On Tuesday Sep 22 we mourned the upcoming days becoming shorter than the nights with some leftover ribs (this time with pesto), corn, and a tomato and julienned bean salad. Mmm, we think we'll survive the equinox trauma.
Our handyman hero Marcelo was here the following day. He installed the new house water filter, added lights in the downstairs workshop, and fixed the lock on the back door. Everything was done beautifully. Now our house water (direct from the water table) is very well filtered. This will keep the irrigation filters from clogging and the pressure washer from having to pump fine grit, along with providing the purest drinking and cooking water. Which was not a problem, but still. The lighting in the workshop is brilliant: even and bright. The back door was very hard to unlock and lock even when we moved in, and it suddenly became impossible about a month ago. Marcelo found that the hinges had slipped slightly, so he jacked the door up with a crowbar and tightened the hinge bolts. It works perfectly now, smooth and easy.
100 bags of pine bark mulch were delivered on Thursday Sep 24 for our gardener to spread over a couple of the front beds. A layer of cardboard, a dusting of soil, and this bark should beautify the garden and keep the weeds at bay for a while.
Here is a view of the rising full moon from our balcony on the night of Saturday Sep 26.
Pat continues to harvest and prepare the bounty of the garden. Her latest haul included almost 4 kg (8.8 lb) of tomatillos, baskets of tomatoes and peppers, a couple more strawberries, and a beautiful lush bouquet of basil. She made the tomatillos and peppers into seven tubs of salsa for freezing, the basil into a couple ice cube trays of frozen pesto, and we'll enjoy the tomatoes sliced or in salads.
Gerrit got Pat's beloved weather station installed on Monday Sep 28. We brought it over from the US, since it's such a nice one. Now we can accurately report wind speeds, outdoor humidity, rainfall, barometric pressure, and daylight flux to our dear readers. Wouldn't that be exciting? Well, you can see for yourself. Pat (aka Lilac09) is streaming all our weather data to Weather Underground, which you can watch in real time here. There is historical data there, graphs, and everything a weather nerd could want.
Here's a story our new friends Marian and Dave told us about when they arrived here in Ponte de Lima. They live in a sort of suburban neighborhood a little west of Ponte de Lima. Not long after they arrived Marian put flyers up all around, inviting neighbors to a meet-and-greet at their place. The starting time came and went, and nobody showed. Uh oh, had they violated some custom or norm? Fifteen nervous minutes later the entire neighborhood came through the front gate. They had been waiting to enter together! A couple of the younger neighbors acted as translators, and everyone had a great time. Marian had made a map of the neighborhood and asked people to pin their names and numbers to their houses on the map. At the end a patriarch made a speech welcoming them to the neighborhood. "We are a family", he said, "and now you are a part of it too." This is the kind of warmth we see all the time from the Portuguese. What a great idea that was of Marian's, too, for instant connection to all the neighbors! She was a pastor in Pennsylvania before retiring here, so gathering people together comes naturally to her.
(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.)
