Easter is coming

Actually, we haven’t started Lent yet but that was the thought that crossed our minds on seeing this scene below.

Kid in tow

We were on a wander through the village when one of our fellow villagers appeared with kid in tow.  Not actually in tow, it was untethered and happily trotting along behind him.  It seems the kid was shy; it was unwilling to be petted until the owner grabbed it by the scruff of the next and thrust it towards us.

Smile for the camera

Despite huge amounts of curiosity and subtle questioning of one of the English-speaking shop owners we couldn’t get an answer to the question: Is this a pet, or is this due to be lunch on Easter Sunday?

Up the stairs to bed

Our lack of an internal staircase (and therefore minor obsession with cold weather) continues to confuse folks.  From time to time someone (family, friends, fellow ex-pats in Cyprus, blog followers) will ask;

But why do you have to go outside to go to bed?!

The story is this: this little house in the hills has no internal staircases.  When we bought it from MadAlex it had two external staircases, one at either side of the house.  To be honest that isn’t entirely unusual here.  In our case one was unfinished and, to our way of thinking, surplus to requirements so we had the builders knock it down and allow us to reclaim a portion of garden.

We talked about having a staircase built within the house but decided against it; the house is not large and installing a staircase would take up a huge amount of our living space.  And anyway, it’s not like it gets particularly cold or even rains that often we said.  Clearly those were statements made before the start of this very cold and very wet winter of 09/10.

A friend, who is not particularly known for his tact, was once heard to observe;

You really haven’t put a staircase in the house?  I thought you were joking when you said you were going to have to go outside to go to bed.

So perhaps photos would help to give some context to this.  Both of the photos below were taken from the garden looking towards the house.

The main, or front, door is to the left of the downstairs window in the first photo.

All being well we exit that door, skirt around the edge of the bougainvillea and winter jasmine, avoid slipping on the mutant arum lilies and nip up the stairs. At the top we generally stop and look at the view up or down the valley, or at night check to see if the stars are out, or look across the valley to see if the mist is coming in.

In less than 6 months we’ve become adept at reading the current and future weather patterns from the top of those stairs.  But at the moment it is usually a quick look because the top of the stairs is totally exposed.

The stairs, as seen from the garden

The tall wall that you see to the right of the photo is part of the courtyard wall of our enclosed garden.  It also happens to be the outside wall of the next door neighbour’s big living room.  For the lower two thirds of the stairs it provides superb protection against the elements; for the upper third it is no help in that department at all.

Part-way up the stairs

Those of with a keen eye will have noticed one of the designer features we inherited; the (somewhat tired and inoperable) black sun canopy.  Sadly it was another casualty of the renovation works and is no longer with us.

Those with an eye for Elf & Safety will note the lack of banister on the left hand open side of the staircase.

There isn’t one.  There probably should be.  One day there even might be … but, probably not any time soon.

Sensible folks tend to keep to the right when going to bed, leaning against that stone wall for a little extra balance.  Although, that itself brings some challenges; at the top of the stairs as reach the top of the wall we have a lovely view over the neighbour’s sloping roof.  Ian once ventured out there in an attempt to resolve a hot water issue; little Max, the terrible terrier, went exploring on one of his early visits and fell into their garden.

Anyway, who needs banisters?  Or walls that go all the way to the top of wherever it is?  Did you see what we have?  We’ve got fossils!  We are reliably informed that those large stones are huge fossils, specifically internal molds.

Fossils as banisters

A internal mold is formed when a relatively soft organism dies and is encased in sediment.  Over time the organism dissolves and then later the space is filled with more sediment, taking the shape of the now absent organism.  We are told that our molds are from particularly large clam or molluscs.

An internal mold

In geological terms Cyprus isn’t particularly old; it was created somewhere in the region of 200 million years ago.  These fossils are probably local so they are likely to be somewhat younger than that.

