More Festivals and Countryside

Thursday Sep 18 was the last day here for Nuno the solar panel installer, due to some other commitments he had.  He tidied up, finished most of the wiring, and got a few panels connected but left the project unfinished.  He will return (he hopes) on Monday.  Gerrit snooped around looking at his excellent workmanship and putting together a power wiring diagram of the house with the new photovoltaic system, which he'll confirm with him when he's back.

Friday Sep 19 marked the start of a three-day festival to honor Santa Eufémia (Festas em Honra de Santa Eufémia) in our little village of Calheiros.  This festival is also celebrated in other parts of Portugal.  There is a sanctuary here in town, Santuário de Eufémia (shown at left), which was commissioned in 1258 -- over 760 years ago!  There was music playing all afternoon and evening from the Santuário: Portuguese folk music, pop tunes, and sacred music.  There have been processions around the Santuário too.  There were speakers and a live pop band performing, and loads of big fireworks have been going off.  Here is a well-made video of the festival from 2016.  They do love their festivals here!

Pat's raised garden beds are taking off.  Here is what they look like after just a few weeks of good soil, September sun now and then, warm temperatures, and regular watering, along with her first harvest: fresh radishes.  Soon to come are lettuces and kale.

The day was clear and pleasant on Sunday Sep 21 so we went for a drive through the nearby countryside.  There are many roads we haven't explored even here in our local area.  We stopped across the valley from our house and took these pictures looking back.  You can see our house (red arrow) with the start of the solar panel array on the roof.

Gerrit superimposed the plot diagram we have of our recent land purchase over the Google Maps satellite view so we could visualize where exactly the boundaries are.  We were surprised to discover that we now own a significant chunk of the eucalyptus grove right across from us!  We thought the whole grove belonged to the neighbor, but not so.  Our portion is the most important to us, actually, providing most of our privacy screen to the other side of the hill and a beautiful forest view.  We want to get an official survey to confirm all this.  Also so we can put up a barbed-wire fence.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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