The Dreaded Palm Weevil Strikes Again

After seeing others hundreds of examples and palm trees locally suffer, it was only a matter of time before I became infected, yep, I've caught the dreaded palm weevil.

Ten years ago there was none or very little palm weevil along the Iberian Peninsula, now due to trees being imported from the tropics in their thousands, it was inevitable that some of those trees were already infected and so the palm weevil was  introduced and within a matter of weeks can turn a once healthy palm from the one on the left to the one on thew right.

One of the palm leaves on my tree was hanging off and looking distinctly brown. so I removed it. I thought that it was due to the wind which has been so strong and had broken it off.
However, the gardener, saw the leaf and said that it had been chewed by the weevil and asked which tree it had come from. Once we arrived at the tree, he took a look, put his head next to the pineapple trunk and said, "sim, it is full of them"(he is Portuguese but speaks English). By putting your head next to the trunk and listening carefully, you can actually hear them munching away inside the palm trunk.

With that he set about removing more leaves to get into the infected area, seems the weevils borough down to get to the softer part of the tree and set up home all the while munching away at the palm and eventually destroying it.

 This is one of the little bugger's that we removed from the palm tree, along with another 15 of his brothers.



The grubs seem to cocoon themselves insides pieces of the palm tree while they hatch. The pieces of palm tree in the picture on the right each contain a grub which were dug out of the palm tree. We had great delight by standing on them and squishing them, they burst like the mother of all blackheads.

The next picture is of the actual grubs which  are enormous, they are the sort of size that Bear Grylls would have a 3 course meal from and we removed over 20 grubs from the tree.






I have now sprayed the infected tree and all my other palm trees with an insecticide, I can only keep an eye on things and see what happens.
That was last week, since spraying the tree, it seems to have flushed out another few grubs which have come to the surface of their own accord and I have had pleasure squishing them but could still hear them inside the tree.
Another week later and so far the trunk seems to be quiet, watch this space.

 

Thank you to my grandson Morgan for the video of one of the grubs removed from the tree, he has promised not to sue me for copyright violation for using his material.

Hotel Portugal

We have been playing mine host, entertainment manager, laundry skivvy,  head cook and bottle washer for the past 6 weeks as our boys and their families have been over to Portugal for their summer holidays.
Needless to say, we are now feeling a little jaded as 6 continuous weeks is a bit tough. However, fear not, peace has returned, they have all gone home, today the silence in deafening, aaahhh bliss.

The Lego has been put away for another year, the buckets and spades and the rest of the beach stuff has gone back into the dungeon and will not see the light of day for about the same amount of time. The swimming pool area has returned to the sedate peaceful area it once was and again is the place to lay back and read your book in peace.
What is it about kids and water, why do they have to shout at each other all the time when they are in the swimming pool?

No more crazy American comedy programs at 10 in the morning (now there's a contradiction in terms, the Americans just don't do funny),  and I have regained control of the remote control, I have felt almost naked for the past few weeks without it.

All I have to do now is return 3 hundred weight of sand that is in the back of the car to the beach and then remove 27 sandy footprints that form a nice pattern on the back of the car seats.

I love 'em to bits really, after all, grandchildren are the reward for not strangling your kids.



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Golf in the Antarctic

I don't know about Life in the Algarve, it is more like Life in the Antarctic at the moment.
Played golf yesteday, well tried to at any rate.

I made the foolish decision of playing in shorts and a polo shirt, well it is July in the sunny Algarve.
Half way down the 1st fairway, I realised that I had made a mistake and needed at least a sweater, by the time I got to the highest point, I needed a thermal vest as well.

The sun was out with not a cloud in the sky, but the wind was blowing a force 9 double hooley with the wind chill wiping a good 10-15 degrees from the 25 out of the wind, which there wasn't anywhere. Luckily I found a wind cheater in my bag and other put on wooly fleeces.
It has been like this for the past 6 weeks, apparently due to the Gulf Stream/Jet Stream being lower than normal on its path across the planet and there seems no end to it.

A ball that normally traveled 200 metres was lucky to get 150 metres into the wind with the club buffeted and blown all over the place on the back-swing.  We had air shots, (not me I hasten to add), knobbled shots, (will have to own up to one of those) and a few that didn't even reach the ladies tee, because as you know, ladies being the weaker sex, always tee off far in front of the mens teeing area gaining such a huge advantage. Sometimes they are half way down the fairway, but that may be classed as sexist, I don't see how when its a fact and far be it for me to be provocative, ( I can already feel a few choice words coming my way).

My best shot was hitting the ball from the tee and sending it 200 metres in the wrong direction, it wasn't a bad shot, it was the cross wind, honest.
Once on the green, the ball was oscillating on the spot and if moved once you had addressed the ball by grounding your putter behind the ball, should incur a penalty but I guess not many, if any counted it.

Needless to say when the scores were announced they were all low, but sadly still higher than mine.

The flag on the old 14th green struggles to stay in the hole

Home Sweet Home

As reported a little while back Dino the budgie, took off on a little adventure and was missing for an hour or so. It may have been a gust of wind, (although I have to say it has never affected me enough to make me want to go AWOL for a while), or he just might need some need toys and therefore some new stimulation.

I had been putting off building him a house in his room for some time, somewhere were he can go and chill.

