Plum harvest begins

I know I've been saying this for weeks but maybe finally Summer has officially arrived; certainly that nightclub next to our favourite restaurant thinks so as it disturbed me both Friday and Saturday nights last week, prompted telephone calls to the police to complain. Not ideal. Anyway that's life and we get on with it; everything else is just wonderful.

That storm disappears past us

Later the same evening a big storm in the distance

Thirty degrees in the shade - lovely

Rambo in the cool of the porch

A chillaxing with a beer on the balcony

The weather has settled into a bit of a routine over the past week. It's been glorious in the mornings and then cloudy in the afternoons and on Thursday last week that cloud went all the way into quite an impressive storm which actually rained on us. That's the last time we've had any significant precipitation however. It's currently very warm, up above 30 in the shade, and the forecast is for hotter weather over the weekend before it cools down some for my parents' arrival next week. We've opened up the entrance hall again for Rambo to sit in, now the swallows aren't being quite so determined to nest in there, and he's appreciated getting into the cool. A chose a slightly different method of cooling down, taking a chill on the balcony with a glass of beer and her book; it's not a bad way to spend some time at all.

Scraping off the stupid shipping labels

The bang before this was huge and shook the building

Rollerblading in the house

Louise takes a ride

Thelma is less than impressed

Finally back on solid ground again, and happy about it

Beautiful balcony view

The sun goes down on another lovely day

It was another busy week for me, workwise, though I took my chances to get away from my desk when I could. On Friday A was cleaning up the display cabinet I'd bought for my model boats to go in and I sat on the sofa in the upstairs corridor and threw a ball for Thelma for a while as I watched. A bit later on there was a huge bang from down in the valley, whatever it was caused quite a cloud of dust and smoke. There were no sirens afterwards so maybe it was from the quarry. After all the cleaning of the corridors it is now possible for A to use her rollerblades inside and she had a lot of fun riding up and down them and then later on went onto the balcony for a bit as well; such a benefit of having so much space! She took the puppies for a ride with her briefly and they were very relieved when she put them back down again. Puppies aren't meant to roll! We have spent less time than you would have thought sat on the balcony, however, as the flies have been at plague levels. I've ordered a large (6m x 3m) marquee with mosquito netting sides which we will be putting up for when my parents are here so we can eat meals out there again; it's so frustrating to be inundated with buzzing things trying to get in the food.

Why did the chicken cross the road...

Mother with her babies

Thelma checking out the peeping thing

All the veg is home grown

The next exciting thing about this week is we have let the new chicks loose on the land, which involved letting Kit out with her ex-flock-mates who have, since she was separated, developed a new pecking order. The first attempt resulted in much fighting and A having to beat the two birds apart with a tin cup (and also prevent Louise getting involved in the scrap, as she loves a good scrap that one) however no camera was rolling for this. The next time we tried it was massively boring and everyone just got along, apart from one duck lunge. Since then they have happily been exploring, following Kit around, and being ignored by the rest of our flock. It's so lovely to watch them run and fly and they have even started chasing the puppies. We may end up keeping a cockerel and beginning to breed chickens for our freezer; it's been quite a lovely thing to have the young and this would bring us one step closer to being able to support ourselves off our own land. The meal picture shows how close we are right now; only the meat was not produced from our garden (and the tomato was just SO amazingly tasty it was almost a joke the pleasure noises we made as we ate it).

Lots of plums ready for harvesting

Up the ladder and checking for insect damage

The first batch, processed the slow old way

An evening harvest, with A up the ladder

That evening harvest was very productive; 6kg of fruit!

While we're on about harvest let's get to the point of the title of this blog. The plum trees, after producing basically nothing last year, are laden with fruit this year and we have been out a couple of times with our ladder and harvest bag collecting much fruit for me to preserve into jams and chutneys. We've collected so much that we haven't been out in the past day or so while I process those that we have in the fridges. I'm hoping A makes the lovely plum sauce to go with the crispy duck and if so I'll get her to put the recipe onto the recipe page of this blog. We have spent so much time taking the stones out of this harvest (sped up by A finding the pipper bit on our garlic crusher!) and we're only half way through the second batch now. I can't wait to get preserving, though.

