Frizzled

The peeps of Sierra and Jeannie are growing ino teenagerhood now. But there are three in Jeannie’s peep who have something funny going on with their feathers - instead of feathers it’s more like hair. It’s a genetic mutation, some people try to breed it for the look, which is called “frizzled”.

Frizzled is a good word for chickens that look frazzled. They look like they are late. They look like their wings and tails were inexpertly crimped with a crimping iron. They look like they are wearing furry mohair sweaters that got singed when they stood too close to the heater. This fuzziness gives them a perpetually surprised look. We call them them the Steadman chicks because they look a bit like the birds drawn by Ralph Steadman. They all have names: Fuzzy Zoeller, Delta Dawn and Tiny Little Tina. Dawn makes little comfort sounds a lot like an infant when she is settling on your arm to roost. It is both startling and touching.

a Ralph Steadman drawing

Fuzzy likes to perch on the h. The h has taken to accompanying me and Jake at 7:45p when the coop flock generally starts to put itself to bed. There are always a few stragglers playing “catch a fly” in the courtyard. It’s the usual suspects, Pie, whose sister Cake will flap down from her perch and poke her head outside and call, “Pie!” Pie will pretend to come closer but then will get distracted and chase another fly. This will go on for about a half hour. I filled up a waterer and when I returned there were four babies roosting on the h, a complete and total takeover.

Sierra has taken to lingering in the fig tree, which causes the three roos to stand around in consternation checking their watches and telling her Everyone else is in the coop, c’mon now chop chop. No way, she says, you’ll all three pile on me. No we won’t, they assure her, and she hops down and they pile on her and I have to pull them off and speak very severely to them about my disappointment while Sierra hustles inside to claim a prime spot on the highest perch and muttering threats under her breath.

The coop flock spends its days under the fig tree or perched deep within it. This fig tree is nuts, it’s insane, it hardly seems of this world, it is so massive. It sits in the back corner of the swimming pool level, which shares a wall at the top of the hill with the pool house and the chicken coop/courtyard. The tree had so many great heavy limbs growing across the courtyard it was like a leviathan had hold of a ship. The h cut two branches, and Tiago cut another when he built the chicken runs outside the coop but the thing is still massive, providing shade over most of the coop and flowing across the courtyard and down the hill in an inviting flood of wide green leaves.

It’s quiet under there, and deeply shady. It is filled with birdsong, lots of little wrens like to sit in the high branches and sing back and forth. The feeling of being in another world is strong. I feel like if I put a little house under this tree the door will open into another dimension, someplace like the Upside Down in Stranger Things but less scary, maybe the Sideways. A place where chickens talk and rats dance ballet at night and lizards make all the really important decisions.

It was hot last week, temps climbing into the high 80s/low 90sF. The roosters lay around in the dirt and on the calcadas, not even moving as I pass by. Sunshine lays on the land like a weighted yellow blanket. The fruit trees are all thriving. So are the flowers in the planters in the palaceta courtyard. And the gate garden, which Alberto planted for us, is growing well, I will have to weed it again tomorrow with the special weeding tool that Alberto brought over along with a look that said, you need to water those plants more, plus a bag of lemons from his trees, some cherries from the tree of a friend, and a bag of crusty rolls from Paulo the baker

Did he give me a look when he gave me the tool, I asked the h. I think so, the h whispered. But better you than me, he added and was that the tiniest trace of smugness? The h has been keeping up on his list of “things Alberto advised us to do” and if I’m falling behind on my list, it’s my own problem to solve.

Betty White, I Dream of Jeannie and Sierra Nevada are laying an average of 2 eggs a day, between them. And maybe one of Sierra’s hens started laying - three days in a row we found an egg in one of the yellow nesting boxes in the coop brooder room. I know what Sierra’s eggs look like - she usually lays in the metal nesting box in the main roost room. These eggs are creamier white in color, and larger. We’re guessing it’s either Penny Lane, a very large golden hen, or Margaret Thatcher, an officious medium-sized speckled hen that seems to be wearing glasses on a jeweled chain around her neck. Both are Sierra’s babies, and both are larger than their Aunt Jeannie.

Jeannie often stays longer in her nesting box than strictly necessary. I always stop and say hi and give her kerfluffles. She explains loudly to me how she just needs a break from the roosters sometimes. I tell her I understand and also it’s peaceful and cool in the stone coop, deep under the fig tree.

The h mounds the rows of potatoes yet again. The passion fruit vines are heavy with the pretty pink flowers that will become the maracuja. The grape vines are growing, the broad green leaves are translucent in the sun, shivering and waving in the breeze. The warm evenings blink with lightning bugs.

My dog Jake sits for long hours on the patio. Everything about his posture says, Wow what a beautiful day. His nose wriggles slightly in the breeze. He moves around from the back porch to the front porch, thent o the center of the patio; if he spots the h in the horta he will stand outside the gate to the horta on lower olive tree Lane and bark. If the h doesn’t make his way to the gate Jake will proceed down the lane, past the garages, and up the cottage steps and bark at the other horta gate.

