holidays

Holidays are never quite as planned are they. Not only has our mild winter weather turned cold (but beautiful) leaving the garden frost bound all day

Even our abundant nettles have a frosty coat all day

but I have been More or less confined indoors with a painful attack of sciatica unable to move or stay still with any degree of comfort. At least most people have had or know someone who has had sciatica so I am laden down with advice  most of which I cannot act on till the pain has subsided a little more.

Still my limps up and down the garden are glorious and the views more stunning than normal clear edged and sparkling on account of the the frost.

No snow here there rarely is but the distant hills are covered and no doubt we will see a little if the cold snap continues.

Plenty of people have have suggested interesting exercises for by back one of which was demonstrated in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas day much to the delight of the other diners. I will try them all and already have tried some.

On my hook

You would think that I have done nothing but crochet for the last week, But to be honest I have struggled to concentrate on anything but when the next pain killer was due. Miss Marple has come to the rescue though a friend give my a load of radio plays and I have been so thankful for them this week.

The couple of days though I have been feeling better, Sadly my shawl isn´t finish as I ran out of wool and I know that there will be no more in the shop till mid Jan. However I have been playing with flowers. Plenty of roses but more to come of other persuasions I´m sure as they are quite satisfying to produce                                                                                                                                           

Christmas is here

Christmas has most definitely arrived in the Hawkins household we even watched a James bond film on the television yesterday. Having said that we will be eating out on Christmas day because of the whole thing about large roast dinners for just the two of us, we have the most enormous joint of pork in the oven with stuffing, Yorkshire pudding and the works and we are eating out on Christmas day so we have as normal gone into overdrive. But honestly it is so nice to potter about thinking only about food and television and the odd walk to stretch our legs that I won´t complain.

 I can always read about other peoples stress on the Internet, I know that for many Christmas is the overachievers nightmare. Somehow if magazine articles are to believed the reality never quite lives up to the fairy tale and for others the hype serves only to emphasise loneliness or loss, For me Christmas has always been good,  We never  went in for massive expensive present giving, We have the joy the joy of the birth of Jesus to give us meaning and hope and although we are away from family I know that we will talk and skype over the holiday.

I saw on there news that Yesterday was Panic Saturday in the UK with the shops full and expecting their biggest take of the year. I feel so far away from that and sure I miss Carol concerts and mulled wine but on the whole  I am glad of a quieter saner celebration.

The Garden,

We have developed a tradition of putting the garden to bed over the Christmas break. It started because the first year we were here our neighbours dumped a trailer load of cow manure on our drive. We has asked for it you understand it is just that it was Christmas eve before they got around to delivering it and so we were there on boxing day with our shovels. It became a tradition quickly and we actually look forward to it. Sadly this year our neighbours have sold their cows so we have have lost best source of manure. We covered the beds and then scraped off any of the un-composted manure into the compost heap and replaced it with homemade compost before planting. It sounds complicated but actually it is pretty simple as the top layer of manure forms a crust no weeds grow and the straw under the crust composts down.

 We still plan to cover the beds with straw and and chicken/ rabbit poo but this time come spring we will just move the straw aside and plant into little compost filled holes. Well that`s the theory.

The straw covered beds are the the tidiest that the beds ever are although I do weed at intervals the beds are still productive even if they sometimes look a bit chaotic.

 We have beetroot still growing amongst the (chickweed which we also eat). However, with the exception of cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli, we are at the end of this years garden. I have vague intentions of growing more year round stuff but am proving to be a bit of a fair weather gardener and am glad of the winter break. Maybe next year who knows.

Christmas creeping further.

I am pleased to report that we have done the Christmas shopping, booked a table at a restaurant for Christmas day (I never thought that I would be writing that, But it seems so wasteful cooking a great big meal for just the two of us). Tonight is the Christmas meal for Steve's job at the Academy the table is booked for 10pm, Spain really does dance to a different tune or clock as case may be. My girls have had their last lesson and given me a gift (much to Steve´s disgust, as he is the real teacher ) We even have decorations up. So all in all the holiday starts tomorrow, Steve never entirely manages a break as some of his students see a holiday as a chance for an extra lesson but all will be more relaxed at least.

In the village

The pictures that you see here are whats left of an area of woodland next to the house, Not belonging to us

I am always quite sad when woodland is cut down mostly because native oak and chestnut are invariably replaced with pine but also because the loggers leave such a mess. Still plenty of waste wood does our heating budget no harm.

On my hook.

Despite what I said the other day about hats, I still have some to upload ready to sell the next will be this baby hat.

