Flora

 

The climate and the rich red soil here at the Base is ideal for all sorts of flora. Trees seem taller and greener and there are all sorts of plants I've only heard of but never seen. 

Of course having 24 hour gardeners really helps.  The old gardener on his little tractor has been here for years. He knows this land. 

The automatic watering system comes on every day and every night.  When I'm going down for coffee at 6pm I have to skip out of the way or get drenched. 

I don't know where their water comes from but there's plenty of it. 

The olive trees are bending under the weight of their harvest. Most of the olives are huge but all is not well in this fertile land. 

It's blowing a gale once again. The sea has white horses (or white sheep if you're Greek) and the olives are falling fast. 

The ones I picked up have black spots which mean they've been infected with dakos. 

They can still collect the oil but it's not extra virgin. 

The smaller olives in the photo above are wild olives

These tall shady trees are all over the resort. I don't know what they are but I'll find out

They produce these tough brown seed cases. I've taken them home before but they didn't sprout. I'll try again 

This is a bay tree which produces those fragrant bay leaves you use in cooking. I've never such a tall one. It's 4 or 5 metres 

Stories

The wind blew hard for 3 days.   Instead of swimming I walked, around the resort, discreetly taking photos. This is a military area and I don't want to be arrested for spying. 

Every afternoon I meet the same women, also out walking.  

One of them is always on her phone. Talking and walking.

We exchange greetings and the other woman asked where I got my trekking sticks.  I told her my brother had brought them for me from NZ.  NZ??? Where was that.  Down there beside Australia. No. She just couldn't understand.  I ended up waving my arms and telling her it was a long way-away.

It's been a long time since I've had to explain where NZ is. Most people at least have heard of Australia.

Once someone asked me if we all lived underground 'downunder'.    

So many people thought I came from Iceland or Ireland or even Greenland.  Maybe it was my accent.  

Nowadays everyone, nearly everyone, knows about NZ, and have eaten it's frozen lamb. A surprising number have visited. 

I've mentioned before my greek m-in-law who thought the whole world spoke Greek and was puzzled that I couldn't speak the language fluently. 

She attended the first few years at a tiny school and could barely read and write.    She and her sisters helped in the fields, picking olives, gathering almonds and oregano and herding their goats. 

Passing certificates were rumoured to be handed over after a present of a 17 kilo tin of olive oil. 

Being part of the Greek Armed Forces does not make you a law abiding citizen. That is glaringly obvious here at the Navy resort.

In the cafeteria we slide our trays along, choose the food we want to eat, pay when our turn in line comes along. 

We choose a table and go off to a side trolley to pick up a paper tablecloth and napkins, salt and pepper and use the oil pourer to put olive oil on our salad. 

Some people go well beyond this and stuff their handbags with extra napkins, tablecloths, packets of salt, even glasses and cutlery.

What we saw today 'takes the cake' as they say .

Vinegar on the left, olive oil on the right. (She didn't manage to empty the whole container)

An old lady...older than me anyway, took a plastic water bottle out of her bag and filled it up with olive oil from the glass salad-oil pourer . 

K didn't let that pass. He accosted the woman, and her daughter . Their excuse? Their door was squeaky and needed oiling. Original at least. 

It wasn't just oil but a stack of paper napkins and a few hundred grams of salt.

If anyone needs extras the subsidised mini market sells oil, salt, napkins and even knives and forks.  Knives and forks were what we saw last year disappearing into someone's bag.

The weather is beautiful now, the beach peaceful. We go swimming every day. The water is freezing but I manage to wade in, dunk under and swim around. 

Having done my duty I can dry off in the sun and get a little colour. I could sit here for hours listening to the murmer of voices coming from a few dozen bobbing heads, reading one of my 6 books and occasionally checking my tablet. Internet on the beach is strong. I can play my daily wordle and quordle and check into Shein. 

 

2 am Musings

 We've had hundreds of visitors over the years.  Friends, friends of friends.  Greater extended family and lots of closer family.  First brothers and now their children and their families and friends.

Many people I still remember though it could be 50 years since we met . Most I can picture but often can't remember names.  

Who was David who visited about 10 years ago?  I can recall so many details but not his surname and how he found us.

