As soon as we put the greenhouse up we had a day of 60 kph winds, and it blew a panel right out. The h grumbled about the crappy design. They just took the smaller design - the original - and made it bigger, without changing the supports, he griped. Still, it is finally up, now with sturdy reinforcements.
Yesterday the h and Tiago began thinning the wooded area between the palaceta and the road, what neighbor Alberto calls the backyard, what I used to call chicken flats because that is where I fed them until I realized what a really dumb idea that was - in between feedings, they tended to loiter in the general area nibbling on anything and everything, including the tender new plants in the built-in concrete flower boxes in the front courtyard.
In my mind I tend to think of the area as the Secret Garden because it’s so shady, and it hides the house from the view of passersby on the street - so well in fact that both a neighbor across the street and a friend that lives further down the road, both residents here in the village for two or three years, didn’t even know the palaceta was there and were shocked to hear that the property was more than just the ruined cottage at the top of the long stone staircase that is visible from the sidewalk.
The Secret Garden is maybe a half acre, containing more than a dozen trees, many shrubs with impenetrable tangled branches like Medusa hair, a cement koi pond three times the size of my above-ground childhood swimming pool, and a big shaded area with a sandbox and ancient stone picnic table and benches. Someday I hope to put down a gravel walkway that wends around the Secret Garden with benches here and there where one can sit out of the blazing Portuguese sun and listen to the music of the fountain, or watch the chickens scratch around whilst giving side-eye hoping for a peanut, or write…or all three all at once, why not.
For lunch one day we roasted our just-picked onions and carrots along with sweet potatoes, mushrooms and garlic and they were excellent. The h made a three bean salad with lots of parsley and cilantro from the garden and it’s silly to think that herbs you grew yourself taste different than the ones someone else local grew and sold to you at the supermarket, but it feels true. This week I need to harvest the lettuce before the roosters do it for me, as well as the rest of the onions and garlic.
It rained briefly Monday, nothing to cmplain about except the forecast called for 0% chance, even as a light but steady shower poured down. I was in the kitchen and heard a polite tapping at the front door. Thinking it was maybe an Amazon delivery person (Alberto knows to come around to the side door at the kitchen), I stuck my head around the corner but there was no one visible through the windows.
Then it came again - tap tap. Tap tap. I went to the window and looked down to see a wet rooster looking up - Alphonse, who knows he is my favorite. I let him in and we wrapped him in a towel and put him in front of the space heater for a bit, then fed him a few unsalted cashews. When the rain stopped we let him out the backdoor and he walked nonchalantly away. He keeps a low profile, that Alphonse, seeming to understand that’s the way he can keep his privileged status to himself. I don’t think he minds sharing, but Potsy, his pal, does - he nudges Alphonse out of the way, gobbles all the food as fast as he can, and is not above pecking Alphonse - or me - in order to get an extra peanut.
We had a little scare with Princess Leia - she suddenly became so lethargic she’d tip over on her beak, little wings splayed. Her chirps were very weak with long pauses. This happened while Tiago’s little girl Ines was visiting again, and I became very stressed that Princess Leia was actually dying, and here was Ines wanting to visit with her. I managed to get Leia to drink some water but she kept doing this odd thing with her neck as though she couldn’t swallow something. I wonder if while she was pecking around in the garden, she picked up a bit of broken glass or something. I think Ines was unaware that the chick was sick; she offered it food and water, but didn’t seem to realize the chick could no longer hold her head up, and didn’t notice the trembling of her little chicken legs, which were cool to the touch.
I covered Leia’s box and took Ines outside where we did various things - skipped down the quinta road (it’s great for skipping), harvested some lettuce and onions for her to take home to her mom, did some drawings - it turns out we like to draw the same things, houses with flowers and love hearts. I texted the h, Peep Peep is very ill and may already be gone, I’m afraid to take Ines inside and see her lying in her box unresponsive please help.
After Ines drove away with her daddy I went inside to find the h cradling Leia, who cheeped weakly, though maybe not quite as weak as before - we weren’t sure. We watched a bit of television while I monitored the Telegram community channel for my job, which has recently exploded from a few hundred to more than 18,000 members, all of them asking questions, or spamming the channel, or otherwise needing attention. I put Leia on my shoulder as I worked - normally she hops up there with alacrity and digs and burrows into my hair until she reaches just the right amount of cave-like warmth and darkness, then falls asleep. This time she just huddled, trembling every few seconds, emitting the tiniest chirps. When it was time for bed I reluctantly put her under the chick warmer, feeling certain we’d wake to a dead chick.
But the following morning dawned clear and sunny and and beautiful and extremely noisy, with Leia standing on her warmer emitting loud skirling chirps letting us know she was back to normal, thank you very much, and would like to come out of her box NOW.
