Storm clouds gathering
And an alien invasion
So, when we thought about making southern Portugal home, we didn’t really think about the Atlantic storms.
But the second one of the autumn barrelled through over the last 24 hours from the south.
Which would be fine…if we hadn’t shored everything up for wind and rain from the west…where the sea winds from the sea normally come from.
(Just as an aside, I do love that word ‘barrelled’ – a cliché left over from my hurricane reporting, I guess. What else barrels through anywhere? Even barrels don’t barrel…they roll.
It’s like dour. What else can follow the word dour except Scotsman? (please don’t flag me for racial stereotyping…most aren’t anyway, it’s just a word that’s always perplexed me).
And don’t even get me started on “Africa’s most populous nation” or its “small mountain kingdom” (answers on a postcard).
I mean we’re fine – this is not another downtrodden FB post after what will now be remembered as WIESFHW (Why Is Everything So F-ing Hard Week).
We have a really solid German-built house without any leaks – unlike poor Radi and Debi – our German hippy neighbours who live down the hill and don’t even have a decent roof, let alone hot water.
It’s just we shipped all our stuff here – all my family history and furniture after the folks died and we sold the bungalow in Newcastle – the place isn’t big enough and we haven’t had time to build an indoor/outdoor room we’re planning on our outside porch, so there’s a lot of stuff outside.
Tarpaulins everywhere, a few smashed things, a wet sofa and pools of water around a very badly collapsed retaining wall later…and the dogs were nervous wrecks, slip slidin’ away behind the sofa.
It was a truly dour day (well, how about that) but hey, we need the rain as it’s been so dry here for the last few years, so bring it on…we have an almost empty irrigation dam to fill!
It just came a little unexpectedly…barely enough time to get the generator into its little house.
(Power update: the hired genny is working well, but it’s not sustainable…the battery’s not holding charge and was flashing red again this morning…I fear we’re going to have to dip into the savings).
It’s still warm out, and so these storms generate massive amounts of growth…all the brown fields turned vivid green within two days of the last rain.
The beans we planted about a week ago are already two inches high with three or four leaves…it’s amazing.
Ana wants to grow “green manure” – nitrogen fixing and easily absorbable plants to be ploughed back in to nourish the soil a little before planting in the spring.
We met Traudi – another German neighbour who’s lived in the valley more than 20 years – and she was planting winter crops of cauliflower and beans among other things…and so, inspired by her inside knowledge we did the same.
(Sadly Garf, our new horse/dog who’s scared of being inside, made a nest in the vegetable patch, but we’ll see how that goes!)
But then…and this is where you guys come in…our green invasion came along.
Check this out…it’s nuts…they came from nowhere.
They look a bit like clover but with black spots. Google has taught me a lot about a Japanese manga/anime series called Black Clover, but not much about whether it’s good for the garden or not!
It’s grown quite tall in the last few days and when I turned the soil it seems to be growing tuberous roots.
Any thoughts?
Radi says we should pull them up or strimmer them down before they flower as they spread everywhere…but… amateur horticulturist friends…what do you think?
Of course the other great thing about the rain here in os cogumelos that grow in the forests around us…the mushrooms.
Ana’s the mycologist in the family…her mum being an expert on Swedish svampar.
We’re told there’s a feast to be had out there…including chantarelles later in the winter…but we got a tip-off as to where to look now for early mushrooms from the woman who collects medronhos berries for the Cow King to make booze with (I’ll save his/that story for another day).
And so we have a basket of mushrooms…the only question is…will they kill us?
Ana recognises them from Sweden as parasol mushrooms (macrolepiota procera) and the Swedish svampboken seems to support that view…in a very smart way.
It identifyies the good mushrooms and then on the following pages features the poisonous mushrooms that look similar…and explains how they are different.
What. Could. Possibily. Go. Wrong?
I hope this isn’t the last post…
You’ve probably already answered this but your lush green carpet does appear to be clover. You may also have discovered that it’s a nitrogen fixer, you should be able to see small roundish modules on the roots you dug up.
Looks like Stolt Fjällskivling, I haven't got a clue about the Latin name.