The first sign of summer is when planting a tree turns from simply picking a spot and digging up a bit of soil … to battering through concrete.
It took just two days of mid-20s Celsius in the Alentejo for the ground to turn from being soft and simple to dig, mix in with compost and happily plant, to needing a medieval throwing spear to break the surface … and left us longing for a pneumatic drill to finish the job.
It’s also a sign it’s now probably too late for us to do much of our planned landscaping for the lodge we’ve been building for the last couple of years.
Half the lavender planted in front of our new villa is thriving, while the other half is struggling – the difference being just three days and one light shower.
We have so many more trees and plants to place, but delays to the building work and so much rain lingering in the clay has limited our planting window.
For our first season, we will do what we can by laying a lot of gravel and mulch, start on a cactus garden and mix in all the cover crops on the vineyard area to improve the soil before we plant next March.
After so much rain, we almost got sick of it (we didn’t, of course), but the sudden arrival of ample sunshine and high temperatures also brought a rush of workmen bursting back on site like a field of daisies.
Once the Easter break was out of the way, our hilltop was filled with cars as on one extraordinary day we enjoyed the company of the builders, carpenters, electricians, painters and our water consultant. All on one day.
The pool people even arrived a day early, which is brilliant but created another layer of complication requiring a wild goose chase to track down our plumber whose attendance was courteously required.
Our post-it note wall of things to do has made a necessary return and is as packed full as ever. But the order of achievement priority has been recalibrated from “quarter one” through “quarter four” to “today”, “tomorrow” and “yesterday”.
But things are finally happening.
We have stairs in both apartments and the metal handrail makers will be back on Monday to measure up the safety barriers; the cork floors have arrived; the pool pump is in, and its concrete structure has been prepped for its final pebbly layer.
The discovery our infinity pool overflow tank was too shallow required some quick cement-block action.
The water infrastructure is almost flowing with a solar pump now bringing irrigation canal water hundreds of meters up the valley from our neighbour’s land to mix with our salty borehole supply and avoid the need for reverse osmosis.
The house and solar panel rainwater capture system is almost finished – just in time for the summer drought.
And we’ve even found the pre-existing electrical cable that connects to our current guesthouse after months of random digging, detective work and the unsuccessful deployment of our friend Niels’ 1980s metal detector to save us a huge rewiring job.
But we’re still waiting for our doors and windows. Their absence hasn’t stopped us cracking on with the interiors. We haven’t got time to waste.
We finally managed to wrestle the cork oak planks – heft from our ancient fallen tree – from the local carpentry shop.
After weeks of waiting, it was a pretty disappointing job, but we have transported them to carpenter Ben in Aljezur to turn these scratched and scraped, slightly warped planks into a stunning 2m long bar and some fabulous bathroom vanities.
We still have to work out a good solution for the countertop legs, but the stunning wood will be an amazing addition to all the bathrooms, and we will mount handmade pottery bowls as sinks.
Our most recent Algarve acquisition trip took us to the workshop of Leonel Telo Cerâmica up the mountains of Monchique.
Leonel was so enthused about the project he started making the first sink before we’d even left the shop. You can watch the video here.
In the race against time that is our rapidly baking hillside, everything we plant from here on in is going to be a challenge, but with water on its way and power coming for the pumps, we will be turning our attention to irrigation installation once again.
Hundreds of metres of drip-pipes and a new submersible pump and floating platform for the lake will hopefully help us keep our hedge of 200 olives alive … and the ones on the hill … and the lavender … and the fruit trees … and…
…and why am I still writing when we have so much to do?
Alastair Leithead is a former BBC foreign correspondent now living off the grid in rural Alentejo. He writes the blog “Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal” and is on Insta @vale_das_estrelas. To apply to volunteer at Vale das Estrelas, click here.
