Had a fantastic bonfire today and got rid of all my honeysuckle and rose prunings. The honeysuckle is so difficult to do anything with, the long tendrils wind round everything and are difficult to break. I burnt it all in the old oil drum we use as an incinerator. Lots of people around us have been having fires for a couple of weeks, but officially we aren't suppose to start until tomorrow, 1st November. Open fires are forbidden from April to November. Everywhere is still damp after the rain 10 days ago, and the humid southerly winds, but there could still be a risk.
John started moving the massive pile of prunings from when we cut back the right hand side of the front garden, ready for a fire tomorrow. He had stacked it all up against Andreas' wall. Koula inquired to see if the Council would collect it for us, but they were going to charge €60, so we agreed to move it all down onto their land, by the river, and burn it there. We will get rid of a lot of their rubbish at the same time.
It has been overcast all day today, but warm and completely windless. We could really do with some more rain, it's 10 days since it rained. While the nice weather is holding we decided to go down to the port for lunch. It really is wonderful sitting there, outside one of the ouzeries, watching the fishing boats come and go, the world passing by, Karystos just carrying on with its life. It has to be one of the things which make Karystos so unique, such a lovely place to be, a million miles away from the Greece that most of the tourists see. John had a plate of mussels in a mustard and lemon sauce. It's the first time he has had it, he liked the mussels but said it was a bit heavy on the lemon for him. I had a plate of the fish they call 'little cod' here, but whatever they are, they aren't cod. They are small white fish, about 16 cms long, and very sweet.
This afternoon we took a walk around the land above us, through the lanes of Palaia Khora, collecting a few walnuts on the way. It was interesting to see how things have changed over the summer. The lanes are even more overgrown than before, in many places we needed to duck down through the ivy and the brambles. It is all so quiet and protected here, we were walking round for over an hour and saw no-one. The bad news is that unless something is done to manage the area it will become even more overgrown, dry stone walls will collapse, trees will fall. We took a look at a piece of land which Effie told us has been sold to some Athenians who intend to develop it speculatively, houses to rent or sell. It's a lovely piece of land, with good sea views, but we think they must be crazy. The ground was scattered with shards of Roman pottery, and close to it are some really old looking walls and building remains. Considering that the archaeologists have been excavating a piece of land someone bought in Palaia Khora for about 3 years now and still haven't given permission to build, I think they may have to wait a very long time, and then may be refused if anything of particular interest is found.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tuesday 30th October
Well, I finally finished pruning the rambling rose today, and cutting the honeysuckle out of it. John gave me a hand this afternoon so that it didn't spread over into another day. The garden looks so much larger now that the honeysuckle has been cut back. I'll be interested to see how it all looks tomorrow, as I have cut off lots of the vine bits so I guess the tops will die back. That should make them easier to remove.
John repaired the old trailer we brought from England many years ago. The wood in the sides at the bottom had rotted, so he used bits from our old wooden shutters to fill them in. Another big achievement today was getting rid of the fibreglass shell of the boat which has been sitting at the side of the garden for several years, and the inflatable and the seagull engine. John took them round to Roger's house as he said he would like to try and get one or both of them on the sea. We found the fibreglass shell cast up on the beach at Aetos several years ago, after a strong southerly gale. John said it looked as if it had been under water for quite a long time, everything had gone, there was just the shell left. We were walking along the beach with Aliki, our dog, and found it cast up on the high tide mark. We dragged it clear of the waves and left it for a while to make sure no-one claimed it, although John was sure that it had been lost many years before, and who knows where. After a couple of weeks, when it remained untouched, Roger helped John to put it on top of the car and we brought it home. It was going to be a project John did, one day, one year, sometime in the future, but he never got round to it. Maybe Roger will.
We only acquired the inflatable last year, when SEEP moved their home to a new house. It had been in the bottom of the house for years and no-one wanted it. John mended it and got the little outboard working, and last summer we took it down to the beach and after several attempts got everything working. We had a lovely trip around the bay, nearly out as far as the island of Pelagia. However getting in and out was very awkward, and John thinks it was this which precipitated the dislocation of his hip joint. So maybe we won't repeat it. I hope Roger gets it up and running.
