Domestic Doings

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.

The Ponte de Lima bridge and river

A little closer view

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:

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.)

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All's Fair

On Thursday August 8 we drove with friends to Vila do Conde about 45 minutes south of here for an Arts & Crafts fair which Pat had discovered.  The fair will be there for two weeks.  It is located in a beautiful downtown park with trees, lawn, and fountains, and everything was clean and neat as a pin.  It was arranged in four long aisles of booths.  There were dozens of booths, all representing towns and villages in the north Portugal region, with their regional specialty crafts on display.  There were embroidery, metal work, art and household ceramics, basket weaving, wood carving, leather work, paintings, fabrics, paper manufacture, papier-mâché and more.  Themes ranged from serious Catholic carvings to whimsical cartoon-like ceramic dolls and marionettes.  The crowd was light, and there was a sense of peace and happiness among everyone.  We had some dinner there too, sandes mistas (mixed sandwiches) of chewy bread, local soft cheese, and thin slices of Iberian ham.  We found several items we loved and brought them home to help feather the nest with handmade Portuguese artisan products.

Artistic woodwork	Sheet metal forming
Booths and fairgoers	Basket weaving
Lace-making class	Wood mosaics
Furniture using wood mosaics	Stringed instruments
Little people & sculptured faces	Glass blowing

Pat and friends also went to a medieval fair the following day, one of the largest in the Iberian peninsula.  It was in Santa Maria da Feira, a small town a bit south of Porto an hour and a half from here, in a wooded park at the foot of the town's castle.  She is an old hand at renaissance fairs, having worked them for a few years.  This one was colorful and had many authentic-looking immersive exhibits showing medieval life.

Falconry was big in those days	Kids' castle
Medieval life	A nearby church

And here is the royal procession

August is a terrible month around here, besides just being too damn hot.  Most of Europe shuts down and goes on vacation.  That means you can't get anything done requiring local help, and the country is flooded with French (and other) vacationers.  Roads, grocery stores, attractions, and festivals are jammed.  We have to just shrug and go along with it, and try to do our shopping in the fringe hours.  We're becoming grumpy locals.

(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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Hot Fun in the Summertime

We have been loving our pool in this hot weather but there is no shade out there, so when we climb out we start to bake.  We've been shopping for a big sun umbrella and got one at the local hardware store.  It does a beautiful job, has 84 kg (185 lb) of ballast in the base to keep it steady, and makes a nice big patch of shade in the late afternoon.  Until a good sized gust of wind comes along and knocks it over.  Good thing it fell the other way from us so we didn't get skewered by an umbrella rib.  Time to increase the ballast or batten that thing down.

We have had many wildfires in the area, including this one just across the Lima river valley which was awfully close to our friends Maayan and Dan. The air has been smoky and sometimes we stay inside huddled with the air conditioning on in the heat.  The firefighters (bombeiros) have been heroic in getting the fires under control.

Our solar panels are finally due to be installed, the second week of August.  Gerrit has been fretting about the sails they will act like in high winds and calculated that we might expect peaks of about 7000 newtons of wind load force (1600 lb) on them.  The plan has been to hold the panel assemblies down with concrete weights, but this is looking less reasonable.  He thinks we will have to anchor them into the poured concrete roof.  We'll be talking that over with the installer shortly.

On Sunday August 3 it was roasting hot.  We had a delicious fruit and smoothie lunch provided by our friends Christoph and Atena, after visiting their almost-remodeled place, and then after some chores we took off for a tour of the countryside in our nice air-conditioned car.  You can see the route here.  We met some free-range goats along one desolate high-altitude road (check out the grampa with the huge horns and beard), and saw some beautiful villages and farms.  Here is a valley view near the little town of Covas.  By this time it was 36 C (97 F).  We began to work our way home through beautiful winding roads and villages we had never seen (even though they were just a few kilometers from home), intent on hopping in the pool.

