Rain !!!

I think you are inspirational Lady A, you are always up and doing, I can't imagine you on a couch, although I know doing very little during extreme heat is absolutely the right thing to do, and indeed what we all do here! Even the smallest effort makes you very hot, grumpy and eventually tired. My neighbour goes for a snooze in his adega (the ground floor room with an earth floor, where you make wine and store produce) as it is by far the coolest place.

I do use F50 on my face, although that is usually hidden beneath a ridiculous Portugeuse straw hat with a brim at the front, but not the back. The old ladies here wear very fetching broad brimmed straw hats, tied with ribbons or scarves, they look beautiful.

I had to look up a pharalope, lovely looking birds. I have seen golden orioles, another one of those nice and easy to spot birds!

Your landscape looks really beautiful Tweetypie. If I miss anything, its views like that!
 
Lovely pic Tweetypie.
It amazes and annoys me when I see youngsters with sunburn and children, we grew up in an era when skin cancer wasn't heard of, but now we know different, I get people on the bus who are scarlet by the end of the day, including toddlers
OH would like a hat tied with a ribbon bit like Scarlet O Hara in Gone with the Wind she says. She went to pick a fig yesterday evening and got stung by a wasp on the end of her finger, the wonders of wildlife.
 
Well, I did go for a long walk, about an hour in all. In fact, I went one better, and collected my little grandson and pushed him along in his stroller. We stopped at a playground for half an hour, and then walked the long way home. I was under strict instructions that he had to be home by 12, so he could have lunch before his nap. He ate an apple and a cracker as we marched along on the way home. As we were choofing up the steep hill which is the main street in their town, up toward the top of the hill, we passed a chip shop which seemed to be open as there was a tantalising smell wafting out into the street! It's a seaside resort town, so they do cater for tourists. Anyway, as we passed the chipper, little philip, 18 months old, who had been lying back contentedly munching his apple, suddenly sat bolt upright, and started shouting "Chips! Chips!" :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: He does love chips, but doesn't often get them! And he has never been to a chip shop, as dau makes her own chips.

It's a good excuse for me to walk, having him with me, and it also gives dau a good chance to get paperwork done and some other things that she can't do when he's there. This morning she made soap, and had the house smelling deliciously of lavender when we got back!
 
That's what grannies are for!
I used to be very hot on rationing sweets etc when ours were little, but when they went to stay the weekend with my mum, they got spoiled rotten. Sara came back home once and looked in disgust at her healthy tea, saying pointedly 'Nanny gives us LOVELY food!"
I got softened up by the time I had my turn at treating our grandchildren, though!

Here is the field at the back of our house, with me and Poppy walking up the path. A bit damper now, but not a lot. Half an inch of rain doesn't go far on drought like that.
image.jpeg
 
I didn't get him any chips! He doesn't get sweets, biscuits etc. But he just loves fruit and vegetables. Always has done. And cheese. Cheese is a favourite snack. And cucumbers. A dish of cucumber, tomato and feta cheese, and he thinks his day is made! When we got back to his mum, he had his lunch of quiche. He was tired though, so didn't want to eat, but I pretended to feed it to his teddy, and he thought that a great game, and started doing it himself. pretending to feed the teddy, then saying "no no!" and eating it himself, until he'd eaten it all, without noticing! :mrgreen:

I was going to head out for a walk today, but I think it's raining. And it's cold! It was cold yesterday too. I needed a jacket. The forecast is for good weather over the weekend, with temps between 20 and 25C. From what I've seen, the UK is getting it a lot hotter, and I really feel for those parts of the continent that have such high temps!
 
It had looked like that around here, Marigold. But we've had quite a bit of rain now in the last week, and things are starting to turn green again. I really don't like the yellow grass all around. I almost hit a cyclist last week! He was wearing a hi vis vest, but against the high, yellow grass on the edge of the road, I couldn't see him! I was turning left, and hadn't seen him come up on my inside, at the junction. Which, of course, he shouldn't have done, but still, I am always careful of cyclists, but I never saw him until the last second! They just don't understand how invisible they are!
 
I love your photo Marigold, I can just picture the large, undulating fields, big skies, bits of trees. I absolutely love the green/gold/blue palette. And the hat!
 
Yay!! Happy dance!! My rainwater butts are set up and connected to the downpipes! A friend came yesterday (bringing the drill with the 5mm drill bit that I was lacking!) and put the taps in, did the connections etc. In the pouring rain that we had all day! This morning, the barrels are about 1/4 full. :) Of course, I likely won't need the rain water again for years, as we likely won't have a drought like we've had, but you never know, do you?!
 
