Letter from Espargal: 25 July 2020

JONES - DAWN MOON SUPPORTING VENUS
This blog is intended for such readers as may have an insatiable interest in erecting garden sheds. Any readers who lack such an interest - hard as it is to imagine that any actually exist - will be forgiven for getting on with their lives.



Sunday:  As it happens, blow by blow: Slavic & Alexandre arrive at 7.15 to assemble the shed. (See the previous blog). Slavic sorts the smaller sections into groups according to length. There are no instructions, only such tips as we have gained from watching a video.



Much measuring ensues to ensure that the base is square. My role is to stand around looking knowledgeable and to join discussions when sticking points arise - which they do a lot. The workers converse in Ukrainian, which I wish I understood.



From behind the gates a few metres away, the beasts take a keen interest in progress - most of them. The day grows steadily hotter. Intermittent deliveries of cold beers serve to lubricate the works.



The suppliers have given me a hefty discount as much of the timber has been exposed to the elements and is warped. (Those short side pieces [bottom left] are mis-positioned and later have to be prised out and replaced with slightly longer sections.)



There is something symbolic about erecting a door frame. It means that one can go in and out. It separates the exterior world from an interior space.....or something like that.



The planks do not fit readily into the intended notches. Slavic bends them against the warp - generally using a large garden fork - while Alexandre hammers them into position. Many take a great deal of bending and hammering.



The window frame is assembled and inserted. The warp on the left wall is lifting the short planks out of position. The roof later pulls them straight.



The shed progresses but only after frequent stops to correct the design. The biggest error is to mis-lay the base planks at the front and back of the shed instead of on the sides. As I say, no instructions!



The roof planks are hammered into position. Sorry about all the Sunday hammering neighbours. It won't happen again.



The dark planks are those that have been most exposed to the weather. The interior is quite spacious. There is already a queue of items waiting to shift across. (Nancy comments that Ratty will love the extra space.)



The roof is lined with a layer of reflective insulation that I bought separately



before the final asphalt cover is unrolled, trimmed and hammered into place. There's still a fair bit of finishing to do but nothing that requires Alexandre's muscular assistance.


THE ESPLANADE: CABANAS
Monday: After further discussion, Slavic and I returned to Cabanas where he acquired Liz's car for a lower price than that earlier envisaged. He pointed out that he would need to spend a significant sum to bring the vehicle up to the standard required for annual roadworthy inspections.



Tuesday: I had a haircut. The hairdresser assured me that taking selenium supplements would ward off most ills, probably including Covid19. I reserved judgement.



Then I went shopping to spend as much of Leroy Merlin's credit note as I could manage. Several hundred euros went on lights and fittings for the shed and the additional water supply system that we are about to install. The store paid me the difference in cash, a most welcome change from the usual procedure.


WATCHING THE CRABS IN THE STREAM
Wednesday: We joined neighbours Fintan and Pauline on a visit to Liz in Cabanas. At our little snack bar on the esplanade, Jessica - the Brazilian waitress - now welcomes us as regulars. In return we show our appreciation. The backdrop of boats floating idly on the estuary is delightful.



Thursday: was uncomfortably hot. Slavic arrived at 7 to work on the shed. The main job was to stain the wood with a preservative before adding the finishing elements. I chose a green stain to help fade the shed into the background. Jones had her doubts. But she went along with it. It needs a second coat to complete the job.



Neither Slavic nor I could fathom how the fancy door hinges worked, however we positioned them. So I bought some conventional ones at Leroy Merlin the afternoon when we went to fetch the new solar cover for our pool. The car's AC worked overtime against 36 degrees of heat.



The new cover is most welcome. We've been making do, first with the old disintegrating cover (that shed plastic fragments all over the pool) and later with the cumbersome winter cover.



Friday: Slavic is back at 7 to lay concrete steps and a path for a neighbour of ours. He mixes the concrete here and we run it around on the tractor. It takes three loads.

We are glad to be done by midday. It's another scorcher.

Letter from Espargal: 18 July 2020

Last Saturday one of us got a little older and was spoiled by caring neighbours



with whom we had celebrated at the Hamburgo the previous evening. (I'm standing, not to make a speech, but to humour my back, which has been unusually well behaved of late - dare I say it?)



On the big day itself, a worthy bottle of wine was procured for an alfresco petisco supper. The front patio is the venue for supper most evenings, once the dogs have been walked and fed and the garden watered.  We supp to the mournful howling of a neighbour's dog (whose mate had to be put down) with backing from the crepuscular chorale's strident stridulous symphony.