Very proud that I've finally finished this task

A cleaning the dust off the storage in the garage

Shifted into place in the garage

Lovely wildflowers in the kitchen

The Eid cake for our neighbours

It was a productive weekend to go with all this harvesting. I finally found some motivation to get back into the Men's Room and Gym and finish off all the electrical work, which I have done. We now have lights and plugs in both rooms and now I can make a start clearing the workshop in preparation for it being renovated and with that the last room in the house will be completed. A was in the garage giving the units I picked up from the other old school last week a good clean out and now they are ready for me to use for storing empty jam jars. It's too hot in there to keep the preserves and jams, though, as the flat roof soaks up the heat; I'm going to have to think again about them I think. A gathered together a load of lovely wild flowers from around the land to decorate the kitchen with and we also spent a bit of time cleaning and tidying in preparation for our guests next week. We're very nearly ready for them. Eid was this weekend also so A baked a cake for the neighbours and then we went over and sat with them and some other villagers for a very nice half hour or so having a chat and enjoying the welcome we continue to receive from these wonderful people.

Swift by name and by nature

Sassy stretching out in the shade

Lettuce growing well

The snakeskin where it was discovered

Thelma is VERY unhappy with the snakeskin

Shortly after this she bit it

Dragonfly briefly settled

And so we reach the final paragraph of this update and it is a varied one as often happens. First of all a picture of a swift flying past (at great speed) the other day; we don't often see these around here, being plagued with swallows, but there were about four or five flying around for quite a long time and with the sports mode on my camera I was able to capture a not-terrible picture. Sassy has still not climbed right out of her run over the steps but she is enjoying us being on the balcony a little more and giving her company. The heat is proving a slight problem, however, and she does move around to find the shade through the morning before the sun goes behind the house. My lettuce are coming on OK, recovering from getting scorched last week sat on the front. We have moved them onto the balcony and now they get good sun in the morning but don't get overwhelmed by the midday and early afternoon blast. Finally just now we heard the puppies barking and barking outside so went to check if they'd maybe found a lizard, baby bird or tortoise. It was none of these things but a very fresh looking snake skin, scraped off on a stone leading to a cave under our patio. Interesting. They were NOT happy and barked at it a lot, even following me to the compost where I threw it in. That is a big snake and I hope it doesn't cause problems. While down there I spotted a beautiful dragonfly flitting around and got a slightly blurry photograph for you all.

So there you have it; there's lots of stuff to be done between now and next week when the 'rents arrive and I'm also super busy with work so hopefully it'll get done. A has been busy today, back to her day job, so we'll probably end up working hard through the forecast heatwave at the weekend. We shall see. Thanks for reading, as always.

Including a trip to the beach

This update was supposed to be done yesterday, upon our return from the beach; unfortunately I was way too tired and slept and then when I woke up I was working. So it's a whole day late being started and who knows when I'll finish it; I'm just about to head onto the balcony to be in charge of the BBQ. Here goes..

Finally the weather is nice enough for a BBQ again

And I'm back in from a very lovely BBQ indeed; 31 degrees in the shade however we were plagued with flies! So many of them; this weather has been a boon I think for their population; days of rain and cool and then suddenly heat and they all hatch at once. We're looking for a gazebo for the balcony now so we can keep them out and enjoy ourselves outside.

Pork chops and lovely veg, on the balcony

The puppies wait while we eat

The river glistens in the late afternoon sun

This is my "very excited" face

This is why I was very excited

Lunch with friends

It has been another pretty unsettled week, weather-wise, with some super squalls blowing through, some of them very violent indeed. We've been able to get onto the balcony to eat a couple of times, and the puppies have enjoyed their sleeps in the sun while we eat, but we've eaten inside more than out. On Thursday we went to go out for our dinner to our favourite restaurant but we sat for about five minutes without a waiter coming over (it was rammed with teenagers at a party so they were very busy) so we headed over to our other favourite restaurant and I was super happy to have Beef Iskander and then Chocolate Souffle for afters. Lovely. The next day we were out again, this time for lunch, meeting up with SandS at a bar in town and that was another lovely meal, good food and great company and the weather held until we got home when there was yet another storm.

