A Round-Up: The Latest In Advances & Improvements
A Round-Up: The Latest In Advances & Improvements
a week feels like a month in dog years
On the property front
The guys spent the entire week mowing and weed whacking the Back Forty which is three wild acres of weeds and one acre of construction materials. Last year the municipality fined us for not taking care of the underbrush properly, so this year we are making sure we accomplish the cleanup - essential for fireproofing - well ahead of the deadline.
Tim and Kirsten took the chainsaws to the last bastion of English Ivy on the property, eventually revealing a tiered series of walls next to the cottage that I had no idea existed. There will be ample room for a nice deck and garden, a boule court, and a stone staircase that connects each level to the next. It turns out one of our contractors, Paulo, is an expert boule player so the h - also an expert, with two sets of cochonnets - is delighted to have knowledgeable assistance in the construction of the court. The view looking out from the cottage grounds is spectacular - you can see most of the village, the sky like a blue cloud-painted circus tent above us.
Inside the cottage the work continues at a fast pace; all rotten walls have been pulled out, the guys are now repairing the stone walls and have replaced all rotten wooden ceiling beams. Next we have to lay out the electrical plan.
With most of the land cleared now, it’s a pleasure to take Jake for a lengthy walk without even leaving the property. We have a loop - starting in the Secret Garden where I check the three spots I know an egg can usually be found. If I have a trash bag with me I will pick up any trash tossed over the wall by passers by, muttering under my breath about antisocial behavior.
Then it’s up the walkway to Picnic Flats, then across the red tiled kitchen courtyard, hang a right to go up the pool steps, where we make a turn around the drained rectangle awaiting the final tiles to be replaced before it starts its new life as a saltwater pool later this summer. Up the steps and down the corridor past the pool house and the fruit orchard, through the new gate, hang a left and take the cottage steps down, make a right and go past the garages and another right up the quinta road, past the horta on the right and the quinta on the left, at the sunken garden follow the hairpin right and continue up the olive tree-lined slope to the cottage.
From there we ascend the steps behind the cottage, walk the Back 40 in a loop, then return to go all the way down the cottage steps, left into the carport where Jake will stop for a drink at his big yellow water bowl before heading to the front porch to pant in the sun.
Jake clearly enjoys the property walk too though he makes it clear that it is no substitute for a village walk where he can sniff the new of other local dogs, greet his many friends and attempt to dodge into the pet store or the vet - often both - to finagle a treat.
On the housing front
The h caulked the bathroom at the quinta - it is the only room that has not required the removal or replacement of floors, ceilings or walls. The temps have been steadily warming but the quinta remains a cool 65, thanks to the heat pump water heater the h installed. We’ve finished painting all three bedrooms. We still have to install baseboards and cabinets in the kitchen but we are in no particular hurry - the windows have been ordered, when they get closer to delivery and installation time, we’ll put the rest of the finishing touches in the kitchen and bathroom.
We planted two more flowering bushes from Alberto in the front garden, and they seem to be taking hold. I am proud of how the front courtyard looks - a year ago it was a barren place, weeds pushing up between the calcadas, the earth dry and cracked, now it is a place of color and growth. Rosa sent over more orchids and I spent a morning potting them.
On the language front
Paulo cut his hand while working, the h reported. Is it serious? I asked. I don’t think so, the h said. I made a point of finding Paulo when he returned from lunch - I pointed at his hand, which was expertly bandaged.
Tu e machucado? I asked.
Um pouco, he said.
Precisa de remedio? I asked.
He smiled. Ja ajude, he said holding up his hand with its bandage.
Brigado, he added. He smiled, I smiled. A whole conversation in Portuguese without once asking Pode repetir por favor?
As usual this triumph was quickly followed by me embarrassing myself by not understanding a simple question posed later in the week. I’ll spill the beans on that one later, I’m still too embarrassed to want to admit it happened. That’s the way it is with learning Portuguese, you don’t dare relish the small triumphs because the language will extend it’s foot and trip you up the moment you’re feeling confident.
