The First Quarter of 2024 started off with an extraordinary and unexpected event. A friend from the Western Garden club posted on WhatsApp that she had a box for a concert that weekend that could not be used due to a health issue. We quickly checked with friends who immediately agreed and within minutes we had acquired a box for that Friday at Teatro Nacional de São Carlos to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Within a day, we booked rooms at the Hotel Fénix, booked the train to Lisbon, and made a dinner reservation at O Português Chiado.
We had a great meal at the restaurant, enjoying not only the food, but also the ambiance of the historic ceiling vaults, as well as a young woman singing folk songs in Portuguese and English.
None of us had been to a concert at this Teatro, reconstructed in 1793 after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. And none of us had ever heard Beethoven’s 9th live and in-person. Neither disappointed. Our box was in the lowest circle, about a third of the way from the stage, and offered excellent acoustics and sight lines. The symphony was staged with a full slate of soloists and a 70+ person chorus.
As we left the hall with snippets of the Ode to Joy circulating through our minds, we decided to enjoy the clear and mild weather by walking through Chiado to the Praça Dom Pedro IV where we could easily grab an Uber. The Chiado neighborhood was filled with people enjoying meals and music clubs as well as the sidewalk buskers. We paused by one guy and joined in singing Radiohead’s I’m a Freak, for me one of the few songs for which I can remember most of the words.
In February, we attended the Orange Festival in Silves. Funny, but neither Soo nor I remember ever hearing about this festival, and so we drove up not expecting much. To our surprise the exhibition center was packed!
There were dozens of booths ranging from agriculture consultants and suppliers, bakeries, brewers, wineries, and more, all with orange and orange-adjacent products. Soo picked up a lot of growing tips and referrals to suppliers. A fun morning!
Q1 also provided a full slate of meetings from our western and central garden clubs and lunches from our west and central AFPOP social groups. Due to the season, most of the garden club meetings presented interesting slide-show lectures, followed by lunch and an afternoon garden visit. Our AFPOP lunches were all opportunities to visit with old friends as well as to make a few new ones. One funny example was meeting one couple for the first time at an AFPOP meal and seeing them again a few days later at the garden club.
The cymbidiums that started blooming in late fall continued through January. Maybe the blooming was a little more spread out this year than last which seemed to cluster right at Christmas.
An Algarve garden never really goes dormant, but we did welcome the return of our early spring visitors such as bluebells, snowdrops, periwinkles, and freesias. We seemed to have more rain and wind than we remembered in recent winters. Our reservoirs really need the water, so no complaints whatsoever. Especially since the garden didn’t really suffer much damage other than some of the privacy hedges being uprooted. We had roses here and there all winter and right now many of the bushes are starting to bloom.
A couple weeks ago, we made our spring trek to Seville to visit the nurseries and Costco. The plant shopping was very targeted and mostly successful. But Costco provided one of the year’s high points: a gigantic bag of tater tots. I have been looking for tots since moving to Europe with no success. Because they are frozen, we never brought any back from our US visits. When I spotted the bag, I read the labeling several times before letting my brain truly believe I found my culinary nirvana. These aren’t the Ore-Ida tots (the gold standard of tots), but they are darn good!
In the fall, we had AFPOP meals from both the Lagos and the Silves sections, several short trips, garden club meetings, and a nice visit from an old work friend and his wife. In November, British friends living in Praia da Luz invited us to an authentic American-style Thanksgiving dinner. And they totally nailed it! They got a fresh turkey from Apollonia that was moist and full of flavor. Mentioning Apollonia reminds me that we also went to a pantomime production of Cinderella by our local Algarve Theater Group, and it was hilarious. We respect the players’ request not to take photos, but here is a shot from their website with the Ugly Stepsisters portrayed as a couple drag queens.
December was a blur of events, starting with the Lagos AFPOP holiday party at the Tivoli. We welcome any opportunity to see old friends wearing their holiday best.
A couple days later, we were off to Budapest to follow through on another planned trip that was scrapped due to covid, and to check out their Christmas Markets. The weather was bone-chilling cold with wet sleet for the entirety of the stay. We stayed at the Alta Moda Hotel, newly remodeled, having a fantastic staff and breakfast, and easy walking distance to tourism sites and the city Metro. Budapest was fabulous, and I wouldn’t mind going back during a warmer time of year. Among the highlights were a trip down the Danube, a Renoir exhibit at one of the city’s art museums, several visits to the Central Market, Tosca at the Hungarian National Opera House, and lots of great meals.