One of our little bald necked chicks

Lots of tomatoes are growing

A tiny baby pepper is growing also

More progress; a drip irrigation system being tested out

Lots of radish, none of it good

The vine is growing well, and climbing across the frame

Corn growing well, here's to us BBQing some with the parents

Around the house, and while we've dodged the storms, lots has gone on. The chicks are getting very big now and are being let out into the main enclosure more regularly; A is the one who has to then chase them back into their small area for the night time and she loves chasing all but one in, then finally getting the last one near the door, before they all pile out again. My little lettuce seedlings are doing OK at the moment, though it is getting hot and they may start to struggle soon. Our tomatoes are really growing well, apparently one is now red but I don't have a picture of it, and also our peppers are appearing. We've been eating spuds from the garden already, and courgettes are beginning to grow faster than we can harvest them. I've put in a drip irrigation system along the tomatoes, to test out a cheap kit A found in Lidl, which is running off one of the water storage tanks collecting rain water. Unfortunately when we went to harvest the huge quantity of icicle radish we found we'd left it too long and nothing of this was salvageable. Gutting. Things are growing well in the garden with the vine shooting up and taking quite a bit of attention to keep it trained where I want it to go and the corn stand now huge and with heads on it; hopefully these will be ready for when my parents visit in a few weeks times. Last but not least was the discovery A made of Balls, one of our ducks, sat on a nest of eggs and hissing at anyone who got close to her.

A beautiful colour for early morning

Evening sun disappears behind cloud

One shaft of sun penetrates the clouds

The remnants of a storm disperse

An absolutely glorious start to the day

Magic light diffuses through the clouds in the evening

This evening's offering - a stunning sunset again

Before I get on to the highlight of the past week, our beach trip, I've actually taken a few pictures of lovely views around the land for the first time for a while; there's been some lovely sunrises and sunsets, some impressive clouds and just general beauty all around. It's a beautiful place to be.

Excitedly heading off on our trip

The first beach we arrived at

Settled at a beach just round the corner from the picture above

Lovely wide expanse with no one else there

An arty shot of the umbrella above us

Giving a wave during my first foray into the sea

A exploring a rock near our swimming place

One of the jelly fish we saw

And so, to Tuesday. Our planned trip to the seaside, put off from last week by ill health, was threatened by a forecast of storms at the location but we went anyway and were so very pleased that we did. We left the house early, at about 6.45 am, and were parked up by the seaside by 8.15 including crossing the border into Greece; we were scoping out a different beach to the one we went to a couple of years ago and first impressions were good; it was a much quieter looking place than the party central one of before. We stretched out in the sun and relaxed and then got our snorkling gear out and swam, watching the fish and sea urchins and other awesome life under the water. It was clouding over rapidly through the morning so we spent some time strolling around, saw a (dead) jelly fish or two and hunted for tiny shells and white stones to take home with us.

This flower was huge, and gorgeous

Sat at the cafe for our lunch

Melted cheese with chili and bread

The most amazing dish; we're going to try and make this ourselves

The menu entries for those two dishes

Prawns and chips for main

It was coming on to lunch time by this point so we took a stroll into town and after some exploring, past beautiful gardens, found a lovely cafe right on the sea front that served the most beautiful food, and with superb service as well. After this we were back in the car and were home again for about 2.30 pm, the border crossing coming back was much busier as expected, and we were both so tired that we slept the afternoon away. It was a beautiful day, just what we needed to sit in peace and quiet, just the two of us, listening to the hiss of the waves and relaxing together. Superb.

This spider chased off the wasps

A small weed from our patio

Beautiful sun this morning

A sat with Thelma, watching

Ahh the update is nearly done; that's a relief. Just a couple of other non-linked pictures to share. First of all the scary spider which has scared off the wasps who built this nest; it has since caught some insects and is building a nice looking larder up in this corner of the window. Next a huge weed I pulled out of the patio which had shot up suddenly from nothing. And then about today where I headed over to the other old school once more to have a final look around and take another bunch load of furniture for us and our friends; it was a glorious day and we both got some wicked items. I had a lovely brew sat on their porch when I dropped their stuff off as well so that was great. Finally a picture of A with Thelma sat on the roof terrace as I took the sunset shot above. I love that photograph.

So there you have it; other than that I'm working about 2.5 jobs at the moment, making some money to be able to stay here and trying to avoid having to work away again. It's good to have my brain stretched once more after the long holiday. Thanks for reading, see you next time.