26th July FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

I didn’t have to water the garden this morning; it rained in the night, in fact we had a thunderstorm. It was all over very quickly; but there was a marked reduction in the temperature today.

The man came to take our water sample; he took one look at our well, full of pond weed and frogs, and shook his head saying it wasn’t drinkable. We think this merely means it doesn’t conform to today’s criteria for drinking water; not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with it. He said we would need to cover the well, pump the water up to a holding tank and treat it with Chlorine – exactly what we don’t want to do. He said we could still use it for cooking and washing; and that was before it was tested. So at this point we thought there was no point in having it tested; but he seemed to think we still should, so we pick the results up on Monday. He also said we shouldn’t drink the water from the village Fontes – everyone drinks the Fonte water, but they probably don’t conform to modern standards either!

We went to Idanha Nova to buy some food for this evening; the Boom Festival starts this weekend, we saw masses of vehicles on their way there (lots of old, painted buses etc). When we got to the supermarket (which is only a little village one) it had security men on the doors and was teeming with hippies.

I spent the afternoon preparing food; I made hummus, as I had no food processor I had to mash the chick peas with a potato masher and fork (so it was rather rustic) and as I couldn’t buy Tahini I used sieved peanut butter – it was ok considering. I made ‘Crepes Suzette’ for pudding; actually I made pancakes which I folded into 6ths (to look pretty) and an orange (from our tree) and butter sauce (no orange liqueur); they were rather tasty if I do say so myself. All the prepping takes so much longer when you haven’t got any space to work in – it was too windy to cook outside (the pancakes).

Mark and Glen arrived at 5.00p.m.; Gary arrived at 7.00p.m. We had a lovely barbeque – Gary even ate some hummus, tortilla chips and a glass of wine, and I fed Betty so now she likes me! Gary and Betty went home and 5 minutes later Betty was back – she stayed for about an hour and then went off.

We had another thunderstorm this evening, so I didn’t bother to water again; I have to admit it didn’t rain much, I used it as an excuse as I’m rather bored with this watering lark – I’d be more into it if I had lovely lush plants growing but apart from a few French beans nothing is growing well, I’m convinced (hope) it’s because I’m trying to do it too late in the season and next year I’ll have a spectacular garden – lots of people around here have.