The h thinks we should rename her Chickenhawk, after that little cartoon bird that is always trying to capture Foghorn Leghorn and is CONSTANTLY YELLING. Chickenhawk, by the way, is also the pet nickname the h has for *me* but I digress. When Leia sees one of us looming over her caixa she finds the highest point in her box, stretches her neck way up and flaps her little wings in indignation. In the morning she screeches to be let out to peck around Jake (Cheep cheep on the floor! we yell when we put her down). In the later morning and early evening she yells to be picked up and cuddled under our “wings” which is the spot behind the ear, under our hair. She stands there peering out between the strands, chirping to herself. When she’s really tired she makes a very high cheep cheep sound and digs deeply into the hair with her little feather duster butt sticking out, and goes to sleep so soundly that she doesn’t wake when you gently untangle her and put her under her warmer in her box.
I can admit I love her; the h doesn’t get all sentimental but I have observed him killing flies and then profering them to her, holding it by the wing while she pecks at it. She is growing fast which I attribute to her high protein diet. Right now she is sitting on my shoulder, burrowing into my hair - her own Secret Garden - for her morning cuddle.
The h has started some plants in the greenhouse, and checks the trees daily - everything is growing ganbgusters including the weeds, which are rapidly outgrowing the potatoes.
We found a dozen more fresh eggs in the fruit orchard, and in campo. Both hens made a nest of freshly cut weeds in a patch of half-shade, half sun. I am onto their methods now. As yet they eschew the beautiful nesting boxes up at the chicken coop, so I may end up scattering those boxes around the property in what they’ve selected as their favorite egg laying spots. It’s a confusing time for the flock, with the men noisily chainsawing in the Secret Garden. Their former nighttime roost - branches that hung dangerously over the sidewalk bordering the driveway - are now trimmed away. It’s good and necessary - we’ve had huge branches fall onto the walkway with a loud crack, unable to support the weight of the rain. And of course the walkway is forever covered in a thick layer of chicken guano which even Jake skirts around. The roosters and hens follow me religiously to the coop to be fed, but still head back down to the Secret Garden to spend the afternoon lazing in the shade.
I found some pretty flowering branches left in the carport by Alberto. I think they are camillas but not sure - I was expecting to see him to verify. We’d just had a conversation about what would grow nicely in the little sunken garden at the center of the courtyard, a grand affair with rebar indicating places where three statues once stood. I’m sure the previous statues were of a Catholic nature - this place at one time housed a university run by nuns, and a chapel presided over by a priest, Father Serrano, who also gave the quinta its name. We’ll replace the statues someday, when we can start attending to things that are purely about form and not function. Do they make statues of roosters, I wonder?
My online job continues to explode with activity and I have been busier than usual, and though I was peripherally aware of not seeing Alberto for a couple of days (he usually parks his car in our driveway), I didn’t get a chance to text him to see if everything was all right. I was worried that Rosa’s post-knee surgery physical therapy appointment did not go well, but the h saw Alberto briefly yesterday, long enough to find out he’d spent a day in the hospital with an asthma attack. When the h said ‘hospital’ I felt my heart pause between one beat and another. I’m sixty, and yet somehow I continue to foolishly expect that all of my friends, even those much older than me, will outlive me and nothing bad will ever happen to them. I texted Alberto to ask if we could help with this garden until he returned, and he texted back, Thank you, it is all under control.
My own allergies have been constant for the past few weeks, even the h is sneezing. I suppose the heavy monthlong rain has something to do with it. Today the temperature will peak at 82, and we have the door propped open for the nice breeze. It is lovely outside - every time I put Leia on the floor she makes a beeline for the door, she likes to peck around on the front porch behind the aloe and orchid plants. So far she hasn’t tried to hop down the steps or fly off the side into the courtyard, but I don’t often let her wander out there unless I am with her - I worry about a rooster spotting her and coming up the steps to investigate. I still am not sure which rooster killed a chick before my very eyes in our first days here, but I’ve never gotten over it, the terrible death cry of the chick as it lay there breathing its last, such a mournful sound. I still want to live, that sound seemed to say.
Side note: Leia is now ‘riding’ my left hand as I type, her little feet lightly gripping the skin. She seems very content, cheeping away, though maybe she is judgmentally commenting on what I am writing, it would fit with her personality.
Tiago and Paulo have spent the better part of a week now pruning the Secret Garden. They toss the prunings into the campo, where we have built up a deadfall reminiscent of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary - the natural barrier of trees and stones that stood between the fake pct cemetery - the one kids buried their dogs and cats and hamsters in - and the real cemetery, the one on cursed ground that caused anything to be buried here to reanimate with a major murdery attitude problem - cats. sons, wives. As far as i know, there is nothing cursed about the campo except the amount of work it’s going to be to burn and/or chip all that brush before the fire season is underway.