Did we mention how our solar water heating system can overheat?  Yes, it's unavoidable with our type of system.  When the hot water tank reaches the maximum (75 C, 167 F), the pump which circulates fluid between the solar collectors and the heat exchanger in the hot water tank shuts off to prevent heating the tank to scalding temperatures.  Good for the humans, bad for the collectors.  With the pump off in the middle of a sunny day the collectors can quickly get very hot and there's no way to cool them down.  Gerrit was inattentive one day and they got up to 150 C (302 F)!!  That's like chicken-roasting oven temperature!  We're lucky they didn't blow their pressure release valve.  We are now turning on a trickle of hot water in a bathroom sink on hot clear afternoons, and that seems be be enough to keep the pump circulating and the collectors from blowing their tops.  We are working on finding the proper trickle which we can leave on 24 hours a day during the summer so we have hot water and unexploded collectors without having to babysit it.

We finally found someone who looks like a knowledgeable, reputable, and available contractor for the major projects we have going here.  On Monday August 4 Hugo and his colleague Carlos came by to assess wall demolition, conduit installation for the pool cover, and connecting and fitting out the bungalow.  They grasped the situation quickly, and made some great suggestions for the bungalow and for simplifying the conduit installation too.

We do share our home with a fair amount of local wildlife.  Our housekeeper Inês found these Asian Mud Dauber wasp nests under a sofa cushion, for example.  (They look like like little turds, don't they?)  Good thing nobody sat on them.

(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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Summertime in Calheiros

Here is a view out our back window which Pat captured with a bit of help from the zoom lens.  

Gerrit made up a little story to remember whenever he gets frustrated by multiple word definitions in Portuguese: "He threw a fit because the jacket didn't fit his fit build.  He was fit to be tied."  "Fit" has at least four common definitions in English.  Portuguese is just as messy as any other language, including English.

The heat wave mercifully backed off about July 19; the days became partly cloudy and very pleasant, but here on July 25 we're getting some more heat.  Not as bad, fortunately.

We got the new pool chlorinator cells and they still didn't work!  Same problem as before.  Next thing to try is a new electrolyzer control unit, which Gerrit ordered on July 21.  This better do it.

On Tuesday July 22 Gerrit started taking a sledge hammer to the low stone wall we have along the far end of the pool.  It was built there for the boules court beyond it, but we will use that area for something else (plus clambering over the wall is a shin-busting headache).  After an hour of pouring sweat, only about 1 m (3 feet) of the wall had been partly taken down.  The magnitude of the job was sinking in: time to find someone with a jackhammer.

The following day he picked up our custom-cut granite slabs for building up the pool-cover end of the pool, and learned firsthand how heavy granite is.  He got the slabs hauled up next to the pool with the help of a hand truck and our lift.  He pieced them together and they fit perfectly.  They will eventually be glued onto the patio slabs already there to build up their height, but we need to work out how to get the wiring routed underneath first.

Pat has set up a weekly Tuesday swim get-together with our friend Maayan at the Arcos de Valdevez public pool, about 20 minutes away.  The aquatic center there has beautiful, full size indoor and outdoor pools, where Maayan can swim laps and Pat can get some water-walking exercise.  It's a fun time for them both, and a different swimming experience than our backyard pool.

She is also doing a lot of cooking.  She has bought a Kitchen Aid mixing appliance to replace the one she left behind in the US.  It will be a great all-purpose kitchen appliance, and Gerrit likes that it makes pure ice cream and frozen fruit sorbet too.  She has also made several batches of pastel de nata now, the Portuguese national pastry, and has raised it to an art.

Pat is also taking care of watching for interesting events, pulling Gerrit up out of his git-'er-done rut, and keeping life interesting and fun.  She is also slowly re-stocking our household goods.  And buying way too many herbs, in Gerrit's opinion.  Pat begs to differ: she says she will be adding interest and zip to her vegetable dishes and Gerrit should be pleased about that.

We got our Certificate of Baggage, finally, which is required to allow us to ship our remaining goods from the US here.  But unfortunately somehow our original June 25, 2024 date of entry into Portugal is shown as our start of residency rather than the actual May 2, 2025 date.  That puts us over a year and makes us liable for taxes and duty on our goods.  We're not sure what to do now, but our immigration consultant is exploring our options.  We hope we don't have to restart the entire Certificate process.

The new pool electrolyzer control unit arrived on Thursday July 24.  Gerrit put it in the following day, the job went smoothly, and it began working right away.  So the chlorinator cells have been fine all along!  He put our original chlorinator cell back in and it's got plenty of life left in it.  Oh, well, so now we have two spare cells.

