The general blog area for the site. Articles which do not fall into a specific category will appear here.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
We greatly miss having a dog around the house and will certainly be looking for a suitable candidate once the perimeter fencing has been installed around the garden.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
With the new growing season looming, our thoughts turned to last year when the local cat population seemed to have designated our vegetable patch as their litter box.
My first option was the purchase of a gun, but Janet wasn't too keen on that.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Janet made an unexpected but pleasant discovery whilst inspecting the garden earlier.
We have a number of aloe plants of varying types, one of which is a baby aloe vera.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
... but not as you expect.
As you may be aware, Portugal is the world's major cork producer with over 720,000 hectares (around 1¾ million acres) of cork forest. They produce around 40% more than Spain, the next biggest supplier.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
We had quite a successful year growing some vegetables. Not everything was as good as we hoped but we are still getting used to the climate and growing conditions.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
The work invested so far over the past year in the garden has paid off, to some extent.
Whilst we never expect to become completely self-sufficient, we have moved a step closer with tasty veggies from the small plot.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
With the hot, hot weather over the past few weeks, we are spending much more time indoors and less in the garden.
But that does not mean we have abandoned it.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
The sunshine has been ever present over the past few weeks and the garden has thoroughly enjoyed it, from the flowers to the fruit.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
... or at least one of his cousins.
I had difficulty accessing one of the cameras which I had set up in the workshop looking out over the garden. It had previously been working fine and I wondered if the recent storms had damaged it after a couple of close lightning strikes knocked out the power.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
After pruning and caring for the fruit trees over the past year we have had quite a few cherries from the small tree and many more from the big tree which fruited very late.
Last year it produced about 20 cherries in total.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
After last year's experience of birds nesting in the workshop I am regularly checking for similar events.
So far this year the birds have stayed away and there is little sign of wasps making their home.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Due to the house renovation taking precedence the garden has not had the publicity that it deserves.
Janet has spent many hours clearing the vegetable patch and digging up most of the big weeds.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
After a pretty miserable, cold, wet, foggy, sometimes snowy start to the year things have really picked up in the past week or so.
We have seen much more sunshine and the garden is enjoying it immensely.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Our first Winter living in Vale de Prazeres has been interesting, discovering just how cold it actually gets, especially in a house with minimal insulation and large holes which allow the outside to blow in. It was cold.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
We are now into the second week of 2021 and here is the first post of the year, sorry for the delay!
Today it has been snowing, lightly, for most of the day as storm Filomena passes close by.