Through the lens of our guests

April has just flown by. One of the most exciting we've had here in Portugal so far. Started so cold and wet. Now people are bathing daily in the rivers that run through the land in the heat of the afternoon sun. Should be ready for planting out the veggies this week. Finally.

Plus we've had guests from all over the world pop by for some rest in our home in the forest. What a joy to have been able to take care of them all. They've bought such light, kindness and gratitude to our little family. As well as some amazing photos from their wanderings through the valleys and forests. (Thanks Zoe Barling for all your iPhone shots on today's post.) It's a real treat to look at our place through someone else's eyes.

I've been enjoying creating some new dishes with the herbs and salads from the kitchen garden and the first produce from our neighbours farm too. Grelhos are the new green shoots from the coming year's cabbages, broccolies and turnip tops. Steamed with some tamari sauce, a little lime juice and a sprinkling of pepper and freshly cut herbs. Delish! Especially when they're picked in the morning and served for lunch. Pranamictastic. :)

Plan is to carve out some time this month to blog some recipes and share a few tales and reflections of our life on a yoga retreat. But for now I'll leave you with some photos and a We Love Moses TV walk around the farmhouse courtyard and new yoga shala.

Enjoy and may you feel the sap rising inside of you this Spring.

Peace

Memphis

Reflections

Yoga Shala Windows arrive!

River Trip in the Truck

Washing Line

Felgueiras

Yoga at Vale de Moses

Waterfall in the valley

Aduki beans

PartnerYoga

By the River

Forest trail

Farmhouse Courtyard

Dinner

Eucalyptus Woods

Farmhouse View

Dining Table

Swimming in the Zêzere

Guest House

Farmhouse Kitchen

Laughter Yoga

Meadow Flowers

Partner Yoga Von and Eli

River trip

Yoga at Moses

Wild River Flower Bouquet

Spring Flowers

Spring Dip in the Zezere

Safira Chillaxing

Poppies in May

Silent Morning Walks before Yoga

Lunch Menu

Laurinda

Poppy meadow

Steps of the guest house

Moses & Safira by bench

Amanda and Safira 

The view from Abitureira

We're open! The 2013 Yoga Retreat Season begins.

After all the preparation over the last 3 months, we finally began our new yoga season last week. It was a close one. We had to battle with constant rain for most of February and March. Record breaking rainfall. Our elderly neighbours cannot ever remember living through a wetter winter. And that follows last year's dryest ever winter. The world's weather, it sure is a changing.

For those of you new to this blog, now and again we take some very home made videos of our restoration and landscaping work here at Vale de Moses. And as a bit of fun we call it We Love Moses TV and upload them to Youtube. Below are the latest 4 episodes documenting our last building project - converting the veranda into a more appropriate space to practice.  I wish I had had the time to take a video every day, but there simply wasn't the time. We were flat out helping the carpenters, blacksmiths and stone masons get it built. And boy, was it close.

We're still waiting for a couple of things to be installed, like doors and some of the railings, but they'll be in place in the next week or so. What was a big relief was that we had an enclosed practice space ready for when our first guests of the year arrived last Saturday. And what an incredible group they were. Even though it poured with rain nearly all week, when the sun did burst through, a few still managed to take dips in the white water rivers running through the land and brave a full swim in the Rio Zêzere on our river trip. Once the sun comes out in full, those waters heat up quickly and it will be a little more comfortable. But hats off. No holding back.

This Rainbows on your Eyelashes group also took some beautiful photos of their stay with us, today's post has a few but I am uploading a bigger album to a Spring Retreat album Facebook. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to see this place through other people's eyes and lenses. Special.

I could write a hundred stories of our experience this week. Each of our guests was a real character and threw themselves whole heartedly into their yoga practice, their treatments and for some experimented with a completely new diet for the week. And they did so with a joyful openness to the elements of life out here on the edge of wilderness. When the water falls like it has done, rivers and waterfalls open up all over the valley. The  energy of all those rushing waters is invigorating. And obviously very wet.

It was a real treat for us to meet such wonderful people from all over Europe and beyond. They came for a week's break to our home in the forest. I was chatting to Josh the other day after his acupuncture session with Mama bear, and we agreed how amazing it is that even though we've moved so far away from the bustling multi cultural life of London, we still get to meet so many great people and hear about their tales from foreign lands.