We've made the Saturday farmer's market here part of our weekly routine.  Every Saturday morning we head down there and fill a couple sacks with fresh local produce.  Pat (or Patrícia as she is known here) is getting great at working with the vendors and counting out change, and is becoming friends with many of them.  Last Saturday, July 26, she got a big hug and kisses from one of her favorites.

We are in wildfire season now.  We have had three of them in about the last week, all about 25 km (15 mi) away in a wilderness area east of here, near where the Spanish border jogs south.  The bombeiros (firefighters) have been heroic in getting them all under control quickly.  They are supported by volunteers, and we will be upping our contribution.

(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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First Dip, Craft Beer, and Clean Granite

Wednesday July 9 was our weekly get-together with the expats at the craft beer bar Letraria in the center of Ponte de Lima, and as we left we met four storks strolling through the parking lot.

Then on Saturday we took our first dip in the pool.  The water was 25 C (77 F) so it was a bit nippy for Pat, but Gerrit loved it.  Maybe it's our imagination, but the salt water felt silky.  We thought we felt the same thing in our friends Steve and Lisa's saltwater pool in Florida, so at least we have consistent imaginations.  (Actually the salinity of a saltwater pool is only about 1/10 that of the ocean, so there isn't much difference from fresh.)  It was really great fun, we laughed like kids, and then we sat and admired the view of Ponte de Lima from the best seats in the house.

On Sunday evening July 13 we went with our friends Maayan and Dan to Caminha, a little town north of here almost to the Spanish border, for a craft beer festival.  We each bought small empty glasses for 4 €, which was basically the entry fee, and then beer prices varied.  Many varieties were available, from all over the world.  Everything was cashless -- you just flashed your debit card and within seconds you were enjoying your beer.  We had dinner there too, from one of the many food trucks.  There was live entertainment for most of the festival from an excellent group doing Django Reinhardt style swing/jazz guitar with backup.  We met some English expats there, friends of Maayan and Dan's (and now of us), and had a fun and lively conversation until the festival began to wind down and everyone went home.

On Tuesday July 15 we went to Braga, the third-largest city in Portugal, about 40 minutes away.  We intended to participate in a Quiz Night at a café there with our friends Maayan and Dan and Simona (a friend of Maayan's and a Portugal newcomer).  Unfortunately Quiz Night filled up quickly, so we made our own quiz show by guessing and lying about obscure word definitions, and had a nice dinner at the café.  Here is Pat next to a fountain in the heart of Braga.

Gerrit finally finished pressure washing the black algae off most of the house granite.  It glistens white now, you can see the tiny mica flakes twinkle in the sun and everything looks fresh and new.  We'll see how much algae comes back by next spring.  We're hoping that from now on it will be a relatively quick touch-up job each spring.  We had to do that for tree pollen on the deck at our place back in Seattle too.

Before	After
Before	After
Before	After
Before	After

(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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Portuguese People, Pools, and Provisions

Gerrit's new obsession is our swimming pool.  He's figured out most of how it works from manuals and notes, and the regular maintenance requirements from websites, so look out.  He vacuumed the pool and cleaned the filter himself on Wednesday July 2 for the first time and everything is squeaky clean.  Keeping it that way will be a full time job though, so getting a pool cover installed as soon as possible will really help keep the bugs, leaves, and dirt out.

Unfortunately the saltwater chlorinator is defunct though.  We went to a pool supply center, got some descaler for it, and gave it a good treatment, but it's still not working.  The tech at the pool supply told us that chlorinators are usually good for about five years and ours is eleven years old, so it's probably time for an upgrade anyway.  Now to find one.  This brand is a little obscure and they seem to be available only in France (if at all).

At least the Google AI (Gemini) was sympathetic and friendly when Gerrit confessed his butane tank latching screwup to it after having asked it what was wrong (see previous post).  Gemini has told him before that reporting actual problem solving helps it learn new solutions to the problem.  But can an AI actually be sympathetic and friendly?  Gerrit is trying to resist the urge to thank it when it is helpful.  He's heard that many gigawatt-hours of energy are wasted by people thanking AIs all over the world.  

Now the grill is going great, and he has slow-cooked a pork roast and a grilled a chicken.  He got the temperature wrong on the pork roast so it was rather dried out, but a little drizzle of olive oil worked surprisingly well to moisturize it without making it taste like salad dressing.  The chicken was excellent, and many more happy BBQs are to come.