We try and keep that in mind as we head up the open stairs to bed.  We might be cold and tired from, yet more, renovation works but the stones stopping us from falling into the garden have been around for a couple of hundred millions years or so.

Cold, cold, cold

How, exactly, did this become a weather-obsessed blog?  There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that us Brits have a particular concern about anything weather related and it is true that the weather is a regular topic of conversation among ex-pats here in Cyprus … but how exactly did we fall into the trap of mentioning in quite so many blog posts?

Anyway, it’s cold again.  Really rather bitterly cold.  And windy; really very windy.  There was a small twister along the coast from us that resulted in a handful of people ending up in hospital.  It’s snowing at the top of Troodos as you can see from the Ski Cyprus webcam.  There has been talk that we might get snow down here near the coast.  That would be unusual, but not unheard of; 2 years when we were house-hunting we experienced a little snowstorm.  Incidentally, that isn’t the house we eventually bought; unbeknownst to us the owner of that property had already found a buyer.

In other news the UN-led talks went ahead.  About the best that can be said is that at least the two sides are still talking … and showing a remarkable determination for scoring points if they can’t actually make any real progress.

THE TURKISH Cypriot leadership set a “trap” for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his visit to the north in an effort to upgrade their status, which “boomeranged” on them, said government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou yesterday.

According to Stefanou, Ban had been tricked into meeting Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat at the ‘presidential palace’ in the north, despite an earlier agreement to hold the meeting at his residence next door. The move backfired as UN Special Adviser Alexander Downer was forced to issue a statement clarifying that “the Cyprus Republic is the only recognised state and that Mr Talat is nothing more than the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community,” he said.

Apart from that we continue to throw yet more logs on the fire and wonder just when it might warm up a little.  This is turning out to be a long, cold winter.

UN’s Ban Ki-Moon on his way

The BBC have an interesting piece on the Cyprus Problem.  They are reporting that the UN’s Secretary General is due in Cyprus this weekend to try and find some common ground that the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots can agree on.

From the article:

Progress is slow at talks aimed at reuniting Cyprus, so UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is arriving on the island on Sunday to inject some momentum.  Mr Ban will meet leaders of both communities, but time may be running out to find a solution, the BBC’s Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond reports.

…

At the Ledra Street crossing the next evening, the players take their places again – another peace protest, tourists finger embroidered tea towels, passport officers dawdle while smoking cigarettes.

Both ludicrous and depressing, this play feels like it has many more nights to run.

The full piece can be found here.  Jonny Dymond’s report, as part of Radio 4’s The World This Weekend,  should be available from Sunday via the iPlayer service.  It is worth noting that, for legal reasons, the BBC’s iPlayer is only available to those within the UK.  If a transcript becomes available we’ll try and link back to it.

It was back in September 2007 that we mentioned the new peace talks.   It was April 2008 that the Ledra Street crossing re-opened, giving a glimmer of hope that some progress might be forthcoming.  It was just last month that the previous president’s corpse was stolen; it has not yet been recovered.  It has been less than two weeks since the Orams lost the latest legal battle to regarding their house in the North built on land owned by a Greek Cypriot.

That any politician believes this can be solved is admirable.  Hopefully there will be inexhaustible supplies of both patience and strong coffee.

Honesty, and the Law #2

Long time readers may remember the case of the government official and his answer regarding the use of hosepipes during the water shortages. A while ago we were reminded of that during, oddly, a discussion about speeding, drink driving limits and police checks.

At the time the police were having one of their periodic increases in the number of car spot checks they carry out. In Aradippou, where we were based at the time, the main local police station was halfway between the house and the nearest access point to the motorway. The police took to setting up a mobile speed traps nearby, catching motorists who exceed the speed limit as they head towards the motorway. Friends commented that they had also seen more checks in other locations too.

In the midst of this a friend reported a tale regarding another mutual friend. The mutual friend, a woman, was on her way home after a late dinner at someone else’s house, when she was stopped by the police as part of these random checks.