Sadly, the Christmas Markets were disappointing. The two main ones featured food more than anything, and at first, I thought that was a good thing so I could try out a lot of things in one place. But there was virtually no place to sit and eat. And the larger fair, in a plaza in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, was so packed that not only couldn’t we sit to eat, but we also couldn’t even stand. I was afraid to drink Glühwein for fear that the jostling throng would make me spill scalding wine on some little kid.
Another cool thing about Budapest is that they have the largest Chinese population in Eastern Europe. Because most came from northern and central China, most of the Chinese restaurants are Szechuan rather than Cantonese. And because this Chinese migration was in the late 20th century, Budapest’s “Chinatown” is on the outskirts of the city. We enjoyed a couple terrific Chinese meals. For one, we took a city bus ride through a sleeting blizzard to have probably the best Szechuan meal we’ve ever had and also to shop at a huge Asian supermarket.
After Budapest, we were looking forward to a garden club holiday party, and a holiday party from the Silves AFPOP section. Unfortunately, Soo came down with a really nasty cold. I went to the garden club luncheon and sat with a friend whose wife also was home with a cold. Soo’s cold lasted into a second week and started to worsen. On the night of the AFPOP party, we made an emergency visit to the clinic, and the meds eventually got her back to normal. Since that time, I have talked with about a dozen people who had or knew people who had colds that lasted two to three times as long as normal.
Our last adventure in December was a trip back to California. We started with a couple days in Lisbon, joining friends to attend Cirque du Soleil. We went up a day early to check out Lisbon’s Christmas Fair, and to take in some fado at Povo on the Pink Street.
The Christmas Fair was in the park across from our hotel. Despite the clear blue sky and the moderate temps, we still managed to get into the proper spirit. The Fair had lots of food and drink, so I sampled a ginja and a medronho to really get into the proper spirit.
That evening, we headed down to Povo, a fado club that nurtures young singers through residencies lasting several months. We were surprised by the remodeling and an updated menu, which further enhanced our enjoyment of a wonderful young fadista.
The next day, we spent the morning shopping (mostly looking) at El Corte Inglés, one of the last truly great department store chains in the world. After a late lunch at Maria Peixeira, we headed up to Altice Arena for the five o’clock Cirque du Soleil show. It was our first Cirque du Soleil as well as our first time in Altice Arena. We enjoyed the show, though once is probably enough. Altice looks like it would be a great basketball venue, though I doubt they could fit a hockey rink in it.
Driving back to the hotel we saw Lisbon all decked out for the holidays. This is the view of Praça do Marquês de Pombal from our hotel window.
Finally, the following morning, we were off to the US. We have taken this same routing, Lisbon to London to LAX, on British Air at least a half dozen consecutive times now. Like most of the others, this one went off without a hitch. In fact, we got through passport control and collected our bags so fast that we caught the earlier bus to Santa Barbara. The same thing happened on the way back in Lisbon! Normally, we spend the night in Lisbon and catch the morning train home. This time, we tried out taking the evening bus instead of spending for a hotel and it was just fine. I doubt we’ll ever again spend the night in Lisbon before or after our flights.
Regular readers with incredible memories will remember that in my September 15, 2022 post (East Side Story) I stated that formalizing the pathways through the garden would be the last milestone for building the garden. Last summer we did it. We marked out the paths with green plastic edging, laid down weed cloth, and covered the cloth with pink and charcoal grey pebbles. After the project, this is how it looked. Soo used all pink on some paths, all charcoal grey on others, and a mix on the rest.
Pretty, aren’t they? That was the good news. Unfortunately, the second law of thermodynamics kicked in and the system moved to disorder. Our sandy soil pushed up the plastic edging, rendering it virtually useless. I’m guessing it was due to alternating compression and expansion from rain or watering. On top of that, ground birds will flick pine bark and other ground cover out of their way and onto the paths in their quest for insects to snack on. So, the orderly paths are now more rural in character and that is okay too.
