Midsummer

two more ladies appearing in my garden, and so on

Aug 23, 2024

The h came into the house after a morning in the garden. There are two ladies in the garden, he said.

I immediately remembered the lady we caught in our garden last year, her hands full of solar lights, looking for what else might be good to carry away. When we discovered her, she was looking around the newly planted horta with an expression that suggested a realization was dawning, Hey, this place doesn’t seem abandoned anymore.

Was she back? With a friend? But he meant naked ladies, as in the pink floral variety. I had let the naked lady flower bed at the edge of the garden get shamefully overrun with weeds, after vowing the last time I weeded that I would keep up with the job. The naked ladies somehow burst through those weeds virtually overnight, like two ladies in big pink hats standing up in church to sing a duet. Last night after sunset I spent an hour weeding while the h tended his greenhouse plants. Sorry ladies, I apologized as I freed them from the tangle of vines at their feet.

We’ve been eating tomatoes every day for weeks now - raw, broiled, fried, sauced. I froze five bags of whole tomatoes. We take turns making new recipes. My contribution of blistered cherry tomatoes with baked feta and chickpeas served with garlic parmesan toast was a hit, and the h’s summer stew of white beans, cherry tomatoes and basil in a sauce made with cashews and white wine is something I could eat everyday.

I thought we had another watermelon and mentioned it to the h. The chickens got it, he said. So this year’s crop of 4 watermelons was split 50/50 with the flock. We don’t really mind. We were eating it as fast as we could and there is still some in the fridge even now. The baby hens love watermelon like nothing else, pecking it down til the green rind is almost transparent, then hopping up on us to wipe their juicy beaks on our pant legs.

The garden is getting ready to enter its fall fallow phase. We’ll have another crop of potatoes and beans to put in, but not until September or October - I don’t know exactly, just that it will be after Alberto returns from his summer ferias.

Meanwhile, there is some desultory cabbage and corn left to harvest. The fig trees rain down figs. The flowers in the front courtyard are still blooming. The petunias in watercolors of pink and purple, the talk regal red Canna lilies, the sunflowers starting to take hold, the “false lavender” dropping purple buds, the coral geranium.

The olive trees bristle with new-growth branches lush with silvery green leaves. They rattle in the morning breeze. The h keeps pointing them out to me, as if to reassure not just me but also himself that they really are growing back. This time next year they will once again be providing shade on lower Olive Tree Lane, as well as blocking the view of apartment dwellers across the way.

The weather is amazing. Each day starts out mid 60s Fahrenheit, with temps climbing into the high 70s and low 80s in the mid afternoon. Jake snoozes in the shade of the courtyard, the roosters dig shallow depressions in the dirt and lay down in them.

Last night we ate a dinner of potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic with a salad of cucumber, tomato and basil, everything right out of the garden. Sixteen months ago when we first arrived here the garden was overrun with chest-high thistle. The only way you could tell a garden had once occupied the space was the little garden shed in the corner, so strangled by English Ivy no wood peeked through. Now, every meal we eat features something we have grown. We thought our first garden here would be more experimental, but guided by the expert hand of Alberto the h has a horta that rivals any master gardeners’.

Most mornings Jake and I get out for our walk by 8:30 when it is still a nice cool and breezy 69 F. This week the municipality is working on the avenida that runs in front of our house, applying new blacktop, so there is no traffic, making it easy for us to dart across the street for a quick hello with Alberto and Ana, who were having an early morning chat at the foot of Alberto’s driveway.

Everything okay? Ana asked.

Absolutamente, I tell her.

Going on vacation? she asks Alberto, who tells us he leaves tomorrow for Madeira and then gives me a huge sack of grapes and passion fruits.

Tiago and Paulo will return from vacation later this week, and work on the cottage will re-commence. I am looking forward to serving them an afternoon coffee break, they have yet to see the garden apartment in it’s mostly-finished glory.

After a full week of having a fully functioning bathroom the novelty has not warn off. Last night I woke and went to the bathroom without even having to lay there for fifteen minutes having the conversation with myself, Do I really have to go that bad? Bad enough to exit the tent, put on shoes and a headlamp to light my way down the steps to the powder room that is the only operating bathroom in the palaceta, and not forgetting to zip the tent behind me to foil opportunistic mosquitos? Bad enough that I will trek outside in the windy dark of 3 a.m. to the carport to fill the bucket (and maybe espying a rat as I stand holding the hose) that must then be hauled upstairs and poured in the bowl to flush the toilet?

Now, I don’t have to do any of that mental math or even fully wake up - I just pad (in bare feet!) across my new German-engineered PVC-free floor and through the laundry room to the bathroom and back again, nonchalantly flipping lights on and off as I go, no headlamp required. Look at you! I say loud enough the h mutters in his sleep What? Nothing, I say.

