Monday 06th September 2021Blog from the Edge - 10

Friends in the City

This week was highlighted by a lovely visit from friends who were staying in their favourite hotel in Funchal (Porto Santa Maria situated on the sea front, next to the old fort). 

We decided to return the visit before their week was up and rather than taking the 20 minute taxi ride to them, we decided we would take the local bus.  This was a Sunday and the ‘Rapido’ service doesn’t run on this day, so a full 1.5 hrs later, we arrived!

It was a lovely ride - twisting and turning up and down through numerous little villages along the way to Funchal, with fantastic views - for the princely sum of 3.35 euros each. We dodged heavy showers all day - a good excuse to shelter under cafe/bar umbrellas 🤣 - but even in the rain it was still warm and beautiful.  After a memorable chateaubriand for the men and fish for the girls it was getting a bit late (and dark), so we decided that a taxi back was the sensible option!   

Other days this week saw us putting in a few sweaty hours clearing my sister and brother-in-law’s garden in preparation of their impending visit to their holiday villa at the end of the month. A cooling dip in their pool was our reward after!  Their two mango trees were laden and so had to be picked - mango chutney on the hob this week, I think!  Also a walk up the hillside above our house revealed a mixture of impressive new villas mixed in with a smattering of the old.  Possible inspiration for future paintings for Paul perhaps?

Monday 30th August 2021Blog from the Edge, 9

Painting and Produce

Well, a bit of a quiet week here, folks, and a slight anticlimax after our first family visit to Madeira last week.

The weather is so hot still in Ribeira Brava, with a temperature ‘feel factor’ of 29-30C. We had about 30 minutes of light rain one night this week - just the 2nd shower since we arrived!

Our pots of geraniums are blooming. Here’s a tip I read about: soak banana skins in your watering can!  We picked Paul’s peppers today 😊. I can’t believe the rate everything grows here! I have all of the produce - basil pesto/mint sauce/fig jam and tomato sauce - bubbling away on the hob!

The big news this week is that Paul has started a painting - a window image from a derelict house in a little village close to Porto Moniz which we visited last Sunday.  This means that the cave project has been put on hold for a little while!

To finish this week off, we had an invite to our neighbours’ place for a traditional meat and pasta family meal - a lovely night was had.

Monday 23rd August 2021Blog from the Edge - 8

Monday 16th August 2021Blog from the Edge - 7

Monday 09th August 2021Blog from the Edge, 6

 A Mixed Bag

It’s been a mixed bag this week on the weather front, with some gorgeous, very hot days full of sunshine and blue skies - and a couple of cloudy days, with cooler temperatures and clouds blowing down past us down into the valley below. We saw our first rain in 5 weeks last night - not heavy, a steady, gentle soak, but it was still warm.

This week’s been a mixed bag job-wise too. Paul finished clearing the garden, and we’ve been burning rubbish. I’ve been planting up numerous pots, sewing curtains, and giving four very sad chairs found in the cellar a new lease of life, with a few coats of paint. We’ve hung a few more things on the walls (not a hammer and nails job, as they’re solid concrete) and Paul has started work on clearing the cave. Note the dry stone wall 😁!  In between we had a couple of very nice meals in Ribeira Brava and Bar Rio.  Oh, and Paul’s had an excellent hair cut!

Progress has been made on the electrical front. We now have numerous sockets, so we can dispense with a few metres of extension cables running throughout the house! 

Excitement is building as we may have our first guests in a week’s time - my daughter and son-in-law and two grandchildren 🤗

Tuesday 03rd August 2021Blog from the Edge - 5

Monday 26th July 2021Blog from The Edge - 4

Here is Alison's latest blog, below, about our move to Madeira. We're making progress with the garden, house, and becoming Maderians - with a little help from our neighbours.

Light, a Lesson and a Secret Cave

Well, we’ve got a fledgling orchard!! 😆 We now have 17 trees and we’re waiting for 2 mango trees. September is the best time to plant these, seemingly.

A lesson (and yet another gift ) has come from Nono, who lives nearby and is doing work for us after his work hours - a great guy, very clever! Nono’s been showing us how to skin and clean the local Dorado fish 🐟. I think I’ll be giving this a miss in the future 😳! It’s far easier eating it at Bar Rio, bbq’d in onion, garlic & parsley - delicioso!

We also have outdoor lights! We had the original lights, that belonged to the house, restored and cleaned, but the switches and electrics still need to be tweaked. The switches don’t correspond with the lights - a bit confusing to say the least!

If you zoom in on the orchard photo, you’ll see on the back wall there is a pile of stones. Jose, our garden helper, started pulling the stones away and there’s a cave buried behind! So we going to excavate it, remove all the stones and make a feature of it. If there’s water there, we can incorporate that somehow too.

Looking forward to a delivery of more plants tomorrow- more on that next week. 😆

Monday 19th July 2021Blog from The Edge - 3

Water

Precious water - you realise the importance of it when you haven’t got it! After 2 weeks of a mere cold trickle for a shower, we now have 2 super duper brand new showers, spilling out powerful jets of hot water. It turns out that there was a fault on the solar panel and the filter was clogged.

Outside, Paulo our lovely neighbour, delivered the lesson of the Levada system to us. We get a time slot every week to fill our 2 water tanks - to be used for the gardens.  He gained permission for us to get an extra flow to flood the orchard where we’re going to plant numerous fruit trees.  

This week will see us burning all the debris from the orchard and garden in a makeshift incinerator (we’re not allowed to burn without one), then there’ll be lots of weeding - and finally planting.  

So far we have purchased a range of fruit trees:

3 lemon, 3 lime, 2 avocado, 1 orange, 1 guava, 1 fig, 1 olive, 1 grapefruit, and we’re waiting for 3 mango trees 😊. We already have a few banana trees.  Can’t wait to get planting!

Tuesday 13th July 2021Blog from the Edge - 2

It’s also about the food! The photos show produce given to us by our neighbours ; a papaya tree planted last August as a 6” high sapling (with a chilli plant next to it!) and our Cup Final supper at our local Bar Rio last night (bbq chicken) .

Well done England!

 

 

Tuesday 13th July 2021Blog from the Edge

Paul has made inroads into sorting his studio rooms - all boxes are now emptied - see picture of the “Gallery” - a bit to go before we can declare it open.

An early night for me tonight!