I’m always worried about people cutting themselves - this place is full of rusty nails - sticking out of the floor, sticking out of boards, laying on the ground. There are broken pieces of tile and glass are everywhere - I regularly take a bag with me when I walk anywhere on the property, knowing I will find many many shards of broken glass. Sometimes the reason for the glass is apparent - a window fell out of its rotted casing and smashed on the courtyard.
But often I’m just puzzled. Take the kitchen garden for instance - it’s a grand name for a little enclosure that measures maybe two feet by twelve feet right outside the back door, between the kitchen and the carport. The hydrangea I planted last fall from a cutting that Alberto nurtured for us is growing nicely, featuring its first pink bloom. For awhile I didn’t think it would make it - when it was first planted, the chickens quickly ate all the leaves, leaving just sticks. The spring rains kept the chickens away from it long enough for it to finally start growing. Now that it’s fully leafed, the chickens aren’t interested in it, though they are still constantly scratching around in this little plot of land, as if expecting to find gold. They don’t dig up gold but they do dig up broken glass. Though I’ve harvested glass from the garden at least a dozen times, each time thinking There! I finally got it all! such is not the case…the chickens with their little double footed scratch like a mini moon walk, constantly turn up more glass. Where does it come from? It’s like a glass garden.
On the visitor front
The Alaskans Tim and Kirsten are here another ten days. as I write this they are launching themselves off cliffs in Porto, paragliding. I try to ignore the sneaking voice in my head that says Hey that looks like fun, bet you can take lessons and go flying with those guys next time they are here. That stupid voice has gotten me into all kinds of situations, like signing up for ultramarathons, or running from rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon in 24 hours, or skiing from the peak of Mammoth Mountain, or buying a huge ass property in Portugal that requires unending amounts of labor. I am not listening to that stupid voice for at least a year.
I heard the h answer his phone, and his brother, on speaker say “Oh, did I call you?” A butt dial enabled us to virtually be there while Kirsten was readying to fly. They stood on a cliff at about one thousand feet of elevation. It’s been a year since Tim has flown, he said he was nervy. What is it that they say, he shouted over the wind to Kirsten.
It’s better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground, she shouted, and flew away.
After the Alaskans, a childhood friend will be arriving from Washington DC. We went to grade school together, at a parish that has the unhappy notoriety of three priests being cashiered out of the priesthood. It’s a strange and amazing thing to reconnect with someone in your late 50s and you can still clearly see the child they once were, still recognize their way of talking, joking, walking. People don’t change all that much. There is a picture taken shortly after my birth where I am clearly giving someone side eye - the very same side eye that is evident in my Facebook profile at this very moment.
After Sandy’s visit, we will be hosting the daughter of a friend for a few days, then our own daughter, a newly minted college graduate, will come in August. In September some good friends from my days working in the computer industry will sail around the Mediterranean then finish their trip with a visit here at Casa dos Galos. We’re going to try really hard to have the outdoor pizza oven built by then - Mark is an excellent maker of pizza, and I can’t wait to make him my vegan specialty, mushroom and caramelized onion with arugula and walnuts and feta with - get this - beet sauce, which is the most beautiful hot pink color you can imagine. Even better, all the ingredients will come from our garden.
We have no visitors for fourth quarter, which will give us time to focus on the palaceta. By then, we will be moved into the lower floor of the quinta, and any visitors can stay in the upper floor, while we start the serious renovation work at the palaceta.
On the garden (horta) front:
Last week we harvested radishes, garlic, cabbage and basil. Garlic is different here - softer, sweeter, more fragrant. I could eat it every day (and usually do).
The new composter is finished. The cucumbers have started to come in. The tomatoes are beginning to climb their trellis - Alberto showed me how to pinch off the leaves in the first two inches of the plant, so it will grow strong. We planted more lettuce. The horta is the most finished, beautiful part of the property now - the raised beds and the greenhouse with their gravel pathways and stepping stone walkways, the bean poles and tomato trellises, the long parallel rows of bushy potato plants.
I still feel sad when I go into the garden shed, remembering Stella sitting on her eggs in the corner, Stanley often sitting a couple of feet away, keeping an attentive eye on things. When I would enter he’d stand and take a few steps towards me as if to say, Whatever you need to do it can wait, right? Can’t you see my lady needs her rest? I’d set down food and water for her and he’d edge closer, neck bushing up, ready to peck me if I got too close. Stella is gone now, along with four of her babies - disappeared one windy Saturday night. The only sign she ever existed are the three orphan babies we rescued.
