Flowers and rain

the long awaited residency card arrives!

This week marks one years since we closed on the property and took possession. A year of sleeping in a tent, and wearing the same four outfits all the time. A year of outdoor showers and sleeping with no heat or air conditioning, and cooking our meals on a single burner or in an air fryer. Of course this time last year, everything was dirty with the sticky dust of decades, the entire property overgrown with ivy and bramble, all the buildings filled with junk and old stained waterlogged mattresses.

Now, all the ivy has been cleared, brambles decimated. All the trees have been trimmed, the buildings sit empty. The fruit orchard has been cleared of the wild seedling trees, and new citrus trees are taking root. The garden has been mowed of its thistle and tilled; half of it is now covered with neat raised beds, and paths of tiny stones between them. The beds have already produced food for dinner – we’ve had potatoes, radishes, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, parsley and cilantro so far. I’m excited to harvest the onions and garlic, which we eat daily.

Now, the lower two floors of the palaceta have been cleared of junk and cleaned. A year ago we had only two left-behind leather chairs to sit on. We’re reluctant to buy much in the way of furniture, as we are shipping containers with a significant amount of stuff, a task that had to wait until we get our residence cards. Purchasing selectively, we now have a table and chairs to eat at, and a couch and coffee table to watch a movie, and a desk for me to work at. The leather chairs were put to use too, after a good cleaning and reconditioning.

Over at the quinta you can see the real progress; the lower floor is nearly painted; tomorrow we pick up the flooring, which should be installed by the weekend. The water heater gets installed the day after Valentine’s Day, and I’m hoping we can get shower fixtures in place before the h has to depart for a 3 week trip to the US. It won’t be the end of the world to keep taking showers outside for a bit longer, especially now that the temps are warming…but it’s decidedly inconvenient.

Today I was planning to take a shower first thing, but then had to forestall as the neighbor came over with some bread, then took measurements for doors he is building for us, then the gardener called to say the police will arrive later in the morning to talk about the horses that someone has tied to trees on our property. We’ve left notes on the horses, and we know the owner has seen the notes, because every few days they move the horses to a new location on the property. Much of the ground is now trampled to a giant mud slick, piles of horse manure everywhere. The gardener could not get animal control to come out so called the police to ask, what should we do? The police said they’d come to check it out, and then I had to decide, take a shower and risk the neighbor and/or the police walking up to the carport just as I’m all lathered up? Or wait for cover of darkness when it will be much colder, and possibly raining again. Yes, taking a shower indoors is something I will appreciate – fewer risks to weigh, and you don’t have to dread turning the water off and being whipped by a cold wind.

It’s been raining off and on the last two weeks.The rain gives me PTSD – the last time it rained here was in October/November, and it was cold, the rain pounding, the wind howling, and we had no heat or electricity, and then we both got COVID. Now the rain is much less severe – a pre-spring rain, if you will, the temps ten degrees warmer than early winter…in fact it will reach 70F this week. The bucket under the leak in the living room – a room we keep sealed off until the ceiling and floor can be repaired – filled up only once. 

All the broken windows downstairs in the palaceta have been replaced, but many of the wood frames are rotted and loose, letting plenty of outside air in. We close and bolt the shutters at night to reduce the cold factor, but during the day we have to keep the shutters open, otherwise we’d be stumbling around in pitch dark even at noon, such is the effectiveness of the shutters at keeping out the light. Sometimes the oldest technologies are the best. The parts of the house we live in are mostly watertight though if it rains very hard water will seep in under the kitchen doors that lead to the courtyard. It’s not airtight – mosquitoes regularly find their way in on warmer days, which is why we sleep in a tent and have a curtain of mosquito netting over the guest bed.

Other than one evening of hard rain, it’s mostly just drizzle. At night a heavy curtain of mist waves in the air illuminated by the streetlights. The new apartment complexes on the hilltop east of our house are barely visible through the fog of humidity. My chickens look sad and bedraggled.

The rain is good for the flowers. The calla lilies are blooming, their velvety white cups glow under gray-white skies. I’ve never seen calla blooms so big – they look a little like ears, a notion (along with talkative forget-me-nots and daffodils that repeat themselves) that found its way into the children’s book I hope to publish in the next month.

My neighbor tells me the spring rains will be in April, after which my flowers will bloom in earnest. I weeded the long narrow flower bed where I planted a dozen pink naked ladies (my mind insists on calling them barenaked ladies). I envision them looking like a line of Rockettes when they bloom.