Dino's new house

I begged a piece of drainage pipe and cut the entrance hole and  fitted the the necessary attachments so that he could climb in and out.
I left his new "des res"around the house for a while for him to see and get used to and he was inquisitive from the start. He soon made it his own by enlarging the hole, pecking here and there and once I had given him a few sheets of paper to shred and make it more comfortable, he moved in and seems as pleased as punch, in fact I think its fair to say that he loves it.
He has always enjoyed playing with golf balls in the past and so I included 3 in his house for him to play with.
His instincts are obviously kicking in as he is now sitting on the golf balls and must be thinking that that are eggs and is  trying to start a new family, I am looking forward to a few baby Titleist's in a couple of weeks time, could be a nice little earner.

Cats and pots

Not happy with the current layout of the flower pots and containers on the terrace at Whittaker Towers we decided to splash out and buy some new ones.
As some of the pots are quite large, I thought it best to prepare them before putting the plants in, in fact I was well in front of myself as we hadn't even decided on the type of plants that should go in them.
So I drilled the holes and loaded the bottom with some crock to help with the drainage and then half filled them with compost.
Fortunately I had recently had another bulk delivery from the local council which I use to fill half the pot before putting a better grade compost in the top half.
Unfortunately, the next morning before I had chance to put the plant in the pot, I was too late, Stig had made himself a nice comfy bed and couldn't be persuaded to move out.

 A couple of days later when we had finally bought the desired plants I had to resort to a bit of bribery with a tasty tit-bit for him to move out, which always seems to do the trick with any animal and I quickly got the new plant in place. Poor Stig was now looking for a new place to camp out, looks like it didn't take him long as he quickly found a shady spot to have a snooze.

Lost, one large budgie

I was out in the garden the other day with Dino our Blue & Gold Macaw(affectionately referred to as the budgie), who always likes to help with the odd spot of soil chewing to help his digestion when I noticed that one area needed a bit of extra help in the water department.  I went off to start the irrigation after I had put Dino on a branch in a nearby tree. 
When I returned a couple of minutes later, Dino was not on the branch and he was nowhere in sight.
After a few calls of his name and some quick searching, panic was beginning to set in and a nasty taste started to arrive in my very dry mouth.  I went back to the house to check there, nothing and  explained to my wife what had happened. We both continued to search and checked every part of the garden, over and over again, nothing.

Baring in my that this is probably the only bird in the world that hates flying and chooses to walk everywhere, I knew he couldn't be far away, but after more calling his name, searching and whistling, he was still nowhere to be found..
I searched the adjoining fields on each side of the house where the grass was around 4 foot high. I checked all the treetops and surrounding vegetation, there was nowhere within 300 metres of the house that I hadn't searched. I went back to the place that I had left him, now some 30 minutes ago and tried to assess which way he would have flown. The wind was quite strong as it had been for the past couple of weeks and today it was coming from a northerly direction. Assuming that a sudden gust could have caught him unawares, it may have lifted him from the branch and set him on his way and he could well be somewhere down wind.

As I mentioned earlier, Dino chooses not to fly but when necessary, he can and obviously he has today but how far has he gone. Surely he can't have gone far as he will not have much muscle in that area and being a big bird needs a good flap to get some elevation.
The first house we came to had a large white van in the drive and as my wife went to knock on the door, while waiting for someone to answer,  she turned around to see Dino hiding under the van trying to get some shade out of the blistering hot sun, which could have been another reason for taking off from his position in the tree, he hates the sunshine. Macaws are originally from the Amazon and are not sun loving birds, they prefer to be high in the tree tops surveying all before them but in the shade, anyway panic over.

Sad Farewell

 I know it can be a touchy subject, never talk about politics and religion as a topic of conversation at a dinner party, but what has come to annoy me me of late are those people that immediately put the shutters up at the merest mention of the word "church" or "religion".
Don' t get me wrong, I am not a firm believer one way or the other and I don't know the difference between a vicar, a father or a preacher, if indeed there is any, although I do know that the Pope is higher up the Stairway to Heaven than I, (allegedly), although we are all supposedly God's children.
Having said that, since coming to live in the Algarve, I have been to Church more times in the past 4 or 5 years than I have in the previous 50 odd and strangely enough, I have come to realise that normal people seem to go to church, they don't have two heads or have a secret handshake and they don't walk around thrusting a cross in your face, in fact I have met some very nice normal people who have become good friends and outside of Church have never mentioned the words God, Bible or Jesus.
I don't do Church religiously (if you'll pardon the pun) each week, unlike my wife who does. I mostly only go for the big occasions, Easter, Harvest Festival, Christmas etc. or when the local children or youth group are performing at the Sunday service.

The local Chaplain at St. Vincents is Father Haynes, well he is until the end of the month and he too is also a normal person.
He and his family arrived at St Vincent's Church in Praia da Luz, Portugal, five years ago last month, the very week that Madeline McCann disappeared when she was taken from the holiday villa in which the McCann family were staying.

I am certainly no "Born Again" christian, but one of the reasons I do go now and again, has to be due to Father Haynes, who I have come to see as a friend, someone who likes a laugh, who plays golf, sometimes badly, sometimes as a real bandit, so much so that one questions if he is getting help from other parts.
He also has an uncanny knack and built in radar for finding lost golf balls, mostly lost by others and he always goes home with at least a dozen or so golf balls than he arrived with.

Last Sunday was one of those special occasions that I went to Church, this time it was special for me for the wrong reasons, as this particular Sunday would be Father Haynes last service as he and his family have decided to return to their native country of Canada and will leave Portugal at the end of the week.

During those 5 years, Father Haynes has become more than the local messenger, he arrived in the middle of an international incident, he has taken a broken Church and built a community, a community who will sadly miss him and his family.

Good Luck, Father Haynes, Susan, Sebastien, Gabriella and Caspian.