Buy local

On our way home we stopped for supplies, bread and tomatoes, from the branch of a big greek supermarket chain.  This in a huge citrus growing area.  I was flabbergasted * to see lemons on sale there, lemons from South Africa at 2.34 euros a kilo.  S. Africa is about as far away as you can get from Greece.  Just 10 metres away from the, Greek (so they say), supermarket was a stall selling bags of lemons, fresh from the local trees at 1 euro a kilo.  Has the world gone mad.  Of course, you say, if it was only this......

 Greece is in an economic crisis and here we have local producers being sabotaged  by a government allowing foreign (and non EU) produce such as this to be brought in and sold.  I can only hope that no-one was buying.  These lemons were a bright yellow and glistened, I presume with wax and some kind of preservative.  I suppose if they don't sell here, they'll sell elsewhere, in Athens say, where lemon trees do not grow in everyone's back yard. What a bloody shame.

*flabbergasted.  Of course, I googled this amazing word.  It's origin is uncertain but first appears in print in 1772.
The British comedian Frankie Howerd used to say in mock astonishment: “I’m flabbergasted — never has my flabber been so gasted!”  
Thank you, Worldwidewords.

Thank you my two daughters who watered my squash while we were away.  It grew from a tiny 'acorn' into a mighty 'oak'.  The plant had six flowers this morning.  Why has it only produced one squash?