Painting Walls ...and Spaghetti Heaven

More Algarve 

flora and fauna...birdlife and beach...and edible things...

Hoopoe above...

Hibiscus - reminder of my African childhood too...

sparrows on the balcony...after a rain storm...

lemons...out of reach...

seagull eating our left over bread.

strawberry tree fruit before they ripen to red...

a buzzard sheltering from the wind on a wall light...

cleaning the beach....leaving tractor tyre patterns...

sweet almond dessert...

blue bird...relative of the magpie I think.

I never tire of watching the waves...

sparrow conversation...

every evening the sun goes down over the same beach ...every evening the sky is different...

seagull waiting for lunch scraps...

Heaven.

Back home I'm surprised to see the starlings...they have been absent from the bird table for a long time.

The blue tits are a constant though...I love them.

The adorable long tailed tits are only occasional visitors....

I see him every day...somewhere in the garden.

Last night, in the light from the  kitchen window, I was thrilled to see this sweet hedgehog feeding from the bird tray...but he disappeared in seconds before I could get a not blurred photo.

 The dawn this morning.

I paint on and off most of the day, stopping for a skype session with lovely homeopath....a long session with a man who comes to measure the windows for Venetian blinds...for lunch...for phone calls. 

My clothes, my glasses, my shoes become more and more paint spattered....my back and my hands ache....but as I watch the grubby walls transform under my roller into clean white surfaces, albeit lumpy and bumpy in places, I feel more and more satisfied as I reclaim the rooms as my own.

I'm too tired to make proper supper so I fall back on rice flour spaghetti, remembering a divine meal Robin and I once had in a rustic, simple restaurant in a  forest in  Umbria. ....pasta with sage and butter.

Cook the spaghetti.

Cut up a handful of fresh sage leaves.

Cook them in butter and olive oil till the butter starts to froth and brown.

 Toss in a crushed clove of garlic and

a long squeeze of lemon  juice.

Add the cooked spaghetti to the pan with a little of the pasta water, some grated parmesan,

a scrunch of sea salt and a grinding of black pepper.

 Heaven.

 Even more satisfying than painting walls.