December 2024

Feliz Natal! This was our second Christmas in the Azores and I still can’t get over how ‘un-Christmaslike’ it is. Aside from the occasional string of lights or Santa decoration, it is easy to forget what time of year it is. We had a rather nice stretch of weather in December – minimal rain and a number of sunny days. Daytime high temperatures tended to be in the low 60s and only a few degrees cooler at night.

Christmas Market and Botanical Garden

Raymond and I spent a lovely day in the capital perusing the Christmas Market. It was held in Praça Velha (old square) in front of the historic city hall, bedecked in lights and with a beautifully decorated Christmas tree inside. I was expecting the market to be like those in Germany, with a variety of vendors selling their wares, but on this particular day all the vendors were selling food. So, we sampled a number of traditional cakes and pastries in the square before going to the Botanical Garden to walk them off.

Bird Competition

While researching the Christmas Market schedule online, we noticed there was a ‘bird competition’ listed. Curious, we stopped by the agriculture pavilion on our way to Angra. How interesting it was! We stepped inside the indoor arena to the screeching cacophony of birds. Literally hundreds of canaries, parakeets, lovebirds, and parrots were in individual cages for the judging. Raymond and I had no idea there were so many varieties of canaries – some frizzy, some with orange heads, and some with Beatles-esque ‘mop-top’ feathers! We enjoyed whistling at them and seeing them respond (some sang quite beautifully).

Garden Projects

After more than a year of collecting bits of pottery, porcelain, and glass in the yard and garden, I finally got around to making a mosaic above the grill. It makes me smile to walk by and see the colors, including bits of Blue Willow like my family had growing up. Raymond calls it “a bit of whimsy.” I also made some improvements to the garden beds, edging each with old terra cotta roofing tiles from the rubble pile. It’s been great to amend the soil and keep it where we want it. We already planted more lettuce and beets in the additional space.

Behind the bathroom and perched between the wall of the oven and the hillside was a very large rock. We wanted it gone to expose the back of the oven and make way for the future retaining wall along the terraced garden. So Raymond drilled some holes and was able to break it into two large rocks.

The first photo shows the overgrown rubble pile to the left of the butternut squash garden bed (in October). We started to clear and expand the top terrace by first raking all of the vines and loose terra cotta tiles. Since there was a substantial amount of decades-old leaf litter mixed in, we have been grating the rubble and distributing the lovely compost to each garden bed. The bottom photo shows the top terrace’s new stone wall (meeting a mostly buried wall which marks the property line) and the new gravel walkway. The idea is to for this path to follow along the future retaining wall all the way to the oven roof on the left.