The truth is that baby hats are so cute and I love the colour of this chunky little pom pom hat.

Creeping Christmas

I have never been one of those people who shop for Christmas in January or has rows of cakes puddings and mince pies lined up on the work surface of the kitchen in November. Here in rural Galicia away from the rampant commercial reminders of the approaching season Christmas really does creep up on us, so here we are scrabbling for presents and still undecided on how to spend Christmas day.

On my hook.

When I decided to reinstate my Etsy shop a couple of months ago, I rushed to make a pile of hats and scarves so that the shop would look inhabited quickly. I have had th

e shop for a couple of years with nothing much in it so I hadn´t even the new shop excuse for it´s sparseness. Having done that I realise that I want to focus on other things, maybe more original arty pieces or bigger things, blankets shawls, throws. The truth is I don´t know yet so crochet journey for a while will be quite eclectic.

At the moment I am working on a shawl. My aim is to make it simple and elegant but warm enough for a winter evening. The picture you see is a work in progress. I will post a better picture when I have a completed garment.

And the rest

 I have wasted yet another afternoon trying to make this computer do want I want it to do. Please tell me it gets better and that windows 8 is the best thing ever. I still cannot print,  explorer won´t let me blog (I have down loaded google chrome for the purpose) and I have to stop every 2 minutes to let the security software do something. At this rate I will be a bald old lady.

Into the swing

Despite having failed dismally so far, I have decided to get back  "into the swing" of blogging that is. I have a new computer, my beloved mac have passed away peacefully in its sleep a week or so ago. Alas the new machine is a PC and I have entered the ghostly world of windows 8 persuaded by a 700 euro difference in the price of  the relative machines and am already certain that if I had the said 700€ I would willingly have handed it over. But then I like Astin Martins but rarely loose sleep over my lack of one.

The house.

Our official project at the moment is Steve`s study which is making slow progress and will get a boost over Christmas when Steve has a bit more time.
I am always a bit irritated by the fact that we never quite finish a job. As soon as a room is usable we stop and move onto the next project and with this in mind I had a bit of a brainstorm during an unscheduled visit to Ikea. I take my hat off to  the Ikea shop designers, on entry to the shop your mind is infected by no-,end uninvited and expensive thoughts ,(enough to end a marriage if some of the overheard comments are  taken seriously) I decided that we would finish the cloakroom. I bought towels, pictures and a candle holder with that in mind. Considering the size of the room which is barely big enough for a toilet and sink I thought that a weekend would do the trick, how long can it take to hang a picture and change a towel. How wrong I was, I should have known that nothing is that simple.
The walls, or at least two of them, are stone as  they dry out tend to leak dust, sand like and in quite large quantities. We had heard that it is possible to seal them with a dilute solution of p.v.a glue and set about to give them a quick clean before applying said glue. We also had a vague recollection that you had to brush the glue mixture onto damp walls. We obviously  h.adn`t  made a great job of cleaning the stone before we pointed it in the first place. We ended up with neatly sealed in streaks which were so obvious that could have been going for a zebra theme. I have to say that PVA does an amazing job of sealing stone because it has taken the best part of two weeks to get rid of the streaks.
The worst thing is that we haven`t finished even now we have a window to fit and shelf to put under the sink. Both jobs were left undone because we hadn`t a clue how to tackle them in the first place, the door does now have a working lock though so that's something at least.

The animals

 

Let me introduce you to our new head of rodent control. He followed me home last week and since he followed me for a good 3 kilometres I hadn´t the heart to turn him away at the door. At the moment he dosn´t seem to know the difference between mice and socks so we have a good number of dead socks. I am however hopeful for the future. His name is Franky we have put the word out that we have him as someone might be missing a kitten. He unlike, the normal barn cats who live around here is used to people and likes attention. I hope he gets to stay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the departure of the house martins a few weeks ago I still have a selection of fat sparrows sat on the balcony. Our sparrows are so fat and round that a guest thought they were a different species of bird altogether. They feed on the grain that we put out for chickens and ducks and live in abundance in the garden. They too nest in the roof and we will take measures to prevent that next year as they wiggle in through the smallest space right under the rafters. I love having them though, they chatter all day in the most cheerful manner.

We are still trying to reduce the amounts of bought feed that we put out for the poultry. They have a pretty big space to range in and we also have surplus veg in the veg garden it seems silly spending money where we don't have to, and no I don't want to introduce sparrow proof feeders that seems a bit mean. Really I want an environment where we can be if we need to be self- reliant we can be so inducing as much home grown food into the diet of the animals makes sense. They get any leftovers already of course although years of fairly frugal living mean that we have very little left over in terms of bought or cooked food.

