{"id":7,"date":"2008-07-10T12:19:27","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T11:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2008-07-10T12:19:27","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T11:19:27","slug":"friends-and-frogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/?p=7","title":{"rendered":"Friends and Frogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s good to have friends<\/a>!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Roger popped in yesterday.<\/p>\n

He’s visiting Portugal for a concert up in Lisbon this weekend, so got a plane over early and brought some friends of his, Sue and John, to stay.<\/p>\n

Some of you may remember Roger; he was helping me out on the stand at the British Bird Fair<\/a> last summer. He’s a past guest who, like so many here at the Quinta, quickly become friends and, in Roger’s case, help around as well. Last year he not only manned the stand for three days at the Birdfair but also spent a good six weeks here during the winter painting and maintaining the Quinta so it’d all look lovely again this year. The kind of friend that’s good to have around!<\/p>\n

He’s into birding and asked whether we’d had any joy with our various schemes to attract more species into the garden, so I showed him one of our unexpected successes ….<\/p>\n

You never know who’s going to pop in ….
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A few years ago I was building a new part of the Quinta, (now called the Royal Salon<\/a> as a bit of a joke), and decided to build into one of the outside beams small cavities where birds could nest.<\/p>\n

Of course when they were finished all one could see were two holes and everyone kept asking me what they were for, so some wag took the time to paint a little sign stating the obvious.
\nWell, they’re used during the Spring as they were intended, and we have many more Blue Tits in the garden as a result, but during the hotter months of the summer when the nesting season is over they’re taken over by another occupant<\/a> and they seem to be all the rage ……. I took this photo yesterday evening as we were all having a glass of wine after dinner and particularly like the “smile” of the lower one!<\/p>\n

It all goes to show that, no matter what one does, one’s actions always ricochet about and have unforeseen consequences, sometimes negative of course, but sometimes, as in this case, wonderful!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s good to have friends! Roger popped in yesterday. He’s visiting Portugal for a concert up in Lisbon this weekend, so got a plane over early and brought some friends of his, Sue and John, to stay. Some of you may remember Roger; he was helping me out on the stand at the British Bird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tree-frog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paradise-in-portugal.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}