She stopped eating when Charlie died and we thought that she was missing Charlie. We tried to entice her with different food and she ate the canned food so we thought it was perhaps her teeth. We went to the vet and the vet found a very large tumour which had spread and was concerned that the tumour may burst which would be painful. So we made the difficult decision to get her put to sleep there and then. The alternative was to bring her home and risk the tumour rupturing. She was very peaceful at the vet and it seemed kindest to do it then than to give her additional stress – and we would be thinking of ourselves and not what was best for her.

Queenie was a link to the past – here she is with Tinkerbelle, Petal, Henry – Sam and I’m not sure who else. Daisy might be there as she would have been young when we got Queenie so she may be behind me.

More queenie pics

Which was a perfect place for a picnic!

It was near another beach which I like but it is FULL of fish!

Looking down into the water we see this little lot:

I’m actually quite high up taking these photos so they don’t give a true idea of how big the fish are. Perhaps up to 50 cms long, and they shine a silver colour so really catch the stun and are quite a sight. This is why I don’t love swimming on this beach. The fish hang around near the top of the surface and all I can see is hundreds of little Jaws like fins heading towards me!

The council uses Birds of Paradise flowers a lot, I think because they don’t take much looking after. Those are planted direct in the ground as well as in pots and the ones in the ground spread a bit into clumps. I guess ours won’t do that as it’s in a small pot but we may put it in the ground at some point so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Two new ones are coming through as well now – don’t they look like beaks!

We’ve got a lot more flowers at the moment.

Nasturtians are everywhere, and we’ve been removing great clumps of them as they have pretty much taken over part of the garden and are growing in the walls.

We did make a nasturian leaf pesto sauce though, so they do have some purpose (as well as the ‘capers’ we made from picked seeds).

And our air plants have started flowering – plus the plant that I took a cutting of from the beach

I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s an invasive species, so hopefully I won’t regret having planted it (given I’ve just been moaning about nasturtians taking over…). However this is on a little piece of land which is rocky and the other side of the gate so if this plant stops weeds, I’ll be happy.

Talking of cuttings, my little cutting pile is doing well. I think all of these are cuttings. I seem to do really well with rose cuttings and I literally don’t do anything that breaking off a bit and sticking it in soil. I don’t even cut them, just badly break a bit off. I wonder if it’s because it’s largely ‘wild’ roses and therefore perhaps are less finicky than others.

Just need to work out now where to put them as it’s not very practical having all these pots for dogs and cats to run in to.

The roses are largely climbing roses so would be good along the walls perhaps.

It could probably do with cutting back more but it looks better than it was.

The pic below is how it was when it started bursting back into life again but before it got straggly. I guess we need to aim for something between the two. Not too leafy but not too straggly.

On closer inspection it transpired that it was not a potato which had grown legs but a little toad.

He was near enough impossible to see though – in this pic he’s sat on top of that lump of earth in the middle of the pic. If he wasn’t for his long legs when he was walking, I really don’t think I would have noticed him.

We do see the occasional toad or frog, I’ve never been quite sure which but this one was definitely a toad as he was walking and not hopping. I’m not sure where they come from – or indeed are going to – but they are nice to see (when we can!) anyway!

The footings of the castro are at the end of the land here, and stone building is the old monestry.

On the way back we saw a ship coming into the aluminium works port. It was a huge ship, probably three times the size of the ships we normally see.

What was interesting was watching the tugs manourver the ship-

Here there is a tug literally pushing the front end of the ship around. The tug on the right later went to join it and another tug was at the other end. I think they were then pushing the ship parallel into the mooring. It was very interesting to see and not something I’d really thought about before – I guess with big ships like this they really can’t manoeuvre and are reliant on help!

So we’ve been talking about putting a pond in somewhere – but where! I was just musing this through and was thinking about the water supply for the pond and wondering if water came in somewhere to the back of the house which is where the original kitchen was and I realized – we don’t have a well! And then I thought more and I don’t think any of the houses do. However in this little hamlet most if not all would predate piped water. What a mystery!

