After spending five weeks in the US, from early January to mid-February, to visit my new granddaughter, I returned home to Portugal to find my garden amass with giant weeds.

These monsters, some of them more than three feet high, had totally obliterated the little rosemary bushes and pansies I’d lovingly planted last fall. I’d painstakingly cleared the ground from the previous year’s weeds when I moved into my house in July. But my efforts were thwarted when it started to rain in November and did’t stop until just before Christmas. I put down sheets of black plastic trying to keep the weeds at bay. Further rain in January and early February while I was away just accelerated the growth of this unwelcome greenery.

The climate where I live near Tomar in Central Portugal, typically has hot summers and cool, but not frigid winters. My neighbors have said they hadn’t experienced snow in 17 years. I did have frost a few mornings in early January, but mostly the autumn and winters are rainy. According to Climates To Travel Central Portugal has average annual rainfall of 50-75 cm or 20 to 30 inches. Average temperatures in the city of Coimbra in Central Portugal range from 41F to 59F (5C to 5C) in January and from 43F to 61F (6C to 16C) in February.

Although the majority of Portuguese roads are narrow, winding, and frankly, terrifying to drive, the country has an impressive network of freeways. I can make the trip from my home in central Portugal to the Lisbon airport in a mere 90 minutes by breezing along sections of the A13, A23 and A1.

These impressive highways are mostly traffic-free because they are toll roads. Many drivers, especially truckers, prefer to use secondary roads to escape the charges which vary according area, and are sometimes surprisingly steep. The toll booth I hit about half-way to the Lisbon airport charged me 6.35 euros, 12.70 for the round trip, or about $14. What I didn’t realize was that most of the roads no longer have toll booths, they use a system of electronic sensors which log your license plate as you pass. So I’d unwittingly only paid about half the tolls I owed for the airport trip.

I blithely drove these beautifully empty freeways for several months, racking up the charges, before someone told me about the system. Apparently, I was supposed to go to the nearest post office and pay the toll within a few days of my trip to avoid a fine.

Sure enough, the day came when the mail carrier arrived with a registered letter informing me that I owed about 30 Euros (10 euros in unpaid tolls and 20 in “administrative costs”.)

Friends told me about the Via Verde device, available from the post office, which you attach to your windshield. You link it to your bank account and it allows the required toll payment to be deducted directly when you pass under the toll point. These are mounted on a boom over the freeway with a sign advising the charge. Equipped with one of the matchbox-sized Via Verde devices you can also zip through a special lane at the physical toll booths. Parking payment at the Lisbon airport is another perk.

For my first Christmas in Portugal I skipped the traditional meal of codfish and cabbage that my neighbors touted. I shared a feast with some British expats who favored ham, turkey and a desert of trifle, (fruit and sponge fingers topped with custard.)

The traditional Portuguese New Year’s Eve dish, leitao, or suckling pig, is a lot more appealing. The little creatures are spit-roasted in a wood oven and basted with a paste of garlic, pepper, kosher salt, bay leaves and pig fat.

At midnight, everyone is supposed to eat 12 raisins, one for each month of the year, to insure good fortune. Confetti bombs are typical as well.

December 5 marked seven months since I arrived in Portugal as a permanent move to this country.

I have found a house, bought a used car, acquired a dog and made many new friends.

As the long dry days of summer turned into autumn, I experienced my first grape and olive harvests. I helped several neighbors and reaped rewards in wine and olive oil.

Things I hadn’t expected: weeks of rainy days. The downpours began in November and show little sign of ending any time soon. I feel like I’m back in Norway or Ireland.

Another weird thing I discovered: it’s hard to find Christmas cards to buy. There are all kinds of decorations, lights, gift bags and wrapping paper, but almost no cards! Sorry friends, I resorted to sending my seasonal greetings by email this year.

Feliz Natal!

All around me, my neighbors are out picking olives from trees in the deep valleys, along the roadside and in the back gardens of their houses. Sometimes they stretch up and pick them from the branches they can reach. Sometimes they climb ladders. Often, they use a chainsaw to cut the top branches so they can do the work while standing on the ground. They also shape the tree to facilitate future growth and ease of picking.

