Finally back to Greece (twice)

Once again I'm back to blogging as today Halil came past to help in the garden however it's been a fun and busy few weeks so let's get on with it.

Hat on a basketball

A storm in the distance

Let's get weeds removed

A beautiful sunset

After work one evening Rosie and I went into town and met up with some people at the local basketball court and I played some ball, Rosie played with the other kids, and then played badminton with me. It was fun and hopefully we'll do it again. I've also been trying to get out into the garden regularly and get a load of weeding done to keep our flower beds looking nice. It has been such lovely weather recently also.

Getting to the beach nice and early

Out for food (I'm just out to shot)

Mike playing with Rosie

The tortoise crosses the road

We had a really lovely and busy weekend after this. I was up very early on Saturday and drove across to Greece to collect my friend and his wife who were on holiday and visiting us for the night. I spent a couple of hours on the beach, got to lay and read and swim a little before I headed to the ferry port and picked them up. I didn't get all that many pictures however we had a lovely time, including getting out for dinner to the restaurant and then a lovely long drive around to do some sightseeing before I had to take them back over to Greece to their ferry again. On the way home I stopped and waited while a tortoise crossed the road. I didn't ask it why it was going though.

Rosie with all the peas

A ladybird on a wildflower

Enjoying the weather on the patio

Put a new chair together

Loads of puppies

Snake skin scrap

There's been some harvesting going on the last few weeks and first off the peas were ready. Angela and Rosie went out with a pot and collected them all and then worked together to shell them all - a great result for a little work. We spent some lovely time sunbathing on the patio on the recliners and I put a new one up so we have one each; unfortunately Dutch then went and chewed the new chair which made me quite unhappy. It did warn us that we needed to keep him away from our new insulation tiles and the pool so we've delayed putting the pool up until we can fence it in; this fencing is now due tomorrow so hopefully soon we can finally put the pool up! Down at the farm there are more and more puppies all the time; they are very friendly and cute! I found a scrap of snake skin while watering which was pretty cool to see - Rosie was fascinated.

We set out the wooden track for fun

The strong winds took this tree down

Rosie chilling on Grandma's bench

Her first ever painted miniature

Here's a tortoise

We've mostly had absolutely glorious weather for the past few weeks however a huge storm did blast through which brought the most incredible winds before dumping a load of rain (very welcome indeed as this refilled our water collection, and soaked the ground really nicely) however the wind did break some branches on some of the tea trees and also took down the top off a walnut tree! Other than this, it's been lovely and warm and I'm gutted we don't have the pool up yet. We've seen a fair few tortoises around which is always exciting and Rosie does love seeing them just like I do. While watering I noticed one of the plum trees that gives an early crop was absolutely loaded with perfectly ready plums so I grabbed the harvesting bag and in about 30 minutes had 3kg of plums ready for preparation. I have since chopped all these and they are in the freezer. We have so much fruit this year it's going to be a bumper crop!

Early to the beach and how lovely it was

A flying fork

Mummy and Rosie burying me

I'm buried!

Sat in the waves having fun

She really does love the sea, and so do I

Panorama of the beach

Time for lunch

Yesterday we were up super early and out the door towards Greece; on the way we picked up our friend. The queues at the border were really long however they processed everyone super quickly and we were on the beach before 8am which is perfect. We had such a great day as the weather was perfect - hot but a breeze and lots of lovely shade as well. Rosie had a blast, she buried me and I got a fair amount of snorkeling done, though there was a strong current going across the beach so it wasn't as relaxing as it can be as I was swimming hard to stay still sometimes. Towards the end of the morning the swell built up and Rosie had a blast jumping in the waves and then just sitting down and letting them wash over us. It was so beautiful and a perfect day, topped off by a lovely lunch at a cafe next to the port. By the time we got home I was wiped out and slept for two hours straight!

There's an (empty) duck pond in there somewhere

Running water back into the pond

Cleaned out the dried up scum

Fixing the stairs

Trimming branches

Levering out a clump of saplings

Chopping down a dead tree

This area is looking so much better already

We have a lovely clean pond again

And so to today. I had a super busy early morning getting stuff done before Halil arrived and had just got outside to clean out the pond when he did get here. I swept out the bottom of the pond and collected all the material for the garden then started the tap to refill it. This took all of five minutes total. Inside Halil was working on fixing the one step on our spiral staircase where one of the welds had come loose. It did not take him long to repair this and then we were both outside back to the task of clearing the trees that are spreading everywhere by the driveway. We worked for about 2 hours straight and got another four or five trees removed. This time we did not use Thomas as the trees we are removing are so tangled with their roots it was crazy difficult to get them up. Halil also cut down and chopped up a dead tree we found. We've decided to leave the big trees for now and take all the sapling and spreading encroaching growth. He'll probably be back next Sunday for another session. I'm really enjoying working with him! During this time the pond refilled so now hopefully the ducks will enjoy it again.

So there it is. I may be back next Sunday with another update but I'm not sure. Let's see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

All sorts, and Halil Garden Help

Today Halil came past to help me in the garden, something I'm hoping will be a relatively regular thing on a Sunday and so I will do an update whenever he does come past. Lots has gone on so let's get into it.

