A Beautiful Fourth
an all-organic edition
We are well and truly into summer. The horta is bursting with growth - just look at this cornucopia of veggies, one day’s harvest. The yellow cherry tomatoes should be called something else to connote their sunshine-bursting-in-your-mouth taste.
All those people I internally (never aloud) mocked for boasting about their zucchini-growing skills, well I’m sorry for my tone but as I suspected it’s not that hard… now scooch over so I can tell you about the utter hugeness, the literally obscene garantuosity of my courgettes! (Alberto calls them courgettes, so I call them courgettes). Truly nothing makes you feel as undeservedly arrogant as a good courgette crop. Behold:
It’s weird being an American on July 4th, living outside of America. July fourth is just another day here in Portugal, the one after the third and before the fifth. Of course Portuguese independence day is celebrated April 25, aka the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, commemorating the overthrow of the oldest dictatorship in Europe and establishing democracy.
It’s a little ghostly, no red white and blue anything, anywhere. My mom has always been a great practitioner of the time honored midwestern art of seasonal decorating. Suncatchers on the windows, towels in the bathroom, gel stars on the windows - all of it has a red white and blue/stars and stripes theme in July, which will be replaced by an autumnal palette in mid September, which is added to and supplemented through Thanksgiving and then bam! everything goes red and green the day after turkey day.
Still it was a festive day, with Alberto bringing us two grilled fish for lunch - Carapinha (the stone man) caught four, I grill two for me and Rosa, two for you, he says. They were delicious with spinach and potatoes from the garden, a very Portuguese meal. Later, I went to a party at the home of an ex-pat in Lisbon, but she did not have any Fourth of July-themed decorations and I don’t blame her, her apartment is decorated with a cool eclectic collection of antiques and red white and blue kitsch would ruin the vibe. What she did have was a tremendous amount of food and wine and she even made individual desserts. A true hostess with the mostest she even had ice! (don’t get this joke? you don’t live in Europe / iykyk) The apartment has a magnificent terrace that mocked us with its capacious expanse under the baleful glaring eye of the sun, keeping us cowering inside until it dropped below the horizon of buildings in the Chiado.
We’ve been having a little heat wave here in Portugal and the temps have climbed into the 90s/100s more than a few times these past two weeks. At night the air is still and heavy with leftover daytime warmth and I wear only a t-shirt and jeans taking Jake for his late night walk. We’ve even run the air conditioner a few days.
The garden house, bareheaded last week, now wears a hat of roofbeams. The guys are working hard in the hot sun. There was some excitement last week when Tiago discovered an Asian hornet’s nest in one of the outbuildings where we store extra tiles. It’s a sinister looking thing, brown and perfectly round, hanging from a rafter in the back corner opposite the doorway. When Tiago banged the doorframe, a half dozen huge hornets emerged and began crawling around the outside of the nest in agitation. The proper authorities were called for disposal of dangerous invasive species. We were sternly warned to leave it alone. It’s a little nerve wracking knowing it’s up there, and how often I’ve walked or ran within twenty feet of it at all times of day and night, unknowing.
Today was potato harvest day and Alberto was over early demonstrating how to dig the potatoes with his nifty tool which he probably made himself in his Dumbledore workshop. All potatoes were sorted into three bins: uglies, babies (see pic) and big ‘uns - in total about forty kilos worth. The big ‘uns will be layered with branches of eucalyptus leaves and stored in the cellar. The babies - ranging in size from a marble to a golf ball (shown above) - went into the kitchen vegetable bin. I cut the bruises and strange bits from the uglies and made brunch potatoes, a huge skillet of them with red peppers onions and mushrooms from the horta. It’s cool to pull a potato from the earth and be eating it just a few hours later.
Our vegetables taste fine but look weird - more nuclear than organic. The carrots are Cronenbergian. I’m not sure I have the courage to eat this tomato. Alberto says to eat it with no oil and just the smallest sprinkle of salt. They are sweet like mangoes, he promises. As I write my eye is drawn to it again and again. No way am I eating that thing.
We’ve had our new dining table with the snazzy orange leather bar stools for a week now, and my life is a paradise of being able to set my glass down on an actual surface, and not the nearest window ledge. I can’t stop fondling the cool expanse of marble as I walk past. Now the h and Alberto are on to the next welding project, a stand for a porcelain sink that will go in the casita bathroom.
