It’s hard to be a chicken in the rain. The flock is not ready to be locked into the coop yet because 1) we have no doors on the coop and 2) the coop itself is not yet vermin proof, there are little holes in the wall from which I have observed teeny tiny mice scurrying in and out which is not a problem, but a rat coming into the coop where chicks are living would very much be a problem. So until I can be sure they are safer inside than out, I simply encourage them to use the coop as a place to come in out of the rain.
They’ll eat in there, and stand around clucking in a way that, if you close your eyes, sounds exactly like the murmur of conversation at a cocktail party. But in general they still prefer to seek cover from the rain in the low brushy area of our backyard garden, which is maybe a quarter acre. Though today I found a dozen hanging around in the carport. They stood around me in tableau as I brushed my teeth at the outside sink. Betty White stood on my shoe for a moment; Jack Tripper walked over to investigate the bottle of mouthwash in our shower tower. A row of roosters stood on the wall bordering the carport, looking down like sentinels.
At least the rain is falling straight down. If it can be said to be pouring softly, then that is what is happening. There is no wind. A heavy mist obscures the hills to the west, reducing the houses there to outlines. Inside, the humidity gauge reports that it is 88% humidity. Obviously it’s so high because none of our windows fit into their frames after decades of neglect, and the outside is pretty much inside. In short: it is damp everywhere.
The ancient discolored walls outside do not look pretty in the rain. They look, well, ancient and discolored. During hte past year we’ve made tremendous progress on the inside of all the structures, but from the street the property for the most part still looks abandoned. Only the careful observer would notice that the palm trees and olive trees are free of the decades long, choking grasp of English ivy and bramble, or that the garage and wall bordering the western side of the driveway have been painted, or the new mailbox by the gate.
Of course, *we* know how far it’s come. I still find it hard to look at pictures of the property when we bought it. Like the one above, of the patio that looks down on the swimming pool - we didn’t know that underneath all those weeds was some nice red and white tile. Or the one below, of the front courtyard, where you can see the thick covering of ivy climbing up one of the palm trees.
Our first task was to clean that ivy off the palm trees - it just seemed symbolic somehow.
Someone walking by at night might notice the solar lights that now dot the garages and the walls and the gardens, but where the lights are most impactful - e.g. the front of the house, the road that leads to the guest house - isn’t even visible from the street, so one could be forgiven for not noticing. And of course solar lights haven’t burned very brightly for the past month. See: rain.
We can’t paint all the hardscaping until May, when everything has well and truly dried out. Though that time might be coming sooner - next week the temp is forecast to reach the high 70s for three days, and Friday it will be 85 F. However, two more days of rain are forecast between now and then so I am not getting overly excited.
When the time comes we’ll add some anti-fungal agent to bright white paint and coat all the walls that surround the property, the big house, the backyard garden, the pool and the pool house, the chicken coop and it will be like flying a flag that says SOMEONE LIVES HERE.
On the plus side of all of this rain, the flowers neighbor Alberto gave us last fall to plant in the built-in flower boxes that line the front courtyard are absolutely thriving, the leaves green and standing up tall, fat buds getting ready to bloom. Alberto says the flowers will be yellow, and he didn’t even know it was my favorite color. The rain keeps the chickens from scratching and pecking at the plants, so they’ve had a chance to re-establish themselves. The hydrangea we planted in the little kitchen garden, which was almost immediately upon being planted denuded of all leaves by the seeking beaks of the chickens lurking near the back door waiting for my emergence, is now positively bushy.
Yesterday during a break in the rain our visitor Gayle donned doeskin gloves and pulled up all the weeds that crowded around and under our Nile lilies and trumpet bushes. Of course I did that just four weeks ago, and it looked great, and if I didn’t see with my own eyes that weeds *pulled up by the root* could regrow twice as tall after four weeks of rain I wouldn’t have believed it.
Today I stained the intricately carved wooden table gifted to us by Alberto. We made two shepherd’s pies with the leftover lamb from Easter and froze them. There are many tasks waiting for me inside but somehow the sound of the rain makes me not want to do them.
Princess Leia has been excessively needy today, chirrupping constantly from her little box. Every time I look in she is standing on the top of her warmer, looking up for one of us. I finally relented and took her out and now she sits on my left shoulder under my hair, peeping occasionally. Life is clearly about more than eating and drinking and exploring for chickens. She wants to feel warm and secure, and not just from a stiff plastic and metal chick warmer - like any baby she wants contact with skin.
Oh look here I am talking about rain and chickens again.
In other news, we are grandparents! Our first grandbaby, Octavia, was born on March 14, 2024. Octavia means “eight” and her month and day of birth add to 8, and so does her year of birth. Names are destiny, I always say. Sandra means “defender of mankind” and I don’t know about that, but I do know that when I first moved here and received an Amazon delivery the delivery guy asked my name and when I responded he said “That’s a Portuguese name!”