The Autumn here means mushrooms, Frades the village where I live is famous for its mushrooms. This is both a blessing and a curse. We know that mushrooms grow here but so does everyone else so the lane is full of cars especially at weekend and basket toting mushroom hunters are in the fields and woods all around, city dwellers have now a renewed interest in foraging and restaurants love wild mushrooms and will pay especially for ceps. To make things worse the habitat is disappearing the last five years of economic depression mean that native woodland is losing ground to the more economically viable pine and eucalyptus
 As the young people move away there are fewer animals to graze the fields and less need of pasture.

Still there is little need to worry yet a rather pleasant walk this morning means that we get mushroom stroganoff for lunch a treat at any time.

Where has the summer gone?

I really am not sure where the summer went, but autumn has arrived early here. Our wood stove is already lit and there are mushrooms in the woods, the mornings are cold and misty and the evenings are cool and dark. It is true that we have a couple of hours warm sunshine in the afternoon but the higher the temperature the more likely that the day will end with a storm. This change is 2 or 3 weeks earlier than last year but is not altogether unwelcome. I am always ready for the new season by the time it arrives with it's change of pace and different round of jobs.

We have almost lost our constant summer companions, thank goodness.  We can start to take measures to stop them nesting in the house roof. We love having them around and they are welcome to the rafters in the barn next year but I would love to be able to sit on the balcony and read without the danger of you know what!

The garden is looking pretty scrappy but we do at least have stuff to eat and to save for later.

 With the anticipation of long winter evenings I have set out some projects to get on with. This will be a cozy cowl for winter walks.

Water Water Everywhere

Actually we do have water to drink, its everything else that we have a lot of but, none at all to use. We have baby animals but we have used all last years meat from the freezer, the garden is full of wood but we have run out of dry burnable stuff and the garden has some veg planted but none ready to eat. Even our budget is looking 'end of the monthish'.

Of course this time of year was traditionally called the hunger gap in the UK and other temperate climates because of the scarcity of fresh food. For our ancestors  it meant that people really did go hungry  of course that is not true for us, we have supermarkets and aeroplane and lorries and roads and all the things that mean we can eat what we want when we want.

Our choice of lifestyle has placed us back in the situation where seasons and weather and time of year affects us. Because we have made a decision that money cannot buy us the things that we value the most we have chosen to spend less time in the pursuit of it. That decision means that we have to make, and grow things that we would other wise have bought, and the natural cycle of feast and famine kicks in.

This is the time of year when I look to wild food and often weeds make up the shortfall in garden greens, nettles and chickweed are still abundant as is sows thistle and clover, marigolds are everywhere here and the petrels look pretty in salad. Of course I buy stuff, and one day I might have a polly tunnel to help  get us over this time food wise. In the mean time we mix it up I try when I can to extend what I buy by using whats available for free.

Fuel is another dilemma for us, again the life that we have chosen means that we want to cut down on use of technology, fossil fuels, electricity etc but there is a balance to be had and I'm guessing it will take us some time to find what really works for us. We buy in uncut  wood for cooking and heating and supplement it with found wood from roadsides and our garden at the moment, but sometimes it runs out before the cold weather does. There is a limit to the time we have available for cutting.

Trials of motherhood

Ok so far I haven't done too well at keeping this blog up to date, I have had no shortage of ideas simply a shortage of time. A spell of sunny weather provided a chance to get some planting done  in the garden
and our helper Jane has been looking to buy a house here so we have spent some time helping her with that, and of course because nothing happens quickly here so it is an ongoing process. I have no complaints though, poking around old houses is great fun, it is only Spanish bureaucracy that can be a little tedious.

We have also had a bit of a disaster with our duck breeding plans. We had our first brood of baby ducks last summer and the mother was very good at keeping tabs on the babies and protecting them from all comers, all we had to do was provide her with somewhere separate to sleep at night so that the ducklings  didn't get trampled by the bigger ducks.

Muscovy eggs take about 35 days to hatch so when this duck had been sitting for 35 days I was quite excited by the time she had been there for 40 days I had decided that the eggs hadn't been fertile and was waiting for a chance to throw them away, we were pretty busy and I didn't get real get the chance till three days later we came home and found random ducklings all over the garden but no mother. I raced over to try and find the mother and round up the ducklings in itself a fairly impossible task. It turned out that the mother was back in the nest but for some reason hadn't waited for the babies. I managed to rescue 7 and got them back to her, not easy as she attacked me every time I appeared with another one. I was too late for the remaining 3  sadly. It quickly became apparent that she panicked and ran off every time there was a threat leaving the poor duckings trailing behind.  The other ducks started grabbing the scattered duckings and running off with them.  Chasing a duck round the garden with a ducking in its beak is exhausting if amusing for the onlooker. Amazingly the duckings survived the raids but didn't survive being left in the cold and wet when mum disappeared.