It’s hard on the hands and shoulders, but that doesn’t deter the hardy Portugues and expats living in my part of rural Central Portugal. The olives fall on a huge net stretched beneath the tree. Once the tree is stripped, the pickers gather the net and pour the olives into a large plastic bin. Sometimes they empty the contents into bags.

A lot of twigs and leaves end up in the bins, so they run the whole lot through a machine called, in Portugal, a “lina” which separates the leaves from the olives. All around me I can hear the loud metallic chatter of these lina machines.

Then, they take the bags or bins down to the local “lagar” or olive pressing center. A few of these still use the old stone grinding method of crushing the olives, most of them use more modern methods that either press them cold, for the extra virgin oil, or use heat to speed the process. Often, you combine your weight of olives with others and pay a small amount for the pressing and receive olive oil in return. Sometimes you have to wait around for a long time while the lagar folks do the pressing.

The annual olive harvest is happening early this year in my part of Central Portugal.

All around The village the narrow valleys buzz with activity as workers strip the olives from the branches.

Not wanting to miss out on this experience, I volunteered to help my neighbors, Sarah, James and their Workaway volunteer, Agne, to do some picking. It’s a pretty labor intensive job. We stood on ladders and either stripped the olives from the branches by hand, or used a little rake device. The olives fell onto a huge net spread under the tree. When we’d finished with one tree we gathered the net together to push all the olives into a pile, then we scooped the olives into a big plastic bin.

My neighbors take their olives to the local press, or lagar, where they are rendered into oil. If you have enough olives, I’ve been told 300 or 500 kilos, you can get your own “pressing”, and your very own oil. Otherwise your olives go into the mix and you get oil from many sources.

Portugal is a big olive producing country where most of the olives are used for oil.

On Sunday I wandered down the hill to my neighboring village of Chaos to watch how the locals handle a national election.

In my former life as a reporter, I trolled polling places looking for interesting stories. The Portuguese are a lot more low key than in the U.S. where the atmosphere at polling places can be tense and even threatening.

National elections in Portugal are held on a Sunday when most people are not working. In my rural area, voting took place in a small room next to the local Junta de Freguesia, or parish council, office. I dropped in and chatted with a panel of four friendly young people who checked voters’ “Cartao de cidadao” or identity card issued by the Portuguese government. Voters then stepped behind a privacy screen to make their choices on a paper ballot. Once done, they inserted the ballot into the opening in a large black box sitting in front of the panelists.

As of 2019, there are nine parties with representatives in the Assembly of the Republic, several more parties have representatives in local legislatures, according to Wikipedia.

After doing their civic duty, my Portuguese neighbors continued about their usual Sunday routine, shopping for fruit and vegetables at the regular market and enjoying coffee and a gossip.

By Monday The Guardian was reporting the results, which showed the existing prime minister, Antonio Costa, would have to continue working with a coalition of parties after his Socialist Party failed to secure an outright majority.

I’ve been in Portugal nearly five months now but stiil don’t read the daily papers or watch TV news. Hence it only dawned on me a few days ago that the political party billboards and leaflets I was seeing meant there is an upcoming election.

I looked for information in The Portugal News, the English language weekly, but didn’t find anything. Luckily, The Guardian, had a comprehensive piece to bring me up to speed.

My first guest arrived this week, bike club friend Rita Wormwood.
We’ve cycled the scenic back roads, explored my local tiwn of Tomar and had fun at the Friday market.

Rita developed a taste for coffee with a “pastel de nata”, or custard cream pastry.

Early this morning, I joined about 30 members of surrounding villages in central Portugal to help harvest the grape crop for local shop owners, Arminda and Manuel.
I went with some Dutch neighbors in their old VW van to the remote vineyard where we joined the others, buckets and clippers in hand. We worked up and down the rows for two hours, then drove in convoy to another remote site, deep in a valley.

Manuel brought us water and cakes while we worked.

Afterwards, we went back to our hosts’ home where they’d laid out a feast for the workers.

I sat with a Russian family and a Portuguese lady who lives in Switzerland and my Dutch neighbors. Copious amounts of the local wine and good food made it a jolly celebration.