The above image shows our village to the right, and in the distance the surrounding hills of the Lasithi Plateau, which for the first time this winter began exhibiting clouds that signalled the approach of the changeable weather that accompanies the winter months. If you can make out the pylon just left of centre, then to its left is the village of Kalamafka, quite a bit higher in altitude than our village and thus far more often under, or even in, the clouds while we’re still enjoying sunshine. That photo was taken on Wednesday November 22nd, and it kind of marks the approach of the winter, finally, after having delayed itself by some weeks this year. In fact the whole year seems to have been like that. The summer arrived late, after a very strange and unusually cool and sometimes rainy June. But then, the rains that usually begin in October didn’t come until this past few days, and not before the locals had begun complaining, justifiably, that the citrus fruit and olive harvests were going to suffer as a result.

Another photo that I took minutes later just a few metres further along the road, and looking more to the left, around the mountain behind which lies the manmade lake that serves as a water reservoir for the Gra Ligia farmers and village, is this one…

I rather liked the shafts on sunlight creeping around the hill from the coast, nice eh? We’ve finally had some half-decent periods of rain lately and the garden’s looking much brighter as a result. Plants like our chrysanthemums and roses, which just about tolerate with disgust the hot summers here, show by their reaction that this is much more to their liking. Here below are some shots from the past week showing how clear and bright the atmosphere’s been when it’s been sunny, and such days are those ‘glad to be alive’ days when you just feel like getting outside and doing stuff. We have done too, and we’ve now pruned the two ancient olive trees in the lower garden for starters. I’ve been up in those trees wielding my chainsaw like a newly elected Argentinian president, so I have…

That last photo in the above gallery was taken in someone’s garden. I was just so enthralled by the wonderful variety of colour and texture of the plants that grow here and become vibrant after a little rain.

During one of the last occasions a couple of weeks ago when we drank iced coffees on the beach and took a swim, I was reminded of a story that Kostas, a retired gentleman with whom we’d often chat while on the beach this year (he was a constant presence in the mornings, as he’d do the same: drink a coffee, take a swim, then get on with his day) told us. As it happened, there was someone on the beach nearby with a rather tetchy child that we agreed needed a bit of old fashioned discipline. It reminded Kostas of something that he’d overheard a few days before. The sea was just a little ‘lumpy,’ without being too choppy, but Kostas said he’d overheard a mother shouting at her kid, who was trying to defy his mother by going into the sea alone. He was probably only about five or six and therefore needed to wait until his mum was ready to accompany him, so that she could keep him safe. He was having none of it, though, and kept threatening to go in alone, whereupon his mother shouted for all to hear, “Mano, if you go and get yourself drowned I’ll kill you!“

Last Sunday was a brilliantly fresh, clear and windy day. For a change the wind was in the south-south east, which direction it blows from very rarely. We went for a coffee at the Plaz Café on the promenade. The sea was ‘up,’ as they say, and had already removed the rather pointless artificial beach that the local council had installed with a few hundred tons of sand recently, in a vain attempt to stop the sea from further eroding the structure of the promenade. While we sat there enjoying what one used to call ‘the ozone,’ I took these…

Note the pigeon coming in to land in the middle shot. I didn’t even notice it while I took the picture, but if you zoom in on him you can see the rather elegant design of his wings as he uses them to slow his descent before alighting on the stone promenade. The best shots are sometimes the accidental ones. A sea like this may cause the café owners a little bother and make them have to dry out their seat cushions, but boy is it wonderful to witness. And finally, I also took this very brief video…

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