I’ll be glad when spring is here, the walls that border the driveway and the cottage steps that we painted this past summer are now green with mildew, as we forgot to put an anti-mildewing agent into the paint.

Last week my neighbor Rosa brought me an orchid, which I placed in a crystal decanter left behind in the house – lacking its stopper, it makes a perfect fancy vase. I sent her a text with a picture of it, and shortly after her husband appeared at our door with a stem of greenery from his rosa de inverno bush, to fill the vase.

Alberto brought us a lovely carved wooden table with a wicker top. I know someone who can cut a piece of glass for the top, he says. Senhor Vidro? I ask and he laughs and nods. I saw the ad down the street, though it was in English – The Glass Doctor. It sounds funnier in Portuguese.

A friend in the US called to ask if we could help her find a way to move and store some boxes of her wares. For the last two years they have been stored at a furniture store in Lisbon. We have plenty of room, we said. We’ll help. We were glad to have a job for Joao, who has offered his services a few different times. Oy. We should have asked for the dimensions of the boxes – the pictures provided had no context, and when Joao arrived with this van they wouldn’t fit.

Next we sent our contractor Tiago, who has a big flatbed truck, but when he arrived and saw the size of the boxes – and the weight of ~400 kilos – he informed us we would need an official transporter, or risk being pulled over and having his truck impounded. We were all surprised – in America, there is nothing more common than seeing a pickup truck stacked twenty feet high with precariously balanced furniture, a scrap of red plastic waving at the back as it cruises 70mph downt he highway. That would be considered very sketchy, Tiago told us. Luckily, he knew a transporter, and yesterday we were congratulating ourselves for this problem being finally solved when we got a call, the transporter’s truck had a flat tire, it would not be fixed in time to arrive before the furniture store owner had to leave. 

The owner of the furniture store was becoming quite testy by this point – he needs the boxes gone, a week has elapsed, and today is a holiday (Carnival) so no one is working. All told there has been many hours spent on this casually promised favor, and it’s not over yet. We are hoping when the transporter goes out there tomorrow that the third time will be the charm. Note to self, always ask for size and weight of the load when promising someone else will pick it up. At least it’s been good practice speaking Portuguese.

Our fruit trees continue to establish themselves, though a windy couple of days knocked the avocado tree over. Alberto tut-tutted and showed up a picture of the kind of stake we needed to tie the tree to. I get for you, just a few euros each, it will be better, he said. The trumpet bushes are fat with new buds. The plants in the platners in the front courtyard are recovering from the assaults by the roosters and hens who used to hang out in the courtyard between spates of rain, drying their wings and eyeballing us through the windows.

Operation Chicken Relocation is moving along. Most feedings, the majority of the flock now follow me up to the coop, especially since they have discovered they can eat indoors even during the rain, and stay dry. Alberto is repairing the two doors that close the entrance to the nesting and roosting rooms, plus the door that leads from the pool area to the coop courtyard…soon, I will try closing them in, and see how it goes. 

We’ve ceased propping the front door open even on nice days because the flock tends to gather on the steps, the bolder roosters and hens entering the house looking for their next meal. Now, I exit the backdoor with the bowl I scoop their feed into, banging a cup on the bowl as I go. It is a hilarious sight, more than two dozen chickens following close on my heels (many of them getting underfoot) as I make my way to the coop, running in that funny-serious neck thrust out, wings way back way that they have. After a few weeks of this ritual a half dozen hens and roosters have taken to roosting on the wall just outside the backdoor, so when you walk outside and look up you will see them looking down like sentinels. Much of the flock now roosts on top of the walls around the citrus orchard and pool house; the roosters crow as soon as they see me, I assume spreading the word to the others regarding my whereabouts. “The little one is on the moooo-ooove!” 

The ice plant we laid down as ground cover is flourishing nicely, as is the lemongrass and effervescence. While rototilling the field next to the raised boxes Tiago discovered some mature desert cabbage cactus plants hidden beneath ivy, so I will plant them as soon as the rain stops. The holly bush that we planted in the front doesn’t seem to have grown at all, but at least it hasn’t died. Often weeds take root next to it, quickly growing taller than the holly. Sadly the chickens do not like the taste of these weeds, preferring the hydrangea which they’ve picked clean of leaves. After all the rain a few buds have appeared on the tips of some of the bare brown branches, and I’m hoping it will get the chance to flourish.