John repaired the old trailer we brought from England many years ago. The wood in the sides at the bottom had rotted, so he used bits from our old wooden shutters to fill them in. Another big achievement today was getting rid of the fibreglass shell of the boat which has been sitting at the side of the garden for several years, and the inflatable and the seagull engine. John took them round to Roger's house as he said he would like to try and get one or both of them on the sea. We found the fibreglass shell cast up on the beach at Aetos several years ago, after a strong southerly gale. John said it looked as if it had been under water for quite a long time, everything had gone, there was just the shell left. We were walking along the beach with Aliki, our dog, and found it cast up on the high tide mark. We dragged it clear of the waves and left it for a while to make sure no-one claimed it, although John was sure that it had been lost many years before, and who knows where. After a couple of weeks, when it remained untouched, Roger helped John to put it on top of the car and we brought it home. It was going to be a project John did, one day, one year, sometime in the future, but he never got round to it. Maybe Roger will.
We only acquired the inflatable last year, when SEEP moved their home to a new house. It had been in the bottom of the house for years and no-one wanted it. John mended it and got the little outboard working, and last summer we took it down to the beach and after several attempts got everything working. We had a lovely trip around the bay, nearly out as far as the island of Pelagia. However getting in and out was very awkward, and John thinks it was this which precipitated the dislocation of his hip joint. So maybe we won't repeat it. I hope Roger gets it up and running.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Monday 29th October
I can't believe how cheap olive oil is, when you consider how much hard work goes into harvesting the olives. Yesterday John and I worked non-stop for 8 hours and we got about 10 litres of oil from our 18 trees. However we know that most of our olives are the type grown for eating rather than oil production, and they have a lower yield. All our trees didn't produce this year, as they were cut back severely 2 years ago. They were easier to harvest than previous years though, as all the branches are low now. Previously John had to actually climb up into the trees. We used the traditional division of labour, John, the man, removed the olives from the tree, and I, the woman, sat on the ground and sorted them, taking out leaves and twigs. The method used is to place large mats on the ground underneath the trees and then the branches are 'combed' with implements rather like plastic rakes and the olives taken off. We had a good day for it this year, the weather is still very mild, in fact I was really pleased yesterday that the sun was a bit hazy as I was not in the shade for most of the time and I was really warm in T-shirt and shorts. We filled 4 sacks and John took the olives to a local press. At the moment the oil looks rather like a thick dark green pea soup. As it settles the 'sludge', pureed olives, will sink to the bottom. I use this in stews and soups, so delicious. It is nice to know that our oil is so fresh and pure, nothing added or taken away, AND straight from our garden. One of our trees has very large Kalamata type olives and I picked these a week ago as soon as they turned black, to cure and preserve. These need to be hand picked so that they are not damaged or bruised. Just think how labour intensive that is!
The early morning haze soon burnt off today and it was warm and sunny again. As I was continuing with the pruning, in shorts, T-shirt and flipflops it occurred to me that when we are back in England I will miss not being able to wear them for 9 months of the year. We decided to make the most of this lovely weather and take a walk down by the sea. I wanted to do some beach-combing to collect treasures for Bella and Archie for school projects, things that maybe they wouldn't find by the sea-shore in England. We got a big bag, lots and lots of sea-urchins, pieces of sponge and pumice as well as shells of all sizes and colours. We also collected some wild mushrooms which we fried up as an extra dish for our evening meal. They are a bit early, we don't usually get them until November, but now we know they have started we will certainly be looking for some more.
