'Deaf' Week

 This is 'Silent' or 'Deaf' week for us.  Time to clean house and home and prepare for Easter. I had a haircut and colour yesterday. That's me done. 

The week ends with Saturday of Lazaros and then Palm Sunday

Then it's Holy Week. There's a special church service everyday winding up with the candlelight parade on Good Friday and the great Easter Sunday celebration

K got into gear and arranged for our annual garden clean up

Sani from Pakistan our happy helper

He had a huge smile on his face when I asked if I could take his photo

Ks 'treasures' are still there round the edges but the jungle of weeds has been conquered. He didn't leave a blade of green

This photo is from the internet but this is what we did before Easter every year when we lived in town.  We whitewashed all our steps and walls. 

The municipality white washes the steps and alley ways now. Or they will if the rain ever ends. 

Sani says he'll come back next week and whitewash our garden walls.  What a great lad

Covered in red silt 

More cleaning

Down on the harbour they're sucking this away quickly

Erminio

 

*Erminio is the name of our latest storm. 

 Yesterday the skies opened and it rained long and hard. We had hours of very heavy rain and rumbling thunder. 

The red Saharan dust cloud  was so thick it felt as though we were captive inside an impenetrable red blanket.  Crete was worst affected and they had to close airports.

Two of our family homes, Jan's and Elli's, were flooded.  Elli had bad leaks in several rooms while Jan had a river running through her dining room and kitchen.  Never happened before. It was the huge endless cascade of water. And yet we had no drips or drops at all in our house. That's a first for us. It just depends where wind is directing the torrent

 Facebook messages from the Mayor  warned us of roads closed because of mud and debris and huge amounts of water elsewhere. Driving anywhere was dangerous . One car was washed into the sea.  Make that 3 cars.  

Water taxis and the car ferry were prohibited from crossing the strait.

Schools are closed today, Thursday, while the buildings are checked for damage and school yards are drained of flood waters. 

We spent the morning checking Facebook photos of the damage and watching tv news. TV crews arrived from Athens and covered the major damage

Fousa. The fertile plain just above our house with its small vineyards 

All the vineyards are completely under water now. Thick red slimy muddy water.  The red Saharan dust is supposed to contain vital minerals but also has toxic elements 

Daughter Danae's 'private' sandy beach has been changed completely and now has a stony sandbar and exposed  pipes

One of the 3 cars swept away onto the newly formed bar of stones and rubble .  Another car is completely under water 

The 3rd car entrapped under the collapsed bridge

The road above has almost completely fallen into the river bed

The old river bed, now calm.  The last time mother nature turned this back into a river was 2014.  Last night it was a powerful mass of raging flood water

The Mayor and his work force are striving to repair the roads and get rid of the debris.  Hotels in this area were preparing for the Protestant (or Catholic) Easter

All my family know this area well. It's the main tourist beach. That's the wall of Helen Apartments on the left and cousin Mike lives just a little further down the river bed.  His house is slightly higher up so no damage.

Across on the mainland, at the Lemon Forest where Jan lives, the road has been closed because of the piles of debris and mud washed down from yet another old river bed.  She has hardly dug herself out of the last storm and is now engulfed by another.  She can't get her bike out and is just a little too far to walk into town for groceries. 

The Municipality will have to do some fast clean up there because the road below her is the main road connecting  Poros and Galatas with all the towns further south, Ermioni, Porto Heli and ferries to the islands of Hydra and Spetses

*Erminio

meaning strength and wholeness 

Italian not greek 

'Spring' Clean Up

A week ago the weather seemed Spring-like and I got out and started clearing away the winter weeds, nasturtiums and sorrel/oxalis

Unfortunately it wasn't Spring and since then it's been cold and wet. Everything was left till the sun came out again.  

Today we have another storm. Thank goodness we got more wood for the fire.  We were just given a fright by the blaring of the Civil Protection Alert for our area. There's a bit of thunder rumbling around and the sky is  dark red with clouds full of Saharan dust. I won't be moving far from the fire today

Garden bits and bobs

Last year's flowers flourishing 

Love the colour

And the red of the hot peppers, mint just starting to show

Empty winter pots filled with garden deco to deter cats

The tomato plant that grew from a buried greek salad not only survived the winter but now has 2 or 3 small tomatoes.  Just amazing

Old and new

Last years hot peppers and christmas bulb still wrapped in silver paper

this years basil and marigold plants

I started the clearing then yesterday young Sani from Pakistan cleared the rest. What took me 3 days took him one hour. He shaved the earth and even got rid of all the garden waste

Sani with his permanent smile completing an  awesome clean up

The cats new toilet

They make my blood boil

My Girls and Me

Every day is daughter's day

So, a short celebration

If you asked me today

'if you had the chance would you go back and change your life'

I'd have to say' NO'. I wouldn't have missed out on these two girls and their adorable children for anything the universe can offer. 

Would I tell others to dare to do the same? I would say a big 'No!' to that.  Stay at home, stay close to your folks, enjoy your culture, your roots,  marry one of your own.   It's not easy adapting to a foreign life, accepting a foreign culture. 

I miss my downunder family even though they visit often. I hope they can continue to travel now as this world, and our lives, are being torn apart. And as we all grow older. Thank the powers that be for social media and Whatsapp but it's not the same as having them in the next town, state, even across the Tasman Sea,  somewhere we can meet now and again for a flat white, a custard slice, reminisce about growing up and laugh together.