Meanwhile the lavender plants and arcadia, which were doing so well in their pots, now reside inside, safe from the chickens. The chickens have left the aloe plant alone, but often dig out the barky soil on top of the orchids, so they may have to be relocated too. The germinating marigolds and margaritas and basil and coriander have been moved to the second story balcony outside the room we currently have our tent pitched in – the room that will someday be the h’s office.

I am excited to see the first fruit on our lemon, lime, and tangerine trees. We’ll have to wait longer for the avocado and pomegranate and persimmon and almond trees.

Much of the bay laurel I planted to hide the back of the workshop from the quinta garden has died, not surviving the double whammy of transplant shock and near-freezing temps we had for a few days in December – days we could see our breath when we were indoors.

In other news the h received his residency card! His meeting was the first week of October; I called in November, enquiring about my re-scheduled appointment, then asked about the h’s card, which by then three weeks overdue. Oh it’s going out in the mail next week, the man on the phone told me in a jovial voice. That was nearly three months ago. We were so happy to see it, we did a little dance outside the post office, Jake barking and dancing with us. People stared at us curiously.

Most of our neighbors have been super nice and have become friends. There are only a few exceptions. One man got very angry when we put a note on his car asking him not to block our driveway. It took many weeks for people to realize that the previously free parking in front of the abandoned property was no longer available, the property no longer being abandoned. And though the man got quite shouty, and defiantly continued to park his car in front of the gate for a few days, he eventually started parking down the street, and I swear his car looks sheepish when I pass it with Jake on our morning walk. I do not allow Jake to pee on it, fearful anyone who saw the man shouting at us might report back to him about the rude Americans. We keep an eye out for him so we can apologize for the tension and give him a six pack of beer we have in the refrigerator, waiting, but as yet we’ve never seen him again.

Then there are the Roma who are parking their horses on our land, which at fist wasn’t a big deal – the four acres at the back of the property contain mostly weeds and a site with construction materials. But give people an inch and they’ll take a mile, as the saying goes – within a week of running into a horse while walking the property (I was startled, the horse was not), a pony appeared at the top of the hill that overlooks the vegetable garden. At night, if I look up there, my headlamp will pick out the gleam of the pony’s eyes. Tying the pony to the tree it is tied to entails the pony owner coming very close to our house – close enough to see the workmen using power tools during the day, close enough to see us showering at night. I’m glad the police have been called, it’s a situation I want resolved. For once, I’m glad that my large dog is often mistaken for being unfriendly, possibly dangerous. I always have him at my heel when I walk the property, mindful of who might be watching.

The h has been giving the horses water, and carrots and apples. Trespassers or not, we want them to be well-cared for. The poor things seem starved for attention.

Meanwhile at the front of the property, the owner of a shisha bar has placed a huge sign on the wall that borders our backyard and his parking lot. He didn’t ask us, just put it up.That’s illegal, our neighbor scolded. He needs to take that down. We left him a note asking he remove it in the next two weeks; week one has passed, the sign remains. While I tend to be laissez-faire about it (because I am notoriously afraid of confrontation) , the h is annoyed. The sign poster knows our property is occupied now – we know he knows because he stopped by the gate last spring to ask if we were the workers, or the new owners. Both, I told him. We spoke Italian, as he had no English and at the time my Portuguese was only rudimentary. I guess I can’t blame him for trying to get free advertising space. I dislike having to confront him, and the Roma with their horses. The h shrugs, not minding such situations – maybe even liking them, as he has a gift for it, they always end up shaking hands and being friends. It’s a good lesson for me, to not tell myself stories and build up the situation in my head, but just deal with it.

These are small annoyances in the grand scheme of things; much more important is the fact that we’ve made so many friends – Ana and Jonas, Gorette, Ana and Amir, Alberto and Rosa, Carlos and Elaina, Marcus and Marie-Alice. Last week I met another friendly neighbor, Paulo, and a lady I see often in the park, Margarita. I feel truly blessed, and study my Portuguese that much harder, envisioning the day we can all joke about the day I said “I am two beers” instead of “I’d like two beers” to the owner of the cafe at the corner, or ask Tiago some of my funnier foot-in-mouth moments…he is always nice and focuses on what he does understand about my speech, but I see the smile in his eyes at my mistakes, and wonder what strange things I am saying. You conjugate really well, he said generously, and I tried not to feel despondent that my own language learning is miles away from knowing how to say “You conjugate really well” in any language but English. Thankfully, my private lessons start Monday, wish me luck.