Family History: Graham Denby weathers a storm in Portugal

Jan 20 2010 by Graham Denby

WATCHING the news this week and seeing how shocking, cold and white the weather has been in the UK I thought I’d mention ours out here in the Alentejo.

I know bad weather has affected the whole of the UK, partly ‘cos I saw the ‘white-out’ satellite picture but also ‘cos when they actually get a covering ‘down South’ ie below Birmingham, considering the lengths commuters go to – or from, it’s full on in the national news, isn’t it?

Over here we’ve had it very wet and windy, reminiscent of the pie and pea suppers after darts matches! Apparently we’ve had the tail end of a hurricane and boy, are we glad it was just the tail end.

From the picture you can see the horizontal effect it has had on a good number of the trees out here. This one is reclining in neighbour Joseph’s most adjacent field, almost up to our boundary fence. At least it fell in the right direction.

The native Portuguese trees such as the cork oak and the olives have relatively small roots, more balled-up than spread out, and when the ground gets sodden as it has lately, the strong winds take their toll.

The eucalyptus trees, which were imported for their quick-growing and relatively straight trunks and branches, are not native and have a voracious root system which helps them withstand the winds, but they do rapidly deplete water stocks in the fields throughout the summer and are not now deemed desirable.

Seeing the toppled tree reminded me of the recent TV drama, Day of the Triffids. I read the book, way back in school, and enjoyed it, but the films and TV portrayals, well, I can’t say they scare much more than Gardeners’ Question Time really, do they?