Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2010

This week has followed where last week led. That’s to say, things have grown. The pups of have grown (bigger), the weeds have grown (higher), our Casa Nada project has grown (costlier), the weather has grown (colder), my hair has grown (thinner). I could go on in this vein but you will have the idea.

Of all these growths, it is the puppies, inevitably, that have demanded most attention. At something over three weeks they are starting to become little personalities, staggering around the bathroom floor, climbing over our shoes and growling at each other – amid much peeing and poohing (mainly) on the newspapers that we lay down for this purpose.

We are introducing them to a paste made of puppy pellets (ground down and dissolved in warm water for the moment). More importantly, we are encouraging them to lap milk from a shallow dish rather than sucking it from a bottle.

They have taken enthusiastically to both innovations, albeit with a great deal of coughing and snorting as some milk goes up their noses rather than down their throats. Jones carries the puppy paste in a plastic glass that the little guys are happy to dive into.

I stick to the milk bottle when I give them their midnight feed, clasping each little animal to my chest in a towel with one hand while I direct the bottle with the other. It’s as close as I shall come to understanding what it feels like to suckle a infant, an activity which, according to a friend of ours, is the best feeling in the world.

I shall have to take her word for it although I confess a fascination with nurturing such a proxy babe. While I read endless books on the evolution of life, it’s not the same thing as raising one’s own tiny creatures. (Right now I'm finishing Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, interesting as always if a bit of a rant at creationists.)

The latest development is the erection of a puppy enclosure at the end of the south patio. This has been much inspected by the cats and other dogs, which we are allowing to grow accustomed to it before we introduce the pups. The rest of the zoo is well aware of the newcomers’ noisy presence but has contented itself so far with curious sniffings outside the bathroom door.

In Casa Nada, Idalecio has almost completed the wiring and the rendering of Jones’s “bijou ensuite” (her description). He has left the stones around the doorways unrendered. We’ll varnish these later to make them stand out in relief against the white walls. Midweek Idalecio joined us in a search for the timber that he needs to construct the mezzanine floor, really more of a platform to take two divan beds and some furniture.


A big hardware store that we visited didn’t stock the necessary lengths but directed us to a timber supplier close by that did. There we obtained what we needed – to be delivered to Idalecio’s yard some time this coming week. We were warned that the sturdy beams we need come in 13 metre lengths and have to be cut as required by the client. That lies ahead, along with the plumbing. For the moment we are well pleased with progress.

Not so pleasing was to see three men with measuring instruments marching down the track beside our fence and subsequently to find various marker pegs and coloured tapes positioned on the verges of the property just above ours. (Having built our own cottage in the woods, we are anxious to discourage anybody else from following suit close by.)

We gathered from neighbours that these are markers for a reservoir that the Portuguese water authorities are planning to build on top of the hill as part of a supply system from a dam inland to residential areas further south. That’s going to mean much trench digging and other nervous-making activities at some point. Stay tuned.

On Monday we were among friends of Harry and May who attended a lunch she organised at a restaurant near Loule to remember and celebrate Harry’s life. I spent the following day assisting her and her nephew, Kenneth, to deal with the further bureaucracy that Harry’s death has entailed. I’m much wiser for the experience.

Our afternoons are shortening as the November nights close in. It’s dark now by six. We try to walk by five to be back before sunset. Nocturnal temperatures are slipping down towards single figures – a heat-wave by Canadian standards but cool enough by ours to justify the first fires of the season. And how nice it is to have a cheering fire flickering away at night in the centre of the living room. The dogs have been just as pleased, settling down in their baskets – often with legs in the air - to snooze the evening away in the fire’s comforting glow.

I was reminded while sharing the dogs’ bed – sitting on it beside them, that is – and chatting to Marie & Olly that while we haven’t seen any ticks for months, the vile insects are still around. At some point one of them detached itself from a dog and crawled up my arm, to sup on my shoulder. I despatched the wretch vengefully before dressing the bite with a disinfectant cream. The problem is less the inevitable itching that follows a bite than the danger of picking up a serious infection. In spite of the precautions we take, we get bitten by ticks several times a year. So far we’ve been lucky.

In the expectation of rain this weekend – rain that seems to have blown away again – we planted a couple more rows of bean-seeds on the lower terrace. Jones came down to assist me. It’s not complicated. One dumps a handful of blue fertilizer pellets in a shallow trench, drops half a dozen seeds on top and then rakes them over.

SUMMER SHEEPFOLD

That’s the easy part. The hard part is persuading the rain gods to irrigate them at the right stage and then to hoe the inevitable weeds that spring up with the beans a couple of months later. With luck we shall have a fine crop in April.

AUTUMN SHEEPFOLD

Speaking of weeds, the sheepfold that Jones weeded so immaculately in the summer is now evenly covered with 10 cms of greenery. Jones declined my offer to spray / strim it, saying that it was bound to contain lots of desirable wild flowers, especially borage, which the bees adore.

The Algarve is suffering from an infestation of weevils that attack some species of palm. Hundreds of these trees can now be seen with their fronds collapsing. The picture shows Mario's digger about to root out a palm from the front yard of a house in the village.

Post Script:
We have moved the puppies for the first time from the bathroom to the sunny enclosure on the south patio. The pups, somewhat overcome by the attention, have retreated to the security of their box. The rest of the zoo is intensely curious and not exactly welcoming. Hard work lies ahead - that much is clear.