Week 37

Bloody hot. Watering. Weeding. In the pool. Eat. Drink. Sleep. Well thats' this weeks blog written then as every day has pretty much followed that pattern............. but having now written it, quite a bit did happen and best of all our tomatoes, chilli's and peppers are ripening.

Onions hung to dry in the courtyard

Monday morning the alarm goes off at 0600 so that we can water the garden before it gets too hot. Everything continues to grow at an amazing rate, even the weeds, despite the scorching heat. It seems as fast as you water, the ground soaks it up, sometimes it is even difficult to tell where you have watered it dries out that quickly. We finish watering by about 0830 when we have breakfast, we already we need the sun shade up. Whilst I groom the dogs and then repair the concrete on some of the paths, Pammi cleans the house and courtyard before doing her meditation and Reiki. I even give the car a spring clean inside and out as it desperately needed it. After our usual salad lunch, mainly picked straight out of our garden, the sun is so hot we call it a day and head for the pool. Lounging about in the sun, reading, laying in the pool .......... we could get used to this. Later that afternoon Emma skyped from Wales but as usual the connection was so bad we had to abandon the call and Pammi ended up ringing her instead. That evening we light the clay oven and have potatoes, straight from the garden, baked. It is a beautifully warm evening and the moon is getting bigger every day, we should get a full moon this week.

Too much of a trip hazard

Repaired for now until the new paths go down

Pammi weeded the kitchen garden

After breakfast Tuesday morning Pammi gets on with picking some produce. Onions, fine beans, peas and mange tout all need picking. As does our first ripe tomato!!! Hopefully they will all start to ripen now as there are hundreds on the plants and we cannot wait to try them. Bulgarian tomatoes are unbelievably tasty. We have beef, plum and salad tomato varieties. TH pops in to see what we have been up to but does not stay long and is on his way. It is too hot to do the strimming which needs doing so I weed and thin out the strawberry bed instead. When Pammi later finishes her Reiki we have lunch, which is salad with our own tomato. It is gorgeous, so red, juicy and flavoursome. Lunch finished we head straight for the pool and another lazy afternoon. Georgio comes by later that day and brings us some more strawberry plants. How did he know I had been clearing out the strawberry bed and there was space for more plants? Anyway we all sat in the shade of the courtyard with a nice cold beer before he toured our garden and gave us a few pointers in looking after certain plants, before heading off home. It was my turn to cook tonight so I made pasta with peas, mange tout and mint all from the garden. Dressed in a lemon and olive oil mix it was really refreshing and summery. After doing the dishes I played with the dogs whilst Pammi took the rubbish down the skip. About two hours later she came back having gone to play with Danni next door whom she had seen whilst doing the rubbish. As usual she did not come back empty handed, she came back with some homemade apricot compote. Delicious.

Our first ripe tomato

One or two onions ready to be hung

Strawberry bed all nice and neat

Onions ready to hang

Wednesday the temperature nudges 38 degrees and is forecast to be even hotter tomorrow. So whilst I water the garden, Pammi sows lettuce, onions and strawberries. After breakfast Pammi goes to the cool holistic barn to work whilst I head out to photograph some eagles. There seem to be lots around right now and quite a few storks again so I hope to be lucky and get some good shots. But no, the only thing I got was a puncture after hitting a pothole which was in the shadow of a tree so did not see it. I always carry a compressor in the car so am soon back on the road again. Amazingly the tyre stays inflated so hopefully it was just the impact that deflated the tyre. Frustrating that I never got any good wildlife photo's though. When I left this morning somehow the gate did not latch properly and Marple the escape artist was off down the road. Pammi went off after her but Marple did not go far and soon came scampering back up the hill. Lucky for us and her. Marple is not street wise. When I get back just after lunch, there are a few groceries we need so a quick trip into Opaka sorts that job out. Pammi suggests we go out to lunch so we go to the traditional restaurant in Opaka. As usual the food was gorgeous, Pammi had the biggest and best Greek salad ever and it is so cheap. The rest of the day is spent reading and relaxing before our evening meal. It is a really humid night and the dogs are even struggling to play in the heat so we stay up late to try to get some coolness.