A birthday gift sent by express post from Lisbon took all of an impatient week to arrive but proved to be well worth the wait. The bespoke mask on her head was included in the parcel. In Portugal one is required to wear a mask in all public interior spaces, a practice accepted by the population with none of the US & UK's contentious hemming and hawing, bumbling and dithering.



Just up the road, the digger has finished levelling Idalecio's plot in preparation for his new house.  Some two metres of land on two sides of the property have been surrendered to allow for future road widening.



The spider's real enough although the photo is a bit misleading. The brute was sitting on the bathroom mirror. Barbara brought along a glass and a sheet of cardboard to slide beneath him for emigration purposes.



I dropped him over the patio railings and watched him scuttle off into the shrubbery, none the worse for wear. Another visitor, this time in the garden, was a snake that slithered over the cobbles in front of me and disappeared into a flower bed. Such visitations are not uncommon in summer. My only concern is to keep a distance between any serpents and Pally.



Speaking of whom - with the new blades for my two electric dog clippers, I managed to shave a bagful of wiry coat from his flanks and back. Pally now comes to us daily seeking attention and is quite amenable to being clipped. He's the sweetest little dog albeit one of the loudest.



His disposition is not shared by his fellow orphan, Mello, who does her best to avoid being handled. We managed to secure her and seat her on the clipping table where she sat passively while Jones fed her treats and I took off her thick winter coat.



She is looking so much better for my efforts. I hope that deep in her heart she's grateful.



After such exciting canine developments, it's a case of treats all round. In fact after virtually all developments, it's treats all round. Russ and Barri have also had much-needed summer haircuts.



Monday morning Eluterio turned up from the council to install the piping for a second water connection. It was a really tricky job as he had very little room to work and some very stubborn fittings (first) to unbolt and (then) to replace in order to split the main supply pipe between the two boxes.



With the assistance of his Russian co-worker, he took the best part of 90 minutes to complete the job. The next steps, he informed me, were to wait for a bill, pay the bill and then apply to the council for a meter to be attached to the pipework. Once that's done, the connection to Casa Nada is up to us.



Tuesday we headed west for lunch and a catch up with Liz on the seafront at Cabanas.



Our little snack bar - with the red sun umbrellas - overlooking the water serves an excellent salad.



It was much busier than it has been on our previous two visits as holiday makers arrive and the summer season settles in.



Just below the boardwalk, scores of crabs were scuttling about in a shallow stream that filtered down into the estuary.



Wednesday afternoon I drove down to meet the driver of the delivery truck bringing the kit for our new shed. The truck was both much larger and longer than I had anticipated. The driver had the greatest difficulty squeezing his vehicle between houses on opposite sides of the s-bend on the road up the hill.



It took him all of 10 anxious minutes to crawl through the gap with centimetres to spare on either side. It was clear that the truck would not be able to manage the turns on our extended driveway loop. So we had the driver deposit the load of timber on the further edge of our field.



From there he was able to reverse the truck back into the road and return down the hill. The extra space provided by Idalecio's road-widening proved to be a boon.



For the next 80 minutes Slavic and I tractored the timber a careful load at a time up through the trees to the the edge of the slab which is to house the shed.



Friday: It's a stinker. My car thermometer registers C36*.  Next week looks a little cooler. Meanwhile the pool is a life saver - although I was pissed off to be stung by a bee that I'd failed to spot in the water. I'm still sore - literally and figuratively.

Letter from Espargal: 11 July 2020

Sunday evening Jones called me on to the upstairs balcony to behold a glorious moon and (a rather outshone) Jupiter close by - just visible in the photo at "11.00". It was indeed an impressive sight. I'm not sure why the picture shows beams radiating from the moon top and bottom. My phone camera has a night setting that I'm still experimenting with.



Rather more impressive is Barbara's moon-shot with our real camera, which doesn't get much use these days. At full zoom the camera tends to hunt around for something to focus on. Every now and then it gets things exactly right. Barbara has a thing about the moon, as you may have gathered. I suspect that it was full the day that she was born.



Monday a digger started levelling the plot (across the road from ours) where our neighbour Idalecio is planning to build his new house. He has been waiting for a building licence to begin work. That's the village's water "deposito" (in white) just above the plot.



Just around the corner, our plum trees are doing us proud. Apart from our own pickings, we have received a load of lemons, courtesy of neighbours. Barbara has stocked up with brown sugar with a view to producing an ample supply of marmalade along with bowls of stewed plums. Pots are bubbling away on the stove as I write and seductive smells are rising from the kitchen.



