Bank Holiday Weather, again, again

Going

Well, it’s hard to believe but the weather for the Greek Easter, if anything, has been worse than last week. We have had torrential rain, high winds and thunderstorms galore. Nevertheless, during the week we took advantage of the help of some neighbours, out here for the week, to prune a tree in a particularly difficult spot. They borrowed our cement mixer for a day to lay a path at the end of their pool and offered some help with the tree in return.

Gone

This involved the purchase of a long ladder in order to get high enough up the tree for it to fall in the right direction, not on the retaining walls or on the flower beds! Chain saw at the ready and it was down in three. Then came the effort of dragging all the long branches down to the bonfire area before cutting them up for logs and for burning off the leafy ends. The burning season ends soon as it becomes too dangerous to have open fires outside. Even after heavy rain the cut branches are easy to ignite and the fires were fast and furious.

Macho men

It was fabulous to have two fit and energetic volunteers working flat out and enabled us to get loads done in a very short time. Then on top of that they invited us to dinner at their house down the road. We arrived home very full and very thankful.

Pile for burning in foreground, next trees to be pruned behind!

 Unfortunately, the great progress we made enthused Ray to prune two more trees so we still have a great pile to cut and burn, grrrr. However, we can now see the village in the distance and with binoculars it should be possible to read the menu boards outside the tavernas to see what the specials for the night are.

In between times I have been working like a Trojan to decalcify the drippers on the automatic watering systems and carry on weeding. There are also lots of repairs to do to the water pipes and drippers where the dog has chewed them up. I am leaving this to last in the hope she will have grown out of it by then. I bought a product to stop nail biting in England to put on the more vulnerable ones but I don’t think the taste is strong enough to put Kelly off.

Alternative Easter Egg

On Easter Sunday Kelly bought us the gift of a half chewed snake and since then we have seen several others. It seems very early for there to be so many snakes about. It must be a combination of the early hot weather and the spring rain. Doesn’t bode well.