Normal Service Will be Resumed asap

Olympic Flame ran past end of the boat on Preveza town quay last week

Unusual visitor at the coffee shop in Nikiana

Sorry, busy spring cleaning!

More news soon.

Off to the Wild Blue Yonder

Still Life

A lovely bouquet of spring flowers brought by a recent dinner guest.

 

We had a fearful job finding some more tin roofing sheets to replace the green shade netting on the downstairs pergola and in the end Ray had to cut the ends off two trial pieces that were not the right length. We ferried them home on the car roof rack with much trepidation expecting to take off like a primitive flying machine any moment. Fortunately it was fairly still with hardly any wind, except rounding a bend near the Meganissi channel, and the traffic was light. We had to pull over once to let a huge pantechnicon pass that was thundering down behind us and actually got a hoot of thanks, most unusual in Greek driving circles.

After a lot of pushing and shoving we now have two sheets in place, only 8 more to go!

 

JCB at work

Yesterday afternoon saw the arrival of the first tourists of the season to the rental villas at the end of the road. They got the benefit of the improvements done to the road only that morning. A JCB worked his way along the road scraping and spreading, even past our frontage. They won’t last long, the improvements that is not the tourists, as the holes and ruts have only been filled with little better than sand which will soon wear away but it’s better for now and better than nothing.

 

Free to good home, well, any home really

Meanwhile, a friend arrived with a second larger wheel for the boat trailer to make the two wheels even so that it is ready for the off, when we eventually find someone who wants a free boat trailer. How can it be so difficult? Hopefully I will find someone when I have a pitch at the boat jumble next week. I am biting the bullet and taking the windsurfers to sell as I haven’t used them and I am just getting older and stiffer so it seems unlikely I will ever use them again, let alone play the piano. Pity, but I have to accept facts and move on to being a proper granny and leave that particular old life behind. But the good news is that first I am going on a week’s sailing with friends on their yacht so I will be AFK for a week at least.

Finally, it looks like it will be another bumper olive harvest this year as the trees are heavy with flowers.

Olive tree full of blossoms

Suddenly it's Summer (well it would be if this were England but it's really only Spring here)

water feature in full flow

empty pool

The weather turned fearfully windy and dumped the previously mentioned extraordinary heavy crop of catkins into the swimming pool en mass. Due to the fact that we were too busy decapitating more olive trees to clean the pool, when the sun then came out in earnest it turned the pool water into soup. It had been beautifully clear and clean all winter so it was a huge disappointment to see it looking so grotty. It didn’t take long to empty however and it was super to see the water feature in full flow. Ray put the pressure washer to good use cleaning down the sides of calcium and loose paint. Next stop, minor repairs and either repainting or possibly even tiling.

 

after

before

The tops of the two big olive trees that blocked the view of the village came down with a bump and it then took some time to harvest the big logs for the wood piles and saw the smaller branches for the bonfire. The pressure of the end of the burning season ensured that we worked flat out dragging and cutting and burning for what seemed like days on end. The weather helped us in this respect as there were several rainy days which, although it didn’t stop the woodland management work, it made the massive bonfires seem a bit safer. As always, if only we had had another week of this work we could have got it finished but this way we have saved something to look forward to in the autumn!

In between times I managed to get a big bag of fertilizer pellets from the agricultural store in Lefkas and got round more of the plantings which the rain helped wash into the ground. The following hot sunny period then gave another huge crop of weeds; it has been a funny spring this year with alternate hot and wet weather. The flowers have flourished however and put on a huge show of bright colours.

 The grass under the trees by the pool grew to about 12” tall in what seemed overnight but still looked lush and green after mowing with my electric hand clippers, which are a huge improvement on the small shears I used to use. Unfortunately it revealed the full extend of the damage done by the dog chewing the automatic watering nozzles. I shall leave repairing them to last in the hope she will have grown out of her vandalism stage by then. I get her bones from the butcher whenever I can, which she enjoys immensely. In fact, she is quite good at finding bones herself on our early morning walks. The other day she was rooting around the base of a tree and came out with a treasure that she proudly carried home for endless gnawing.