Oh gosh, Marigold, it looks so barren. It's like it around here, too. Infact, out in the forest, it's like an Autumn day, with all the brown leaves on the ground. It's only the shaded areas that have remained green. The good news is that the whole day last SUnday of none stop rain has helped my lawn and for once, in weeks, I can see GREEN coming through. The only advantage I had was that it has killed a lot of the moss, so I don't have to kill myself scarifying it with a rake!
LadyA - CHIPS... I just love home made ones with an egg to dip them in ;-)
 
Today is the third anniversary of my husband's death. I have to go to town this morning, to buy some fabric stiffening. I'm "upcycling" an old dress I got in a charity shop. I couldn't resist it, as the fabric was so pretty. But I've never seen fabric like it. If it gets wet, it literally shreds like tissue paper! So, I'm making cushion covers from the main parts, and will use the scraps for something like lavender hearts or similar. It's very lightweight fabric though, so I'm using iron on stiffening to give it a bit of body.

Today, it's notexactly raining, but it's extremely damp out. The kind of day when, although it's not raining, you'd end up wet without really knowing how!
 
Gosh Lady A, I hadn't realised it was three years since he died.

Sometimes the fabric in old garments just seems to give up. I once bought a lovely 1930s silk dress, but the fabric just kept splitting and not necessarily in areas subject to a lot of wear. Modern sewing aids are amazing; I have at least 6 different "weights" of interlining - three or four different iron-on and some that have to be stitched. One fabric I've used is so loosely woven you have to stitch the interlining to it before any attempt to cut it out ...

Thinking of you.
 
Thinking of you today to, a day of memories and reflection.
Hope sewing goes well
 
Margaid said:
Sometimes the fabric in old garments just seems to give up.
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Yes, but this wasn't an old dress! Fairly new I'd say. Just weird fabric! In fairness, the label did say "dry clean only". But it didn't say "don't go out in the rain"! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

The sewing hasn't gone at all! I got held up here and there, went and bought flowers for the grave and put them on, then went and had tea at dau's, and have basically done nothing at all since I came home!
With the flowers, I couldn't decided between a bouquet of sunflowers and a pot of dwarf yellow lilies, so I got both! The day brightened up and got warm and sunny.
 
That's the way life goes! I remember a friend of mine who bought a pair of boots and ended up with wet feet when it rained. The shop assistant to whom she complained said she shouldn't have worn the boots in the rain!

Sunflowers and yellow lilies sound lovely, and hopefully the birds will benefit from the seeds :)
 
Are you OK, Mrs Biscuit? I keep reading about runaway temperatures and wildfires in Portugal. I hope you can check in soon and let us know how things are going.
 
Margaid said:
Sunflowers and yellow lilies sound lovely, and hopefully the birds will benefit from the seeds :)
Click to expand...

That's the nice thing about the graveyard where my husband is buried. Although it's in the town, it's an ancient graveyard, surrounded by a high old stone wall which is thickly covered in ivy. There are huge trees in there, and the entrance has an iron gate, then a long gravel avenue with over arching trees and shrubs on either side, so as soon as you go through the gate, it's like entering a hushed, quiet place with the only noises the sound of birds and the occasional whack of tennis balls from the Tennis Club next door. The avenue is quite long (and not vehicle accessible, so coffins have to be carried!) and then opens through another entrance into the graveyard itself, which is green and quiet, with a lot of very old graves among the newer ones. My husband is buried right beside the old stone wall, which he would have liked. :) There are loads of birds in there.
 
Hello All

Yes we are safe and well. We are in the middle of Portugal and away from the fires down at Monchique on the Algarve, which having been burning for days, I have just read that 29 people were hurt overnight, the poor firefighters working in this heat, its getting quite hideous. We are lucky, we are living under a cloud (literally) which is apparently sand from Africa. Consequently the sky isn't blue and the sun isn't at its worst. The highest temps we have had are 41, the highest in Portugal have been 46. But the effect of these lowering skies is that the heat is trapped, and the nights are almost as bad as the days. Its been 33 overnight, and 35 at 7am. Fortunately today is supposed to be the last day of the extreme heat, thank goodness. My body is slowly losing the ability to cool itself down and thats with spending 90% of the time inside, on the sofa, hardly moving!

Thank you for thinking of me!
 
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