Great news about work by the sounds of it, if you're able to negotiate reduced hours,

Yes, I am really looking forward to it! Also, they have asked me to do the feasibility and planning on a big capital project for a building, so plenty of work for a few years yet and a lot of control over what I'm doing. I really want to do some teaching, though, I miss that, so one session a week would be great.

I've been following your adventures in Portugal, you're inspiring me to tackle my garden (a much smaller scale, maybe 15x30ft). I had random trees cut down a few weeks ago, and the big one on the boundary pollarded. It's really the "front" garden, facing the road, but everyone uses the "back" door to the house, so I have been thinking of changing over the front garden to growing produce. It gets a lot of sun through the day.