Newer new sandalias

Can't walk on one new sandalia.. (from Italy, which is a kind of Spain, too.)

Rain

Whut? Whut?

A bit of rain! Unique!

Destaple

This house has a lot of wood. Wooden windows, wooden shutters, wooden window frames, wooden cupboards, a wooden work surface in the kitchen of about 8 meters, wooden doors, etc. The state is alright, though not terribly well maintained the past few years.

Like here, on the sun side. And we have a lot of sun. But maybe I have said that already.

On the outside it's not better. Au contraire. It is quite worse, because quite some windows have mosquito nets stapled to the outside. As mosquito net material does not last long that has been repeated a few times. And you obviously do not remove the old staples. So now I encounter them. All of them.

And, as each window in Spain has a thick iron racks ("rejas" in Spanish), it's not so easy to reach them. But I can, with a tiny mirror. And a knife to pry the staples a bit, a small screwdriver to do more prying, and a big screwdriver for even more prying. Then pliers to do the actual plieing.

And then you get this.

Admit it, this looks better already..

A surprise is that at the outside, between the stone wall and the window frame wood there is a cavity of about 1 cm, that was filled with something like gypsum or lime mortar. It was brittle enough to fall out here and there by just using the sander, which I have cunningly stuck through the rejas. The remaining stuff in the joints I could easily remove with just a small screwdriver. Which is nice, as I can now treat the wood that was behind this white stuff.

So what should I put back? Lime mortar? Gypsum? Those who dare to mention silicone sealant will be severely punished.

Oil tomorrow. Tung!

Terraza Mas Impermeabilizante

Today we applied another coat of our beautiful red Terrazas paint to make the patio more waterproof, as the car will need to be parked underneath it later.

By the way, you see the weather is really nice today?

Today we painted the patio with another coat of that nice red Terrazas paint to make it more waterproof. It needs to shelter the car later, so waterproofing is good.

The weather is still very nice, by the way. 

Wine / No whine

This one we got as a present from out neighbour: top! VERY good. No idea where you can buy this one, and how much...

This one is just from the Mercadona supermarket, for €3,00 no less. Mr. Gort would call this one "parkerisée", as it has an obvious taste of wood, but we like that. Certainly for 3 euro.

And this one is the deal of the week: €1,80 for a very good rosé.

And, sorry, no, a good white one we have not yet found. Yes, this one, available in NL at Gall&Gall for € 13,00.

BBQ

The first time using a BBQ. And yes, as soon as

the BBQ is hot, the height-adjustment mechanism is stuck.

Not a wild boar after all. And no, this isn't a small sea bream, the BBQ is ridiculously large.

/ No wild boar after all. This isn't a small sea bream, it's the BBQ that is vast.

Hmm. No dishwasher. 

/ Hmm, no dishwasher.

@!**Grr! BBQ

This BBQ is part of the inventory. Big enough for a big party.

20 kilo iron and stone. And a grill that is adjustable in height with a crank, were it not that the gears slip and the grill is stuck and tilted. It cost a few hours, a big hammer, ball bearing grease, and a lot of swearing to get it moving.

The gears are forced onto the other thing with a few pieces of wood now. Else the thing does CRICK!, and we bl**dy h*ll, etc.

Wild boar tonight!

Or a dorade.

Fig and orange jam

There are starlings here. And more noisy types. And they all like figs. Lots of figs. More than half of my nice and black figs is already gone! I could "save" just about two kilos..

Cook half an hour with the zest of an orange, the juice, a lime, some extra sugar, a bit of vanilla sugar, pinch of salt (huh?) and a bit of cinnamon. Nice red jam!

Apparently this tree has two fruiting seasons, it is still full of small green figlets. I guess they are ripe in August, like last year, when if was full of fruit, too.

Fun with a reservoir?

We chose this place because there is water. Well, we can get water: agricultural irrigation water. About 70 m³ per month. You need a water reservoir to store that water, they call that a "balsa", here. You need to have a balsa constructed by digging a hole, covering it with plastic, ... And first get planning permission.

And, we'd like a swimming pool. Amongst other things.

Well, in front of the workshop there's an odd bit of space, surrounded by a wire mesh fence. I had though before that could be an old balsa, but now I am almost sure. Because of all that irrigation the past weeks I took a closer look at the canals, and what did I see?

Our maybe-balsa has one of those small sluices too! Hidden behind plants first, but now out in the open. It's not there for nothing, I'm sure. The area is not a field, it can only be a balsa.