Dahlias have been moved near the greenhouse and are multiplying.
Cactus’ keep blooming.
Our old friend, the Queen of the Night, is doing well, surviving trimming and moving all over the place to keep out of the way of the builders. You can notice that we even put it on wheels.
Soo’s planting from the previous year was largely successful. We put in several ornamental gingers (which could be finicky) and all but one is thriving. A single day lily from the summer before has multiplied dramatically.
Here is a new Dragon Fruit.
We put in several different types of gloriosa lilies, and they all made it. Of all the exotic plants we brought home from the Madeira trip, only one failed. Unfortunately, it was probably our favorite, but also the one with the highest risk, the thunbergia mysorensis. Assuming we can get one without flying to Madeira, it’s probably worth another try before giving up completely, The African Tulip Tree (a.k.a. Flame Tree) and the heliconias are doing fine.
Besides the survivors, the big surprise was the degree of growth over the past summer. It was especially evident when I looked at the pathway pictures, which showed the garden in June.
Roses take center stage. We are now over one hundred rose bushes (and still shopping).
On the fauna side of things, our resident lovebirds had at least four babies and we seem to have attracted even more.
I know, I know. It’s been quite awhile since our last post. It’s not like we haven’t been doing anything. It’s just that post-covid, much of what we have done is to repeat things that we have done in prior years. And those things have been wonderful and worthy of posting. It’s just that it would be the third or fourth time I would have written about some of them and I’m just not creative enough to find new words to describe them. So, I punted.
But I do owe it to myself and my small band of subscribers to get caught up on what we have been up to since the Madeira trip. So, here goes!
Maybe the most noteworthy part of the summer is that we had four visits by friends and family. Most of all, it was great to catch up and to share our new retired life with our guests. It was also fun to test out using the new construction on the property and to come up with a few new ideas as well. The sunroom construction was finished in time for three of the visits and we made good use of it from breakfast to late-night reminiscing. Our outdoor kitchen was also finished during the summer, but we haven’t really had a chance to use it for company.
It was also great fun to get back to the full set of summer festivals, post-covid. The only one we missed was the Lagoa Wine and Fado Festival. My fault entirely. For some reason I thought it was in July instead of June. But the Olhao Shellfish Festival returned for the first time since covid. And Fatacil and the Silves Medieval Faire were as fun as ever.
The garden continues to develop. Many of the hedges that we used to create private “rooms” are over eight feet tall now. Most of the plants that we brought back from Madeira have survived (fingers crossed they make it through their first winter).
There is always something blooming, even in the direst weather.
In the next few days I’ll do another post with a garden update and that will pretty much get us caught up through Fall 2023. I’ll try to get back soon to tell you about December and January.
Another day, another high point of the tour. Tough life. Today’s first visit was to Monte Palace Tropical Garden located just a few meters from the cable car’s upper terminus. The property dates back to the 18th century when the English consul bought it and began transforming the gardens for his personal use. It was acquired in the late 19th century by Alfredo Guilherme Rodrigues and soon after large manor house was built in a style modeled after German castles perched on peaks overlooking the Rhine. In the mid-20th century, the property fell into neglect until it was acquired by José Berardo, a colorful character in Portuguese history, who set the path for the garden as it now is.
The garden is over 70,000 square meters and I’d guess the drop in elevation from top to bottom is close to 500 feet. Much of the garden is a mature tropical forest blotting out the sky. But in between you will find dozens of paths winding their way through the trees, some broad and gently sloping, and others narrow, often with stairs and uneven paving.
Oddly, the overall character of the garden is Asian, with numerous water features, Buddha images, Chinese statues, Japanese bridges, koi ponds, of course a good selection of Asian plants.
There is also a significant array of tile work, with one set illustrating the history of Portugal and another showing the historic presence of Portugal in Asia. The Garden houses three impressive museums, one focusing on Zimbabwean sculpture, a gem and mineral museum, and one presenting a collection of cultural artifacts from around the world.
This is a lingering kind of garden. It presents more surprises the slower you walk. It is worth stopping every few meters to study all directions, and up and down.
