“You have a relationship to a place through the body. It is no wonder that humans have always been fascinated by place. Place offers us a home here; without place we would literally have no where. Landscape is the ultimate where; and in landscape the house that we call home is our intimate place.”
– John O’Donohue from Anam Cara

Every once in a while there is an evening so devoid of human activity that even my thoughts feel loud and intrusive. On those rare occasions it is as if nature draws a curtain of sound on the lingering remnants of the day – the snap of the beaks of bee eaters as they catch a final snack before they call it a day; the squeaks of the swallows twirling around one another before swooping in under the overhang of the workshop where they sit in neat little rows on the metal support beams; the high pitch whine of mosquitoes looking for exposed skin; and rhythmic chirping of crickets providing ambient white noise, as the day dissolves into pastel colours.

Although I love those evenings, it is the mornings slowly unfurling themselves that I feel the most in my body. Wrapped up in a soft blanket, cradling my first cup of coffee, and with Lily usually curled up on my lap, I soak up the chill, for I know it will eventually give way to scorching heat.

Sometimes a thin mist slips through the landscape, other times dew congregates on the porch roof before slithering off with a soft drip . . . drip . . . drip.

Every now and then a rustle in the vegetation makes me squint, mostly searching in vain for a deer, or the family of wild boar I spotted twice just as they were scampering like otherworldly shadows across the neighbour’s ploughed land, before disappearing through a fence.

The drone of a single car on the main road about 2 kilometres away is a reminder that a bigger world exists at the edges of my hermetic way of life.

Midnight often joins us as the sun glides over the horizon allowing all of us to sit for a moment in a pool of warmth. With the light, it is not just the air temperature that changes, but also the sounds: a dog barking, a rooster crowing, and the distant drone of more cars, as people stir to start their day. And just like that, the magic is broken, and I slip inside to make a second cup of coffee or start watering the garden.  

Notes:
# On the windy days during summer my body is always tense. My ears perk up for the drone of firefighting aeroplanes, and every time I step outside, my eyes automatically search the horizon for smoke. Only once, the wind direction brought smoke from a fire into sight, but luckily it was far enough from me not to feel the threat. The quinta, though, seems to lie in the flight path of two of the firefighting planes, so I often hear them as they pass by overhead.

# Apart from various bits of strimming, I also pruned most of the lavender on the land, and managed to remove all the suckers from the olive trees during the cooler hours of the day.

# We can get extreme temperature fluctuations in summer, and a 40°C day can easily dip to a mere 11°C in the early morning hours. Because I sleep with the doors open, I often feel a cat snuggled close to me when I wake up with a shiver. We’ve even had a couple of nights dipping into the single digits, but the days have been hot for the most part – some unpleasant, but others perfectly in line with what I now expect of summers here.  

# The tractor we bought in June was finally delivered to great excitement. I suspect Michael will, when he is here the first week of August, spend more time than he should on it, trying out the various implements we bought with it. It is a much overdue purchase, but it was also an expensive one, which means our savings pot needs to be filled up again.

# I had a horrible experience, waking up one night with a burning sensation on my leg. Disoriented with sleep, it took me a while to realise that I got stung by a centipede. I killed it immediately when I found it hiding under my pillow, took an antihistamine and painkiller, and rubbed an antibiotic ointment on it, before falling asleep again, this time on the couch, as I used so much bug spray on the bed that I could have killed myself going back to sleep there.

# My little patch of garden is flourishing. I’ve started eating some zucchinis, while the flowers are attracting all sorts of interesting pollinators, including what looks like clouds of tiny butterflies gathering around the little purple origanum flowers.  

A Moment of Joy:
I’ve had regular deer sightings throughout the month, but one afternoon just as I was about to go for my walk with the cats, we frightened the two fawn that was in the field in front of the house. Without their mother present they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to flee to, so I just froze on the spot and allowed them to settle down, before slowly backtracking to the house to fetch my camera. Once they moved onto the neighbouring piece of land, the cats and I settled on the wall to watch them graze on the sweet green grass, before Lily’s sneezes frightened them away.

Portuguese Traditions:
Summer is synonymous with festivals and parties. Even the smallest of villages have their own summer party, or romaria, and municipalities sometimes spend enormous amounts of money to get well-known artists to perform during these events.  It is a time to visit with friends and family, especially when it coincides with when emigrants return to their ancestral villages for the summer holiday.

I am not a fan of loud, crowded spaces, so avoid these as a rule, but when in February, I stumbled upon a classical music festival taking place a two-hour drive south of us, I immediately booked two nights’ accommodation and tickets for four performances.

FIMM (Festival Internacional de Música de Marvão) was founded by German conductor Christoph Poppen, and his wife, soprano Juliane Banse in 2014.

Marvão is a hilltop town in the Alentejo that lies close to the Spanish border, and has, since Neolithic times been a place where different peoples, cultures, and religions intersected — witnessing Celts, Romans, Moors, and Jews pass through at various points in history. The festival treats this history of coexistence as a founding principle, framing its mission around friendship and cooperation between nations, which is reflected both in the artists and festival goers.

Part of what makes the festival so special lies in the concert venues.  Perched on a mountaintop, Marvão offers open-air concerts against panoramic views in grand venues like the Roman ruins of Ammaia and Marvão Castle, while centuries-old churches are turned into intimate recital halls .

Now in its 12th edition (July 24 – Aug 2, 2026), the festival has grown into a well-regarded fixture.

This year, around 15,000 visitors from across the globe were expected to attend the 40 concerts that were scheduled over the ten days the festival is running. With a programme that spans symphonic and chamber works, opera, choral music, and curated contemporary pieces, there is a strong focus on artistic excellence and inventive programming.

It was an amazing experience, and although the venues were packed during the performances I attended, the town stayed sleepy outside these timings, which meant that it retained its off-the-beaten-track feel, which is part of its charm.

Written by: Jolandi