no camera

The view from Valdovino is still visible but we have no camera at the moment and painting pictures with words is not my forte. The ground is so so dry, I dug a couple of feet down or a little over half a meter to plant a couple of trees yesterday and it was still like dust down there. We are having a horrid time with cutworms, they took loads of our seedlings in spring and continue to be a pain chomping through the stalks of chili plants, munching basil, the roots of young palm trees, cactus etc. I have tried putting soil through a mesh before using it, leaving it in buckets full of water for a few days to drown the buggers, even microwaving it but all to no avail new little ones appear a few days after planting. I guess we are stuck with them this year. Brassicas and anything closely related are being hit by little black and yellow beetles, no idea what they are but they do eat a lot and we have little green caterpillars that rapidly become big green caterpillars and also have a taste for Basil- I love Basil, we love Basil but we are not getting to eat much of it :-(

I have cleared about 1/3 of our trees now, still loads to do though, we have enough cut for the winter so I am now storing them in 2-3 meter lengths - a lot faster than chopping them into rings. We are still waiting for the trees around our house to be cut - the 50 meter exclusion law was passed in 2007 but many houses are still bordered by eucalyptus..meanwhile the fires rage a few hundred Kms South of here. I will ask for them to be cut again then take some more firm action if nothing happens.

We had our first peach last week mmm delicious much better fresh from the tree than fresh from the shops - hoping for more than two next year. We also had two golden plums and one red one, all delicious just not enough of them. Half of our Citrus are not doing well many blind ends to branches with flower buds and new bud growth eaten out. Same with the Fuschias and a few other bushes too...not sure who is to blame there although we did have a fair few bugs crawling about in Spring and there has been little recovery since. New Grape and two Kiwis have also been slow to settle in. Chilis, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes all very late and not as vigorous as last year. Many things are doing well, passion fruit are well set and starting to wrinkle, some squashes doing a bumper crop, sunflowers just amazing, pansies going on and on and on.

We have had some good kayaking/snorkeling adventures at Vilarrube finding wrecked pirate ships etc. and the boys have started some Spanish lessons with a friend who teaches supplementary stuff in Cedeira, Despite them working from the same books they use in proper school they are enjoying the learning a lot more than they do in school. School still remains my number one concern out here, they do try to teach some good traditional skills like sustained engagement with tasks, but they mostly the schools seem to be gloomy falling apart buildings with demoralised teachers and outdated resources. There isn't a lot of fun but then there isn't a lot of fun in the jobs many people go on too, I guess maybe getting used to 'not a lot of fun' might be part of what they are learning. There is also very little support to control difficult children and the victims of bullying seem to have to take it on as character building. We will give it a little more time and see how things go.

Hopefully more pics and less words in a week or two.