She was asked if she had been drinking, to which she replied that she’d had two glasses of wine with dinner. That amount of alcohol, over the course of several hours and consumed with food, should have left her well within legal blood alcohol levels.

She was somewhat surprised when the policeman asked her what type of wine she had been drinking. Really, what bearing could that have on her fitness to drive? Confused, but honest, she gave details of the wine that had been consumed: a locally produced red. The policeman nodded and then questioned her on the food that had been eaten. Now totally baffled at the line of questioning she recounted the evening’s menu. Again the policeman nodded, frowned a little and then proclaimed;

Ahh, that is ok. But really you should have been drinking this wine rather than that wine. It would have complemented the food much better.

With that he wished her a safe drive home and sent her on her way. Such is life in Cyprus!

A birthday ramble

There was a birthday in the house yesterday.  All told it was a quiet-ish day; a small pile of presents, nice food, birthday phone calls.  In the afternoon the skies cleared for a while so we took a wander through the village.  For once we had the foresight to take the camera with us.  There’s no particular theme to these, just things we passed on our travels.

Just along the road from us is a bank of wild fennel.  Actually, that is understating the case; we are surrounded by wild fennel – it is everywhere.  But, just up the road there is a handily-photographable bank of wild fennel.  The plants in the photo are a little over four feet tall and still growing.  It is one of the first plants to make an appearance once the summer heat has gone, poking its tiny head through the soil and then growing and growing and growing as if it’ll never stop.

Wild fennel [Foeniculum vulgare] doesn’t have an edible bulb like the ones you can buy in the supermarket.  A little research suggests that is Florence Fennel.  Instead this has invasive, determined roots.  There’s a few plants growing within the stone walls in the donkey track.  When it gets too hot the plant dies back and waits quietly for the temperature to drop again.  Then, it can start its growth cycle all over again.

Wild fennel

A little further along we stumbled across some winter cyclamen growing in a neighbour’s garden.  Growing, not in containers or pots, but between the paving stones of the patio.  These are, to all intents, weeds.  But aren’t they just gorgeous?

Winter cyclamen

Earlier this month we mentioned we’d stumbled across a citrus tree producing both oranges and lemons.  The photo that we had wasn’t great so we took the opportunity to take a couple more.  In the first photo it is possible to see the run of lemons down the middle of the tree and the oranges on the left and the right; the second has a closer shot showing the fruits side by side.

Fruit cocktail tree

Cocktail tree, close up

Looking at these photos it is hard to believe just how wet it has been.  Not long after we got home the heavens opened again and it rained and rained and rained and rained.  Today has been a day of sporadic showers.  Tomorrow there is a rumour we might see the sun for a while.

That would be very, very nice :-)

Frugal fire tools

During the evening the fire sometimes needs a little bit of help.  Independently, and unbeknownst to the other, we both did some research on blow pokers as a possible solution.

Blow’n'poke, a UK retailer specialising in blow pokers describe the item as follows:

The BLOW POKER is a very simple and useful cross between an ordinary poker and a bellows. It is a brass tube about 3 feet long and one inch in diameter. One end has a mouthpiece like a trumpet’s through which you blow. The air comes out of the other end which is put near the fire and gets it to burn up – similar to a bellows but using your own puff. The ‘fire’ end also has a solid point, so it can be used just as well instead of a poker.

They looked just what we needed but £45 seemed a little steep, and that was before adding on the cost of postage to  Cyprus.  We have found, through hard experience, that shipping things here can be horribly expensive.  Last year it made more sense to buy an item online from a retailer in New Zealand than from one in Europe because of the shipping costs.  How can that make sense?  How can it be cheaper, or sensible, to send something 10,000 miles rather than 500?

Anyway, back to the tale at hand.  We looked, we liked, but we decided it was too great an expense so we shelved the plan.

