We've discovered a new way to enjoy breakfast here in sunny Andalucia: a loaded plate of fried eggs, swimming in extra virgin olive oil, sprinkled with a copious amount of garlic and served with a slab of fresh bread for dipping in your yolk and mopping up leftovers. It beats the healthy fruit-loaded muesli that we caution ourselves with from Monday to Friday and it's just the ticket for fueling up in preparation for a weekend of pottering around the finca. We introduced our summer guests to a plate of this new favourite and also took it across 'the pond' where we holidayed with our American friends in September. The responses ranged from lukewarm, or "I'd rather just have toast!" to fully adopted with a few spicy embellishments.
Summer has been a long hard slog. Half way through October and we're only just beginning to see the temperatures drop from the low 30s (degrees C). During the worst of the onslaught of the sun's rays we managed to pack quite a bit in before lethargy sent us shuffling to the bedroom to snooze away the hottest hours under the ceiling fan. In between times, the veggie plot was toiled and weeded. The heat made for very hard work especially when temperatures at one point 'maxed out' at a merciless 47 degrees in the shade for seven days. Our tomato plants took quite a roasting but still managed to produce a relatively handsome crop under the nurturing care of the green-fingered Mr Forbes. Our onions also fared well and we're still working our way through a bumper crop of those. At the other end of the scale, we enjoyed just one floret of late season broccoli before the rest of the plants surrendered and withered to a dehydrated heap. The gradual changing climate has brought with it a certain amount of head scratching over when to plant our autumn seedlings. We can no longer rely entirely on what it says on the little packets but must watch the weather forecast for predictions on when it will warm up or cool down. Summer crops over, our beds lie in wait for their winter planting once again. With a bit of luck, we can start the cycle again at the end of October.
Sadly, we didn't attract any bees to our new hive this year, despite all our efforts. We'll need to rethink and perhaps re-site the hive to a more secluded spot and hope for better success next Spring. With the bee population in such decline, we want to do our bit to preserve this precious species.
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Apricots from Brian's memorial tree cropped heavily this year.
They gave us a cupboard full of jam as well as a freezer full of crumbles. |
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| Let's make some onion marmalade! |
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| Who knew onion flowers could be so pretty? |
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| The first of many tomatoes at end May |
The ongoing garden decluttering should have meant consigning the endless pile of leftovers from plumbing jobs to the local dump. But instead these piles of rubbish, that Mr Forbes would prefer to call valuable scrap and useful spares 😏, must take precedence over, say, the storage of bikes for instance and why not?! And, so, we bought another shiny new shed so that the bikes would have a cozy place to live while their neighbours moved in across the garden! Despite the feeling that I'm helping to facilitate the migration of scrap metal and old boilers from garden to shed, I'm encouraged that we're making some headway with the tidying and all our sheds are beginning to look a lot more organised. Small victory but you have to start somewhere when you're married to a plumber who's been set in his ways for so many years!
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The new bike shed, locally crafted. I'm sure there's plenty of space
for another one somewhere. |
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While the battle to convert "Steptoe's Yard" to a garden continues,
another battle is won and the van gets a tidy up (only because it needed
emptying for its first MOT!) |
Our first summer visitors (and lukewarm recipients of the fried eggs and garlic) were my mum and my eldest sister at end June/early July. Luckily, they escaped the worst of the summer temperature took hold and it remained in the low 30s pretty much the whole two weeks of their visit. We spent the majority of the time sitting by the pool or on the terrace and eating plenty of good food and (of course!) chatting endlessly! Daniel also flew over for a long weekend to attend a friend's wedding, so we had a house full for a while.
All dressed up and ready for a little BBQ gathering for Helen's upcoming 60th birthday.
The gang come over to help with the celebration.
Scott's mum was the second visitor to be offered the egg breakfast, but she politely declined in favour of toast!
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| The delightful and original Mrs Forbes with her lovely son! |
Shortly after mum (Janette) returned home, we packed and headed off for our big holiday of the year; to the USA. Our trip was essentially about visiting my friends of more than 20 years, John and Nancy, and to join them at their holiday beach house rental in Ocean City New Jersey. John and Nancy made it to our wedding last year with much difficulty due to health problems so it was on the cards for us to return the visit and this one was several months in the planning. First on the itinerary was a stop over in New York's Manhattan. A great deal has changed in the 21 years since I was last there, the events of 9/11 being perhaps the most significant. I wanted Scott to experience more than Manhattan's main sights though so my search for a sporting event resulted in an unforgettable evening in Queens' Citifield Stadium to watch the New York METs take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in a thrilling game of baseball. At the end of our holiday, we returned to New York to see Wicked on Broadway and take a ride up to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Building) to gaze upon Manhattan's city lights at night. A surprise for Scott's birthday was a luxury chauffeur-driven SUV from JFK to our hotel and then back at the end of our stay.
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| A Cadillac "Black Escalade": We arrive and depart Manhattan in chauffeur driven celebrity style! |
One of the memorial fountains at the 9/11 Memorial Site. A calm and serene place in the middle of Manhattan's noise and chaos. In the underground museum below, the outer walls of the fountain memorials are exposed and shaped to reveal the actual foundations of the original twin towers. An incredibly moving experience.
The Chrysler Building and The Empire State, two of Manhattan's most famous landmarks
Two views of NYC: Street level and from the top of the Empire State
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| No trip to New York should be without a ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty |
