2 months, not really a good time to go but I went anyway. I put my tomatoes and peppers out under plastic bottles and one of my neightbours said he would look after them. He did a good job, the tomatoes are impressive. The peppers died but they were very tiny and they are tender.

One of my neighbours has given me some new peppers and a courgette. my lettuce and spring onions have done mothing so I have had to sow again.

The area that I dug over to sow carrots and leeks is covered in grasses so I have had to dig that over again.

The top garden is the worse, the grass was as tall as me and hs completely over grown everything. I have started cutting it back and have weeded the strawberries, potatoes and grapes so that they can breathe.

This is the field I have to walk through!

This was after I had cut back a lot but it gives an idea of the height of the grass. Even my astro-turf had weeds growing through it!

still February

The weather took a turn for the worse and we had a few days of snow, but now it is improving again. I drove down to Ourense on Monday, the countryside looks positively autumnal here, between, the bracken and the dead leaves still on the oak trees, but closer to Ourense the hills are all yellow as the Mimosa is in flower, very spring like.

Spring!!

Actually it isn't spring but it feels like it! I have been pruning my fruit trees, they haven't been pruned for years so they have branches growing more than 20 feet into the air with the result that I can't pick the fruit.

These are the pear trees now!

The young plum trees, hopefully I will get some fruit from these this year.

I have also planted some strawberry plants here as well so I hope I will have a fruitful summer.

death

There have been 2 deaths related to the village this year, so far! One was a lady of 103 who wasn't residing in the village when she died, the other was Tina's husband so I discovered something about local customs. The coffin was 'on show' in the Chapel of Rest before the funeral and it is the custom for the family to be there and to accept condolences from friends and neighbours. The funeral was yesterday afternoon. First there was a Requiem Mass then the interment. The priest said the mass as if he had a train to catch, I found it neither prayerful nor helpful as a termination of someones life.

I have been thinking a lot about my funeral arrangements. The compnay I have my house and car insurance with keep 'encouraging' me to take out their insurance to pay for the fueral costs! I have had a look at it and didn't feel it was very useful so I had already planned to go to the Undertakers on monday, whilst my car is being serviced, to talk about funerals here. I am very aware that I am a long way from my sons, and as they don't speak spanish, they will have problems making arrangements if I die here. Yesterday's funeral really focused my mind on what I don't want!

I do think some kind of service is important, for those left behind, as a kind of closure ceremony, but I would rather that my nearest and dearest had a wake and remembered my life rather than my death. This is now something that I will discuss with my sons whilst I am still sound in mind and body.

January 2011

I have bought and planted 6 vines and a gooseberry bush. It will be interesting to see how this works. I think I have probably bought too many vines, I will probably be overwhelmed with grapes. It will make a change from pears! I still have pears left and they are still in good condition. It is a very good pear tree.

My vegetable patch now has onions and garlic in it as well. The weather is very mild at the moment so I hope they don't sprout too early. My gardening books are english so I am planting when things are on sale here, I guess if they are being sold it must be the right time to plant! No one else seems to have planted anything so who knows?

December

I think it's winter though the calender says not. The weather is erratic, December has been mostly dry after a very wet November, but we have freezing temperaures, snow and some beautiful warm days. The temperatures go from 16 to 18degrees C one day to 0 and below the next, then back again.


This week has been very busy. We had Christmas dinner last Saturday, in a local restaurant of repute. Very different from the way it would be done in England, there were loads of little dishes (tapas) then the main course, mine was Wild Boar, it was very tender and tasty but there was far too much, an enormous plate of meat and potato. There were no decoration or anything to show it was for Christmas!


Monday we had an outing to the coast, this was put on by the Xunta de Galicia to promote the eating of fish. It was a wonderful day. to start with the weather was superb, the coast of Galicia is beautiful, especially with the sun shining!
We started with a meal, this was cooked by an award winning chef! We had a plate with 3 cold fish dishes, like tapas again but beautifully presented, then the were 3 hot ones then octopus with beans. Whilst we ate the chef demonstrated other way of cooking fish.


The whole meal was superb, it really demonstrated to me the importance of presentation! I can cook but my food presentation is lamentable!
After lunch we visited a small village that has kept it's original character.

Finally it was a visit to a fish market, then a stop for coffee and cakes and back home.

Sunset over the Rias Baixas!

Today I have invited some of the local ladies for Mince pies and Gluhwein.

More mellow fruitfulness

My drainage problems have been sorted, causing some disruption to the village as the whole road was dug up! It took 4 days to clear the drains and provide me with a drain that now connects to the sewage in a sensible place, but all is now well.

The last few weeks have been very wet, interspersed with the odd dry sunny day, just to cheer us up. This has resulted in a burgeoning of mushrooms and toadstools. Tina called on me the other day to suggest we go mushroom hunting We found loads of these, I recognised them as Inkcaps and was sure they are edible as I have eaten them in the past.

We picked a lot, not for me as I do not like them but Tina was prepared to give them a go even though she didn't know them. I was reluctant to take responsibility for her eating mushrooms on my recommendation, so hurried to check on the web. I was, and still am, sure that these are Coprinus comatus and are edible when young (before they turn inky) but when translating the info I also turned up information on Coprinus atramentarius, which said about not drinking alcohol, this was stressed very much in the Spanish information though less so in the English, probably because there was a greater certainty of the Spanish drinking alcohol with a meal! In the end she decided not to eat them!

There were some of Parasol mushrooms, Macrolepiota procera, most were getting a little old but we picked a few. I was reluctant again, wisely I think, to eat these without clear identification, even though Tina seemed confident that they were edible. So I took spore prints overnight and looked them up. They were delicious!

I'm not sure what these are, some kind of Lactarius I think. I wasn't stupid enough to pick them.

Nor this one, though it looks very pretty.