“You are not guaranteed a long life, so make it a good life.”

I slow down to a crawl behind a little old lady in black walking with her donkey, where the little village peters out into a patchwork of small parcels of land. On a previous occasion she had a dog with her too, but on this particular morning she is carrying a ladder and a small saw, which indicates that she is on her way to prune their olive trees, as I later learn from Sil that she has a husband whose body has been bent by a lifetime of work into a 90-degree angle. My best guess is that she is somewhere in her eighties. She gets a fright when she notices the car, and steers the donkey to the side of the narrow road. I smile and wave, as I pass.

An array of interesting characters people the small roads I travel on to fetch our stone mason two or three times a week. Although the three hours a day I spend on the road can be tedious, I do enjoy the unfolding of spring, not just in the changing landscape, but also in the people actively engaging with the season’s chores. More often than not I get stuck behind a tractor or have to swerve to avoid people walking with buckets or pulling or pushing wheelbarrows.

Another regular I notice on my early morning drive is a little old man pushing a bicycle. On it I’ve noticed a basket and his walking stick. He walks slowly and I often wondered about his final destination and motivation, until Sil told me that he goes up to Relva, a small village halfway up the mountain towards Monsanto, where he sits the whole day, waiting for the occasional tour bus to stop on the square to sell one of his handmade instruments.

Although the weather in March followed the typical spring pattern of cold days interspersed with warm ones, strong wind, and even snow on the Serra da Estrela, it has at least been a sunny dry month, the driest March since I moved to Portugal, which felt wonderful after the exceptionally wet winter months.

Notes:
# At the beginning of the month I managed to harvest enough wild asparagus spears to make, what has become my yearly asparagus omelette to celebrate the beginning of spring.

# The usual strimming, burning, and compost making have dictated the rhythm of many of my days, but Lawrence removed the old shower, and we carted away two loads of rubbish to the rubbish dump, while I also moved left over bricks and rooftiles out of the way.

# During one of the storms a big branch broke off our big cork oak (on the right of the picture), and blocked the road. Luckily it was on a morning Lawrence came to work, which meant that it was the first thing we had to deal with.

# Matthias managed to prune half the olive trees, which meant the branches had to be dragged to my biochar pit, where I burned them. This time, not to make any biochar, but just to get rid of them. It is a job I detest, yet, when I put my mind to it, it was done in half a day. Unfortunately, I will have to repeat that process sometime in April.

# The dry-stone wall is almost done, but as we are waiting for two pallets of stone, Sil started work on a wall around the olive tree directly in front of the house.

# The sweet smell of the white broom bushes lure in so many bees that it sounds like the whole bush is alive at times, while the first lavender has also started flowering.

# On the days with unpleasant weather, I managed to almost finish Issue 3 of the magazines I am creating for Michael and I, while I also received the copies I ordered of the newly printed second issue.

# Midnight and I are attracted to the pools of sunshine that falls into the house in the morning.

# I keep telling people that Michael is safer in the UAE despite it being attacked by Iran, than if he was in South Africa. I usually get a blank stare back, as I often think people think South Africans exaggerate, but Michael got AI involved to fetch the statistics, and this is what Claude came back with:

LIVING IN A WAR ZONE vs. SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA: (2025/26) * 24,692 murders recorded in the 2024/25 full year (SAPS official figures) * 65 murders every single day * 2.7 murders every hour of the day * Murder rate: 39.2 per 100,000 people per year * Despite an 8.7% year-on-year decline, it remains one of the highest murder rates on earth Source: SAPS Q3 2025/26 crime statistics; Daily Maverick, Dec 2025 UAE — DEATHS FROM IRAN’S WAR (Official Ministry of Defence figures) * 11 people killed in the UAE over 28 days of Iranian missile & drone strikes (28 Feb – 28 Mar 2026) * 178 people injured * 425 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles & 1,941 drones fired at the UAE — almost all intercepted * Annualised war death rate: 0.11 per 100,000 people Source: UAE Ministry of Defence official figures; Wikipedia — 2026 Iranian strikes on UAE * A UAE resident during an ACTIVE WAR faces a risk of violent death 356 times LOWER than a South African faces from murder in peacetime * In the same 28 days Iran killed 11 people in the UAE, approximately 1,820 South Africans were murdered

A Moment of Gratitude:
On the afternoon I burnt the olive clippings, I spotted a fox in the orchard busy hunting in the same areas Midnight frequents, and where she can sit for hours in front of one of the little holes waiting for a mouse to make its move. The fox was not much fazed by my presence, even when I later turned on the strimmer. I watched him for quite a while, marvelling at how wonderful it is to share the space with various forms of wildlife. Something one doesn’t often see is a rabbit, which made it a double joy when I spotted one driving down the road one afternoon. Another sight that fills my heart with gratitude that spring has arrived, is watching the little lambs frolicking in the pastures, as I drive along our dirt road. One flock I drive past has a lot of black ones that are just gorgeous, especially as their fur later fades to brown instead of staying black.

Portuguese Traditions:
Swallows, or andorinhas in Portuguese, is a welcome sight in early spring, and Michael and I keep hoping that they will build some nests under the overhang of the workshop. Not only do they choose a partner for life, but they return year after year to the same place. They became a powerful symbol of home, family, loyalty, and love in Portugal, when Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro created a series of ceramic swallows in 1891 (patenting it in 1896). Since then, they have increased their symbolic meaning in a country where a lot of people have emigrated to other parts of the world, and as such imbue that powerful Portuguese emotion of saudade – a longing for home or the homeland. They are popular gifts, and as a gift, they carry the saudade of the giver, creating a powerful connection between the giver and receiver.

Written by: Jolandi