There is a pilar which I guess is about 100 meters up the hill (which is circled in pink). Pilars are communal water sources which are used instead of wells for water collection and some also for washing clothes. However, while I can imagine that although impractical, people could walk up to get water, this house and many others had livestock so surely they didn’t take the cows up the hill for water? The shepherd in Villagarcia used to take his sheep to the pilar, but that was a lot flatter – and they were sheep not cows.

We do have spring water piped into the house so obviously there is a source somewhere. And the pilar has an overflow from which water flows somewhere. And the river isn’t ‘too’ far away, but certainly not super-convenient for collecting water.

So my question was why build houses where there’s no obvious water source OR why build the pilar up the hill from the houses. Particularly houses with livestock which would need a lot of water.

Then I thought more and there’s a channel which runs along the side of the road. It’s a very definite channel but doesn’t have running water. I had just thought it was a drainage channel, but thinking about it, the water runs down the hill, so it doesn’t really need a drainage channel – I can’t see how it would work.

Therefore I am wondering if that channel was some form of viaduct with running water in the past from either the overflow from the pilar and/or the spring where we get the piped spring water currently and the houses took water from this channel. That would sort of make sense as the channel appears to go into the center of this little hamlet.

As far as I can see there’s no old water storage containers so I assume the water flowed all year round (it doesn’t currently, the spring water dries up during the summer).

I suppose there could be an old well somewhere, there was more land attached to the house than there is now, but it’s not obvious – but it remains a bit of a mystery!!

The next step is to have a look at the pilar and see if I can see where the water overflow from the pilar goes. I had thought it was to the river, but if it goes somewhere towards the channel at the side of the road things might be clearer 🙂

Plus he also does things like mix up the phrases he knows and when he gets a response from us he repeats it. For example, he knows ‘don’t worry be happy’ and he knows ‘let me entertain you…’ and he will mix the two up and say ‘don’t worry let me entertain you’. Well, obviously he won’t know the meaning of what he says – however if he gets a reaction from us, he’ll then repeat it and add it to his repetoire, so in addition to the phrases we have taught him, he also has his own Ludvig phrases.

So we think he’s really clever, but of course, we could be biased 🙂

However, this is where the interesting thought comes in.

Let’s say that Ludvig is average – what would that mean for the above average African Greys? What can they do? I know there was one that recognized and said the names of hundreds of things, and Ludvig isn’t at that level. I’ve seen an African Grey operate a smart home system (which clearly isn’t that smart if a parrot can operate it) – however I am absolutely certain if we had a home system where we could speak to turn on lights or switch off appliances, Ludvig would be doing that with gusto! We have said we could never have doors which were voice operated as he would most definitely end up locking us out.

But it is quite a mind-boggling thought!!!

As a slight aside, one reason I never have any fears about devices ‘spying’ on us or listening in, as hearing Ludvig in full flow would most certain confuse anyone trying to learn anything from our household 🙂

The two lights on either side of the bridge towards the horizon are fishing boats (I hope…!)

This is the pic I took a few weeks ago showing where the land has been cleared:

We were wondering the other day what additional supports the bridge needed as it does get exposed to waves when there are strong waves coming in that direction. I guess there must be pretty sturdy foundations there.

The vet rang us about 10.30 in the evening to give us an update and said that Charlie was sleeping peacefully, however later she died due to fluid build up in her lungs. It was a bit of a surprise as we’d not expected her to die after the seizure had stopped and she was sleeping – however we were prepared for the fact the seizure might have done extreme damage and we may have had to make a decision about what was best for her quality of life. She was deaf and virtually blind and while the medication were helping with her seizures, it was always going to be important that we avoided her becoming distressed because she was confused and that was the thing we were most worried about. So in one way I’m thankful that it happened relatively quickly and peacefully.

Some photos of Charlie over the years…