The pool perfection quest continues. The pool is actually great now, it looks beautiful and all the chemicals are balanced, the new chlorinator is working just fine, and we're enjoying our swims. But imperfection lurks. There is a large sand-filled filter in the equipment room (about 190 liters, 50 gal), and it is showing signs of being clogged up. System pressure is on the high side, and some actual seaweed-type greenery can be seen through the transparent plastic cover, waving in the current as the pump runs.
Filters apparently need to have their sand changed every few years, and this one doesn't look like it has had that for a while. The access cover won't budge either. Time to find a new cover, break the old one out of there, suck out the sandy sludge, and pour in some new sand. Uh, maybe this winter.
We have a fig tree along our driveway by the main entrance, and we gathered our first crop ever. Almost 3 kg (6.6 lb)! We sliced some up and heated them over grilled turkey breast, and Pat separated the rest for drying, keeping fresh, and freezing for future jams and sauces.
Pat took a few photos of the view from our balcony, slightly zoomed in, on a nice clear summer day.
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The Ponte de Lima bridge and river |
A little closer view
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The neighboring village of Arcozelo |
The contractor we interviewed for the wiring and wall demolition near the pool (as preparation for the automatic cover installation) has given us a good quote so we have them on the calendar for the second week of September.
We have been accumulating the raised garden bed kits which Pat and her Israeli landscaper Alex have decided on. This involves picking them up at big box hardware stores in bigger cities, but we make a nice drive out of it. Alex and Pat have worked out an automated watering scheme involving water timers and in-ground piping. Alex is an expert in organic gardening, horticulture, and plant health. He and his crew are also going to revise the areas around the trunks of our existing trees to give them nice big organic "mouths" for nutrients and water, and a little softer look too. All this starts Tuesday August 19, so much of the garden will shortly have a facelift and dependable watering.
Gerrit has been wondering what his first electronic project after retirement would be, and here it is: an automatic solar water heater protector. We've mentioned how the solar collectors here can skyrocket to alarming temperatures. Well, there's a way to avoid that automatically by bleeding off a trickle of hot water when the hot water tank starts approaching its maximum temperature. He is putting together a design, writing software, and ordering parts to build a little gadget to do just that. It will protect the collectors whether we are home or not, and no matter what the weather. We can leave it running year-round. Pat has suggested a product name already: The Collector Protector (TM). In the process Gerrit is lining up suppliers and sources for his future Portuguese projects too.
The gardeners were here on Tuesday and Wednesday Aug 19 and 20 and made great progress. They got a beautiful new timer-controlled irrigation system installed and built big organic soil beds for the backyard trees. They removed the buried concrete boxes around them to give the roots more room to breathe, and surrounded them with cobblestones we picked up at our neighborhood quarry which match the same ones in the front yard. Our little Honda Jazz has been a real trooper for hauling stuff like that. Here is how some of the garden is shaping up:
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And now it's Gerrit's turn to be all swollen and infected. He got a wasp sting on his hand and it became infected. Late summer is the worst time for this, the wasps are very protective of their brood of new larvae and they get angry when you get close to the nest. After a day of antibiotic salve and bandages it was no better, it was actually starting to get worse, so on our medical consultant's advice he went to an emergency room in the nearby city of Viana do Castelo. There is no "urgent care" here, if you need to see a doctor or nurse right away you go to the hospital emergency room.
There was only a 15 minute wait, and he was seen by a compassionate native Canadian doctor who spoke flawless North American English. She prescribed antibiotics, antihistamines, and an NSAID. The evening after the first dose he was feeling better and his hand was starting to deflate, and three days later his hand was almost back to normal. Costs? After insurance, 40 € ($46.60) for the consultation and 11,50 € ($13.40) for the prescriptions.
A sweet note about the pharmacy: only one employee spoke English, and a little haltingly, but they found her for Gerrit after he attempted a little Portuguese and looked baffled at the reply. She printed English labels for the prescriptions including instructions like "after eat something". The kindness of people here, going out of their way to accommodate us ignorant immigrants, is continually touching.
And another example: we took the car in for its one-year service, and Gerrit was struggling with describing what was needed. An elderly gentleman asked if we spoke English, and he stepped in to translate. Such kindness! We ended up chatting with him (in English) the whole time the car was being serviced.
On Thursday Aug 21 it was a nice day with no wildfire smoke so we decided to take the day off and go on a little day trip. After fighting with incomprehensible failures in Google Maps and several wrong "solutions" on the internet, after lunch we headed on a counterclockwise loop almost as far south as the city of Braga. We saw lots of beautiful countryside, churches, and the sobering aftermath of some wildfires. We returned along the road with the miniature city and castles which we featured in this post, and Pat got a nice shot looking up the hill at it.
Wednesday Aug 20 we began to see festive road arches being put up in the center of Calheiros, our little village. It looked like a festival was coming up. Pat asked our housekeeper about it in a text message, and yes, it was a celebration. When Pat asked what it was for, she was told that it was just for people to have fun! What a great attitude the Portuguese have. A couple nights later the arches were lit up as we came home one evening and we took this video. It turned out that this was part of an upcoming weekend-long party in Ponte de Lima and Calheiros too. We'll try to give a first-hand report. We will certainly hear it right here at home!
We got home from shopping one day and jumped when we saw this monster grasshopper crawling up the lift control box. Pat ID'd it as an Egyptian Bird Grasshopper, and it is indeed as big as a small bird. Our gardener Alex said he has eaten them. They swarm like locusts occasionally in Israel, and he and his buddies snagged a few and roasted them. They taste like french fries he says. We're taking his word on that.
(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.)