New swing is super fun

A scary monster and Rosie

New boat on the front lawn

A snake that visited us

Enjoying the sun

New style of meal

This time I'm just going to go through the pictures and videos in order as there isn't so much to go through. The day after the last blog Rosie was straight out onto her swing, and she's been swinging a lot on it and loving it; I'm so happy  she is having such fun with it. Continuing the theme She drew lots and lots of monsters on the patio with her chalks, this one was supposed to "scare me out of my head". On the Saturday we pulled the new boat out and Rosie and I got it inflated to check it out, just on the front lawn.  Later that day we saw a snake by the green building; the first we've seen on our land for a while. My foot was starting to hurt that day and the next day I was in agony, but had to drive with Rosie to a play date which was great fun I just wish I'd not been in such pain. She played with the little girl of my friend and we picked cherries and just had a great time. On Monday I went with Halil into town to see a doctor and ended up at the hospital with lots of tests and even more waiting around. Eventually I was diagnosed with gout, which blows my mind, but at least I had some medicine and it did work fast. I got to chill with Rosie on the patio in the sun (and Dutch got involved) which put a smile on my face that I didn't want to have before because of the pain. This has now caused me to change my diet, which puts more pressure on Angela which is really frustrating.

I decided I needed to weed this section

Looking very much better

A storm in the distance

A hole in the clouds

Playing a fun game

More sun bathing with Rosie and the puppies

So much grass to mow

How is that even slightly comfortable

Onwards. I was off my feet for a few days and got so bored that one lunch time I went out and weeded one of the flower beds and got told off because the next day my foot was worse again. Silly me but I hate sitting around. Angela got to go spend an evening with our friend one night and I had lots of fun with Rosie. We were outside watching a storm come in, and marveling at the square hole in the clouds that appeared above us. Then we played some games and sunbathed. I also spent two entire days cutting the grass and almost bought myself a robot mower. I've noticed today that the tyre on my ride-on mower is totally flat so that's a bit annoying. I got to watch a very terrible film that evening and Xena fell asleep in a very unusual position.

A weevil in the garden

A stunning rose in our garden

Clearing more trees

Rosie's lovely Rose

The cutting is ALIVE!

Trying to grow an avocado seed

Time for some garden and growing pictures. We have had to do lots of watering and I saw an interesting beetle, maybe a weevil, on a thistle leaf. It was there for a couple of days. The roses have been doing really well, so stunning! We had a power cut one of the days so I was unable to work; I went out into the garden and did some more digging out of trees. The power came back on just as I finished, thank goodness. That evening I got a grab a picture of Rosie's Rose, that I bought while collecting my mum for her visit. So beautiful! Finally inside the vine cutting that I've been watering now for weeks thinking that it was dead but not giving up, it has new growth on it and by now it has four or five big leaves! I'm so happy about it. My new diet brought some avocado for breakfast and Rosie and I have planted two of the stones to see if we can grow them.

Some of our wildlife

Dutch hates being kept out

More chilling in the sun with Xena

A fun way to play with her swing

Face painting fun in town

In the park

Park exercise equipment

About to get pushed into the pond

In the middle of the pond

Angela on the bank while we float around

Our tortoise visitor

We're getting close to today now. Last week I took a lovely walk with Rosie around the garden and saw lots of cool things including a hairy caterpillar in a tree. We also camped which was brilliant and the day I took the tent down Dutch lay glaring at me through the fence - he hates being excluded. More fun with Rosie, she was shouting to me to go and see her on the balcony after school one day and I went to find she'd climbed on the swinging chair with Xena. She's been having so much fun with her swing, though not always actually swinging on it. On Friday it was National Children's Day here so after school Angela took Rosie to the park and I went down and joined them and watched lots of dancing and show, Rosie get her face painted, then we went to the park and finally had some food in town before heading home. It was really nice. Yesterday we were up and out to take the boat to a pond. We went to our mountain village however when we got there we found lots of people fishing and decided to not disturb them so we ended up back at our home village on the pond up the hill that we normally walk to and it was just magical. Rosie loved it and so did I. When we got back here was a large tortoise by our gate.

Out before it got too hot to do our weeding

I got this dug out over about 1.5 hours

Rosie's butterfly jar

Halil gets stuck in digging out trees

Cutting down the dead tree

A broken strap

It got up to 34 degrees

Cutting branches with an axe

Xena joined me in Thomas as I was pulling roots

We cleared loads in the two hours

And so we finally reach today. This morning before Rosie woke (she had an epic lay in) Angela and I both went into the garden and did a load of weeding which was really needed. I found a dead butterfly while I was weeding and Rosie was very sad so she took it inside and made a little garden for it in a bottle. Halil arrived at 10am and we went out into the garden and slaved for about two hours working together to remove trees by the side of the drive. It was very hot, and pretty hard work, but we got loads done and it was so satisfying. We ended up using Thomas to drag a load of the roots out rather than having to break our backs digging them out. Some were very strong and we broke our strap multiple times and in the end had to cut if off the tow bar as it was so tight from being pulled so hard.

The first storm blows towards us but misses us

Such a beautiful sunset this evening

After Halil went and I had some lunch I fell asleep on the sofa and woke to the sound of thunder. A huge storm was blowing in that I then enjoyed with Rosie on the balcony. Then a second storm blew over and this one hit us hard. There were two very very loud large bangs in particular where the lightning struck really close to us. Xena was so scared she ran and hid right under my bed for ages bless her. The storm lingered for quite a long time but did eventually blow past and the sunset was stunning as I sat down to start writing this. Now it's pitch black and this took me all evening!

So there it is. I think Halil will be back in a couple of weeks so I'll do another update then. Thanks for reading.