A couple of days later we were doing some work in the so-called garage.   Once we’d finished the things we’d intended to do we had a little tidy up and identified two or three things that needed to be disposed of and were too big for the regular rubbish collection.  Included in that group were a pair of collapsible outdoor chairs, the type that can be folded up and thrown in the back of the car for use wherever.  We tend to buy a pair a cheap pair each year and accept that they won’t last longer than that.  Last year’s were the princely sum of 10€ each and had served us well all through the spring, summer and autumn only to start to disintegrate at the end of the year.

Just as we were about to consign the chairs to the discard pile a thought occurred. The supporting diagonal of the chair was hollow, approximately the same length as a blow poker and open at both ends.  Surely it couldn’t be that simple?

Well, it turns out it is.  Five minutes work with a screwdriver and bingo!  One piece of the chair is now acting as a very efficient blow poker for the fire.  £45 plus shipping saved … and we have three spares if needed.

Sometimes the gods of frugality are watching and smiling ;-)

House Rule #1

It started raining at around 10am; it stopped for a while just after 10pm.

The yuccas ended up swimming.  A dustbin under the garage hole in the roof filled to 18 inches deep with run-off water over 6 hours.  We finally headed for bed, up the external staircase, at a little after 11pm.

All through this winter’s wet weather we have watched carefully for problems with the roof.  It was one of the few areas where we had to do no work at all;  MadAlex had the a new roof fitted as part of his renovations or improvements.

Much of the other work he had done has had to be re-done.  The plumbing has been a particular challenge: the fresh water supply in the kitchen turned out to be routed from the tank rather than supplied by fresh water, the never-tested water heater would have blown up the first time it was ever turned on.  New plaster failed to hold due to issues with how it was bonded to the walls.  Door don’t fit doorframes; windows aren’t level.

But the roof?  Despite our concerns, based in part on other workmanship, the roof has been just fine.  Which, here in Cyprus, is fairly unusual.  Friends with new houses have problems with their roofs; we had numerous leaks in the Aradippou rental house.  But here, the roof has been good so far.

So, we headed to bed late after a long day of watching the torrential rain and making essential forays into the garden to fetch fresh logs and rescue the gate that had come loose in the wind.  We stopped at the top of the stairs to look at the view up and down the valley and see if the stars were out – they weren’t, more rain was due.  And then we made our way wearily to bed …

… only to find a 40ft² (about 4m²) puddle on the bedroom floor.

To be fair it isn’t quite as bad as it sounds; the room is big and the flooded area was mainly tiles.  Our temporary (until we find someone to build bespoke fitted wardrobes) clothes rails were standing in it, as were a few pairs of shoes and a laundry basket or two.  There’s probably no long term damage but finding enough towels to mop up that amount of water at almost midnight is not to be recommended.

And the roof?  Well, it’s just fine; nothing wrong with it that we know of.  It’s the windows.  Under certain conditions, such as torrential rain from the west, it seems they leak.  Copiously.

So, House Rule #1: When it has rained solidly for 12 hours it is wise to wear wellies to bed.

Weather

It seems the forecast was spot on; it is raining as if it’ll never stop.

Below is the US Airforce’s European chart for today.  The online version can be found by going to http://euro.wx.propilots.net/ and selecting USAF -> Surface Analysis from the drop down box in the top left corner.

The L, signifying a low pressure system, in the bottom right hand corner is pretty much right on top of us.  The mass of orange to the south east of us are lightening strikes.  Lots of them.  To add to the interest the weather system is coming to us from Egypt which means that the rain will be, at best, dirty or more likely sand-laden.

US Airforce Euro weather chart 18 Jan 2010

In the village of Mosfiloti, a few miles away from us, there is a guy who maintains his own weather station and shares the data online.  Mosfiloti seems to have its own microclimate so we don’t always see the same weather as them, despite being so near, but the forecasts are a useful indicator of what weather we might get in our little microclimate.  At just after 3pm Cyprus time his site is reporting light rain and an inch of rainfall so far today.