The early morning haze soon burnt off today and it was warm and sunny again. As I was continuing with the pruning, in shorts, T-shirt and flipflops it occurred to me that when we are back in England I will miss not being able to wear them for 9 months of the year. We decided to make the most of this lovely weather and take a walk down by the sea. I wanted to do some beach-combing to collect treasures for Bella and Archie for school projects, things that maybe they wouldn't find by the sea-shore in England. We got a big bag, lots and lots of sea-urchins, pieces of sponge and pumice as well as shells of all sizes and colours. We also collected some wild mushrooms which we fried up as an extra dish for our evening meal. They are a bit early, we don't usually get them until November, but now we know they have started we will certainly be looking for some more.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Saturday 27th October
Well, I suppose today has been a fairly typical untypical day, where we just do whatever crops up. It started off this morning when Vangelis asked if it would cause a problem if he left his van parked in the lane leading to our house, as we wanted to take his olives. Now this simple sentence needs so much explanation. First let's deal with Vangelis! Half the men in Karystos seem to be called Vangelis. As each family has its family names so it seems that many towns and villages have a preponderance of the same names. I suppose it makes sense, as the villages grew, with inter-marriage. This Vangelis lives in a village about half an hour away from here, but he owns some land at the back of our house. He visits it maybe five times a year, usually to harvest the lemons or the olives and the rest of the time it looks after itself.
Next, about leaving his van outside our gates. The track leading to our house is only wide enough for one car, so if he leaves his van there we wouldn't be able to get our car out. One of the fantastic things about our location is that there isn't any vehicular access to the land above and behind us, only an old Turkish 'kalderimi', passable by foot or donkey, you couldn't even get a motor-bike up it. This means that we can never be built up, but it also means that on the odd occasion when Vangelis needs to transport sacks of stuff from his land he blocks our drive. We can live with that!
Now for taking olives. Its a week since we had the first meaningful rain of the winter, so now it's time to takes the olives. All around us people have started, families getting together to help each other. We only have a few trees and not many olives this year, so John and I will take ours tomorrow, just the 2 of us in a couple of days. The ideal thing is that you get your olives to the press as quickly as you can after picking them, otherwise the quality of the oil deteriorates. So when families have lots of trees they get together with another family and they all help to take one lot and then the other. It has been a long, dry, hot summer, only a few centimetres of rain since last March, and none at all since May until a week ago. Some of the olives were looking shrivelled even before they started to turn black. Ours are OK because we have watered the garden, but we don't have a very heavy crop this year, they are still recovering from a serious pollarding a couple of years ago because they had got very tall and straggly.
John got to work at the back of the house taking down some temporary metal fencing which we had put up when we discovered that sheep grazing nearby could get into our garden. The sheep have gone, so the fencing can come down, but the main reason is that we need to get it out of the way so that the tall pines can be cut down, (another story for later). I carried on with the rose pruning, but I was very hot as I decided to put along sleeved top on. The rose is beautiful, white aging to lilac and an amazing rambler. It is also scented, but covered in thorns. I have a theory that as growers have bred out thorns, so the perfume has been lost. Things grow here so quickly, some of our mulberry branches made up to 2 metres over the summer.
Then we had visitors, a very nice Greek couple who came to look at the house. The man was called Agamemnon, the first Greek I have met with this name. We have met men called, Socrates, Euripides and Odysseus, but this is the first Agamemnon. They were very complimentary and seemed to appreciate the same things about the house and location which we enjoy. We will see.
Then our friend Melanie, with her friend Michel, arrived, so we all drank coffee and chatted. We had arranged to give Melanie a lift to Marmari, putting her bicycle in the boot of our CRV because she wants to take it back to Athens with her. So when Agis and Elizabeth had left we went off to Marmari for lunch. Marmari is the nearest port to us, about 20 minutes away now on a good road across the plain. It used to take nearly an hour on a bus which had to climb up out of Karystos, over a mountain plateau and then drop down to Marmari the other side. In those days there was also a ferry coming directly into Karystos, so we usually used that, but the harbour at Marmari is much better so the service from there has always been more frequent and reliable. Now the ferry boats are bigger and they can no longer get into the small Karystos harbour, we only have the fishing boats and we have to go to Marmari. It means that Karystos is on the way to nowhere, and anybody who comes here really wants to and knows where they are going to end up. We can live with that!