The world through bars

 When we got down to four duckings we decided to put her in the spare rabbit cage where she and the babies were safe. Not a permanent solution nor ideal as she needs to show the babies how to get on in the big wide world. Haven't decided on the next step yet. Its all a bit traumatic for for me and has caused more than one duck related nightmare.

Tapas

Better news with the rabbits though, I initially thought that mummy rabbit had only two surviving babies  when we found a dead one in the cage. Its impossible to check properly as rabbits cannot be disturbed when there is a new litter or they kill and eat the babies. When they emerged into the sunshine yesterday there were six fat and healthy babies. Six is still a small litter but it is way better than two.

At times like this I begin to wonder why we describe our lifestyle as simple, surely a quick trip to Sainsburys for a shrink wrapped pack of chicken breasts fits the description better.

Sunshine, beautiful places and cheap houses,

Well at last the sun is shining and Galicia feels Spanish again. We had a chance to visit with friends see the lovely Frages do Eume national park and have a picnic on the beach. We also looked at a couple of houses with our helper, Jane.

Both of the houses we went to see were in little mountain villages with stunning views and both were for restoration the first though is the one with the story attached. We had to walk through the village on foot as we were unsure about getting the car down to the house. So of course by the time we arrived every one in the village knew we were there. We were shown to the house that was 'on the internet' and told by the villages in no uncertain terms that it was overpriced at 9000 euro's the house next door we were told, though smaller was only 2500 immediately the owner was phoned and an appointment made for us to see inside a few days later. The owner turned out to be one of those terrifying Galician women that remind me so much much of the strong Yorkshire women of my beloved home county. We barely escaped with our lives, so determined she was to sell. The house as it turned out was not what Jane needed being a tad small with the optional garden just up the lane and not attached.( It would make a perfect holiday cottage though once restored) We were told of several other houses in the area for sale but declined to look for fear of agreeing to something by mistake. As usual on these occasions I wished we had money to spare as I am pretty sure that prices like these cannot last forever, still we have a house and far too much to do to take on another however cheap.

I leave you with a couple of pictures taken on our trip to the National Park and recommend that you visit if ever you get the chance.

The garden

For me, a fair-weather gardener if ever there was one, we are are at the start of the gardening season. With the exception of a few trees planted midwinter the garden has been left to its own devices through the winter. I come with with a few excuses such as water logged ground but since every year is the same I have to conclude that for me gardening is a summer activity.

Today it  didn't rain  hurray!!!! so I got the chance to sort out my greenhouse . My green house is tiny and more that a little ramshackle and as such has been the subject of ridicule on more than one occasion. I stand resilient to attack because it has served me well, nurturing seeds in the spring and growing winter salad (when I brave the cold and wet to plant them).

 In the autumn I flung a couple of half packs of leftover seeds onto the seed bed by the green house and was rather gratified to find that they are growing , Ok so there is more weed than seed at the moment  but you can just about see the baby lettuce if you look hard.

I love that we get to eat something from the garden everyday, even in winter, and a little bit of spring sunshine makes me think of the coming years good things.

Bad weather- Good fun

The problem, and occasionally the the joy, of living in a temperate climate is that we have long periods of unremittingly dismal weather. When we are on our own I don't find this a massive problem, it gives me topic of conversion that I can indulge in with my neighbours ( Galicians talk about the weather almost as often as we brits do) and I can happily stay indoors with some sewing or knitting and maybe a book. I feel sorry for helpers though as most work is outside, there is not much sightseeing to be done and the house, part finished and with no central heating is only warm in small patches.


Our holiday weekend was pretty much a wash out, but due to the Spanish capacity for having a good time whatever the  external circumstances, very enjoyable. Today being the day before the start of lent, (Shrove tuesday in the UK)  is Carnival here an altogether more crazy time where pub-crawls in fancy dress dominate the calendar.

There is always galician traditional music

The weekend saw the annual carnival event in a nearby town namely a bone  fair. here's how it goes, A couple of large tents are erected in the centre of town one attached to a stage for bands.

Why worry about the rain just put up a large tent

During the morning and afternoon the tents are a market place where one can buy a whole range of goods including the aforementioned bones and various pig pig parts.

