the cheek of it!

i saw a car mucking about at the top of our drive this morning, and thought it was just turning round. I walked up to check the post box this afternoon only to find its been nicked! The cheek of it- in broad daylight! Very annoying. Anyway please dont send us any post until we have a new one up soon.

Wow- i'm just back from a lovely walk- got a bit lost on the way (!) but finally made it to the beacon to take a photo of the view. If you look carefully at the mountain photo (click on it to enlarge) you can just see our house in the middle of the trees!

The dogs got a bit overheated, so we took a detour via the river on the way home to let them cool off!

The weather has cooled down alot, but its still warm and sunny during the day. It's lovely time of year to be here as the leaves are just turning but we are still in shorts!

We have just seen the builder who will be back next week to do some more work.

Parabens Artur!

Sunday we invited some friends for lunch- roast chicken, roast potatoes, vegies from the garden and blackberry and apple crumble- washed down with a few bottles of coca-cola of course! It was Artur's birthday so lots of cake too! Artur's dad- (Artur Senior) actually grew up on this quinta so it was really interesting to have him with us to tell us how the farm used to be (less trees, more potatoes!).

rain finally (and a house photo!)

finally its raining- about time, as everything has been so dry and we have been struggling to get everything watered.

yesterday we went on an adventure around the valley with the tractor!- scrumping and blackberry picking- we also managed to to come back with a basket full of green beans and some HUGE pumpkins from Gloria- and managed a few glasses of wine on the way round as we passed the neighbours!!

duckies progress

they are growing so quickly......am thinking duck and tomato sauce?! (ahhh!)

MORE TOMATOES!

Running out of ideas now!!!- tomato sauce, tomato ketchup, tomato soup, sundried tomatoes, tomato chutney...

prize given to the best tomato recipe (guess what the prize is?!!!)

no more tomatoes!

whose idea was it to grow 100 tomato plants? all day in the kitchen making tomato chutney, tomato ketchup, tomato sauce etc etc

its enough to drive a dog mad