September is the best month

With travel and jet lag and moving to a new house (from the palaceta/main house to the quinta garden apartment of the guest house), the month of August was something of a blur. The flowers of summer are beginning to give way to a more autumnal landscape. Yesterday I found a pure yellow leaf dropped from the plane tree on the calcadas of Lower Olive Tree Lane.

There is a Portuguese word they say has no equivalent in other languages, a word considered unique to the culture that is untranslatable: saudade, the definition of which (an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone) very much describes how September feels for me, the way it enters on a cool breeze that brings down the hot temps of August by ten degrees. The days are clear and sunny and beautiful; what clouds there are scud quickly across a pale blue sky. At night the wind rattles the leaves of the tall umbrella pine tree above my bedroom window.

Our workers have been off for the month of August - the traditional time of ferias (summer vacation) here - but now the property rings once again with the sounds of hammers, shovels, concrete being mixed, power tools growling in the distance. After a monthlong break, my Portuguese Zoom tutoring sessions started again.

The avenue in front of our property remains closed to through traffic for another two weeks, so the neighborhood continues its new existence as a quiet place for a promenade, punctuated only by the sound of our roosters. Many days I see people standing outside the wall, photographing roosters as they perch in the lower branches of the trees of the Secret Garden and strut along the top of the wall hoping for treats.

Hi Sandra! From the top of the cottage steps I hear the voice of Ana’s little girl; she is riding bikes with her brother Joao, her mom and dad watching from the sidewalk as they chat with the parents of other bike riders.

that green and yellow rectangle is the roof of the laundry room

The roof of the laundry room in the garden apartment is some sort of tinted corrugated industrial plastic that turns the light in the room an underwater greeny-yellow. When the wind blows at night, the ginormous Monterey pine drops cones and needles and small branches on it, making a sound like claws scrabbling. Last night there was a thump, and a claw-y sound that was … different. The light was off in the laundry room so I could clearly see the thing that was crouching on the semi-transparent roof, backlit by the moon. It looked a little like a squat, four legged Nosferatu; by the head and ear shape I knew immediately it was Pele, the hairless cat I’ve seen around the neighborhood and, in the last weeks, on the property.

There are a lot of cats around the ‘hood, both pets and strays. While Alberto is on vacation a family of tuxedo cats has taken to sitting in his driveway. The h was startled by a big gray cat the size of a dog shooting out of the apple orchard one evening. Pele (which means skin in Portuguese) is a tomcat, no collar, no notched ear. He’s apparently well fed, with an ill-tempered expression that says he’d just as soon scratch your eyes out as look at you. I once caught Pele stalking Larry the rooster in the space that will one day become the jacaranda garden. Without thinking (except to mentally acknowledge how large and scarred and ugly the cat was) I ran towards it to startle him away from oblivious Larry, something I definitely won’t be doing again —it was unnerving how close it let me get before turning and sauntering away with a casualness that said, I’m leaving because I want to, not because I’m afraid of you, Karen.

The roosters of the eastern flock have taken to digging themselves little holes in the upper quinta garden, where they sit in the shade during the heat of the day, watching us through our new floor to ceiling double windows. Fortunately the windows have a cool vertical tilt function; if we opened them all the way, it wouldn’t be long before we’d have roosters coming into the house, you can bet on it for (insert Yoda voice) I am much wise in the ways of roosters, am I. Indeed. 

After a couple of weeks of missed appointments, we find we will have to wait 2-4 more weeks to get our 10G internet, the current equipment only supports 1G, so work has to be done by the internet company to support 10G at the house before it can be installed. We shrug. Sitting tight is something you have to get good at in Portugal. What needs to happen usually happens but not always when someone told you it was going to happen. I continue to wait for my residence card to be mailed to me, going on five months of waiting (about the same amount of time the h waited for his).

The henlets are growing bigger every day. The goal is to have them in their coop by mid-month; the three amigas at twelve weeks are still a little too little. They are so fun to watch during their garden romp times. Twice a day they get an outside ramble, a task that requires two of us, one to stand guard against the roosters who are a little too interested in Princess Leia. Jake is also called to help, and cheerfully naps on the sunny calcadas between the roosters and the orphan hens.

The roosters lurk some distance away amongst the bamboo, watching as the the henlets run about the kitchen garden, then pick at weeds growing between the calcadas, then on to the front courtyard garden, where they have completely decimated the petunias. They were so pretty, a delicate mass of papery white and pale lilac blooms now reduced to green leafless stalks but oh well. We sort of felt like we owed it to them to eat a few petunias, because they live their lives mostly in the Brokedown Palace instead of the great outdoors. Of course it’s only temporary but we’re anxious to get them back into proper chicken environs where they’ll be happier, and, once they’ve integrated to the flock, free to come and go visiting us as they like.

Luckily our voracious little henlings ignore the just-bloomed sunflowers. I read somewhere that chickens don’t care for sunflowers so they are a good perimeter plant for crops that chickens love, like cabbage and watermelons. We planted the sunflowers as a lark, wanting some color in the front garden in the fall months. They have just started blooming in the past week, and stand all facing the sun like a row of fresh-faced French schoolgirls lined up for morning assembly.