 At lunch time all the restaurants offer a set menu, pig bone soup followed by pig ribs with potatoes followed by pancakes. In the evening there is music and a pig bone BBQ in the tents with of course a supply of local wine.

The weather forecast says we are due some fine weather soon, I hope so because I need to work in the garden. having home grown veg through the summer is now essential to our budget.

Tourists and helpexers

We had planned a bit of a holiday weekend this weekend, Steve had to go into Lugo so Jane our current helper and I were going to go with him and play tourist. Lugo for those who don't know is a lovely city with Roman walls and a pretty old town complete with some upmarket shops and plenty of bars and cafes. Plenty to keep us girls happy for a few hours anyway. We did go to Lugo, but the rain was so bad that we abandoned the touristy bit and just did the monthly supermarket shop, and buying loo rolls really don't have the same sort of appeal at all.

Because I have no photo's or stories about said trip,it being a washout an all, I thought that I would just give helpex a quick mention. Helpex, wwoof  and workaway (I am am sure that that their are others)  are schemes, where you can offer accommodation to people in exchange for work. We are hosts with helpex and as such have, visitors now and then, who do a variety of jobs both in the house and garden. It has proved to be great fun, we get to meet all sorts of people and show them our local  bit of galicia and get some work done at the same time. In exchange they get a cheap holiday. They have been all ages and some are traveling for year or two, some are simply on holiday. We don't have people with us all the time but quite a few come for repeat visits, all seem to enjoy the change of pace.

I would recommend helpx as a way of travelling especially if you want to take a few months to see some new places. But I would also recommend being a host especially if you have a big garden, or are working on the house and enjoy meeting new people. Find the website here 

Wood day

Its friday today so it must be wood day. Wood is at a premium at the moment and our winter supply has almost gone. I guess we want to be warm tomorrow so out we must go in the rain collecting wood . We are determined not to to buy and extra load of pre chopped stuff this winter so we have become scavengers, marching about with wheelbarrows and ropes looking for fallen branches. Maybe next year we will fill the wood shed and so avoid having to collect wet stuff in the rain heres hoping.

Dusting the clock

“HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.
NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.” 
― George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

One of the first questions that I was asked when I told my friends that we were moving to Spain (After explaining that in Galicia you don't get year round hot temperatures and we would not have a swimming pool) was "are you going to be teaching english?" I felt qualified to be emphatic when I said no because of my obvious lack of remotely connected qualifications or experience. However now several years later, and with Steve having gained the relevant qualification and more students than he can handle, I find myself with my first students.

A part of me is amazed that so many people want to learn English that simply being a native speaker is considered by some people as sufficient qualification. I have salved my conscience by restricting the lessons to conversation rather than grammar. Sensible of me having discovered that my pupils, two teenage girls who's first lesson was last week, know considerably more English grammar than I do! and rather more sadly, their spoken English is about at the same level as my spoken Spanish despite my having lived here for 5 years (Big sigh……... I really must do better)

Of course it would be nice for me if we could live with no income at all, if taxes didn't exist and we could produce everything that we needed, so that I could swan around all day working in the garden or the house chatting with dogs and ducks ( An unfortunate by product of living in the country, still I suppose its marginally better that talking to walls) and generally pottering to my hearts content. Steve got fed up of pottering after we had been here only a few months, hence the teaching qualification, remarkably pottering is a thing that some people are  just not cut out for.

The thing about this teaching is that is takes all day, not the lesson or the preparation but cleaning the kitchen. The kitchen is the room where we do everything and as Steve has the car the girls have to come to me and the table is in the kitchen. Last week I positioned myself where I could see the clock so that I could tell how the time was going. Big mistake…... all that I could think about was how dusty the clock was. This week I dusted the clock but worried about what else I'd missed. The strange thing is that Steve uses the pitch for one of his students and never once has he mentioned the dust on the clock!!! nor have i ever seen him with the feather duster in his hand. Why is that?

A new Start

I started writing Diary of a Dreamer because my husband and I had come to a point in our lives when we had an opportunity for change. It tells the story of that move to another house, another lifestyle, and anther country. But what happens once you have made that move when you settle into your new life and that life has become the norm?

 Well, you have a new story, but  this time one made up of little things, the mundanity of a daily routine. Just as a the success of a marriage is not determined by the splendour of the wedding, the success of a lifestyle is not defined by the move, it is the tiny day by day changes, the lessons learned and the mistakes made, the things that make you laugh and the things that make you cry that tells the story of that life.

So as the Walrus said to the Carpenter: The time has come to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings……..