The day began with a wonderful call back to Melbourne and family, all gathered for the traditional Sunday dinner at Hutton St. Then, a quick breakfast and a run down to the Chaos Sunday market. This week there was little by way of clothing and other such goods. Instead, all the vintage and second hand collectors were out in force. Of course we went through each stall and Britt found two very nice locally made woven baskets. My eyes went to a wonderful spotting scope. Amazon price was $200, and there it was for 5 Euros. John checked it out and it was in excellent nick. We thought it would be perfect for Wil out on the terrace, for bird spotting, especially as this very morning, while doing stretches by the pool, he'd heard the calls of at least eight different bird species. Oh yes, and Britt bought some of those delicious crusty Portuguese tarts for later.
When I say
later, I mean after gardening. Britt and Wil knew we always have an interests
in gardening and had graciously left us some gardening jobs to do. Casa Adega is
a vast property so even if we lived here full time we could never get on top of
all the jobs that could be done, but we made a start. Britt cleared a whole bed
next to the shed of weeds and allowed the vine tracing its way across the roof
line, to shine.
John set to
work untangling and taming a banksia rose along the side wall and in the process uncovered a lovely apple tree. I was set to work pruning
two citrus trees and a rather pretty flowering bush that had grown so high it
was obscuring the view from the park bench. Taming the overgrown lavender was
also my job. The look on Britt’s face told me I had gone too far with the lavender,
but there was a lot of dead wood that had to be cut out.
It was a
sweaty and hot couple of hours, but we thought that the garden looked better
for this attention. We quickly piled the cuttings high and left them for handyman Pat to burn off.
It was a
quick change of clothes and off to the rather wonderful O Sabor da Pedra restaurant the guys had booked for lunch. Britt
and Will knew Anna, the woman who owns and runs the restaurant and they were treated
like old and valued friends when they arrived. It was a gorgeous meal eaten
as we looked over a lake where the occasional river craft sped past. Britt had
beef medallions. Wil had the special of the day, rooster in a rich sauce. Johnny
had fish caught from the lake next door and crumbed with sesame seeds. I had the most delicious
and tender octopus that you could imagine. By the end of the meal that was
washed down with a very nice local white wine, Johnny and I were kaput and
ready for a nap.
We drove
home through Tomar and stopped at the supermarket for provisions for the
evening meal, but John and I stayed in the car snoozing. Johnny obviously effected by not only the wine, but the cold medication he had taken at lunchtime.
There was still a bit of garden cleaning up to do when we returned to the Adega, and when we finished we took our drinks to the olive grove down the lane. John recorded the sounds of the birds in the grove on his nifty app which told him each bird's name and sitting on a platform Wil built last summer, we watched the sun set. Well he tried to but we were talking and messing up his recordings. Apparently there is a vast number of species that visit the property, including a nightingale and a woodpecker.
Dinner was gratefully a modest affair after the big lunch and we sat under velvet skies eating our cheese rolls. Mumma Cat came down for her plate of sardines too. Above us glowed one star so brightly I thought it might be a helicopter or a satellite. Wil checked it out on his star map app and it turned out to be Venus, possibly reflecting the last glancing rays of the sun that had sunk below the horizon.
As we got up to go to bed, Britt could hear crunching on the gravel that surrounded the house. It was the wild boars coming out of the groves. They knock down walls and dig up cables. They can be real pests. Tonight may be the night that Wil takes out his air rifle.