After lunch at a café perched on the side of the slope, we came to a decision. Though there were two more gardens on the day’s agenda, leaving the group at this point allowed us to take the cable car down to the coastline, something we had been hoping to do. We checked in with the tour leader and headed off to the cable car terminus where we went on the twenty-minute ride down. Steep and high, and yet it wasn’t nearly as scary as the car ride up.
The Central Market was on the way from the bottom terminus to the hotel and we both have never found a central market that we didn’t enjoy. Soo was especially keen on seeing what kind of plants she might be able to take back home. Soo wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I was starting to worry about packing, since EasyJet makes more money on luggage than on passengers.
Friday
This is the last day of the touring itinerary, and started with another of the major tour sites, the Botanical Garden Madeira. This 80,000 square meter park started as the personal park of the Reid family, founders of Reid’s hotel which is to Funchal like Raffles is to Singapore. In 1960 it was acquired by the Madeira government and transformed into this national treasure. The park is divided into five major groupings and several sub-groupings. There is a small natural history museum near the top that has some taxidermy as well as some interesting specimens of corals. Most of the plants, over 2500 varieties, were familiar to us, but nonetheless provided a pleasant walk with great views over Funchal and the Atlantic.
After lunch, our next stop was Quinta das Cruzes Museum and Garden. In terms of a tourism attraction, I think the museum probably ranks first and the garden second. The museum’s collection was focused on Madeiran historical artifacts. The artwork was primarily portraits of Madeiran government figures.
We had two more stops on the agenda, the Municipal Gardens and a wine-tasting at Blandy’s, but we bailed out on both and headed back to the hotel to rest up for dinner.
Saturday
This was to be our free day before returning to the mainland on Sunday, but EasyJet spoiled that with a Sunday strike that required us to rebook for Saturday afternoon. We made the best of it with a late breakfast and a few more hours at the Central Market where Soo remarkably found a few more plants to take home. We managed to get everything packed (!!!), spent the night in Lisbon at the Moxy, and had a wonderful dinner with friends at Maria Peixiera’s.
We joined The Algarve Gardener (TAG) shortly after moving to Carvoeiro. One of the neat features of our new club is an annual trip outside the Algarve, with this year’s trip being a week in Madeira. We signed up for the trip nearly six months ago and have been eagerly looking forward to it since then.
Our travel comprised an early train to Lisbon, a taxi to the airport, and an EasyJet flight to Funchal, Madeira. Folks who had been there before told us that pilots needed to be specifically certified to land at Funchal. As we approached, we could see only a narrow strip of flat ground hugging the mountainside. Half the runway was constructed as a bridge.
In our short time with this group, we found that the group’s organizers, Bob and Rosi, are meticulous planners. This week was a masterclass in logistics.
We were met at the airport by a fleet of black Mercedes vans and sedans. On the drive to the hotel, our driver imparted two bits of wisdom: “One day; four seasons” and “Madeira roads are like spaghetti.” Both were proven out over and over during the week.
After about ten minutes of driving, we had our first good look at Funchal as we emerged from a series of tunnels and flyovers. In the photo below, the piece that looks like a series of windows in the concrete, bottom-right, is a motorway that had been roofed to protect from rockfall.
We saw nothing flat. Funchal sits in a bowl with buildings densely packed up the steep slopes. Every building was sited on a slab of concrete carved out of the steep hillside. As we drew closer to the downtown area, we saw that the commercial part of town was achingly charming and spotlessly clean. Though sloped, the central area was much less steep than the city further from the sea.
We booked into the Turim Santa Maria, a modern hotel at the edge of the commercial district, with an easy walk (downhill) to the central market and numerous restaurants. Being Sunday, most of the restaurants were closed, but we had a decent meal at Noodle King, an Asian restaurant offering ramen, stir-fry, and sushi.
Over the next five days we would be booked for eleven gardens, two wine-tastings, and a driving tour of the island.
Monday
We got up early and hit the breakfast buffet at the hotel. It was a good spread although unchanging over the course of our week. Our fleet of black Mercedes picked us up at the hotel and took us to the western side of Funchal to the Madeira Magic Garden. The driver called the area the “tourism center” because of the upscale hotels and the shopping mall. The garden was operated in conjunction with a gym which seemed like a strange combination. The Magic Garden was originally the city’s landfill, and in the process of being rebuilt, it repurposed a lot of natural materials. It was well laid-out, with winding paths offering many ways to get through all the sights. It would be the lowest elevation of all the gardens we would be seeing, and provided great views of the sea and coastline as well as the rest of Funchal up to the clouds.
