Dispatch from Beautiful

In Belas: guests, babies growing, roosters, dogs, vegetables, books

• The opportunity for chaos increases exponentially for every additional animal beyond one that you allow in your house. One minute I’m serenely working at my table in the entryway, morning light pouring in. The next minute Jake scratches to go out. I open the door and Alphonse the rooster steps in before Jake steps out. He makes a beeline for the food I have specially prepared for the babies. The babies stream under Jake’s feet and leap off the porch. My phone rings, unknown caller. My alarm goes off - time to call mom in the middle of her night in the American midwest, and remind her to take the dose of medication waiting for her at her bedside, put there by my sister. We need a bucket of water, the h calls from upstairs. The chickens follow me in a flock as I search for the babies- feeding time is overdue. An emissary from the eastern flock steps through the carport gate, looking right then left. His posture says, Um, are you ever going to feed us? At the last second I spy a baby zoom around the corner of the patio. I follow and they are up the steps and speeding down the outdoor hallway to the fruit orchard. Woof, says Jake, waiting at the back door to be let in. The roosters gather around him, clearly wondering if Jake might possibly feed them. I open the back door and set the babies inside. The roosters stream in. The babies scream and stream out. Jake asks for a treat. I chase the babies. The flock follows me. The h calls for water again.

• Twice in the past week we’ve harvested vegetables where less than twenty minutes elapsed from pulling the beans off the vine or the potatoes out of the ground and served at the table with equally fresh basil, parsley and cilantro and it still feels like some kind of miracle.

• Today we’ll harvest beans and more zucchinis; soon, tomatoes.

no privacy, ever

• It has been raining lately, nothing hard, just ranging from a light sprinkle to a light drizzle. The roosters stand in the courtyard drying off; one hops on the railing to eyeball me through the window (to you it’s reflective, but to chicken dinosaur eyes it is not). He crows every now and then, apparently reporting to all and sundry that the little foodbringer (me) can be observed inside please stay tuned for updates.

• It’s stunning how big and filled out the trumpet bushes are, I only planted them late last fall and here they are taller than me already, peeking over the garden wall. We didn’t even improve the dirt where we planted them. Things grow really well here.

• The apple tree is getting ready to shower us with apples.

  

  apples!

• Today we’ll have four guests - one arrived yesterday afternoon, two arrived late last night. Another arrives today. Some will sleep in the palaceta, some in the quinta. They are all Americans, from different periods in our lives: two girls in their early twenties, daughters of a mountain biking and skiing buddy of the h’s; a longtime colleague / friend; a girl I’ve known since kindergarten. Of course we are both women now but she really is the girl I remember, she looks exactly the same, with the same whiz kid brain. In total we’ve had 25 guests visit in the past 9 months. Let’s go to Portugal - it just has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it?

• We ordered a new sofa bed to arrive in time for the overflow of guests and the couch was somehow divided up into three shipments, nothing that arrived would be considered the sleepable parts, which naturally are scheduled to arrive the day our last guest deeparts.

• Yesterday I was in the carport and I glanced over and saw Jake and Alphonse standing side by side, facing the back door. They looked like they were going to a party - Jake in his brown suit, Alphonse in his fancy green tail feathers and waistcoat. They stood patiently in their finery, as if one of them had knocked and now they were waiting for the host to answer.

• The cottage is almost finished to a state we can electrify it: the roof is complete, the windows and doorways crisply framed. Man, that Paulo is really expert at cement work, the h says. I plan where the bookshelves will go. It will be a Castle for Readers, this cottage high on its hill.

• There is some rooster on rooster action happening regularly. The recipient of all these attentions is missing some feathers on his back. This gives him an appearance that is both bedraggled and alarmed.

  

  Princess Leia with Yella Amarela

• The pintahinas are growing. Princess Leia is very much a baby hen now, vs. a hen baby. She’s a good eight weeks older than the three amigas. Every morning she triumphantly leads them on a trip around the house, including venturing up to the second floor and third floor and, if someone forgets to close the door to the mudroom, down to the cellar. Every day I let them out the front door to scratch around in the courtyard garden. The sweet confidence of them, parading past Jake and parachuting off the porch, landing on the calcadas then speeding over to the garden to disappear under the ivy. When it’s time to come in I just cut up a blueberry into tenths, and they follow me inside in a zoomy little line. They think the blueberries are flies - or anyway Princess Leia does. She screams with excitement when she sees me go to the kitchen. Fly prep beginning, she shrieks, her little dinosaur feet pattering rapidly after me. The other babies will come from all corners to form an excited little conga line into the kitchen, where they wait expectantly for me to carve up the ‘flies’ on the cutting board and then scatter the pieces on a plate that I set before them with a flourish like some Michelin starred chef.

• Every morning and afternoon the four babies approach the h or me and demand to snuggle. They might all sit in a row on your arm, or stomach. they might pile under the ear, behind a curtain of hair. They might line up on a thigh, according to size, with Princess Leia always perched in the spot closest to the knee. As soon as you put your hand on their backs their little eyes start closing.

• Baby chicks fight sleep just like toddler humans - they don’t want to miss anything. They nod off and their eyes close and they jerk their heads up and look around all bleary-eyed.

• Do chickens remember? All four of the baby hens are survivors of fox attacks that took their fellow nestlings and their mothers. I found Princess Leia screaming under a bench in the courtyard, the nest her mother had made the night before, in the front garden, blown apart, not even a feather to show where the hen and other chick had been. I carried Princess Leia inside and she’s been with us ever since; hens don’t leave their chicks til sixteen weeks, and Princess Leia will be there in about three weeks. Meanwhile the three amigas treat her like a mama, vying to crawl under her at nap and sleep time. Sometimes Princess allows it, other times she shakes them off and tucks her head under my hand. I’m still a baby too, she is saying. The other day the four of them were scurrying around the front garden. I gathered the three amigas up and brought them into the house. A few minutes later I went out for Princess Leia, but she was nowhere. Then I heard a low warble and turned to see her standing under the same bench the day I rescued her. She was craning her head up, looking all around for the babies, the very picture of the question, Hey where’d everyone go? But the sound she made was plaintive. Oh no alone again, it said. Or maybe it’s my imagination. Still there is no denying she hopped right into my cupped hands, giving up the freedom of scratching around quite willingly to climb my shoulder where she hid herself in the safety of my hair and went immediately to sleep.

• Dogs definitely remember. Jake was overjoyed to see our/his friend Steve again. People are always surprised, always say “I think Jake remembers me!” If you have met Jake, you are unforgettable to him, you are his automatic friend for life, a Jakebrother (or Jakesister). We should all be so lucky.

  

  sailing orange seas of safety, together