Letter from Espargal: 31 August 2013

Rain has fallen, great big wonderful wet reviving drops of rain.

Although this is not the kind of news to excite Albertans, it was a gift to the exhausted gardeners of the Algarve.

On Thursday afternoon, instead of spending two hours with the hosepipe, Jonesy sat on the patio with a baggy - so did I - immersing ourselves in the shower that came floating darkly over Benafim and deposited itself all over us.

Although we'd been advised that there might be thundershowers I was sceptical. All too often, they fail to appear.

It's early in the season and I took advantage of the cloudy afternoon to clean the car.

I hadn't noticed what was happening overhead until Jones drew my attention to the skies. We just had time to get things under cover before the rains came down.

It's been a much cooler week - although temps are due to climb up into the 30s again.

At the end of August each year I celebrate the passing of summer - like a mountaineer who has got past the crux.

There has been a dampness in the air for several days and the first ornithogalums have sprung up in the park, a sure sign of autumn's imminent arrival.

The mozzies, meanwhile, are making the most of late summer. Each morning when I top up the bird-bath (cum bee-pond), I check for larvae. And mid-week sure enough, the water was full of them, little black wrigglies getting ready to enwretch our lives. (The OED has come out with a bunch of new words and I reckon it's time I contributed one or two myself!) So I drained the water out through a small (pluggable) hole and left the bath to dry out in the sun.

I sometimes reflect on the ethics of killing other creatures - moths, wasps, spiders - simply because we don't want them around. But the tormentors - mozzies, flies and ticks - don't figure on my morality chart; they are to be blatted out at every opportunity.

And with blatting in mind, I keep a couple of swatters handy both upstairs and down.

The real challenge is to whack the big flies that come buzzing in with an enviable display of aerobatics. They're lightning fast and know you're sneaking up on them. I have about a 50% success rate. A successful whack brings its own glow of satisfaction.

The grateful ants instantly drag the corpses off, sometimes two or three to a fly. On our walks we come across great armies of ants toiling back to the larder, all but invisible beneath their sun-brolly seeds.

I am taking the liberty of putting up a picture of a black bear that, with her two cubs, was raiding a plum tree in the garden of Barbara's nephew north of Vancouver. When disturbed, she scaled the 8-foot iron fence with an agility and speed that amazed our relatives. All we can hold up to Canada's bears are Iberia's wild boar although, in truth, these are nocturnal and rarely seen.

I played good Samaritan to a visitor staying locally, who had wandered up the road with his little dog to dump his garbage in the wheely bins on the corner. Two normally placid dogs that live nearby decided that the strange canine was intruding on their space and were giving it and owner a hard time as I passed on the tractor. So I hopped down and distracted the aggressors with the biscuits that I always carry. In fact, they usually come running up as I pass, hopping up against the wheel to take a biscuit from me.

On the home front Jones has been guarding the gate into the park in the evenings as I set off to find a hiding place. This gives me a bit more time to seclude myself up a tree or in a bush before the dogs (which otherwise cheat brazenly) come haring after me.

Barbara has been trying to get a shot of them as they charge into the park. Below you see the leaders in full cry. That brown blob, tail up, in the middle is Russ in full flight; he bays as he runs in anticipation of the treats that my discovery will bring.

It's the closest thing I know to being a hunted fox - and it's quite exciting, even when you know that you are not going to be torn to shreds.

Slavic spent two days, one helping me to bring in some of the firewood that has lain drying in the sun all summer following our major pruning exercise last year. We stacked six tractor loads and dropped two more off with neighbours. And that's just from one of the three giant piles that dot the property. The second day he cleaned up the cheese-wedge, the extended garden area that we are trying to reclaim from nature.

I waited half an hour on the phone to get through to the British taxman after noticing that Barbara's pension was suddenly being taxed erroneously at source. (We pay all our taxes in Portugal!) Last time I called the UK tax office, a year or two ago, somebody answered within seconds and apologised for keeping me waiting. I was flabbergasted.

No such luck this time. I sat in a queue in which horrible music alternated with a voice informing me: "Just to let you know, you can also find useful information on our website...." Thirty minutes of that amounts to torture. I was on the point of giving up when the call was taken by an assistant who (after speaking to Jones to confirm that I could act on her behalf) noted the error and promised to rectify it.

Making such phone calls falls to me.

In terms of our informal conjugal division of duties, I do repairs, bureaucracy, correspondence and travel - everything at the computer. We both do animals and Jones does....well....the bit that's left.

There's some relaxing gardening, a little light food preparation and occasional washing and cleaning.

One job we did together was to raid Sarah and David's cottage, the Padaria Velha (Old Bakery) for grapes (while they are back in the UK.), taking the ladder across on the tractor.

There were huge bunches of them clustered high on the vine that's meshed with the loquat tree.

We took turns in climbing the ladder to get at them, reaching up through the trellis and the branches to snip the off the fruit.

At the same time, Jones fed Bold (aka Sick Cat), who has chosen to stay over there rather than return to Casa Nada. Little wonder, considering that his food is hand-delivered twice a day.

Bold spends his day in a perch on the vine. To feed him, Jones lifts him on top of a cupboard, a look-out from which he can spot any enemies. And enemies he certainly has.

We think that it was a wound he sustained during a fight that has injured his throat and made it hard for him to swallow - hence Sick Cat.

The news in Portugal is mainly about the fires up north (several people have been killed) and the coming local elections. Because expats can vote in local elections, one of the political parties organised a meeting of expats in the Loule area to canvas their support. Our friends, the Davieses, took the opportunity to enquire why the water reservoir on the hilltop 100 metres away (right behind the Quinta) was not supplying water to residents, two years after completion. It turns out that the construction company went bankrupt shortly after finishing the work and the whole matter had been tied up in the courts ever since. Welcome to Portugal.