The hill-eating monster, 4 months later

This is how it looks now. Remember what I had to say about it back in July?

Local restaurants, cafés and people with houses for rent have been doing brisk business as a result of the influx of construction workers. What will happen when that work ends?

Along this Guia-Algoz road increased traffic and zero maintenance have resulted in more potholes and uneven surfaces, which are specially dangerous where large trucks, and there are more of those, speed along the narrower bends and don't necessarily keep strictly to their side of the road!

If you travel on this road, please take care!

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Two

Two pictures, two bridges and two gulls on a double lamp-post!

This is my entry for Cee's challenge.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - Nov. 2013

It's the 15th of the month again and time to welcome you to my Algarve garden (hardiness zone 10). After some long-awaited rain a few weeks' ago and temperatures high enough for sunbathing at the beach, my flowering plants are very happy.

 Some bulbs have produced autumn colour, as expected,

These lilies are lovely but I'm actually quite pissed off disappointed with the seller at Espinho market. She sold me four different types of gorgeous lilies (I even wrote down their exotic names) but I  ended up with 1 unknown dead, 2 pink and 5 yellow instead!

Dominating the garden at the moment, I have the lavenders and the roses.

This is the bush I was considering taking out of the corner, where it fights for space with the red oleander. It was butchered cut back in August and look at it! I just haven't the heart to remove it now. I guess I'll have to cut the oleander so that they can share the space more peacefully.

  

This young lavender is looking great.

And this, even younger, feathery-leafed lavender has finally adapted to its allotted space. I think it's so elegant! I've taken cuttings and, if I'm successful, next year I'll be planting one between each rose bush along the front wall.

And talking of roses, these are still in bloom:

I'm also pleased to report that there are lots of pale blue blooms on the creeping rosemary ...

 ... flowers on the yellow hibiscus, and on the red one, too ...

... and the cuttings of this ground covering plant, from a friend's garden, have taken, settled right in and rewarded me with pretty little pink blooms after just a few months.

You might have noticed that I haven't shown you any grass - well it's just grass, very green and needing mowing, which I can't do because I'm recovering from the flu.

Oh, remember this?

It shares the enormous planter where my small lemon tree lives. A reader asked me what it was when I posted a picture in June. Well, it took a while, but I've discovered what it's called. It's Plectanthrus neochilus, also known as the lobster flower.

November has been good to my garden, so far. Temperatures are set to drop by about 10 degrees Celsius during the coming week, so next month may be more about foliage than blooms. See you then!

Have you visited May Dreams Gardens yet? That's where Carol hosts Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: One

Cee changed web host or whatever-you-call-it, I lost her posts for a while and today I discovered my links to her challenges were no longer working!

I've just tracked her down again, so here's my entry for the current theme:

The weevil turned a palm tree into a perfect look-out post but there's just room for one!

And doesn't this rock look like a lone prehistoric animal to you?

You can find Cee's Fun Foto Challenge HERE now.

The secret is out

Image courtesy of audfriday13, freedigitalphotos.net

My secret is out!

Initially, I only told a few friends and one member of my family about my blogs. Only one of the people in the know actually comments on posts once in a while.

At first I kept my blogging activity secret because I wasn't very confident and had no idea if I would keep it going. Then I began to get more and more readers and made some virtual blogger friends and just didn't feel the need to tell everyone about my blogs.

But it's a small world.

Portugal is very small!

And the Algarve is a "tiny" region!

So it just happened that at that gardening fair I told you about recently I recognised a Portuguese blogger I follow. Being a shy, cautious person, I didn't just start a conversation with a stranger. I could have asked, "Aren't you ....?" but I didn't. I noticed that he seemed to be an acquaintance/friend of a colleague of mine who, as coincidence would have it, was at that fair, too.

Having confirmed later with my colleague that the other guy really was the blogger, I ended up letting the cat out of the bag!

Yip, today I was asked, "Don't you have a blog, too?" ...

This was in the staff room. And I think other people heard our conversation!

So, this blogger is feeling exposed. Now I'm wondering if this is good, bad or indifferent? 

It definitely changes one thing - ranting about my job is a no-no.

What do you think? Is it a good idea to let everyone around you know about your blog?