Jake is if anything a little too comfortable with the new set up. Each night when I go to bed I find him deeply encroaching on my side of the bed. As the night wears on he claims more and more of my space. I got so annoyed the other night I got my pillow and flounced to one of the other spare rooms, forgetting we moved the cot that was there back to the palaceta. I returned to bed to find Jake had already snuggled into the warm well my body had so recently occupied. I gave up fighting his dead weight and lay down at the foot of the bed where there was now plenty of room. When the h woke later to go to the bathroom and returned I could feel him contemplating the set-up - dog stretched out in wife’s spot, wife curled at the foot of the bed in dog’s spot - before deciding not to get involved and going back to sleep in his regular place which was spacious and undisturbed, as Jake would never dream of crowding his dearly beloved master.

Comfort, man. It spoils you. I just came off a sixteen month stretch of sleeping in a tent, on a mattress topper placed on a hardwood floor, in a place with broken windows that let the heat, the cold, mosquitos and rain in. Also a bat, once. Now I’ve had a bed in the AC all of three weeks and I’m whining about how it’s not perfect for me and my dog in our large bed that is not on the floor. There must be a lesson here but I am not sure what it is. Don’t get too comfortable?

It’s amazing how much more pleasant your routines are when they take place in a nice clean orderly environment. Now as before I wake, take care of the dog and the chickens, then courtesy of the h find a nice hot oat milk latte steaming on my desk when I return. After my coffee I wash my face, brush my teeth and take Jake for a walk, using the time Jake spends interminably sniffing everything in sight to answer emails and other work associated with my paying job.

These days Jake and I finish our morning walk by entering our property from the Back 40 i.e. the acreage behind all the housing on our property. Though it’s nominally fenced off, locals have been walking their dogs there since long before we moved in. As we have not posted signs asking them to stop this activity, the net result is that any walker in the space encounters a pile of dog feces every four or five steps. It makes for a dangerous walk requiring you watch every step you take. To my disgust, Jake finds it among the most interesting aspects of our walk. You’d think some of the folks using this space would realize Ew yuck we are ruining this space maybe we should pick up this dog doo doo so people and dogs don’t have to pick their way through a minefield of poop in various stages of drying out, but no.

Today I saw that the apartment windows of the thief, Ricardo - the man who broke into our house in our second week here, stealing virtually everything we brought to this country - were half open, so I took Jake right past. Having spied on him for a time, we are well aware of Ricardo’s habits. Normally, the windows and shutters are shut tight until well in the afternoon. Thieving takes place between midnight and four a.m., after which he returns to his apartment and keeps the windows down and shutters closed until late afternoon. He hangs his laundry to dry out the bathroom window out back (and yes, I have considered stealing his clothes). Around 4p, he opens his windows for some fresh air, but leaves the curtains pulled - presumably so no one can look in at him and the stolen goods in his apartment.

But lately before 9a the windows at the front and back of the apartment are open, and a new set of curtains blows gently in the breeze. Has he moved? I’m sure the other occupants of the building would be greatly relieved; when the h was with the police outside Senhor Ladrao’s apartment, a crowd gathered, the neighbors making it very clear by their statements they were well aware a thief lived among them. It couldn’t be a pleasant life, scurrying in and out of your domicile knowing everyone around you knows all about you, and hates you, and when they lock their windows and doors they are thinking of you, personally.

Speaking of windows I cannot stop looking out of the new windows installed in the garden apartment. Sitting in bed reading, I can look out the window opposite the bed and see the moon perfectly centered. And the west-facing window in the largest bedroom gives an unobstructed line of sight through the shaded courtyard, down Olive Tree Lane, across the apple orchard and the front courtyard to the tall front doors of the palaceta. Last night the h went over to get some things and I could see the lights shining from the living room windows over there. I liked knowing that if he looked out a front window he would, in turn, see the garden apartment where Jake and I waited for him like an island of light in the dark.

The pace of improvements continues. Next week 10G wifi will be installed. Last night the he installed the range hood, and showed me the oven with induction range he ordered - a sexy Italian affair. In a couple of weeks we will be able to bake without the limitation of the air fryer basket size, and cook a meal using more than one pot or pan.

With traffic being diverted away from the street in front of our property - a major artery cutting through the oldest part of the village - it is strangely quiet, no morning or evening rush hour. There are more people walking down the street than usual, and many of them stop at the gate to photograph the roosters roosting in their preferred spot, in the mid branches of a tree that hangs a bit over the wall. The h recently power washed the walls and the gates and then applied a fresh coat of white paint to the exterior walls, which made the newly painted black gates stand out, crisp and elegant.

What was it Alberto’s son Paulo said? It is now evident the house is in the hands of someone who cares for it. The passers by who stop to photograph the roosters inevitably notice the freshly painted wall, then glance at the gates, then up the driveway past the (also freshly painted) garage, the cottage steps, to the greenhouse where their eyes pause and you can almost hear them thinking Wait was that there before?

One young man, maybe mid twenties, stood on the sidewalk under the roosting tree laughing and looking around as if to say, Is anyone else seeing this? A few roosters strutted on the top of the wall. The man saw me at the top of the driveway and made an elaborate gesture with his arms: Look at them! I gave a vaudeville shrug. I know! Perhaps because we were too far away even for a shouted boa tarde, the man held his arms out to the roosters, then brought his hands together on the top of his heart. I made a heart with my cupped palms, thumbs touching. The man laughed. I laughed. Jake barked. On the wall, the roosters crowed.