May 4th: There was great excitement here
at the weekend when South Cyprus finally joined the EU. It was
a pity they didn't vote for the island to be reunified, but unfortunately
that didn't happen for various reasons. I think they may end
up regretting it... on the other hand, the official UN plan wasn't
very fair or tactful, as it seemed to give far more to the North
than to the South, so I'm not all that surprised.
Still, there were lots
of celebrations with ongoing entertainment at the sea-front bandstand
on Friday afternoon and evening. The town band had to be there
at 11pm (!) because at 11.30 they had to play Beethoven's'Ode
to Joy', the EU anthem, after which an EU flag was raised to
join the Cyprus flag, and then they also played the national
anthem. I'm usually fast asleep well before 11pm, but as it was
a once-off historic occasion I went with Richard and our guests
down to the sea-front, and it was certainly quite moving. After
the Cyprus anthem they had a rather impressive firework display,
which Tim could hear from our house, so I would probably have
been woken up by that if I had gone to sleep!
On Saturday we were having
a bit of a lie-in when we heard drum bands and a loud and not
very tuneful horn - it was the traditional May-day marches and
communist rally, which goes right down our street - terrifying
poor Cleo almost out of her mind. Then on Sunday there was a
big performance of 'The Musicians', the play Daniel's been in
recently, at the British High Commission in Nicosia. Richard
and Tim both went to help with the sound and lights, and our
guests went to watch; I might have gone along as well, but there
was a special church meeting to make a decision about whether
or not to look for a pastor outside the church, so I thought
I'd better go to that to represent the family. It was quite a
warm day and the play was all outside in the huge grounds in
Nicosia, so it was just as well I didn't go as it would probably
have been too hot and sunny for me in the middle of the day.
The weather has been lovely
in the past few days. We had more guests last week - people who
are considering moving out here to work with Richard in the Autumn
- and they loved the temperature. Sunny, about 25C in the daytime,
down to around 12C overnight. Today it's a bit cooler and quite
windy, but the sky is still blue and the sun is out.
My tomato and courgette
'plug' plants, bought about six weeks ago, have grown like nothing
I've ever seen before! I did use a fair amount of compost with
them, and they're almost growing visibly. There are three or
four tiny courgettes, one of which is at least 5cm long, and
several little green tomatoes. The tomato plants appear to have
some kind of black flies on them - I don't know if this is blackfly
as such, or something local; they don't look very attractive
but don't appear to be doing any harm. I don't really want to
spray them since the only sprays we can get here are fairly drastic.
My geranium cuttings all
'took', so I now have loads of little plants, and about four
of my bougainvillea cuttings also seem to have survived although
they're still very small and I don't want to plant them out just
yet. I might keep them in pots until the Autumn. The main bougainvillea
in the front garden looks stunning this month, covered in the
deep pink bracts that form at the end of each branch.
May 20th: Our mespila (loquats) have been
fruiting since late April, so I've made several pots of jam using
my recipe for apricot jam. Once they're really ripe, which they
are now, they're delicious to eat but even though we've given
away loads there are far too many with our two trees. So jam
seems like a good way of using them up, particularly the early
ones which are quite tart.
Strawberries have been
in the shops quite inexpensively too, so I've also made quite
a bit of strawberry jam. Also to our great surprise and delight,
there were some apricots. We haven't seen any for about three
years, other than the dried ones, but they suddenly appeared
in the supermarket one Friday so I bought a few kilograms and
made jam of the ones we didn't eat. I'm hoping to make enough
jam to last the whole year since it seems so silly to buy jam.
Richard's the only one who eats it regularly.
The mulberries are ripe
too after several weeks of dropping the outside fuzz all over
the patio. Our two trees seem to get bigger every year, and they're
absolutely loaded with fruit even though I haven't given them
any compost or fertiliser. The white mulberries drop all over
the patio which is a real nuisance; if I don't sweep them up
every morning they get trodden in the house and make a terrible
mess. The purple mulberry tree is near the end of the garden,
so not such a problem.
I've made a few jars of
mulberry and apple jam, which Richard quite likes, but he prefers
other types and none of the rest of us like it much. We gave
some away too, but they're not very popular. I think we could
have people picking almost continually for the whole month and
there would still be mulberries left to fall.
times since 13th August 2004