Leroy Merlin has at last contacted me re last week's saga, the undelivered wooden shed. The nub of the problem appears to be that although there is a kit in-store, it either lacks parts or is damaged or both. The assistant who rang wasn't sure. She said a colleague would call me with the details. It would be available at a discount if I wanted it; alternatively, I would have to wait several months for another. I wait to hear more.



Monday afternoon the sky turned an ashen grey as distant plume of smoke heralded a big wild fire north west of us. The fire service's online map (the excellent fogos.pt) pointed to a serious blaze in the Sao Marcos area, about an hour's drive away.



It burned fiercely into the evening, filling the air with the stench of burning scrub and smearing the western horizon an ominous oily orange.



Tuesday morning - helicopters bearing water bags clattered overhead once more. The fire season is well and truly upon us. These past few days it's been stinking hot, with temps soaring into the upper 30s although fortunately there has been little wind to fan the flames.



Mello dives into her pool the moment we get back from the morning walk - and at any other time she feels inclined. The others tend to drink from it, often with their front paws immersed.



At the human pool, close by, the water temperature has reached a dizzy C30*, not far short of the jacuzzi. A downside of the heat has been the number of bees that alight on the water to refresh themselves and are then unable to take off again.



So many were in need of rescue that we decided to put the disintegrating summer cover back on while we await the delivery of a new one at the end of this month. Each afternoon we fish out a dozen or more struggling bees, along with a host of other insects. It's jolly hard to swim vigorously while they're buzzing around.



Tuesday I visited Jodi to get my toenails clipped (as they have been these past several years beyond my reach). At the same time I popped into the Alte post office where I was delighted to find three Amazon parcels waiting for me. Cristina, the post mistress, had suggested that I direct our online orders there after so many had gone astray - allegedly because the CTT-expresso courier couldn't find our house.


PROPOSED SHED
Leroy Merlin called again, this time offering me a short video of the "damaged" shed and a discount. All I could see is some discolouration in the timber. It looks like water staining. So I've expressed a strong interest. The only question is whether all the pieces are present. The assistant can't be sure. He says they're totally out of kits for sheds of all sizes at present as these are imported and national borders have been closed by Covid for months.



As I finished watering the garden late on Tuesday, the hose caught a small pot holding a succulent. Instinctively I grabbed the plant to save it from toppling over. Next time it can fall! The fleshy leaves are spear-tipped and really mean. Not that the minute lesions testifying to my painful punctures will earn me much sympathy - a case of inverse proportions. (Post Script: Barbara is similarly punctured after losing an argument with a rose bush - although I can't think that she suffered as much!)



Our thanks go to Marie and Olly for passing on Poppy's possessions. Both Squinty (in situ) and Mini have been making good use of her bed. Still on the animal front,  Barbara has been making several visits a day to Sarah and David's cottage in the hope of seeing (and feeding) Not Robbie, who has disappeared. I fear that the omens are not good. Stray cats are not known for their kindness to their fellows.



Wednesday morning a man from the council turned up to follow up our request for another water meter (to install a separate supply for Casa Nada and our field). A useful chat ensued at the bottom of the garden as the procedure is complicated.



Thursday: to hold a second meter,  Slavic built the standard plastic box into the wall beside the existing one. We now have to inform the council that it can make the connection. They drill appropriate holes through the walls of the box and set up the pipework. Then we have to apply for and pay for the meter to go inside the box -before completing the plaster surround. Then we have to cut a small channel all the way up the drive to take the pipe to Casa Nada. Then we......(to be continued).


SPONGING DOWN HIS HANDIWORK
Also Thursday Slavic laid the pavers along the front of the slab intended to take the wooden shed.



He did a fine job, even managing (with a pig of an angle grinder) to shape the final paver to fit around the pole at the end. I've watered the new concrete to slow down the drying process in the heat. Now we wait (once again) for the delivery of the shed, this time, due on Wednesday.



The final job was to build a short paver-path to access the two bird baths in the south garden, replacing the rather hazardous tree-stump segments that used to disappear under foliage in winter.


NO, IT'S NOT A HAT OR A HAIRSTYLE, IT'S A SUCCULENT!
It's an area where Jones is often to be found working away at her plants.  One day, she says, she will get the garden looking the way she wants it to. It won't be today because Pally has ripped out a host of succulents. Jones says he doesn't deserve his supper, an empty threat if ever I heard one. One way and another it's been a busy week - of which I have said sufficient.