Purchasing a pig in your pj's......

Sunday morning I was busy making banana pancakes in my pj's and minding my own business when the bell rang... a guy had turned up with three piggies for us as a result of a conversation with neighbours many moons ago...... much to my surprise.... !   So this is Buster. He had great fun running around the garden yesterday eating fallen peaches, pears and apples and even enjoyed a nice mud bath ! So now I have had a coffee, I am coming round to the idea of owning a pig...

The trees are full of peaches and apples and there are tons of blackberries, so we have been enjoying lots of fresh fruit and fruit cobblers.. yesterday I made a huge jar of spiced peaches too, they are seriously gorgeous.

Have been incredibly busy trying to complete our front room ... it has been a hard slog but the tiles are going down now and there is finally light at the end of the tunnel.....

Vimieiro

Vimieiro has to be one of our favorite river beaches, it also has a great Restaurante - Bar overlooking the river run by Susana and Nuno. It is close to Sao Pedro de Alva...

coord:      W 8 11' 52"     N 40  16' 36"

A good spot for a picnic in the shade too, there are plenty of picnic benches under the trees.

I find the water at Vimieiro extremely fff .... frio and don't tend to swim there unless my head feels like it is about to burst into flames,  but the kids seem to enjoy it !

Piri Piri Chicken (again).

I do love chicken.... :o) especially Piri Piri....

We recently checked out the Market at Tabua which is every Sunday morning.. It is a large market with all the usual Portuguese market malarkey you would expect. It has a good selection of plants, a very BAD lady selling tiny puppy dogs "come here little girl..... look at these cute little puppies, tell your Mummy you want one"..... (you know the type). grrr .

And last but not least.... some very delicious Chicken.

Black Cherries.... :o)

Amandio invited us to help ourselves to some black cherries from his tree which is taller than my house ! so we took a bag and filled it with a ton of cherries.... he was shocked when he saw the 'small' amount we had and asked if we didn't like them !! they are incredible... we are now stuffing ourselves and Sienna looks like she has been in a serious accident of some kind - she is wearing most of them.. WOW.. delicious..  It is these small things that make me feel incredibly lucky..... x

I planted two nectarine trees today.. cannot wait to get some more fruit trees in the ground.. I love Portugal (and my neighbours)

Denver and Freckles first sleepover....

 After much ado, several months and some terribly bad Portuguese (on my part) with a splash of general confusion mixed in......... the village stud (Chibo) is finally here tonight for a sleepover with Denver and Freckles......

It is truly a daunting task to ask your neighbour for the services of his prized Billy goat to get your girls up the duff - for fear of serious misunderstanding... and sign language is suddenly totally out of the question.    :o{

My Son assures me that I have told my neighbour that a)he is pregnant,  and,  b) ...... I can't tell you because it is just ... very wrong.

But somehow, this evening.... we finally cracked it.

Fingers crossed it is love and we will hear the pitter patter of tiny cabriteeny feet in 4 and a half months...

Archie... and his roomies

Archie seems pretty happy in his new home and is stumbling in and out of his new pad as he pleases... he seems to be blind as a bat ....

:o{

He is sharing with Denver and Freckles who seem to really love him, although the girls can be a bit lively with each other they seem to know that he is a bit fragile and have been really good with him so far... either that or they just think he is a bloody big goat and are too scared to mess with him.... he is happily munching grass all day long and even manages to run when he hears his food bucket rattled in the evening.. he is a bit stinky close up and still looks a bit like a cut and shut donkey as his butt really doesn't match his head end but isn't he cute.... ! 

Bee hives and bannana muffins...

I must be getting old..... 10 years ago I would have been off shoe shopping for some new heels to wear out...... today I am washing a donkey, going for a walk in the valley and baking..... what happened ?

had a lovely walk down the lane alongside our house with Lee and Sienna this afternoon... on the hunt for bee hives - just out of curiosity really. We have been for numerous walks down there but never seen them. Today we finally found them, following the sweet smell, growing number of bee's round the foxgloves and my friends directions...  I crept up to the back of the hives to get a better look whilst Lee and Sienna waited at the bottom.... I got as close as I dared to and the smell was incredible.. there are around 40 hives down there.... those little guys are amazing.

Then Lee got stung on his forehead and ran off shouting his head off - (very manly). He is not very good with buzzy stingy things anyway.... I fear after this afternoon he will be even less keen on me getting some hives of my own....hopefully he'll get over it.

On the way back up Lee shhhhhh'd me and pointed at a snake sat on the bank next to us which was bloody huge. So then it was my turn to be uncool .... I inhaled suddenly - making a wimpy, girly ,Olive Oil type gasp and it promptly shot off... it was a fat old lump, about 5 ft long with a pale yellow belly... gutted I didnt get a shot of it.

So back home to making bananna muffins with Sienna (yum), a glass of Zubrowka vodka with ice cold apple juice and doing everything possible to avoid plasterboarding the lounge ceiling.

Could be worse I reckon...