baking

We have spent much of the last week or so trying to sort our tax and social security status in Spain out, it has been rather complicated but we are making some progress at last and we have been getting the children ready for school, A bit of a shock when we picked up the school books...almost 300 euros worth and I don't think we will be able to claim any of it back again. Today must be the hottest day of the year it was a misty sunrise,although we seem to sit in a lovely clear gap with mist above, below and all around us.

that is usually a good indication of hot weather ahead and it just went on getting hotter and hotter, now its around 6 pm and everything out side is singing hot, way too hot to go out really.

 

Rowan did some more work on our tree house that is now going to be a sort of pirate sailing ship  in the woods hopefully.

The pumpkins are coming along well and the hens are on regular caterpillar hunting duty in the cabbages just now. 

One of our Brugmansias is starting to flower we did not expect it too in its first year hopefully tomorrow the first one will be open.

Lugo Province, lack of electricity and some card games

We visited Lugo province for the first time recently, we stayed in a quiet little campsite at Monterroso, it was adjacent to a lovely little municipal recreation area with a clean looking river swimming pool and stepped waterfall right along side a turquoise chlorinated type of pool and a good sized area for toddlers to play in the water too. We are still having camera troubles so we don't have many pics.

Between the campsite and the pool are some relics of the ancient watermills.

 

The water was cold but the sun was hot so the boys stayed in for quite a while. 

There were also some traditional kids things. They were handy when we realised that our van had a flat battery in the morning...the alternator saga has been going on and on ...

 After a rescue by a local car electrician who amazingly refused to take any money for inspecting the alternator and charging the battery over night we chugged along eyes on the voltmeter and popped into the Zoo near Outeiro de Rei and found some impressive wood carvings starting with the huge entrance gate there are some imaginative enhancements of the natural shapes of ancient trees that have been long dead and some good use of granite starting to emerge as they develop new areas. I don't know who the artists were but we were all impressed. Sam and Mel took more pictures I hope to get some from them to put up here soon.

 

And animals of course

and a play house for Lorena

 and swings for Lorena

 

and more animals

It were a grand day out for sure but stopping at the zoo was a mistake there is a big drain starting a 2.8 diesel engine and we ran out of low tension circuit power after about 20 mins. Sam noticed I was not behind him anymore and backtracked - 15 mins with jump leads from Sam's engine charging our battery and we had enough to make it home.

We have spent weeks trying to sort out replacement medical cards, illness, administrative brick walls and our misunderstanding of the conditions applying in each country leave us with our UK issued cards running out tomorrow just as Rowan gets his second blood test results and they decide what to do next.  Lots of things could have gone wrong today - I battled a nest of angry wasps dressed in shorts and wellies (they had stripy T Shirts on as well) and won with only two  minor stings, it was getting ridiculous we had 5 stings between us in the morning before I accidentally discovered the nest with a strimmer.  I also wielded the new chainsaw's vorpal blade and chopped a dozen trees skillfully managing to keep all of my parts intact, we set off to do a major shop in Ferol armed with two charged batteries and made it back with only minutes of power left then four hours from the dealine wher our medical cards run out I managed to fall quite heavily simply by stepping into a strap handle of the inflatable kayak bag, left carelessly lying across the workshop floor, and turning round and trying to walk back again, both feet were trapped and strapped together at the ankle and down I went a victim of a classic rugby tackle by a big heavy grey bag all my weight onto my left knee on to an edge where the concrete changes level. Its swollen and painful but I don't think I need treatment however it was a timely reminder of how easily accidents can happen...I really need to sort out medical cover of some sort tomorrow morning how ever telefonica have still not agreed to transfer our calls back to talktalk (free calls to to UK for 15 euros a month) so I have to ring the UK via skype and a variable internet connection oh joy I hope I get someone who knows what they are talking about for a change.

Weather continues to be hot but I swear I can hear a swell breaking at Pantin so I expect some weather is on the way in the next few days - the ground could do with a drink.

Trees again

Actually it is quite exciting thinking of what we might do with all of the trees, a small scale fort has some votes a wooden version of Minas Tirinth or the home of the Rohrim or at the least a Swiss family Robinson house soaring up into the treetops is in the boys minds whereas I see a more modest affair more like a large log cabin kind of hut really or a Robinson Crusoe job. I have been looking around at open sided field buildings, there are a few hybrid poly-tunnel sort of constructions, using eucalyptus and plastic instead of steel and plastic, that look quite useful and doable, and I keep thinking of mazes and climbing frames, the veranda idea is now back on the cards - when we first moved here we thought we might build one along the side of the house that looks down towards the lake, we could even have paths and a woodchip drive if we bought a shredder and spent a few weeks feeding it branches. We now have more than enough wood but less than sufficient time to do the work,and eucalyptus does not last long outside in the weather so I need to tread carefully as to how and what I build, at least we won't be cold or relying on the central heating this Winter, I guess a larger stove will be needed.

trees

I have had some requests to keep this one going so I will try and keep the local stuff going on here and post more general info on the valdovino blog.

A law was made a couple of years ago regulating eucalyptus and conifer trees, it has new been modified and the result is that none of either are allowed within 50 meters of the perimeter of land with a house on it. Jolly good we can ask the Junta to ask the owners of adjacent land to chop down the huge trees that pose a hazard should they fall in another great wind or should we get a forest fire sweeping through here. The law is not implemented very well it seems and there are still a lot of properties still surrounded by trees, I guess partly because of the low price of timber just now and partly because people make their living from these crops and want to hang on to it as long as they can. We have a strip of fairly young Eucalyptus on our land that we were planning to use as a sustainable source of biomass. If we ask for adjacent trees to be cut we will also have to cut our own trees. A time limit for complience of around 2 months will be imposed and I will have to spend a lot of time playing with my new chainsaw or the Junta will send men to cut the trees for us and we will be charged and fined for non compliance. If we don't cut our trees our home insurance would not pay up in the event of a fire damaging the property. There are many hundreds of trees of varying sizes - I think there is enough wood to heat our house for about 14 year however cut timber does not store for that long and it would be a rather large pile and many months of wielding an axe to chop it to manageable burning  bits. Neighbors whose trees are far enough away for us to feel they are not a hazard will also have to cut theirs, some of these are not really mature enough to be worth selling and wood is just not selling just now either so there might be some bad feeling created hmm but then it is a criminal offence for them to grow their trees that close - what do we do ? Well we know what we must do its just a case of how soon do we do it really.

Gone

Having been here for just over a year I can safely say we have now actually gone to Galicia so I am moving to a new blog for most new posts although will still keep adding a little to this one. The next blog has no posts as I write but is set up at http://aviewfromvaldovino.blogspot.com/  The idea is to provide a perspective of Galicia and the wider world as seen from our little corner of it.