It was November and he'd been in Athens for a few days. He walked everywhere and used public transport. He'd been out to the monument commemorating the Battle of Marathon. David went by bus in the middle of a thunderstorm and got drenched. He enjoyed every minute of it!  

He stayed in Spartan rooms on Poros, 15 euros a night.  And he wanted to interrogate the girls on life in an economic depression.  They weren't enthusiastic naturally enough but he was satisfied with their replies.

Next day we hurried him off the island just before another storm hit.  The taxi boats had tied up because of high seas and the car ferry was about to stop too. We rushed him across the Straits and he caught a bus....to where? Maybe Epidavros. He loved history. And current events. Couldn't understand why my blog wasn't more political.

Does he ring a bell with anyone? I'm thinking he might be a distant cousin. Brother of John who visited recently.  No photo. 

Then there were the 2 *Karitane nurses (for newborns and their mother's) back in the 80s.   Lovely girls. They brought a soft stuffed bunny for Elli who was just a wee baby. We still have it.  I have a photo of them but no names. 

*Karitane nurses I think are only in NZ. 

And my Uncle George who visited in the late 70s, driving a small car where he slept.  

We lived in a tiny basement apartment and the fridge door had just fallen off. I had a thick towel hanging over the front to keep things cool.

Uncle G had been in the NZ army and was captured in northern Greece after the German occupation .  He was travelling back visiting all the people and places he remembered, in Greece and in Austria where he spent the rest of the war working for the German war effort.

I wish I had asked more questions back then. He wrote his memoirs but they're held in some army museum in NZ. I'd like to read them, know exactly where he was in Greece. 

That's what went through my mind in the wee hours last night. 

Summer Resort

 A long journey yesterday. 4 hours  on the road and then endless trips up 4 zigzag ramps to haul up to our room pillows, bedding, suitcases with clothes, bathroom gear and other bags of necessary paraphernalia. 

We are at our favourite Navy resort for 2 weeks. Cheap and cheerful.  They provide a room with 2 beds and mattresses, bathroom, a cupboard and a small fridge. We bring the rest.

At the end of last summer we decided we needed to cut down on all the things we 'needed'. So I made, a list. 4 pages long. The only thing we cut down on were the number of books for me to read.  6 instead of 10.

So here we are. 2nd day and 2nd day of high winds, whirling sand , flying chairs and waves?  Waves? The sea is supposed to be as flat as a millpond. I don't 'do' waves anymore. Had enough of them in NZ. This is the Med.

It's s end of season and there's a serious lack of 'essentials'.  No coke zero and no wine or raki in the subsidised supermarket. We had to make an emergency dash for a nearby Lidls this morning.

A local alien with a mug of red wine. No wine glasses this year. 

Nothing much else to do anyway with this wind. If we can't swim there's nothing left besides  drink coffee, eat and gossip. K has found a few Navy friends for the gossip.  But they have their wives with them. I'm seriously antisocial. I'm on holiday. Small talk is not my forte.

I've retired to a distant table to 'work'.   Our rooms have virtually no internet signal so I have to come down to the cafeteria to write my blog.

I've downloaded a couple of games to play when I wake up at 2am.  I can't listen to YouTube and I can't turn on the light to read my book. 

So there you have our lives for the next week or so. 

No washing, no cleaning, No cooking. The only thing i have to do is sweep up some sand now and again. It always ends up on the floor of the room no matter how well we shower before returning.

What's Cooking

 A look at what's been cooking in our Greek kitchen over summer

K making his favourite summer dish Briam

A sort of ratatouille.

Zucchini, aubergine, peppers plus carrots, potatoes, onions, fresh tomatoes, parsley, oregano and lots of olive oil ....all the goodness of summer.

I would have added basil and mint but he's a traditionalist.

K is the fish cook in our house

Unless it's fillets fried in batter

These fish are called 'kokalia'. Sea Bream?  Too many bones for my liking but I dissected a few of them.  Their name in Greek means 'bony'. Yeh....

He cooked these in the oven with zucchini, tomatoes and potatoes

Beetroot

K loves to accompany fish with boiled beetroot, bulbs and leaves with a lot of olive oil and vinegar.