But, how deep is it? If it is a meter and a half it's quite usable as a swimming pool already! Just whack in some tiles, et presto! However, the soil is too hard to dig in with a spade. But, already clear is that the thin-ish wall that is visible above ground is bilt on top of a much wider wall, in the ground.

One of these days someone is coming with a small digger, we could ask him to try and find the bottom of this well?

The "balsa: area is ca. 8x11 meters, we could use half as a pool, the other half for watering the garden, and for topping up the swimming pool?

It would be so great if this indeed is an ancient balsa, as we then don't need any planning permission!

Interesting times!

Slip slap slop!

So, generally speaking, the weather here is quite pleasant. However, as a white northerner, you shouldn't go out in the sun unprotected. Not even a tanned Spaniard, but they're less affected. In Australia, they have a great slogan:

Slip, slap, slop - Slip on a shirt, slap on a hat, slop on sunscreen.

So, this fine canvas hat from Australia is gratefully used here.

And SPF 50 sunscreen.

(size M, for anyone who comes across one ;-)

Weer weer

I will say nothing.

I just grin.

























hahaha!

The plastic soup origins

Ik ben al twee keer streng toegesproken door dezelfde winkeljuffrouw in de Mercadona. Je mag hier namelijk niet met je blote handen aan de groenten en fruit zitten. Ook niet aan de uien. Je wordt geacht een plastic handschoen aan te doen.

Ik weet nu waar de plastic soep vandaan komt.

/ I have been spoken to, sternly, twice already, by the same shop lady in the Mercadona. It is strengstens verboten to touch the fruit and vegetables with your bare hands. Or the onions. You are required to wear plastic gloves.

I now know the origin of the plastic soup.

Fig picker

Iron wire, a plastic bag, duct tape and a bamboo stick. €2,50 instead of € 30
Also notice the clever nudge to nudge the figs' stems.

Figs continued

Fresh figs (off a tree) are quite nice, if they're completely ripe. Many fall when they're not completely sweet. Let's see if that gets better by drying them. 30 seconds in boiling water to kill off fungii, bacterii and insectii, then dry for a number of days. We'll see. And taste.

Tung

Tung oil. Made of nuts from trees in China. Well suited to treat wood with, instead of paint or lacquers.

And it so happened.

Door

This is the old door of the workshop/garage. (It's rotten.)

And this is the new one. (Not rotten.)

We did keep the old lock.

Because you don't want to get rid of such a nice old ironwork key.

Eh?

Identify this citrus?

This citrus tree. What is it? Tell me, please!

These are small round hard oranges, perfectly round, 5 cm diameter (2 inches). The peel is enormously aromatic. A mix of orange and vanilla.

(Grand Marnier beware, if I get this tree to fruit..)

Yellow leaves, lacking fertilizer.

Thin branches, with razor sharp thorns all over! Not pee-ing near this one..

Dung!

There are about ten citrus trees here. At least one tangerine, some orangy things, and some trees that I did not see any fruit on yet.

They are not doing terribly well, because they were not much loved the past few years, like a certain dog. Hardly any water, certainly no fertilizer. So you get yellow leaves and barren trees. Lucky I have relatives far away, who know all about lemons, and the like. Dung! my sister knew, and the roots are very close to the surface my mother said.

Google knew citrus trees love nitrogen fertilizers. So, that means we need to pee under those trees. Which we'd rather not, as they are very prickly, and have nasty thorns.

There are not that many garden centers here, but there was one that had a 1 kg box. At home, with Spanish reading glasses, it became clear you needed to feed about 40-100 grams per tree, depending on, among other things, blossoming (no), setting of fruit (no), winter (no). There was no dosage for neglected citrus, but I decided on 100 grams per tree. That kilo was soon gone. (More was purchased.)

And, lo! Two weeks later: fresh new green, blossom buds!

Poe, heet! 38º / Wow, hot! 100º

38º (or 100º for Fahrenheit types.) ! But inside it's fine, 26º. Windows and shutters closed!

Weather

Did I mention the weather here is pretty good?? (And it stays that way for a bit.)

Figs

We always looked for a house with a big old walnut tree. Not many of those here, they don't like dry and hot. But figs do! There is quite a big one here. I noticed it last year August already, with all it's figs dropped off, and unpicked, and a thick sweet scent like Pedro Ximenez, if you get my drift.

Fig season starts NOW. All of a sudden there are a lot of figs, that were really green last week, turning dark! And they are very good. Quite unlike the fresh figs in The Netherlands. I always found them rather mwah, nothing much.

It isn't easy to judge a fig's ripeness, but we'll study it carefully the coming days.

Meanwhile, this is appears to be a special tree, as other figs around here have no ripe fruit at all!