My nickname in college was “Little One” because I was the smallest person on the softball team, and at 5’1” and ~95 lbs probably the smallest pitcher in the entire NCAA, but I could still throw a 75 mph fastball. It’s all in the wrist. Point being there are tiles on the front of our house, put there by the people who built it 115 years ago - on one side of the door the tiles read “My house is my world” and on the other side it reads “The house and the nest of the littlest one”. Maybe it was my destiny to be here. Some days it feels like it.
As I write this the village bombeiros alarm is sounding. This is a daily occurrence at noon, but now it is 2:45p. Like a true villager I will check Facebook to see what is going on. The last time it sounded at a non-noon time, there was a fire in the neighboring village of Idanha, set off by fireworks. It’s pretty certain there is no fire today - it’s now pouring less softly, and just as steady. Maybe the main street cutting through the village is flooded. The creek in the municipal park has swelled from a trickle to a wide and fast-running stream.
While I am on Facebook I will check out the pages dedicated to why people who moved to Portugal hate it and are moving away. These people are far outnumbered by the people who have moved here and love it, but they are much more vocal about the things that make them unhappy. I started out following the page to see what the downsides were to such a big move; after a year here, I feel pretty well versed in the downsides, having experienced most of them firsthand, but continue to follow the page to remind myself how foolish it is to complain about things you could have and should have learned about before making such a big leap, and also to remind myself how the way one frames things also shapes one’s reality.
For example: if you move to a new country, and don’t learn to speak the language, then your inability to communicate withe the people who live in the country is not a “language barrier”, it is your ignorance of the language. Portuguese people speaking Portuguese does not constitute a language barrier, it is simply reality. The only barriers that exist to comprehension are those you bring with you. To call your own inability to understand, speak and learn a ‘barrier’ is a framing error that places the locus of the problem on Portugal instead of where it belongs, on you.
Today I saw a post likening moving to Portugal to buying a pair of shoes without trying them on. At first the shoes look great and you eat up the compliments but before long their ill-fitting realities, which could have been discovered with just the tiniest bit of basic effort, hurt your feet and, before too long, your very perceptions about feet, shoes and life itself.
Everyone congratulated the poster for such an excellent analogy. There was much agreement that all of the positive reviews about Portugal climate and people and cost of living are just so much propaganda spewed by cultists who somehow make money from spreading disinformation about living here.
I never add to the conversation on these pages, figuring what would be the point? Sure there’s bureaucracy, and rainy days, and people who aren’t friendly, just as there are efficient institutions, sunny warmth and nice folks. What place doesn’t feature all of these things? You could say we were very lucky to meet so many nice neighbors, which we were - we also have neighbors that screamed at us for moving in and taking away their free parking spot, neighbors who stole things from us, neighbors who tried to steal things from us, neighbors who threatened to call the camera and report our tree limbs hanging over the sidewalk in retaliation for our us asking them to cease their illegal use of our wall, neighbors who did, in fact, call the camera and say we were illegally burning, which we provably were not, being in Illinois at the time the complaint was filed. Why did they do it? Who knows.
All of these things could have turned us off of Portugal, if we let it. But then we would have missed the long wonderful summer evenings of talking and eating in our neighbor’s garden; the lunches and the days of learning how to plant trees and crops with our neighbor Alberto; the satisfaction of seeing this neglected grand dame of a property be slowly restored to her former beauty working side by side with the wonderful Tiago and Paulo; the unexpected friendship of the chickens, whom, after crying over their deaths, presiding over their births, and winning their trust, I have come to know and love as the individuals they are.
As I write this, Princess Leia sits on my right shoulder (having tunneled under my hair from the left side), her downy breast pressed against my cheek. She is not sleeping - her eyes are open, and she cheep-cheeps now and then. She seems content to watch me type from this vantage point, occasionally pecking gently at my reading glasses.
I am excited to meet Octavia when we return to the US in six weeks to attend the graduation of our youngest daughter, who in addition to being a freshly minted college graduate is also a freshly minted aunt. Tia Sophia, she will be, while we will be avó and avô, which look like the same word but are pronounced differently because the person in charge of such things apparently thought Portuguese wasn’t quite difficult enough. Avó for a grandmother is pronounced "a-vaw," with the nickname vovó (like gramma, or meemaw) being pronounced "vo-vaw."Avô for a grandfather is pronounced "a-voh," with the variant vovô (like grampy or pawpaw) being pronounced "vo-voh." I remember the difference with a little poem:
I’m in awe
to be your avô,
& just wait ‘til you know
your big tall avô !
Do you think we can we get my tattoo sleeve finished before I leave? I ask Maria, the artist. Sure, she says. Right now we have the marigold complete, and the outline of the other flowers.
Especially if we just avoid the most painful areas, she adds, which sounds good to me.