Summer..... Not in the City

 Congratulations and Jubilations

Granddaughter Luli found out this morning which University she'll be attending this year. It's the prestigious Athens School of Economics, the best in the country. She has been swatting hard for the last 2 years and finally all the stress is over. She achieved her dream!! 

Luli

Working the summer at a waterfront café ' 

'meanwhile back at the ranch' 

Poppi popped in to help the old folks do a few chores

This is the second time she has been called for urgent repairs

The first time was when our bedroom window fell off it's hinges.  It's very heavy, double glazing.  It came down without breaking when K was doing something to the fly screen.  We needed Poppi with strong arm muscles to lift it up again and into place

Done

Then she had to lift out the flyscreen from our living room window.  The screen was ripped  years ago by cats climbing up them with their sharp claws and a recent high wind destroyed it completely. 

She came up the second time, attached the new screen to the frame and slotted it back into the window

Done

We have loads of cherry tomatoes and are giving away bags of them.  I've pureed some and will make some sweet n sour sauce. 

Apricots I buy at the farmers market every week and simmer and then puree those too.  The freezer is full and I've made apricot chutney and apricot jam.  Both of them are delicious 

Both K and I have containers of tomatoes in the garden.  I Google how to grow tomatoes, follow all the instructions, stake them, prune them, make my own fertiliser from compost and get a handful of tomatoes.  K gets someone else to plant his, just let's them grow any old way and waters them when he remembers.  We've got kilos and kilos of tomatoes from those neglected plants. 

What's going on there? 

We've just survived our first heatwave. Temperatures of up to 42o in the centre of the country. About 36 here but felt much worse. Three days of hell fire.  

Now it's over and we had a thunderstorm.  Thunder claps right overhead and very heavy rain. It's just what we needed. The lemon trees soaked it all up. And K won't need to water his tomatoes for quite a while.

Good for us, but not for Elli who had to deal with leaky windows and doors at the office and at home 

It's beautifully cool now. I feel human again and sleep will be sweet tonight, not sweaty. 

 The little church of St Anne

25th July is her Fiesta