My sweet boy will be fourtnee this month. He is still pretty spry but also he has to go for a walk very late and very early or he might do a little xixi on the blanket, which we’ve installed just for him, with its absorbent side and waterproof side meant to protect the human bedding, which it does about half the time, the other half requiring us to wash the sheets and blankets and comforter covers more often than usual. My sweet gray faced boy.

At the moment a one mile plus walk at 11:00p and then arising by 6a to shuffle out to the garden to do his early morning business seems to be the magic formula. Every day after fourteen is a blessing, my Labrador-owning friend Linda says. He looks better…stronger said my friend Sandy, visiting me in Belas for the second time in nine months. Like he’s gained dexterity and strength.

It’s true that just yesterday Jake jumped up on the bed without a boost, something I haven’t seen in forever. I congratulated him and hugged him and he woofed.

Since Sandy’s first visit we’d gotten Jake on a supplement for his joints and we ensure he gets long walks including climbing some steps and hills twice a day. When my niece from Alaska came to visit for a few weeks Jake enjoyed daily hours-long rambles with her and slept like the dead, if the dead snore real loud and fart a lot. The niece also took Jake swimming in a local creek which made him overjoyed. He’s such a water dog; when he was a puppy and we drove to the beach Jake - normally docile and chill - would go so bananas in the back seat the moment he could smell the ocean. We had to roll the windows up for fear he’d leap out and run to the waves. The goal is to have Jake swimming regularly again soon, as getting the pool gussied up is one of our very next projects

Our classic 70’s rectangle pool will feature a series of graduated stone platforms on the shallow end, good as stairs but wide enough for sitting and reclining on loungers even as one remains partially submerged. Jake could take himself for a nice layabout in wet splendor during the long hot days of the Portuguese summer, interspersed with some good rounds of fetch if there are people around. The real issue of course is when no people are around, thus the new design - the big wide unmistakable concrete staircase on two sides will ensure our senior guy can easily exit the pool, or if not, at least keep his head above water until help comes.

One side of the rectangle will be a swim lane. I think we’re going to skip the diving board on the deep end; the h suggested making the deep end a little less deep and though it’s probably a good idea I feel a tiny pang at that. Whenever I see the blue bottom of a dry swimming pool, I feel like there is an optical illusion overlay of coins glinting at the bottom, the sun rippling across the wave-lapped surface. Each time I walk past the pool it whispers to me.

In the heat it has been hard to sleep at night so I sometimes take a walk. Some of the cafes around the village are open late, their doors and windows propped open to the night air, yellow light spilling onto the street. As I walked past I could see groups of men gathered standing between the tables, or at the counter with their mini Sagres beers, gesticulating and laughing, and it was like being part of the audience in the dark watching a play on a lit stage.

We cleaned the chicken coop out. I was wondering how there was so much poop in just a week but it turn out it was not mostly poop it was mostly feathers. Molting season is upon us. I collect only the prettiest feathers for my collection. I have a rooster tail feather duster, maybe the only one in the world. This year I’ll have enough feathers to make another rooster duster. I wish I could think of a funky design for the handle.

As I write this the wind blows outside, ringing the wind chimes. Today was breezier than we expected, blowing the hot weather away and also blowing the dream blanket off the clothes drying rack. We call it the dream blanket because when you sleep under it, it gives you vivid dreams which may simply be because it is so soft and fluffy but also it seems magicked. One of the very next projects is a proper clothesline to stretch all the way across the courtyard so sheets can flap like Tibetan freedom flags, scaring the roosters. The h yesterday went to the place to order the metal for such a project and Alberto will help him weld it. The h is a mini welder now.

Speaking of roosters, all of the roosters on the property - there are forty, I think - are crowing crowing crowing as I write this because I am late with their lunch. The h is tractoring the weeds of the Back 40 and also flattening the campo where the containers, God willing, will be dropped in early July. (please say the following bit out loud in your mind: Dear Universe deliver the Belas rooster lady’s containers without incident please and thank you.) Over July-August-September the containers will be emptied into the four houses on the Quinta dos Galos property, then the containers themselves will be repurposed - I think it will be one of the more interesting projects of the property, what these containers become. Stay tuned.

Today the workers are finishing painting the Garden House the new color (two sides are now Quietude, the other two are still white). The guys will be painting the window trim and house trim as well. We have a traditional 16-paned window in the front of the house, It would be so cool for each of those panes to be a stained glass scene, like a tarot deck. I went up to close the coop and found that the door on the side where I Dream of Jeannie and her peep live had blown closed. It was a hot day and they spent most of it outside under the fig tree but once I re-opened the door Jeannie came marching past me, her feathers hilariously ruffled. She stomped her little chicken feet and made “I never” sounds and went straight past me to her nesting box where she loudly complained about the way things are run around here. I stayed petting her for fifteen minutes and she quieted down but was still occasionally muttering I nevers under her breath.

Now I’m sitting here in the courtyard enjoying the sunset. The pretty green house color looks so nice under the shifting shadelight of the giant old sycamore tree and the Monterey pine. I can hear Jake snoring nearby. I love these days, the sun warm and the breeze cool, the sky so blamelessly blue. Whatever happens after we die, wherever we go, I hope there are wind chimes.