 Thankfully my girls, my dear sons in law, grandchildren, are close by and I know I'm blessed. As I am with my foreign husband who supports and cares

Elli's balcony

She's living in the family house down in the old town.  It has a roof terrace with a panoramic view of the harbour and a balcony full of pot plants

She sends me marmite recipes, NZ memes, NZ recipes that she hopes I'll take the hint and cook for us

That reminds me it's time for hotcross buns.  This weekend Elli, and Jan, and the rest of you 

Danae, eternally aged 28 (with a son of 24. How dare he!! ) 

Phones me for advice on a recipe,  sends me all the latest kiwi goings-on from NewsBeast.gr

 NZ only gets in our news feed when it's something strange and downright weird .

Now an empty-nester she's bringing up Boem

Elli's bundle of joy

Junior is now a senior

The three of us

We all love NZ. The girls have visited quite a few times and have NZ nationality

Up and Down

 Every day we are threatened with thunderstorms, doom and gloom.  It has been affecting me mentally and health wise.

Now I understand why so many Brits write about grey skies and grey moods, and escape.  

This is run up to Easter weekend for you and I expect the island will fill with european tourists in shorts and Tshirts 

  The conflict now seems just far enough away, on our horizon, out of reach.  We have become accustomed to hostile war cries and rhetoric. Our Turkish neighbour rarely let's up. 

Planes are flying safely in and out, supermarket prices are more or less the same, fuel prices have flattened out.

I've had headaches, a sore back and aching bones all week. Plus the sameness everyday of that doom and gloom on our doorstep dragged me down. Days and days of sameness. 

Family pulled me out. Even though they didn't know it. 

 Luli's parade and her important place as wreath bearer.  The heart  really  can burst with pride. 

Nels learning to make my stuffed tomatoes. 

A BBQ meal with some of the family

 Messages from other grandchildren far away in Athens 

Morning greetings from my girls

Communication with my dear family downunder

The little things that matter. 

A change of time.  New timing hopefully will bring warmer weather, maybe more energy, more enthusiasm 

Help from a stranger. A little old man became my guardian angel yesterday.  I went to the Atm to use my new bank card.  I thought I'd read the instructions for the card's use but I hadn't noted the newfangled stuff. I tried to poke my card in the hole as I did the old one. I tried again and again. It wouldn't go in.  The little old man standing behind me, never seen before, said 'no no, you do it like this'.  Seems it's a swipe card. You swipe it across the little swipe-icon, never seen before. Hey presto. It worked. I gave him  a smile and a heartfelt thanks. 

I'm slow on the uptake. I know. And this wizened angel flew in to my rescue.  It really made me smile

Everything is back to normal. K is boiling old goat, aged Vaso next door seems to have wandered off and we can hear the family calling her.  The dogs are echoing the chorus. The sun has come out for 5 minutes. The washing will dry quickly. 

I feel happy enough today to make a Shein order, try out a new sticky chilli sauce recipe, plant the 2 pots of basil and the marigold I picked up a week ago. 

There's no cooking to be done today.  We've got leftovers from Granddaughter Nels stuffed tomatoes and Yiannis Bbqed meat. That boiled goat is a 'delight' for another day. It may need more than 24 hours simmering in the stock pot.  At least we will have the stock. If nothing else is edible

Queen of Poros

On 25th March 

 Greece celebrates the beginning of its successful uprising and eventual freedom from the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1821

 

On this Greek isle, as in every greek village, there's a parade of school children, wreath laying, music by the Municipal band, speeches and later Greek dancing

The last grandchild in the parade

There she goes, Luli, Queen of Poros and  Queen of my blog.  Dressed in the traditional costume of a Poros woman

She'll be in the parade in October and after that we will have no-one to applaud. The last of the grandchildren would have flown the coop

The costumes are provided by the Lykeio (High School) 

Worn in the 1800s and early 1900s

Luli 2nd to last on the right

she was also the wreath hander-over to all the local important people as they approached the War Memorial

Mother and daughter

They represent almost 50 years of parading, dancing and reciting patriotic poems on this and a few other waterfronts

All the kids in that final class were in costume

Nels first, Christos the rowing coach, Poppi and friend dancing the hasapiko, a traditional greek folk dance.  The hasapiko,  'butcher's dance', originated in Constantinople, instigated by the Greek Butcher's Guild'

 

And just to show you how it was done in days of yore

Here is Danae, in the middle, dancing the same dance when she was at school.....a few, ahem, years ago. On Poros waterfront

Danae is my '28' year old daughter, mother of Poppi and Nels and  24 year old son, George

Forever young

At the going down of the sun 

The Navy Guard from Poros Naval School taking down the flag at sunset on the 25th, bringing the celebrations to an official end

It's also the name day of those named Vangelis (male) or Vangelia (female) so unofficial celebrations continue long after sunset

What's Up Doc

 What's Up?  Not much around here

Elsewhere, it's a different story

Orthodox Easter happens in a few weeks. 

Every year there's  a 'miraculous' candle lighting ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Since 1988 the Holy Light from the church has been brought to Greece on Easter Saturday evening. The candles with the Holy Light are taken to every big church in the country before midnight. At midnight lights are turned out and the priest appears with the Holy Light.  The light is transferred from candle to candle through the crowd and then comes the proclamation 'Christ is Risen'.  Our island receives the light by speed boat. The Mayor meets the boat and transports the Light (candle in a lantern) to each of the 5 main churches. 

However bomb fragments fell last week near the Church in Jerusalem and no one knows yet whether the ceremony will still take place.  

It's freezing again. K is having trouble with cold fingers

It's been freezing for days. 

We weren't going to buy any more wood but we've been forced to

The young lad stacked it very nicely. The front yard doesn't look too untidy

   

We always fly the blue and white Greek flag on National holidays

25th March is an important National Holiday, As usual it's to do with church, historical victories and tradition

 These flags are in shreds.  

He's taken them down and tomorrow there will be 3 new flags, NZ, Australia and a big Greek flag in the middle