Here it hasn’t stopped raining since 10am and, at times, it has been exceptionally heavy.  Ian braved the elements once or twice to try and get photos that might give a sense of the storm but to no joy.  Fog and mist don’t photography so well and even suppressing the flash doesn’t really give a good indication of the gloom.

The best we can do is show the poor swimming yuccas.  They made their first blog appearance back in December when they were removed from the main tree and potted up.

The red container that they are in is about 6 or 7 inches deep; this morning it was empty.

Swimming yuccas

The garden, mid-January

The weather here continues to be variable.  After a week or more of clear and sunny days we’ve now got a forecast of rain and storms for a week or so.  The fire, our only heating, continues to be a feature of our evening schedule.  In the garden the plants and trees seem to be split into two broad groups: they’re either growing like crazy or in hibernation mode.

The winter flowering jasmine [Jasminum nudiflorum] has recently burst into a mass of flower.  During the warmer months it grows, slowly and steadily, in and around the bougainvillea.  As January comes round it starts to burst into ropes of bright yellow flowers.  Unlike most other jasmines it has no fragrance but the flashes of colour are welcome at this time of year.

Winter flowering jasmine

Jasmine flowers up close

While the jasmine is un-fragranced we are hoping to introduce a highly fragranced plant to the garden.  This week we potted several dozen stephanotis [Stephanotis floribunda] seeds.  A friend had lovely plant trained across a garden trellis.  It had started in a small pot on a balcony and then been transferred into the ground when she moved house.  Three summers ago it produced a huge seed pod; two summers ago it produced another dozen or more one of which was gifted to us.  The seed pod, which is similar in size and shape to an avocado, has been allowed to dry and split to release the seeds.  Should they germinate they may join the other climbers on the pergola.  Whilst stephanotis is normally grown as a small house plant in the UK, here it will grown 10 feet or more tall.

The trusty bougainvillea has been taking a well earned rest.  It has dropped pretty much all of its leaves and coloured bracts and looks distinctly uninspiring at this time of year.  The previous owner declined to prune it at all so we are still, a year on, playing catch up.  Dried leaves, flowers and bracts from multiple previous years remain trapped inside a network of old dead wood.  Last year we spent hours trimming, pruning and lopping the old wood to try and release them.  We managed to remove much of it, hopefully this year’s pruning will deal with the rest.  And it became clear this week that the bougainvillea pruning needs to happen soon; the new growth is just starting to appear.  This year though we won’t be keeping the old wood for the fire, lesson learnt there!

Each of the fruit trees is continuing along its seasonal path: the lemons have a mix of ripe and immature fruit, the clementines are ready for picking, the oranges are ripening, the peaches are blossoming.

No shortage of Vitamin C

We have high hopes for the peach this year; it is only a small potted tree but in its first year it produced half a dozen wonderful fruit.  Last year it was unsettled by the move here, either by the physical transportation or the difference in temperature and altitude.  It produced not a single fruit.  This week it has started showing signs of life once more with new shoots and four blossoms.  There are few things prettier than blossom on a peach tree and despite knowing that our maximum crop this year will be just four peaches we are absurdly happy to see it back with us.

Peach blossom

Of the fruit trees only the pomegranate looks desolate; it is hard to imagine a sorrier looking tree than a pomegranate in its rest phase.  It is difficult to reconcile its current state with just how lovely it looks when it is in leaf and setting fruit.  Even before it gets to the fruit stage, when it is still in flower, it is one of the highlights of the garden; the splashes of scarlet flower are so dramatic and full of promise.  Apparently they, as well as flowers, are still placed on the tomb of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.  Her family coat of arms included the pomegranate, a symbol the of Granada region of Spain.

Resting pomegranate

Finally, a follow-up from last year.  In October we mentioned that the unidentified yellow tree was inundated with huge bees collecting pollen.  A friend from Ireland subsequently suggested that it might be an Esperanza [Tecoma stans], otherwise known as Yellow Bells or Yellow Elder.  Online images seem to indicate that she is spot on in her identification.