In terms of the plant collection, most of the plants could be found in our garden, although the ones here were on a massive scale. This was a very pleasant appetizer to prepare us for the coming week.
After lunch, our fleet drove straight up the mountainside to visit Quinta da Boa Vista orchid nursery. The winding roads supported two-way traffic by only a matter of centimeters. And not only two-way traffic, but parked vehicles and buses too! Again, I was reminded of the driver’s comment about the roads being spaghetti. We went left so that we could go right; up so that we could go down. We went through tunnels, on flyovers, and around sharp blind turns. The journey was like a game of three-dimensional chess.
The nursery was massive and had a very good variety of orchids. The owner, Patrick, is a trained botanist and gave us a personal tour. Doing so he answered every question. And he never settled for a simple answer but rather he provided answers that were both technical and detailed, often replete with anecdotes.
In addition to orchids, this nursery has many rare tropical plants. One of these is the Jade Vine, native to the Philippines. The striking turquoise flowers have apparently evolved to a symbiotic relationship with native bats, by developing in a way that allows bats to drink their nectar but prevents birds and bees from doing so.
Before leaving, Soo was able to purchase a few exotic plants small enough to carry home, one being a flowering vine from India and the other being a spider orchid.
Our last stop was Pereira d’Oliveira, a tasting room for Madeira wine. I learned that the primary difference between Madeira wine and port is that Madeira is made from white wine. Our arrangement was for four tastes of five-year-old wines: dry, semi-dry, semi-sweet, and sweet. Each was unique and filled a particular role in a meal. We were surprised when the servers also treated us to a flight of ten-year-old wines, and the improvement in character of these was obvious even to me. Finally, the servers brought around plates of Madeira cake. Imagine the best brownie ever, crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, blended with a bit of dried fruit. I think the cake was my favorite part of the tasting.
Tuesday
Today was another in a series of days that Soo and I were both looking forward to. Our entire day would be spent touring the island outside of Funchal, culminating in an afternoon at Quinta da Arco, the largest rose garden in Portugal. We are starting to get used to leaving the hotel and driving straight up the side of the mountain. Our first stop was to be Pico do Arieeiro, the third highest peak in Madeira at around 1800 meters. On most days the peak offers a view that looks down on the clouds. This wasn’t most days. The higher we went, the denser the fog and mist became. By the time we reached the radar station, we could barely see more than a few car lengths ahead, and our tour leader decided to skip the peak and to head to our next stop. Now we have yet another reason to return to Madeira.
The next planned stop was Ribeira Frio, a national park comprised of dense forest, numerous hiking trails, a trout farm, waterfalls, and scenic overlooks. The misty rain had let up just a bit, but not really enough to make any of the aforementioned activities pleasant. We wandered around the gift shops and snack bars, trying to stay dry before moving to our next stop. Porto da Cruz on the north side of the island gifted us with a clear blue sky and majestic cliff views. Some of the viewpoints offered see-through plexi bridges that provided a look at the waves crashing on the rocks below.
From Porto da Cruz, we headed west along the north coast to the village of Santana. This was our lunch break, but the pretty village also had several examples of the original thatch houses from centuries past.
After lunch, Soo was delighted to find a couple heliconia roots and some unusual bulbs in a gift shop.
Finally, it was a short drive to Quinta da Arco. This garden is located between a steep forested mountainside and the sea and contains over 17,000 roses from over 1500 varieties. Being May, the roses were in full bloom.
Wednesday
Palheiro Gardens is a 143,000 square meter estate located east of Funchal at an elevation of 500 meters. The estate dates back to the 18th century when the Count of Carvalhal planted trees from around the world. Many of these trees still stand two hundred years later. In fact, the maturity of some of the plants is remarkable. We must have seen over a dozen plant types that were the largest we had ever seen. For example, we have a few protea plants in our garden. But here, there is an avenue of protea trees (!!!).