Drunk on heat and bugs and petunias, the henlings don’t protest as we lifted their dirt-heavy little bodies and carry them inside. An interesting thing about these babies- if you snatch at them, they will squawk and run from you, zigging and zagging with a startling speed. No way can you catch them. But if you close your hands around them gently, they go limp, as if hypnotized.  Yesterday I picked up all four though they are getting quite big and my hands are small. It was a bit smushy but they didn’t complain. Jeannie started falling asleep under Leia’s butt feathers. 

After the garden romp the h and I will sit with the hens inside the palaceta for a bit; the four of them will walk up and down our legs and fly back and forth between my shoulders and the h’s until they finally settle down. The permutation is always a little different. Yesterday it was Leia on the h’s thigh, snuggled under his hand, and the three amigas all riding my chest, their little beaks falling forward to rest on my neck, me trying not to giggle and wake them. The h fell asleep and started snoring which woke the henlets, I opened my eyes to see their necks stretched to the limit, heads turned toward the h, listening intently. I closed my eyes just in time; at such close range, they will sometimes gently peck at your eyeball, intrigued. They move so fast it’s not something you can react to in time; you have to pre-guess and protect yourself. Just after my eyes closed I felt Yella’s little yellow beak on my left eye, and Cher’s hit me right under the right eye where the skin is thinnest. 

When they ascertained there was no danger (or food), the telescoped necks collapsed, eyes fluttered, and tiny heads sank forward on their puffy hen breasts, and everyone dozed again. When I started feeling lucky that I had three hens on me and not one had yet pooped on me I gently deposited them in a patch of sunshine on the couch with such a light touch Yella stayed asleep. We tiptoed out, being careful to not let the wind chimes tied to the door jingle as we left. 

We have a new oven on order, supposedly on its way to us from Italy. The h also ordered a toaster oven, and we have been having fun making things that a single burner and small air fryer have not allowed for: chocolate chip cookies, whole roasted cauliflower, pizza.

Property improvements continue while the nice weather lasts. We added glass tiles to the cottage roof to bring more light in. We like the effect and will repeat it for the top floor apartment of the quinta.

The h painted the walls that line the driveway, the long continuous wall on the western side and the  big curved wall on the eastern side, as well as a good portion of the street-facing wall that lines the half acre Secret Garden. It’s very clean and crisp looking, and quite the contrast from the ancient, ivy covered, chicken-guano spattered tumble down muros we found here just a year ago.

There is nothing like fresh paint to get to know your neighbors. When we returned from walking Jake the other evening a couple with a beagle were standing on the sidewalk outside the Secret Garden, peering with frank interest over the wall. They moved closer to the gate. I figured they were peering at the name on our mailbox, and sure enough when we appeared in the driveway seemingly out of nowhere (most people don’t notice the gate on the far east side of the driveway, tucked as it is against a high wall that casts a deep shadow at night). They looked abashed.

Ola, boa noite, I said, smiling. Their beagle barked crazily at Jake, who, having been let off his leash, walked over to the gate and responded with his big boy woof. 

Boa noite, the woman replied, tugging at her dog whose small size belied his lung power. Jake watched them go, wagging.

Another evening returning from another walk we were turning into the driveway when an older man walked past. Jake galloped up to him.

Ele e amigavel, I told the man, who looked…familiar. 

Oh I know, he says (em Portugues). This is the second time we have met. How old is he, again?

I remember you! I tell him. Jake is thirteen. Ele tem treze anos. 

I am 74, the man says proudly, which is exactly what he said the first time we met outside one of our favorite pastry shops, a conversation with much more hesitant Portugues on my part, but that Jake effortlessly brokered.

The h has been preoccupied Ph balancing the soil for his plants. I heard him yell in the greenhouse and went to see what happened but it was just the Ph reading of 7.2 he was happy about.

The trumpet bushes in the courtyard garden are recovering from snails eating their leaves, and filling out admirably. The h pruned the plum trees in the quinta garden within an inch of their lives and turning the plat into a graveyard of branches. I understand the need to prune, but it’s still wrenching to deliberately destroy some of the few pretty things about the property i.e. the well-matured trees. I get that they have not been well maintained and need the attention; some of the trees in the Secret Garden, untended for decades, were rotten from the inside out and had to be removed altogether. Still, I hate the process. The h laughs at me.

pile of tree arms

Meanwhile, the horta (vegetable garden) is winding down. We picked the rest of the red peppers and a final basket of tomatoes, plus a bins’ worth of pearl onions. In another month, we will plant potatoes again; we’re amazed how good the first two crops have been, considering the soil has not been worked in any way for several decades. The loose rocky ground is difficult to dig and turn when it is dry - weeding is all but impossible unless you water the clodded earth first. But it is undeniably fertile, with poppies and wildflowers blooming in between what’s left of the brown dry rattling climbing beans and the rows of turned earth where potatoes were and will be again and the raised boxes now empty and waiting, bright little pops of color that hum with bees.