I have got rather behind with this blog over the last two months, autumn came late, but winter has now started. There was some beautiful autumn colour and so many different types of fungi and this year at last we managed to grow melons. Some people have no problems growing these, but I always have, the ones we produced were not planted, they appeared! obviously we had not got the compost heap hot enough and the seeds must have been in the compost we put into one of the tunnels, whether we can do the same again remains to be seen.

We have made a far bit of progress over the last two month though, the sun room is now completed and the downstairs loo is done, the pantry is now well under way.

The gander hunt

Last January we lost our gander, as readers of our blog will know this turned into quite a saga, well the story continues. Two months ago we were having our doubts as to whether the new ganders were in fact ganders,a hint was the fact that they appeared to be laying eggs, well at least they were sitting on eggs but it's not unknown for ganders to do this while the females go out to feed, we had however set eggs in the incubator as well, nothing happened!! We had also seen the original geese trying to mate the 'ganders' in the pond, something was clearly amiss. We decided that we would contact the agricultural shop where we had bought all of our geese . As we no longer had a Spanish speaker staying with us we thought it best to email our request, the reply was affimitave, so we followed it up with a phone call to confirm that they could get a gander and that it would be at the shop waiting for us on Monday. In Spain we seem to travel vast distances to get what we need, and the geese are no exception, the shop being some two and a half hours drive away. Well, we arrived at the appointed time to find that the man in the shop knew nothing about it. After Simon had explained with his now vastly improving languge skills[a cross between Castilion Catalan and Galliegan] the man realized that we had in fact traveled a long way and that there were definite arrangements made and he knew exactly whom to phone! Someone somewhere had not passed on the message that the gander should in fact be in Padron, not still running around his field some forty km away, so with the aid of the map, plus an address and a phone number and a very protracted detailed list of directions we continued our journey, this time to the coast. The new gander, and yes, we do think he is a he, was awaiting us. It was by now two fourty five and we had planed to look for tiles for the downstairs loo in Santiago de Compestela, and were also due to go to lunch at three with friends who live an hours drive from Santiago[ in the right direction for us to get home] so the tile hunt was abandoned, a phone call made to our friends to explain what had happened, and a look at the map as Simon was sure we could find a shorter route to our friends house. Nice theory, the map showed a nice road, much shorter than the one we had come by, across the mountains, what however the map didn't show was how windy the road was, and in fact to get ten km nearer our destination you in fact travel twenty km. It would have been a beautiful scenic route if it hadn't been thick cloud and fog on the hills (mountains in our language, over 900 m, about the height of Snowdon).

At sometime in the future we plan to return to this coastal atea as it has great scenery and some interesting Celtic remains and monasteries but this will be for the warmer months.

We love photographing fungi, just a small selection of the ones we found yesterday.

It's just a shame we cant find any pixies in the woods.

Sunday was all Souls Day, for the previous week or more all the shops were full of Chrysanthemum plants and the farmers market on Friday was just a sea of flowers, although this day is celebrated in Ireland it is a far quieter affair. Halloween is also celebrated big time with lots of parties, and the shops full of spooky gear.

On the first of each month there is a big market held in Monterosso, and the one for November is huge with just about everything for sale except geese! Yes, we are again on the wild goose chase, the two we had bought earlier in the year as male are in fact female, so we are back to searching for a husband for them, when we get one I just hope he doesn't find it too much having seven wives.

On the first of each month we meet up with other expats in a hotel in Monterosso, mainly British but one Russian lady as well, it struck me that the landlady there must find us very strange as we sit there drinking tea and coffee or maybe a coke, I cant imagine a group of Spanish just drinking soft drinks when they only meet up once a month.

The weather is now mild and damp, just the right weather for mushrooming, we have found six types of highly edible ones, plus many very pretty ones which are not.Hopefully the weather will stay as it is for a little longer so we can pick enough mushrooms for drying.

A few more interesting fungi

Health and Safety 2

My concerns about the general safety for customers in shops is probably an over reaction especially when most accidents happen in the home, normally because people are using the wrong tools for the job, we are no exception to this, three weeks ago I attempted to remove part of a finger cutting up pork with a pair of scissors, on reflection not a good idea, this led to a very nasty blood infection which I'm still trying to get rid of, I guess if I wasn't so stubborn I would have gone to the doctor and by now it would have cleared up, but I didn't and it hasn't. I think Simon must have been feeling a little left out as I was feeling so bad so he thought it might be a good idea to chop up kindling wood with a 5kg axe and try to remove the side of his hand at the same time, he being so brave refused to go to the emergency room when it happened, so I patched him up as best as I could although to me it was clear that his hand needed more than a plaster, also the bathroom looked as though the chain saw massacre had just happened, however the following day I did convince him to at least go to see the nurse at the health centre to get it properly dressed, the nurse called the doctor who immediately wrote out the paper work for the hospital where we spent four hours being seen by numerous doctors nurses and the x ray dept, eventually he was stitched up and now has seven stitches to show for his efforts of chopping wood.

A chopper is used for chopping wood up small, an axe is for heavy logs that you aren't holding steady with your hand, scissors are great for cutting material paper etc, not for cutting meat. I guess we need to be a little more careful.

On a brighter note the country side is now full of mushrooms and toadstools and we had a feast of parasol mushrooms yesterday, tasting all the better as they were free, also the autumn crocus are now in bloom it's lovely to see the brightness of them nestling in the grass, these are NOT the saffron crocus although many people refer to them as such, indeed they are poisonous.There are also masses of chestnuts although they are not one of my favorites I must try to think of ways to use them as I hate to waste things.

So! ..it does remember how to rain, I just hope it remembers to stop as well, after two months of no rain at all we now have very heavy rain, we managed to harvest the peaches before it started but the maize is still in the field. The peaches are now bottled and all we have to do is to find somewhere to store them, the next job on the agenda is the downstairs loo and a large larder, the sun room is almost finished, and more pointing has been done by our last helpers, but there's still one big wall to complete, then comes the major job, converting the old kitchen and adjoining barn into independent accommodation.

A couple of weeks ago was the Lugo honey festival, there were around twenty five producers all with wonderful displays and some super honeys including Organic honey which of course we bought.