There was even a larger avenue of camelia trees, though the flowering had finished for the year. The other thing that really struck Soo was that the garden had plants thriving next to each other when they shouldn’t even be in the same environment, much less the same garden. There were succulents and cacti right next to plants from tropical rain forests and they were all thriving. (One day; four seasons?)
As for the weather, it was still misty from the day before, with a few intermittent sprinkles. The plan was to spend 4 ½ hours here and we had a small lunch about two hours in. After strolling for another hour, the drizzle hardened, and we headed back to the tea house for a brandy for me and tea for Soo.
Our second stop of the day was to the garden of Quinta Jardins do Lago, a cozy hotel down the hill. Here we received a guided tour from the Head Gardener, Michael. Michael is a botanist who eschewed a career in academia to keep his hands in the dirt. Here is Michael with Columbo, the garden mascot.
There were quite a few very mature plants, but what seemed most notable here was the variety. In his time with the hotel, Michael has brought many plants that are native to islands such as the Azores and the Canaries. There were also quite a few orchid species living “in the wild.” We also saw many Asian plants and trees such as jackfruit and rose apple. One particular treat was spending some time in Michael’s nursery, where he has his new acquisitions acclimatizing and cuttings rooting for replanting. A very welcome perk was about halfway through the tour, when the hotel manager surprised us with a tray of very a good Madeira wine.
A lot going on in the garden. Right now we have some folks laying out the paths through the garden. I’ll post some shots when they’ve finished. For now, I thought I would just do a status report on a few themes started earlier.
When I posted shots of the cymbidiums a couple months ago, we still had three that were in bud, but hadn’t yet opened. These three were a little exciting because they represented the last to flower of the back bulbs that we brought from the US seven years ago. We had no idea what they would look like. Two of them opened just a few weeks after the last posting.
The last one only opened a few days ago.
In other news, our little paulonia tree flowered. This tree was a stick that a nursery owner pulled out of the ground and gave to us for free. For a couple months, it just sat there. Then, we were astounded when it grew about three feet over the next couple months. It put out buds at the end of the fall, and a week ago, the tree bloomed with these purplish trumpets.
BTW, Wiki calls the paulonia the fastest growing tree in the world.
Finally, I know this is maybe the third or fourth time I have posted these, but I always get a kick out of the terlandsias blooming. It just seems so unlikely!
After a three-year Covid pause, the Loulé Carnaval celebrations were back and as good as ever. In past years, we have always gone up for the actual Carnaval day, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Due to conflicts this year we went up on Sunday. No different though. We went up with friends and had a terrific meal at Bica Velha before the parade.
The parade runs on three days, Sunday to Tuesday, and consists of bands, dance troupes, and the famous satirical floats. The town center was absolutely packed and excitement was at a fever pitch as the parade began. The theme of this year’s parade was centered around the discovery in Portugal of a new species of dinosaur and some of the commentary that followed (“That’s not a dinosaur; it’s just a big salamander!”)
Here are some of the visuals. See how many faces you can identify.
One of the things the western Algarve is proud of is its abundance of storks. Unlike much of Europe, most of the storks here are no longer migratory. Not only have they occupied every abandoned chimney and tall pole, but many communities and eco groups have constructed poles with platforms in order to make the storks welcome.
Last week, on the way up to Monchique, we came across a refuge that we had not noticed before. It is on the left side of the N266 about 2 km after the Silves turnoff. If you reach the village of Rasmalho, you have gone too far. There is likely to be a few cars pulled over so that folks can snap photos.
With the pandemic, we hadn’t gone up to Monchique for several years, and we aren’t sure if this stork refuge is something new or if we just blithely drove by in the past. The spot is marked on Google maps as a photo destination and the oldest review is eight months ago, so maybe it is relatively new?
It’s been six years or so since we brought over a bunch of orchid rhyzomes to Portugal. We knew it would take at least five years before we saw any flowers and no guarantee whether they would even survive. As of last year, seven produced flowers. This year we have two more. The last one has healthy leaves but still no flowers.
At any rate, this year’s cymbidiums are blooming pretty much all at once. Here is what our sun room looks like now:
The white cascading one, top center, has produced eleven spikes this year! And we have four more plants in the greenhouse that have produced spikes that have yet to flower.
Bob and Soo 