 Beetroot are a winter vegetable but these were fresh mid summer with tender leaves.

Another K dish

Spetsofai

Spicy sausages with tomatoes and peppers and a bit of boukovo (hot chilli pepper)

Shrimps saganaki

Shrimps with tomatoes and feta 

Fish, the family dish

Red mullet fried in it's entirety. Accompanied by boiled zucchini.

More bones for me to remove. Filleted fish is not traditional in this house
 

Of all these the only dish I cooked was

Peach crumble

    For daughter Elli.  I also made a small one for K and he surprised me by asking for more.  I have stewed apples and crumble topping in the freezer.  An easy sweet.  

I cook too in case you wondered but he has his specialities and I'm very happy to have handed all the fish over to him to prepare. He prefers to cook the way his mother did, very traditionally Greek.

Tis The Season

 

Not a good season for grapes. 

Those on our vine that didn't turn into raisins were sweet but there weren't many decent bunches. 

The vineyards down in the fertile plain near us had mixed crops. Those that were well looked after, de-leafed, fertilised, watered and kept weed free had an average harvest. So they say. Everyone's an expert here and everyone knows their neighbours business better than their own. 

Making wine is hard work if you want a few hundred kilos of your own vintage to drink with friends over the winter. 

We finally stopped at the top of our road and collected half a dozen figs from the branches hanging over our neighbour's fence.  They were small and sweet.  We should have picked them earlier. There were a dozen at least squashed on the tarmac

Vaso and her son were collecting carobs from their tree one morning.

Vaso once collected carobs from all the neighborhood trees for her goats. She gathered them all, often bent double, not wanting to leave even one languishing on the ground or hanging from the tree. She then hauled the heavy sacks up the incline to her house, without breaking a sweat. 

Now it's her son who's in command. They gathered a small bag for the chickens and left the rest to rot. 

Another neighbourhood tree. 

The pomegranates are still small and unripe. I'm hoping for a bag of these in a few weeks. 

The white bougainvillia is starting to blossom .  The white flowers should bloom into November. 

Our 'new' water feature. 

On A Poppi Roll

 Here we go again. I should change the name of this blog to Poppi-Poros-Star. 

I do have 4 other grandkids.   George, Nels, Jamie and Luli. Plus the others we've adopted. Martha and Dimitri and Evita. Stars Every One of Them! 

You've heard of The Tall Poppy syndrome?  This ones the tallest of them all. 

She's up there waving in the wind and woe betide anyone who tries to cut this Poppy down. 

OK. Here we go.  As soon as she turned 16 she got her motorbike licence. A year later she passed her car licence. Her sister Nels also got both licences as soon as she could. This one's another dare devil. Nels didn't get a licence for a 120cc motorbike. Oh no. She passed her licence on one of those huge 400cc monsters which rush past you with a vrooooom vroooom...leaving you to eat their dust. My daughter Elli and my granddaughter Nels are both speed heads.

And just a note. My 2 grandsons who are both mechanics and learnt their trade on Harley Davidsons have not bothered to get their licences.

Jamie is  the same age as Poppi, George is 23.  Talk about 'eat their dust'!  The girls have left you a million miles behind.

Wake up boys. 

Poppi is always looking for a new challenge. As are her sister and cousin, Nels and Luli. Strong women, with the best of kiwi and greek blood

A few weeks ago she got her speed boat licence.  Yup, she's now Captain Poppi.

Next month she will be picking up her lifeguard diploma.

Oh what a Diva 

The first thing she did was rent a boat and take her cousins for a spin around Poros bays

Heaven knows what else she's got in mind for the future

Collective spit everyone

Ftoo ftoo ftoo

11th of the 9th

Schools around the country open today.  Not for lessons.  Today local Priests do the rounds of schools and kindergartens blessing the children and their teachers. It's a photo op for the Mayor and a few important persons who make speeches and bore the britches off the kids. 

A large bunch of basil is dipped in Holy Water and the children and their teachers and anyone close by are splashed and blessed. 

I've been to many of these blessings over the years, first for my own children and in later years to admire and photo the grandchildren.

We only have one granddaughter left at High School and this is her last year.   

Have your best year ever Luli. We know you'll top your class! 

