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| Front porch deserted as we set off for the Olive Garden! |
K and I woke up with stiff backs this
morning. The trees in the olive garden needed severely cutting back
and our friend Rick and his son Ryan turned up on Saturday morning
early with all the equipment needed to get started on creating a
proper garden.
So, Easter Saturday saw us in a quiet
olive garden, and I had more than a few moments reflecting on the
Easter story as I staggered about sorting leafy branches from larger
pieces of wood as Rick started up his chain saw and cut the trees
right back to manageable proportions. As the morning wore on, we
began to feel the sun's heat as all the shade from the trees began to
disappear and the garden became lighter and brighter. In the
background, among the bleating of sheep and goats, there were happy
children's voices coming from the church next door as the village
kids were racing about with large sheets of orange paper and seemed
to be doing a treasure hunt round the village. It won't be Orthodox
Easter in Greece for another few weeks, so our thoughts have not
really emerged from Lent here yet and the weather, though warmer than
the UK is not reliably into summer.
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| Soon there were piles of clippings everywhere we looked |
Half way through the morning, I went
back to the house for supplies of cold drinks and returned with a
basket of freshly picked oranges, tiny Cretan bananas, slices of
bread and cheese from the local shop and we sat down on the yellow
clovery carpet for a breather. Yiannis, drove up in his large 4 x 4
truck to park outside noticed all our olive branch clippings and
asked if he could have some for his sheep – so we started loading
the leafiest ones we could find over the wire fence to the next
garden where he said that he would graze his flock. By the end of
the morning, we had so many enormous piles of clippings stacked
around the garden that K decided to advertise free animal food at the
cafeneon and to ask people if they needed branches for their “zoa”.
It would be great if lots could be eaten and none goes to waste!
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| The orange blossom smells wonderful! |
Rick set off for another job at 2.30
p.m. but K & I collapsed in a heap of aching limbs and sore
backs, thanking God that Ryan still had all his fingers and toes
after a morning with Dad's sharp tree saw lopping at twigs and
branches. Just before loading the truck, Rick had taken his
rotivator and cleared a proper patch for growing things, so we had to
make a list of plants and supplies needed next time we venture into
town.
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| Back garden of the Old Olive Mill |
Prising our aching joints into some
kind of hideous movement on Monday, we drove to Rethymnon for the CIC
coffee morning followed by frenzied shopping at the Purple Palace –
the nearest our area of Crete has to B & Q for gardening
supplies. All we needed was a garden fork and a wheelbarrow, but
other than pitchforks and broomsticks with poor quality tops, we
couldn't really find anything we needed in the vegetable patch
department and in the middle of all this, our mobile phone rang with
the news that our fence had blown down in England and would take a
few hundred pounds to put right. Big bother!
The postman delivered two letters on
Tuesday from the French Government. My pleas to my European MP and
the British Pension Agency had obviously borne fruit because one
contained a “complimentary” summary of the payments owed. The second envelope contained
– wait for it – another blank Attestation d'Existence form for
completion at my local town hall or the British Consulate. I did not
have time for another bus trip to Heraklion, so we dropped in at the
local authority building in Perama and wondered why we had never
ventured there before. All the ladies were so kind and helpful and
told us that these forms had to be signed by all the Greek pensioners
each year also. I showed them my passport, waited 5 minutes – lots
of signing followed by energetic stamping - no problem! The Post
Office photocopied the form for me, free of charge, and it was posted
back to France by recorded delivery the same day with a covering
letter via Google Translate (while I kept my fingers crossed and
hoped that it wasn't nonsense!).
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| View from the village |
So I can set off back to the UK on
Thursday, having completed lots of paperwork, bought plants for the veggie
garden, unearthed thermal underwear and packed some cans of Cretan
Olive Oil for treats. Sadly, the blog will be on hold for another
natural break, but I will be spending some precious last moments with
my dear Mum, for whom this blog was originally started, so it may be a
little while before I can get blogging and photographing again and my
heart is heavy at the thought of a difficult journey back to
England.
K & I feel for many of our friends
are going through sad times this year and the long, long UK winter
has not helped. I want to take this moment to send love, joy and
peace to you from Crete along with get well again - get whole again - greetings. Rest assured that you are all in our prayers.