Thursday is crazy hot, when the thermometer tops 40 degrees. We start off with good intentions with weeding but soon stop. Pammi has offered to give me an indian head massage so a relaxing hour is spent having that done. There is no way we are doing anything else today so to the pool we go. I never thought we would use it so much, but it is so nice. The sun warms the water and it is like having a heated pool. I have researched all about pool maintenance and we have got the chemical levels right now. The water pump we leave on constantly and it has made a real difference. After our evening meal we decide to take a stroll around the village and as we walk past TH's house he calls us in. Ani and Thomas are also there. We have the garden tour and are given a bag of plums, apricots and peaches. We are then invited to stay for a glass of wine and something to eat. They cannot get used to us being vegetarians and despite their best efforts to get us to eat meat we just have some spicy potatoes. A few tumblers of wine later we leave before we need to be carried home. It was a lovely evening though and once again everyone is so nice and generous to us. We get home and play with the dogs until very late as it is still so hot. The sky is amazing tonight and I use my phone app for a while to identify all the different constellations we can see. 

The sun setting on our local church

Friday is a cooler 35 degrees :) We have no choice today but to crack on with the mountain of jobs to do before our guests arrive on Sunday. Pammi deep cleans the house and then the holistic barn whilst I strim the lawns and the front of ours and our neighbours houses. It is so so hot and I melt in the blazing sun but we are on a timescale now. Late afternoon I finish as does Pammi who has been doing her Reiki practice. We do not even have time for the pool today. Early evening the sky darkens and the wind picks up considerably. It feels like we are in for a storm but nothing materialises. Oh well looks like we'll be watering again in the morning. But tonight is BBQ night and we have potatoes with chilli (our first out of the garden) and sweetcorn with beetroot burgers for Pammi and chilli and bean burgers for me. They were scrummy and we had a really nice relaxing evening.

Our first chilli's and wow, were they hot. We were concerned the peppers and chilli's weren't going to grow, but in the last week or so we have gone from a few small ones to large ones and more than we can pick. That will be a job for next week to pick and preserve them.

All neat and tidy, shame the grass is nearly all dead though.

Chillin in the hammock

Saturday we have plenty of jobs to do so after breakfast I carry on strimming the top land whilst Pammi deep cleans the holiday let. Then we both go around tidying and cleaning everything that doesn't move (although the dogs did get groomed too). But with all the will in the world we have to stop, it is so hot. Anyway that pool is calling. A couple of hours in the pool and the world is a better place, but not so good that we want to resume working. Tonight is construct a pizza night so we are eager to eat early as we love this night. I pick the chilli's from the garden and they are on my pizza in minutes. You cannot get fresher than that. We have a lovely meal but have eaten way too much so we go for a walk. We bump into Efan who gives us a couple of strawberries in exchange for me helping him push his donkey cart up the hill. How was he ever going to do that if I had not walked by without him having to fetch then hitch his horse up which would take ages to do. After a bit of a chat we are on our way. But it is hotter than we thought and we take a short cut home. The rest of the evening is spent in the garden with the dogs who find it too hot to play so we all just lounge around in the deck chairs. The moon is almost full tonight and the stars are really bright. Tomorrow must be a full moon.

Pizza night

This hill is steeper than it looks

Today our guests arrive. We spend all morning making sure everything is spotless. Then check and double check everything is as good as it can be. Be interesting to see what we have forgotten or overlooked but we are really looking forward to their arrival. If they get as much out of their visit as we have put into it everyone should be very happy. We really hope so. And we also have another tomato ripen today, a good sized plum tomato which we will have this evening. Lets hope it is the first of many to ripen now as the weather is forecast to be very warm for the next week.

Our first plum tomato

Bean plants laying out to dry in the sun before being shelled. Good luck with that lot!! 

Well hopefully we will have lots to report next week. Have a great one everybody.