Spotted while driving through Vila Ruiva is southern Alentejo today. A little bit of searching online revealed this information on the insect zoo.

Cartoon drawings of insects on a wall, pointing to an insect zoo

🧰 I find it a joy when I discover a really good plumber, or electrician, etc. That person or persons feel like gold to me.

I found this cage with Budgerigars in the Center of Alcácer. Next to it was a similar cage with pigeons. I don’t know what or who they were for? It has obviously been there for a some time - though how long, I don’t know?

A concrete hut with a caged front full of Budgerigars

🥵 It must be hot out there. There is no wind, and the air coming through the windows is cooking.

The wind blowing through the grasses by the River Sado yesterday evening.

🤫 After just under two weeks of visitors, everyone has left. I sit here this evening in silence. I can feel my body and mind settling, like the snow settling in a shaken snow globe. And with the settling I can better touch my inner life, a place where I rest well.

I miss maps, old paper maps that you could spread out over the floor to plan your route. That you could fold up to hold on your lap with the section of the map that you were traveling through. I loved looking over them to see all the details they hold - thinking here especially of the British Ordinance Survey maps. Maps that you could stick pins in of places visited and draw out roads traveled.

A variety of maps stuck over a wall and ceiling

The Sado estuary.

Calm river estuary water with a post sticking out of the water, grass to one side and blue sky

Another photograph of Cais Palafitico da Carrasqueira, the ramshackle, zigzagging, interlocking piers on wooden stilts, near to Comporta in Portugal. There have been other photographs of the same area here on my website. It’s a very photogenic area.

A colourful hand made wooden cabin with three child like drawings on the side and two life jackets

🌡️ After a cool week, the temperature is starting to rise again. Clear blue skies and warm sun outside.

I believe that we all have our safe spaces. Those places in our mind and body where we feel comfortable. Part of the practice for this life is, I believe, to stretch those boundaries. This is not a challenge, not “a who can stretch furthest?" dare. Rather it is path through life of seeing if I can grow larger my potential, in what I can embrace than what I might be doing now…a path that I can chose to take if I wish to, and one that I do so while caring for my own well being - not jumping further than I feel is safe to do so.

And then those times happen when I am caught completely off guard and find myself out of my comfort zone. In such times my safe boundaries just collapse, disappear from around me, and I am left standing naked and exposed with nowhere to run to. Whether other’s see that in me, I don’t know, but for me in that moment it is a very real feeling.

Such happened to me last night. People visited, new friends. We engaged in conversation, and the ground just opened up underneath me. Nowhere to run to. I could feel the discomfort in me, I felt exposed and I had nowhere to go. I was left just being where I was - talking, listening, engaging - but that engaging was cutting through me. I wanted to get up and leave. There was discomfort in my body and mind - scratching, itching, tension. With nowhere to turn to, I was left just being present to the feelings, to the experience. Breathing, allowing the felt experience to be there, not pushing it away. Just seeing it as not personal, passing through me, real and at the same time not real, holding that paradox.

Afterwards I found a safe and comfortable place to be, like resting after a period of strenuous activity, allowing body and mind to rest and settle. And next time that challenged comfort zone will be a little more familiar, probably still uncomfortable, perhaps still scary? For all of that though I can breathe into it again, let it pass through me, and learn that little bit more from the experience. For in all those scary, uncomfortable places there is also wisdom.

Barrosinha, Alcácer do Sal.

Barrel standing alone in a courtyard

📯 There was one hell of a lot of honking car horns outside just now. That and a faint sound of horse hooves. I have no idea what was going on, and it stopped before I could get outside. There is a festival happening in the area this weekend, and so I wonder if the noise is related?

Images of Design Week in Lisbon.

A collage of four designs from Lisbon Design Week. An ornate lampshade with white strands hanging from it, some cloth hanging down, a small white ceramic bowl, a wooden stool shaped like an owl

Some of welcome relief from the hot sun yesterday afternoon in Lisbon.

A cobbled sidewalk in shade with speckled sunlight and the feet of someone walking

Checking out the wine.

Drawing on a wall in a restaurant of a woman eying a glass of wine. A double light shines above

😮‍💨 I am completely exhausted. Just too much going on over the last week, regardless of the good time had. I could spend this evening in and have an early night, but that is not going to happen. We have an event to go to. Maybe this weekend?

Monsaraz - one street of maybe two.

The wall of a house painted white with a small, mature grape vine growing against it, a cobbled road disappears into the distance

🗺️ Well I have just managed to drive around a part of Lisbon without the aid of Apple Maps, or any maps for that matter. It was not big achievement, I did not travel that far, but I could not have done that a year ago. I’m getting to know my way around.