This morning came round very quickly, bright and early at 7am we loaded everyone and their bags into the cars and drove into Oleiros to buy coach tickets from the sweetest old man in the café and had time for a quick tea and coffee and fresh home made pastries straight out of the oven at another café, before saying our goodbyes.

To Marianna, Nolene, Edgar, Sue, Bob, Jane, Oksana, Vicky, Laura and Per, that was an absolute honour to have you with us this week. God's wind in your sails you lovely, lovely people.

Peace and love and all good things.


Thanks for tuning in.

Memphis

Nature doesn't hurry...

The sun is shining. The sap in the trees is rising. The mimosas are in full, gloriously-scented, yellow bloom. And the tiny daffodils are peeping out on the forest floor. Signs that Spring is emerging. Graças a Deus that we've had a winter of rain to fill up the water tables after last winter's 5 month drought. The appearance of Spring holds an even more poignant message for us this year.

The forest fires at the end of last summer charred a sizeable chunk of the surrounding landscape. Paradoxically, fire destroys and rejuvenates simultaneously. The contrast between the wee forest flowers breaking through the rich black pot ash is remarkable. I was heartened by Tameera at Light Stays Retreats for her Lau Tzu quote this week on FB. Good to be reminded....

"Nature doesn't hurry, 

yet everything is accomplished." 

Lau Tzu.

Big thanks to our wonderful volunteer Christian Steiger, who has been working tirelessly over the last month, helping us prepare the houses and the land for our yoga retreat season opening in a few weeks. Clearing up some of the fallen trees and debris of the winter storms, weeding the kitchen gardens ready for planting out this year's herbs and salads, rearranging and tidying spaces, deep Spring cleaning and to top it off playing around in the kitchen with me inventing new dishes for the retreats. Exploring the taste-scape of our pallets.  It's been a lot of fun and inspiring to have another chef to cook with.

Eloise turned 14 in January and Joshua 16 last week. They grow fast. And we observe them change once more, this time into adults, young, energetic and magnificent. Flapping their perfectly formed wings on the edge of the proverbial nest, eyeing that tantalizing horizon of destiny, wherever it may lie for them. The world is their oyster. 2 languages mastered and more coming, they'll be able to navigate their way through. They're not ready to leave just yet, but they're beginning to imagine what that might look like. Imagination and Vision. Such precious and powerful human attributes.

Now the winter rains seem to have passed, we'll be starting the improvements to the yoga platform next week in the sunshine. Strengthening the wooden pillars beneath the veranda with a metal structure that will double as a frame for the wisteria,  roses and jasmines to grow up through. We'll also be enclosing it from the fresh morning valley autumn breezes and the fierce summer sun. We'll keep you updated with a couple of vids to show work in progress. It'll be sad in someways to loose the openness of the practice space, but with more guests and children coming this year, that experience of floating above the forest is not as important as taking care that our guests are safe and don't fall to injury.

And while all that is happening we also have 4 families from the UK with us to explore the possibility of making the jump out to this part of the world. Nice to be able to provide a comfortable base from which they can travel off every day to hunt for similar abandoned hamlets in this beautiful, mountainous and relatively "undiscovered" central part of Portugal.

After these lovely families and their oh so very cute kids leave, my Mum and Dad are popping over for a fortnight from the UK before Easter and then we start our first retreat of the year. Which, Merci Papa, is already fully booked. Places on our retreats are booking so fast this year we can hardly believe it. We've had over 5000 likes for our Facebook page in 12 months. Staggering. Guests are coming in from all over the world - America, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Italy, India, the UK, Thailand and Norway. And that's just for the first 2 retreats of the year. Amazing.

We are really touched by how people have responded to our invitation to come spend a week with us in the forest. And by how many people are helping us in this little quest - Ellie and Rosy at Responsible Travel, Will at Yoga Travel, Filipe at Seegno, among many others. Thanks. We really do appreciate all you're doing for us.

Peace, love and Spring hope to you, whatever the weather outside your window today.

Memphis x

p.s. Respect is due to Josh for these photos on the blog, he took them for me this morning. Lad, you sure got an eye.