On Friday Jul 4 our housekeeper Inês was here doing her normal fabulous job.  We offered her a ride home again, this time warning her a day in advance and definitely not refusing her offer to come in.  Her husband Pedro was there, and they showed us around their beautiful, neat-as-a-pin place.  They have been there for 35 years and the place looks brand new, fresh paint and finishings, everything.  They keep an immaculate house.  They have a small farm with grape vines, a field of corn, and a small orchard of fruit trees.  They invited us to stay for lunch and we had a wonderful time together.

The all-Portuguese conversation flowed freely, believe it or not, with Gerrit handling most of the verbiage and Pat interpreting the non-verbal part.  We talked about our jobs, the political situation in the US, how long we had lived various places, our offspring, and so forth.  It turned out that Pedro is an engineer for Formula 1 race cars!  He travels all over the world for his job.  [EDIT: that was Pedro's son-in-law.  Still not quite getting all the Portuguese!]  We became fast friends, took group photos, and parted on the best of terms.  Boy, it's really not been our experience that the Portuguese are hard to get close to.  They are warm, friendly, and welcoming, they touch and hug readily, and they love to celebrate.  It's quite an honor to be included with their friends and family.

Another language success story was at the local swimming pool supply, where no one speaks English.  We've been in a couple times now, needing to talk tech about chlorinator cleaning and other things, so Gerrit plunged in and mostly got his point across.  It's amazing what you can talk about using only the present tense, with the vocabulary of a six year old, and some mental tap dancing to find words you know to express the things you can't.  The patient and friendly staff there help, too.

We went to one of our favorite local restaurants for lunch, but it was deserted.  There was a note written on notebook paper taped to the door with just one word: férias (vacation).  We had to laugh, it was so Portuguese!  No "sorry we missed you", no return date, just a simple "we're gone".  The sign has been up about a week now.

Here's a new translation we just ran across: to pet an animal is "fazer festas a", literally "to make parties at".  What a sweet image!  Both the owner and the pet, having little parties.

Gerrit decided he wanted to drain some of the pool, because too much salt had been added.  He did some math to determine how low we needed to bring the water line to achieve the desired ppm of salt, strung together some dryer hose for a drain pipe, disassembled part of the plumbing in the pool equipment room, and several hours later had drained the water level down to the target.  Then for several more hours he added  fresh water, enough to bring the pool level up again, and the salt level was now exactly right.  (See?  He's obsessed.  Please send help.)

On Sunday July 6 we decided to take a break from pressure washing and gardening (it was getting roasting hot) so we headed to the coastal city of Viana do Castelo and then north a bit till we found a coastal seafood restaurant.  We really want some more of those Portuguese grilled sardines while the season is still high.  But guess what they didn't have on the menu?  Oh well, clams and octopus will have to do.  Both delicious and a nice way to beat the heat in the ocean breezes.

Picture postcard scene near the restaurant	Clams and octopus, half eaten before we remembered to take a picture
Seafood makes Gerrit happy	Atlantic view from the restaurant

And Pat has had her first conversation with a stranger in Portuguese.  She was in line at a Chinese store (one of the popular variety stores, actually called "Chinese stores") and chatted with the woman behind her, who spoke only Portuguese.  They commented on the weather (hot), their purchases, how we lived in Portugal now and how the woman was so pleased about that, how delighted she was that we were from the US (instead of the UK, which is more commonplace) and other friendly talk.  Pat reports that it was natural and low-stress.  And a milestone!  Not only that, but it was her first solo drive on the exciting roads here.

Gerrit has found the chlorinator which our pool system uses at a distributor near Lisbon, and has ordered two of them.  The water chemistry measures in the acceptable range now, so we are just about to dive in for the first time.  The chlorine level is okay as it is now, so we don't need to wait for the new chlorinator.

Gerrit also completed the engineering drawings for the granite risers we need in order to support the upcoming pool cover mechanism and bench.  There are granite suppliers just on the other side of the valley here (who provided the granite for this house, by the way), so we headed there.  Gerrit was rehearsing the Portuguese he'd need to explain it all, but the very helpful employee spoke English quite well and they completed the order to Gerrit's satisfaction.  Total cost for granite and custom cutting was under $100, and it should be ready in a week or two.

(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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