“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. “– Barbara Ward – We learned in April that land clearing is not the same as gardening, and that we will have to approach it in a more efficient way. Our visits are short, and […]
“It all comes with the cold water.” – An Islandic saying to remind someone that if you are patient, things will fall into place. As the temperatures in Portugal are plummeting, and Michael is heading there tonight, it may seem rather ironic and perhaps a tad cruel that I would reflect on the warmth of […]
“The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.” – Simone de Beauvoir – “I’d like to go home now.” […]
“. . . it is our dreams that tell us who we really are and what is important to us . . .” – Paula Constant – As our eventual plan is to combine the barn and ruin into one house, and with Michael always looking at the “bigger picture”, often to my chagrin, he […]
“The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t.” – Joseph Jenkins, from: The Humanure Handbook I completely agree, when people make statements like: “We do not have a symbiotic relationship with the earth anymore; or, we live wasteful lifestyles.” And when people […]
“The weight of a dream is not in proportion to its size. Some dreams are made of fog, some of lace, some of lead.” – Rebecca Solnit – We fell in love with the land, the first time we saw photographs of it, and when we first set foot on it in July last year, […]
“The immensity of nature gives us a new perspective on life, washes away or minimizes our worries. How can we feel sad with all the beauty there to see? And how can we feel poor when all this beauty belongs to us?” – Ferenc Máté – July brought long sun-drenched days, followed by lingering light, […]
❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞ – Rita Mae Brown – Learning Portuguese is not optional for us. In rural Portugal hardly anyone speaks English, unlike Lisbon, where most people can speak a couple of languages. And so, I thought, […]
“There are experiences of landscape that will always resist articulation, and of which words offer only a remote echo – or to which silence is by far the best response.” – Robert Macfarlane – April visit 2018
Wildfires in Portugal are both real and disastrous, as was seen in the devastating loss of property, livelihoods, and lives in 2017. Native wood species, like pine and oak, are more and more shunned in favour of eucalyptus trees. As a result industrial monoculture plantations are created, which burn easily, as the trees contain a […]
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