We had a very nice lunch in Marmari with Melanie and Michel at a nice little ouzerie we know with very friendly people and traditional food. When we got back Vangelis was still taking his olives so we left our car at Koula's house, (more explanation might follow another time). Koula was just leaving so she stopped and thanked John for the odd jobs which he had done for her yesterday and told us that will also start taking their olives tomorrow.
Back home, a few chores to do, a piping hot shower and here I am at 19.40 writing this up. I quite like this blog idea, I wish I'd started it before. I have often wish I had kept a diary, so many fantastic things have happened to us since we have been here, it would have been good to have had a written record of them.
Next, about leaving his van outside our gates. The track leading to our house is only wide enough for one car, so if he leaves his van there we wouldn't be able to get our car out. One of the fantastic things about our location is that there isn't any vehicular access to the land above and behind us, only an old Turkish 'kalderimi', passable by foot or donkey, you couldn't even get a motor-bike up it. This means that we can never be built up, but it also means that on the odd occasion when Vangelis needs to transport sacks of stuff from his land he blocks our drive. We can live with that!
Now for taking olives. Its a week since we had the first meaningful rain of the winter, so now it's time to takes the olives. All around us people have started, families getting together to help each other. We only have a few trees and not many olives this year, so John and I will take ours tomorrow, just the 2 of us in a couple of days. The ideal thing is that you get your olives to the press as quickly as you can after picking them, otherwise the quality of the oil deteriorates. So when families have lots of trees they get together with another family and they all help to take one lot and then the other. It has been a long, dry, hot summer, only a few centimetres of rain since last March, and none at all since May until a week ago. Some of the olives were looking shrivelled even before they started to turn black. Ours are OK because we have watered the garden, but we don't have a very heavy crop this year, they are still recovering from a serious pollarding a couple of years ago because they had got very tall and straggly.
John got to work at the back of the house taking down some temporary metal fencing which we had put up when we discovered that sheep grazing nearby could get into our garden. The sheep have gone, so the fencing can come down, but the main reason is that we need to get it out of the way so that the tall pines can be cut down, (another story for later). I carried on with the rose pruning, but I was very hot as I decided to put along sleeved top on. The rose is beautiful, white aging to lilac and an amazing rambler. It is also scented, but covered in thorns. I have a theory that as growers have bred out thorns, so the perfume has been lost. Things grow here so quickly, some of our mulberry branches made up to 2 metres over the summer.
Then we had visitors, a very nice Greek couple who came to look at the house. The man was called Agamemnon, the first Greek I have met with this name. We have met men called, Socrates, Euripides and Odysseus, but this is the first Agamemnon. They were very complimentary and seemed to appreciate the same things about the house and location which we enjoy. We will see.
Then our friend Melanie, with her friend Michel, arrived, so we all drank coffee and chatted. We had arranged to give Melanie a lift to Marmari, putting her bicycle in the boot of our CRV because she wants to take it back to Athens with her. So when Agis and Elizabeth had left we went off to Marmari for lunch. Marmari is the nearest port to us, about 20 minutes away now on a good road across the plain. It used to take nearly an hour on a bus which had to climb up out of Karystos, over a mountain plateau and then drop down to Marmari the other side. In those days there was also a ferry coming directly into Karystos, so we usually used that, but the harbour at Marmari is much better so the service from there has always been more frequent and reliable. Now the ferry boats are bigger and they can no longer get into the small Karystos harbour, we only have the fishing boats and we have to go to Marmari. It means that Karystos is on the way to nowhere, and anybody who comes here really wants to and knows where they are going to end up. We can live with that!
We had a very nice lunch in Marmari with Melanie and Michel at a nice little ouzerie we know with very friendly people and traditional food. When we got back Vangelis was still taking his olives so we left our car at Koula's house, (more explanation might follow another time). Koula was just leaving so she stopped and thanked John for the odd jobs which he had done for her yesterday and told us that will also start taking their olives tomorrow.