At one point I went out and saw Tiago high in the air straddling the branch of an evergreen, holding a branch above him with his left hand and leaning waaaaaay out to the right and up to saw at a branch. I quietly went back into the house, refusing to see more. He is a professional gardener and knows what he is doing but sometimes it’s just better not to know.
Later he showed me scratches on his leg (Jake followed him relentlessly, trying to lick them), then pointed to the back wall where a nook for (yet another) statue borders the courtyard and the Secret Garden had fallen away.
Caiu enquanto voce na escada? I asked. It fell while you were on the ladder?
Sim, he replied cheerfully. I will fix. Which wasn’t at all what was on my mind.
Taking down the huge dead palm at the center of the Secret Garden required the h to help. The h came into the house to warn me, Keep Jake and Ines out of the garden - out of the courtyard, even. I peeked out the door to see the tree had a huge cut, like the mouth of a PacMan, deep into the trunk, maybe twenty feet up.
We can’t leave it like that, so we’re going to be awhile taking it down tonight, the h said. At least another hour.
Will it hit the house, or the street? I asked.
No but it could bounce badly, if we don’t control it, he speculated.
I peeked out while they were working to see the tree wrapped with straps, the h and Tiago heaving at it before having another go with the chainsaw.
In the end it fell safely to the side, and did not bounce onto the koi pond and shatter it, which I did not even know was a possibility until after, the h knowing I tend to get anxious so not mentioning it.
I took Ines far away from the palm with its Pac Man cut - we checked out the swimming pool, her eyes growing big when she peered into the deep end, which looks even deeper sitting empty.
Gosta nadar? I asked and she nodded vigorously because it’s the rare kid that doesn’t like swimming.
No profundo? I asked, and she pointed toward the shallow end and spoke a flood of Portuguese that I’m pretty sure meant, I can swim in the deep but my mom would make me stay over here where it is not as deep.
There was a distant crack, like a giant stepping on a tree. There were no accompanying screams of pain or shouts for help, so I resisted the urge to run down to the Secret Garden, and took Ines up to the cottage for a look around. She pointed out little flowers growing out of the wall, naming the colors for me: amarelho, roxo, rosa, verde.
Oh my God, the h told me later. I was down on the ground pulling and Tiago was up on the ladder chainsawing and I could see the top swaying and yelled and yelled but he couldn’t hear me with the ear protection in. The top fell, the ladder went flying one direction, the chainsaw in another with Tiago riding the trunk like a cowboy. The h laughed as he told the story, but in that way that says, I could just as easily be crying as laughing.
I am beat, Tiago said at the end of the day - the only time he has ever said such a thing, he works tirelessly. I have read complaints about workers in Portugal not putting in full days, working drunk, etc. from other immigrant residents - and even locals - attempting to fix up their places, and I’m not denying their experience but in our personal experience, the workaholism of our contractors and neighbors are unmatched, and we find ourselves rising early and working late to keep up.
Last night I had to strap on a headlamp and search the property for the h - I’d heard him weed whacking the driveway, then the expansive terrace above the garden (see above), but then lost track of him. I found him in the quinta painting the third bedroom, the color a perfect but indescribable tint of…stone? khaki? I have no idea what to call it, it is both cool and warm, not too light and not too dark, modern and classic at the same time.
Hey it’s nine o’clock, I told him. Did you eat yet?
We ate some leftover bean salad and looked around the place with some satisfaction. It’s not quite move-in ready, but it’s very close, and the difference between how it was when we moved in - all rotting walls and ceilings and falling-down drywall, with cheap ugly pergo over the even cheaper, uglier tile - is hard to believe. We’re 95% finished, just a bit more painting and fixtures. The h ordered the windows, finally giving up on the website and visiting the store with Tiago, who told him the Portuguese word for “haggling” which the h then successfully did, getting a little discount on top of Tiago’s contractor discount.
We were delighted to learn it will be possible to install screens with the new windows, which are a fancy cool gray color instead of plain white and open both horizontally and also tilt vertically. Screens are a sentimental necessity to me - I was born in the midwest in a home with no air conditioning, and laying in bed at night listening to the far off sound of a train, the breeze billowing the curtains, June bugs banging softly against the screen is something I want to repeat here. Though of course the sound of the train in my childhood home is replaced by the sound of roosters here. Both home towns translate to beautiful, and it was, it is, and will be.
These are wonderful slices, chunks, of your life. Thank you so much. XO
I would visit your Secret Garden every day if I lived nearby! I absolutely love the chickens in the tree. Have a beautiful day and thank you so much for sharing some spice from your life! 💖