In chicken news, the feathers on I Dream of Jeannie’s head are growing back in but she still looks like she’s sporting a mohawk. Yesterday she spent the afternoon with us at the house - I had to give her respite from the young roosters who are constantly trying to mate with her. When I gave her her very own bowl of chopped up cucumbers and grapes she squawked adorably with happiness and ate so fast all you could hear was her little beak hitting the porcelain, tap tap tap tap.
The other day Jeannie successfully evaded the Haskell gang by fleeing to the higher branches of the fig tree which seemed like a great solution… but when I arrived to close up the coop Jeannie had to get a drink of water first, and I couldn’t help noticing that she took more than twenty sips in a row, indicating those Haskell brothers kept her treed all day. I do what I can to limit her exposure to them during times they are mostly likely to try to mate with her - when they come down from the roost in the morning and after feeding times, and right before roost time at night. For example Jeannie’s dainty yellow feet never touch the ground in the morning - we have a routine where after all the other chickens are in the run eating breakfast, she flies from the roost bar directly to my outstretched arm and perches there while I carry her over to a lawn chair in the courtyard in the morning sun and sit with a pink plastic cup of food for her to peck from. One by one her babies will show up to eat the bits Jeannie drops, and jockey for space to sit on my lap or other arm.
Shaun Cassidy made a full recovery and then for no reason I could discern, re-injured his foot by running too soon. He gets along fine but he limps like a pirate and as I pass him on Lower Olive Tree Lane I say Bom Dia, Shaun, Matey, Ar!
Betty White has abandoned the pampas grass as the ideal place to lay her eggs, and now I can’t find where she’s laying them. Jeannie and Sierra both stopped laying during the most intense days of heat, but today we found three eggs. Meanwhile Sierra’s daughter Penny Lane is absolutely huge, and sometimes I’m like whose chicken is that before I realize she’s one of the babies.
The domesticated flock that stays in the coop has started to wander further afield - Sierra and her peep like to accompany my three big roos down to the swimming pool, while Jeannie’s peep likes to check out the fruit orchard. The other day I walked past the fruit orchard and sawy Fuzzy Zoeller and Falcon and Snowman laying around in the dirt under the baby avocado tree all casual like looking for all the world like three junior high school boys talking about summer camp and girls, their bikes laying in the grass somewhere nearby.
We had a little scare tonight, I went to close the coop and did the count and came up one short. I double checked - no Fuzzy. I started singing the goodnight song (Goodnight Sweetheart) which makes everyone start walking over to the roost. Jake and the h showed up. Hey where’s Fuzzy, the h asked. He has developed a partiality to this little frizzled rooster with his hilarious oversized yellow feet. We went down to the pool, because last time I came up short a hen, I found her huddled at the bottom of the pool. The pool was empty but I called Fuzzy and listened and heard a very alarmed sounding roo nearby. I looked up, around, then down - there on the second step of the ladder in the deep end was little Fuzzy, shaking like a leaf. The h climbed down into the pool which for some reason caused Jake to do zoomies, barking with excitement. Fuzzy was tenderly carried up to the courtyard and allowed to mingle with his peep for a few relaxing minutes before I started the goodnight song, and everyone went to bed.
I’ve just about decided to get rid of a few of the youngest roosters - we ‘re up to forty, and these young ones are too rambunctious until we can build the hen population back up. I’d rather give them away then eat them, though I’m pretty sure whoever I give them to will in fact eat them. There is a well-loved Portuguese recipe that involves sangue - the blood of the rooster (wouldn’t that be a great short story title?). Since fresh rooster blood is not easy to come by, it’s not a dish people get to eat that often. I know about the dish because since we moved in there has been the occasional person stopping by the gate or coming to the door asking if they can buy a galo (twice there has been a galo-napping) so I expect interest to be high. Writing this, I am starting to feel bad even though I am not overly fond of those Haskell rascals - Eddy, Freddy, Neddy and Teddy. I shouldn’t have named them, dammit. Their sister Betty, of course, stays.
The h has been tractoring the campo flat in preparation for the arrival of our containers with all of our worldly possessions. Long ago the h worked for a company that required him to learn a lot about container ships. Did you know what happens to containers that fall of the ship? They are shot! This makes them sink, so that passing ships don’t hit them. This has me picturing my bullet-riddled couches and paintings and mirrors and rugs at the bottom of the sea decorating an underwater house like SpongeBob Squarepants.
Here’s a goth glamour shot of Fuzzy that ChatGPT produced with a very specific phrase that another chicken-owning lady told me to input along with a picture of my favorite roo. You wouldn’t know he’s wearing big yellow clown feet from the handsome look of him.
That’s all the news from Beautiful…for now!