Back home, a few chores to do, a piping hot shower and here I am at 19.40 writing this up. I quite like this blog idea, I wish I'd started it before. I have often wish I had kept a diary, so many fantastic things have happened to us since we have been here, it would have been good to have had a written record of them.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Friday 26th October
We have created this blog because it has been suggested that people thinking about buying our house, and spending at least part of their lives in Karystos, might like to know how we spend our time, to learn more about what it would mean for them if they decided to come here.
It is a bit late really because we are packing up the house and will go back to England in a couple of weeks, but I suppose you have to start somewhere, so here goes.
It has been a typical late October day today. It was a bit misty to start with, but the sun soon broke through and we had hot sunshine. As the mornings are cooler we tend to lie in bed a bit, and catch up with U.K. news and events with the Today Programme on Radio 4, drinking our coffee, (Fair Trade from the Co-op, brought from England). We tend to take Radio 4 for granted now until we talk to other people and realise that they don't have it. John finished trimming back the cypressus trees at the back of the property today, keeping it as a nice tight hedge, as it forms some of our wind protection. I carried on cutting back the honeysuckle which has really invaded a lovely rambling rose and killed off the lower branches. I don't know whether to go for broke and cut the rose right back, as we have done the other part of the garden, by the drive where the honeysuckle had been really rampant, or just re-shape it.
John went and did a few jobs for Koula, repairing the old VW van she uses for storage, then we thought maybe we would go to the beach for a couple of hours. So we packed up a couple of beers and, as we have a slight southerly, went round to a bay on the Paximathi side. It was wonderful, absolutely deserted, the sea crystal clear and turquoise. As we sat gazing across the bay to Karystos there was a sudden movement and shoals of small fish leapt out of the water and crossed the entire bay in a series of swoops and dives. Then we saw a larger shape pursuing them, close to the surface so that we could see it. This carried on for quite a few minutes as the small fish dipped and dived, escaping their predator.
As the sun started to go down we came back home and after a piping hot shower (solar panels), John got the BBQ lit and we sat outside in the late sun and enjoyed 2 beautiful fillet steaks, lovely fresh courgettes and a tomato salad. I am sitting writing this, still sitting outside at 18.45, the sun has disappeared behind the mountains leaving a warm red and gray glow over the sky. I suppose it has been a fairly typical day for this time of the year.
It is a bit late really because we are packing up the house and will go back to England in a couple of weeks, but I suppose you have to start somewhere, so here goes.
It has been a typical late October day today. It was a bit misty to start with, but the sun soon broke through and we had hot sunshine. As the mornings are cooler we tend to lie in bed a bit, and catch up with U.K. news and events with the Today Programme on Radio 4, drinking our coffee, (Fair Trade from the Co-op, brought from England). We tend to take Radio 4 for granted now until we talk to other people and realise that they don't have it. John finished trimming back the cypressus trees at the back of the property today, keeping it as a nice tight hedge, as it forms some of our wind protection. I carried on cutting back the honeysuckle which has really invaded a lovely rambling rose and killed off the lower branches. I don't know whether to go for broke and cut the rose right back, as we have done the other part of the garden, by the drive where the honeysuckle had been really rampant, or just re-shape it.
John went and did a few jobs for Koula, repairing the old VW van she uses for storage, then we thought maybe we would go to the beach for a couple of hours. So we packed up a couple of beers and, as we have a slight southerly, went round to a bay on the Paximathi side. It was wonderful, absolutely deserted, the sea crystal clear and turquoise. As we sat gazing across the bay to Karystos there was a sudden movement and shoals of small fish leapt out of the water and crossed the entire bay in a series of swoops and dives. Then we saw a larger shape pursuing them, close to the surface so that we could see it. This carried on for quite a few minutes as the small fish dipped and dived, escaping their predator.
As the sun started to go down we came back home and after a piping hot shower (solar panels), John got the BBQ lit and we sat outside in the late sun and enjoyed 2 beautiful fillet steaks, lovely fresh courgettes and a tomato salad. I am sitting writing this, still sitting outside at 18.45, the sun has disappeared behind the mountains leaving a warm red and gray glow over the sky. I suppose it has been a fairly typical day for this time of the year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
