“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.”  
– Leo Tolstoy 

Progress on the quinta at times feels like a long, drawn-out and never-ending process, but at times the amount of work can leave me out of breath. Whenever Michael comes for a two-week visit, I always hope that we can manage all the essential work in the first week and then have a quieter pace during the second.

Michael and Tim worked for 8 days straight to get all the scheduled work done. Sometimes until after 7 pm, and at times in pouring rain. The irony is that a lot of the work was buried again, and although there are some visible changes to the landscape, mostly it still looks the same as it did before.

The work started with digging holes for manholes, and trenches to lay pipes for future projects, before levelling the terrace with the excess soil from digging up the area between the workshop and terrace to install a proper drainage system.

Once the various trenches were backfilled, it was time to move on to the drainage system. We booked a big digger for a day to remove a layer of soil to create space for some touvenant. We will eventually pave this area, but for now the touvenant has to settle into place before a final levelling and paving will be done.

The extra soil was used to level out the terrace in front of the house.

At the side of workshop Michael also got Tim to dig out and level two different areas, which will be filled with touvenant and compacted.

Sil, a friend of Tim, who has discovered a talent for dry stone walling since moving to the area, repaired a portion of a retaining wall at the back of the house after Tim managed to dig up a big piece of root belonging to a tree that was cut down before we bought the property.

I can’t wait to start with permanent gardening around the house, and although I know that it will still take longer than I would like, the small terrace behind the bread oven is almost ready for designing something more permanent. We decided to build small circular walls around the three olive trees on the terrace, and asked Sil if he would like to sign up for the job. Although he has never done anything like it, he was keen to give it a try, and the first wall was a great success. Both Michael and I are in love with it, and although the priority has shifted to other jobs, he will do the same around the other two trees, as well as two more olive trees to the front of the house at a later stage.

A big cork oak that was still standing when we bought the property eventually fell over as it was rotted to the core. Although we removed the fallen wood at the time, the roots were still standing. Making good use of the digger, we asked Tim to remove it. It was so rotten that before I could even take a photograph it was gone. In its place, Sil is currently building two curved walls to link with the existing ones running along our access road.

Michael also welded and put up a washing line for me in a spot that gets a lot of sun, which means that I finally have more space to hang clothes and that the washing line that was strung between two olive trees at the front of the house could finally be taken down. We had a good laugh, as the ground where he erected it is so uneven that the two poles look wrong and a bit strange, despite using the laser level to get it just right.

We were hoping that the Electrician would come to wire up the workshop while Michael was here, so Michael pulled rope through the pipes running to the workshop right at the beginning to make it easier and quicker for him to do his work. When he failed to arrive, Michael pulled the long electric cable we had been using to get power to the workshop through one of the pipes in the newly dug trenches, and connected two lights to provide light in the meantime for those times he wakes up while it is still dark and cannot fall back to sleep. From experience we know that it may take many more months of waiting to finally get the Electrician on the land.

Because the soil is drenched and things like diggers and tractors churn up mud, every bit of rain felt and still feels unwelcome to me. Not so for the swallows making good use of the mud to build nests. Unfortunately not yet below the overhang of the workshop where we are hoping they will start to build their nests. With a total of 160 mm for the month it is, like March, one of the wettest Aprils on record.

That also meant that the workshop became an absolute mess during the 8 days of full on work.

The last couple of days were spent cleaning up, sorting out, and tidying up, while Michael also spent some time to rig up chains for my yoga trapeze.

The work unfortunately, after Michael left, did not stop, and Tim and Sil are regularly on the quinta when weather and other commitments allow for it. The biggest project now is the retaining wall for the terrace in front of the house. Tim spent many hours getting that ready for a concrete pour that was supposed to happen on Tuesday, the 29th, ahead of rain that was predicted for Wednesday. I spent my fair share of time in the trench to dig open the pipes that bring water from the borehole and electricity to it, place plastic pipe and tape around rebar to help with the levelling of the foundation, and dug out soil that fell into the trench after a rogue thunderstorm moved through and dumped 9 mm rain in its wake on Friday around lunchtime.

When, this past Monday, brought chaos to mainly Portugal and Spain when a blackout wiped out all the electricity in both countries. I felt grateful to be on the quinta, and although we are on the grid and were also affected, it was less noticable. Luckily someone on a WhatsApp group that I was on for a birthday party mentioned what happened shortly after I heard the electricity go off. It meant that I could quickly inform Michael and cancel a yoga lesson I teach on a Monday before the networks went down and communication ceased. With that, the concrete company managed to get hold of Michael in the afternoon to confirm the pour for Tuesday morning at 9 am, as they have generators. Michael was in a panic, as he couldn’t get hold of me to convey the message, but he eventually managed to phone a friend, who passed by the quinta to convey the message in the evening. As we are in a rural part of Portugal we expected it to take 3-6 days for us to have our electricity restored, which meant I was overjoyed when it clicked back on at 11pm.

As Tim, Sil, and I were looking at the time on Tuesday morning, wondering when we will hear the concrete truck, Michael called with the message that they were unable to deliver the concrete and will have to rescedule. Luckily both Tim and Sil had other work to get on with. As Sil will be building the retaining wall as a dry stone wall, we are hoping that most of the stones can come from the land, and so Tim got busy digging out stones between two pieces of our land where some sort of wall was built or planned for at some point in the past.

The weather prediction held true and after 38 mm of rain yesterday, I was swearing at the concrete company, as the carefully prepared trench is a mess, and more rain is predicted for tomorrow. As I am trying to finish off this long post, I feel exhausted and frustrated.

A Special Memory or Moment of Joy:
I regularly watch a little Eurasian blue tit, who discovered Lily’s hair on the scratch pad on the porch, collecting mouthfuls of fluff for its nest. I’ve started putting extra out after brushing Lily in the morning, so I imagine it is going to be the cosiest and softest nest in the area.

Notes:
# The Spring weather has been a rollercoaster ride during the whole month fluctuating between cold and balmy days. It meant that I can almost hear how the grass is growing, and footpaths I have strimmed open previously had become overgrown again. Just to access the fruit trees to prune them, meant that I had to strim first. I made good use of the cuttings, as I raked them up to add to my compost heap that Tim moved to where we had been planning to have it all along.

# Tim scraped away extra soil that had been building up in the middle of our access road, and filled various places that had washed away with some touvenant. He also levelled the area behind a small wall at the entrance of the land where I had previously removed the last remnants of an old wire fence.

# The cats and I manage walks on most days, except for when it is raining, or I decide to light a fire in the firepit. The landscape is gorgeous with various wild flowers blooming, including all the wild lavender and white and yellow broom. The air is filled with the songs of birds, especially that of nightingales. Although Spring brings a lot of work, it is also a very pretty time of the year.

Written by: Jolandi