 We will see the blessings on the news over and over again. Tv cameras show lines of school children at the big Athens schools and the tiny island schools where there may be only 2 pupils and a teacher. And a priest. That goes without saying. 

Poppi is coming up to do some work for us.  A few end of summer jobs that need to be done before she disappears off into Athens for another year at the Athletic Academy.

K is busy frying meatballs and potatoes so she doesn't go home hungry. 

I've printed a list of jobs. 

Outside jobs included storing away the big summer umbrella and hauling the heavy concrete base to its winter position under the outdoor table. Moving big ceramic pots to their sunny winter spots. Everything I deemed heavy she lifted as though it was feather weight. It would have taken me 3 days to do what she did in an hour. Oh to be a strong young rower. 

A major indoor task

Clearing, cleaning the shelves above the desk computer. There was 10 years of dust and rubbish. Even K got into the spirit of it all. We filled up a big bag of old boxes, papers, all sorts of wires, headphones that were falling to pieces. I was overjoyed to see those shelves cleared.  So much junk we had harbored for so many years. 

Gone. Gone. By golly gosh, All Gone

Decanting that huge jar of NZ peanut butter into smaller jars so the whole family can enjoy it. 

Changing over from flimsy summer curtains to heavy winter drapes. 

She stowed away some of the fans. It's still hot but comfortable now. 

She trimmed the white, late blooming, bougainvillia. 

She stowed away a few summer chairs. 

Good grief. It sounds as though we are ready for winter. No way. 

Next week we go away on summer holidays, knowing on our return we are ready for autumn winds and maybe the first rainfall. 

Thanks Poppi 

 

 

Hair Time

Our hairdresser is opening her own salon but these things take time here. Meantime it's al fresco.

Danae gets a bright red refresh

And we learn all the goss

I got my usual summer short back and sides

This selfie is slightly better than the usual ones I take

But oh boy

Those hooded eyes

They're a family trait from my father's side of the family

Several in the family have, what I call, Chinese eyes

None of the Greeks inherited them.  

Boem looks on, very excited by all the action and new arrivals

Mr Google must have been listening in. After writing the first half of this post he immediately sent some photos from 5 years ago. 

Haircuts back in the days of  the pandemic

Danae gives K a short all over style.  

Notice the small-ish bald patch there in the middle

I got too enthusiastic.  That was the last time I was allowed to give him a haircut.

 Danae wielded the scissors with a more gentle hand

The granddaughters are skilled hair stylers.  They've all got very long hair .  They braid each others hair and the hair of their Mamas. French braids, classic braids, braids with flowers and beads.  

An athletic braid

My 3 girls

Poppi Nels and Luli

NZ Artiste

 Traditional maori weaving.

This summer my brother and sis-in-law brought some of our favourite kiwi treats and necklaces made with seaglass and shells. The spirit of home.   

 They also brought with them these beautiful woven bags

They are woven by Bay of Plenty weaver Rawina Gray.  She has been weaving for the past 20 years, taught by her grandmother

A kete

I love these woven bags but sadly never knew the Maori name for them

Thanks to Rawinia's story I now know their correct name and history

'They are woven from natural NZ fibres, leaves of flax, harakeke, pingao from the sand dunes and kiekie, a plant from the bush' 

Aren't the colours stunning!

This bag has been created using a special flax dye

and has been 'hijacked' by my granddaughters who are sharing it between them.  

Rawinia writes

'To me these kete represent the land, the sea and the air.  Flax is abundant here (in New Zealand), feathers representing wildlife (our Maori cloaks are adorned with feathers) and the paua shell*, a seafood found in the waters of Tauranga/Te Puke area in the beautiful country we live in,  The handle of the kete is fibre extracted from the flax leaf, called muka.'

*paua  - abalone

A kete I have since my days at Te Puke High School

The mother of my best friend Gwen was Maori.  A lovely lady.  She made the most delicious fried bread, Paraoa Parai, and she wove this bag for me.  It's over 60 years old now and has followed me around the world.  The bag has begun to fray and I need to find a way to preserve it for another 60 years.  Maybe put it in a glass case

Thanks kiddos and thanks Rawinia.  These kete are now cherished by kiwis living on a Greek island.