Medic-ame and went

So we experienced some bad weather.  None of our roof tiles got blown off.  The lemon trees got a long deep drink.  A drip started dropping in one room but it was contained in a bucket.  The only nuisance, the sound of that drip all night long.

Greece got battered.  Small boats got sunk. Rivers overflowed, waves blew yachts onto the beach, houses were flooded but not around here.   K's little boat got buffeted and many buckets of rain water had to be pumped out of the bilges but it survived to sail another day.  

We watched fascinated as the storm passed over the Ionian sea, across the Peloponese, through the Cyclades, up into the Sporades and finally over to Turkey.

Not so fascinating was the force of the wind thumping the olive trees outside our window.  The worst damage on the island was a fallen tree near the beach which fell on power lines and blacked us out for a few hours.  80 year old Vaso came down during the power outage to make sure it wasn't just her power that was out.  A fragile figure wearing her husband's old threadbare  dressing gown and a pair of plastic beach shoes.  Her hair was standing on end after the bout with the wind as she battled to our gate.  After a glass of raki and the present of a bottle of our homemade vinegar she struggled back through the gale, up the slope  to her house.  I watched with bated breath to make sure she wasn't blown away like Shirley Temple in the Wizard of Oz.  Not even a cyclone can stop Vaso.

A waterspout photo-ed out in the bay of Poros

  

Our front garden

Maybe the peppers will produce more fruit now after this plentiful watering.  They were the only plants left 

The weeds are sure to appear like magic in a few days

Our friend, David Kaikas, returned safely to Athens on the bus and then strode out in the eye of the storm.  He took another bus and wrestled through the wind and rain to see the site of the battle of Marathon.  Here the Athenians defeated the Persians and a runner brought the good news to the people of Athens.  That's how the idea of the modern marathon started.

Mad dogs and englishmen

Tramp out in the eye of a storm!

He got happily drenched and later spent a few hours in a hotel room drying his clothes with a hair dryer 

And lived to fly home the next day

Now I know what it's like when a mediterranean hurricane (medicane) blows through Poros.  I hope they don't become a regular occurence in these times of climate change