On the chicken front
Stanley still stands around the apple orchard as if not quite knowing what to do with himself. When he sees me he hustles over, and I realized that when Stella and her brood disappeared, so did his main source of food. So I’ve resumed scattering food for him up in the orchard. Poor Stanley.
While we were watering the trees in the quinta garden a bright green parrot flew down, plucked a loquat off the tree and sat on the power line eating it. Later Alberto came over to show up pictures of parrots that landed in his garden. I see them from time to time - once, a big flock of them landed in our pear tree, all startling blues and fluorescent green, chattering up a storm. I hear them when I walk Jake, on the other side of the walled Queen’s land. It’s strange to move across an ocean and land in a place where parrots flocking overhead are a regular feature, just like they were at our place in the Presidio in San Francisco. There is a documentary about them - The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
We now have four orphaned chickens living in the house in an old rabbit hutch we cleaned out and put in the mud room. It is spacious and full of woodchips, and fits a chick warmer with plenty of room to scratch around. It’s a double decker - kind of a condo for pintainhos. We were thinking Princess Leia would be on the top floor and the three chicks from Stella’s peep (Amelia Amarela, Tangie and Tawny) would be occupy the lower unit, but it turns out that Princess Leia now likes their company so they are all together. She needs chicken friends, she has spent too much of her babyhood perched on us, staring at us with her little fuzzy head cocked as if to say I know you’re my parents but something just seems *off*. She hated sharing her warmer with the three amigas at first, but now has learned the pleasures of being the older, more experienced cousin, leading them around the house and showing them all the spots where they can relax in a sunbeam or scratch in a window well. She enjoys the company and the chance for more food - when I cut up blueberries to feed them she gobbles hers as fast as she can then snatches scraps of blueberries right from the beaks of the little ones.
We remain steady at four hens. We now have doors on the coops, but I don’t think I’ll be trying to pen the hens in it until I return from my daughter’s graduation in Massachusetts next week. The h has put out a game camera but we’ve seen no prowling animal in the footage. I’ve noticed the hens are roosting much higher now, and do not descend until I’m actually banging the cup against the bowl of food for the morning feeding.
After the last hen disappearance, I woke late at night and walked out into the Secret Garden and sat for awhile, motionless, waiting to see if anything came creeping along. The roosters and hens were quiet high up in the branches of the trees bordering the garden and the driveway. The sound of the wind in the palm trees was soothing. Sitting there in the dark, the fecund smell of the newly spread wood chips all around me, I found myself thinking about my dad, how hard the last year of his life was. Dad loved the natural world, he was always stopping a planting or mowing job and coming into the house to get one of us to come back out and see something - a baby bunny sitting under a flower, a coffee klatsch of cardinals on the fence, an insolent goose honking on the roof. How I wish he could hve visited this place we are making.
Other stuff
My final tattoo session - the fourth - was very, unexpectedly, incredibly painful, even with the consolation prize of getting inked in a third floor room with floor to ceiling windows so that we seemed to be floating in the tops of Lisbon’s famous jacaranda trees. The artist used a numbing cream that was like magic during the session…but when it wore off the pain whoosed back, more excruciating than ever.
I sat down at a cafe next door to the tattoo studio, because it had a little front porch with a few tables under the spreading jacarandas, the sidewalk was littered with their purple confetti. I had a glass of wine - remedio pelo dor, I told the waitress, laughing an indicating my ink, wrapped in plastic ‘second skin’. She was immediately interested, asking me if I was a client of the studio next door, how much did it hurt, how much did it cost, did I pay all at once or per session? It wasn’t until I was on the ride home I realized we’d conducted the entire conversation in Portuguese. The wine and the wind and the beauty of the day were nice, but could not completely distract from the pain. I was glad the Uber driver didn’t want to talk to me, I was too busy clenching my teeth.
You lead a truly amazing life!
I love your perspective and the empathy you feel with the animals. What an adventure!