It’s two weeks ago today that I came down with this cold. I can’t remember the last time I ever had a cold that lasted this long. We finally made it to the pharmacy a couple of days ago and I bought a couple of home tests kits for Covid. I didn’t really think that either of us had it, but every time any Greek friend has called to see how we are, that’s the first thing they ask, “Have you done a test?” I suppose I can’t really blame them. After all, Covid may not be much different from a cold for most people, but Thanasi (who I first talked about in this post back in December 2020) has recently had a scare with his grandmother, a sweet ya-ya whom we also know quite well now, because she’s over 90 and has been in hospital this very week after testing positive for Covid-19. Fortunately, she’s come through and is now recuperating back in her modest little home on the edge of town.

Anyway, I did the test and it was negative. It’s as we suspected, we both have colds. It starts with this horrible dizziness and a pain behind the eyes, accompanied by a sore throat. Then it progresses to a tickly throat and cough, and the catarrh in the nose and throat, and now I’m left with this ruddy cough that’s stubbornly refusing to go quietly. It seems that my live-in nurse Yvonne hasn’t suffered from it quite so badly as I have, since she seems to be getting over it slightly before I am, but confirming that it’s ‘going around’ is the fact that we video called a good friend on Rhodes yesterday and she was down with the same symptoms, as is another young friend who lives in Ierapetra.

Although, like a lot of people, I can quite ‘enjoy’ being sick for a few days, because it means these days when I no longer have to worry about work, that one can stay in bed with a hot water bottle, drink hot honey and lemon with a dash of brandy thrown in for medicinal purposes, read a book, listen to some music and sleep for hours, a few days is enough. More than that and it gets tiresome, right? So yesterday, since it was yet another beautiful day, we went for a walk up the lane towards Meseleri for some fresh air.

The photo at the top of this post was taken during that walk. We came across an almond tree that’s already in full flower, and as well as the flowers it still had a lot of last year’s crop of almonds attached to the branches…

In case you didn’t know, almonds grow in rugby-ball shaped furry shells, and the furry husk is easily removed when the fruit is ripe. The husks are usually green, but if left on the tree long enough they turn dark brown, almost black, in fact. The husk often cracks open with time while still on the tree and can be peeled off with a fingernail, leaving the brown pitted shell that contains the almond inside. If you, like me, remember your parents always buying a selection of nuts in their shells every Christmas, and then watching as Dad would sit by the fire, bowl of nuts on his lap and a pair of nutcrackers in his hand, and crack away at walnuts, hazels, brazils and almonds, usually having to fight us kids off as we’d be too impatient to wait until he’d achieved a respectable pile of ready-to-eat nuts in the bowl, then you’ll know that the hard shell around an almond is usually beige coloured and has a pitted surface.

Seeing this almond tree beside the road, we set to at picking some of those remaining almonds, which is a rather relaxing thing to do in late afternoon sunshine, especially as the blossom on the tree is a wonder to behold while you’re doing it. We filled the pockets of our fleeces and arrived home well pleased with our haul. We could have picked more, and may well go back for some more yet, but, after I’d shelled all the almonds yesterday, we had around 250g of perfectly good almonds to add to our jar. When you consider that almonds grow everywhere here, it can be slightly galling how expensive they still are to buy. So to be able to augment our supply in this way was very welcome.

The weather can’t have been more different to last winter lately. We haven’t seen rain in the village for three weeks now, apart from a ten-minute sprinkling the day before yesterday. Last winter was the wettest for decades, and this year the villagers are cussing the lack of rain. The soil is as dry as it often is during high summer. On our walk we set off down a lane for a few metres, one which we often walk down, simply to admire the view and look at the wild irises. The lane in question is usually muddy and retains some large puddles during the winter months. At the moment the ruts are rock hard and dry as a bone. This past few weeks, following the cold spell in early February, we’ve been waking up every morning to bright sunshine. Overnight the temperatures have been between 9ºC and 14ºC, with the mercury rising to anything between 18 and 22 around midday. There has been very little wind too, which has meant that currently it’s an absolute joy to throw open the French Windows at the start of the day and walk out onto a warm, sunny veranda, where the cat is usually stretched out on one of the chairs waiting for his breakfast.

This seems to be a good year for the wild irises, by the way. They’re only little, but so lovely to look at…

We were walking near the Saturday market in town this past weekend, and spotted one of the prettiest cats we’ve ever seen sitting on someone’s patio table. He must be well domesticated, because, as I whipped out the phone to take a couple of photos of him, he came over for a petting session. Yvonne wanted to kidnap him, he was so gorgeous. What do you think?

Finally, below is another nostalgia pic. My dear dad has been gone for 14 years now, I can hardly believe it. But when he and my mum came over to stay with us on Rhodes, Dad soon made himself useful and helped me build a gate for a fence I was constructing to section the orchard off from our garden. The fence and gate were made entirely of reprocessed wooden pallets, and dad, ever the resourceful one when it came to using his hands, built me a 90º square out of three pieces of wood. I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea how to do that, but he did, and it served its purpose well while we built that gate. The photo was taken while dad was wearing his ancient (and much too short) dressing gown. He came outside to see what I was up to and soon got involved, without bothering to go back inside to get dressed properly. Yvonne took the photo as she loved to see father and son working together as a team…

That about wraps this one up. Thanks for reading it, I never take anyone out there who reads this stuff for granted, rest assured.

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