Autumn Clean

This morning I received an email from my lovely friend Joani with all her news from deepest darkest Wembury - one of the most beautiful places I have been to - although John may not agree as his memory of that particular stretch of coastline would be the Navy firing school!

When people ask me if I miss anything from the UK I struggle to think until I get emails from people like Joani and then I realise I most definitely miss friends and family and would need a year back in good old Blighty to be able to catch up properly with all the people I would want to see and that just ain't gonna happen anytime soon so it is sort of comforting to think that many of them keep in touch by reading this blog so they know how John and I are doing and will understand how useless I am with Skype and emails and good old snail mail.

Today's sunrise was spectacular in its own way as the sun crept up through the cloud.  It was not to be such a hot day today but I had loads of things I wanted to get done before going to Art so I wasn't that bothered.

We don't seem to get motivated with a Spring Clean mainly because the weather seems to go from cold to hot very quickly and when it is hot you don't feel like doing much so we are more motivated by an Autumn Clean as the cooler weather now means it is easier to get jobs done and the threat of rain means you take the opportunities when you can.  Hence we are decorating and embarking on the pool project and ticking things off the to-do list like there is no tomorrow.

It is good to spend time on the house - each year the thought of Winter and its extremes of weather here in Droushia fills me with less dread as we have worked hard to make the house as weather-proof as possible - each year doing a bit more and a bit more as our budget will allow.

On the subject of Winter John has got the wood burner stacked up and ready to go - she even got her chimney swept earlier in the year.  She looks so inviting I know that he is itching to light her but although it is cool in the evenings it is nowhere cool enough yet and once she is in action we wont want to do without her!  It is a question of putting on extra layers - not difficult when we are still padding around in shorts and bare feet and then complaining that the tiles are cold!  I have found doing my crochet a good idea because the blanket I am making keeps my legs warm as I am working on it!

 My job this morning was to tackle the ironing.  I am ashamed to say I have not done any for weeks - I want to say that my excuse it that Charlie likes to sleep in the ironing basket and I don't like to disturb him but in reality I am not one of life's great ironers - John is much better at it than I am but that comes from his military background. Still I started at 7.00am and stuck with it until 9.00am when I had an empty basket and lots of nice neat piles of ironed clothes.  John will no longer have to wander round like Stig of the Dump poor man - now he will be able to open his wardrobe and just wonder at the rows of neatly laundered and pressed tops at his disposal!!!  He is more likely to think he has gone into the wrong house or that I am having an affair!!!

It was a very pleasant walk down to Sheila's this morning.  My neighbour Savvas still has massive bunches of grapes hanging above his drive - the good ones have been bagged to protect them before he comes back to pick them.

His hibiscus hedge is also in full flower - not that I have hibiscus envy but I have never managed to get one of these to survive in my garden and they would really add some welcome colour now - maybe I should try again once the work in around the pool has been completed as I am guessing there is going to be a bit of collateral damage and I am going to have to put in some plants afterwards.

The mare with the malformed hoof is back - not sure if she is pregnant as she was certainly one of the harem for Ron Jeremy the stallion.  She is a gentle soul and we used to be quite worried about her but I think she is reasonably well looked after as she is moved regularly for grazing and today had a big bucket of water nearby that she had not kicked over and then later in the day when Diana and I went off to belly dancing I see she had been moved again this time across the road.

Apparently the malformed hoof is an old injury which the vets could not rectify.  This may well be the case and she doesn't seem to suffer to badly even though her front driver's side hoof is twice the size of the passenger's side one - if you get my drift.

Anyway after several months of slim pickings she will be enjoying the fresh green grass that is beginning to sprout up everywhere - particularly in our garden even though we have a blanket of shingle put down.  These weeds clearly survive with next to no soil the buggers - I can see a weekend in the garden ahead of me if I am going to keep on top of things.

I finished my picture at Art today and I had already found a nice frame with a mount which I think shows it off quite nicely.  I have created it from one of my photographs and it is of a shop/cafe in Kouklia which has beautiful blue shutters, the insides of which sport murals so it is really a picture of a picture!

I hate finishing a picture - it is like finishing a good book - now I am in search of my next subject and I don't know what to chose - I shall troll through my photographs to see if anything takes my fancy or take the opportunity to go out with my camera and find something.

John does not have football this weekend so I may drag him out with me.  It will be a good opportunity to do a bit of exploring together - we haven't done that in ages and if the weather remains as lovely as it has been we might even take a picnic and have a day out - that will be a bit of a novelty!

I wandered back through the village after lunch with Klaus and Sheila - it was really quiet - only two cars had passed me on my way down this morning and on my way back I saw no-one.

John had been busy with the paintpot again - this time he has painted the outside wall under the pergola and was starting on the job of cutting tiles which are going round the windows so I left him to it and got out Mum's sewing machine as she had a couple of little jobs she wanted me to do.

A quick five minute job became a battle of wills as Charlie made off with my big reel of cotton.  It is not enough that I have had to hand wind the cotton onto a smaller reel and hand wind the cotton onto the bottom bobbin for this job, I have also had to chase the cotton round the house and wrestle it off of Charlie.  Then to cap it all I ran out of the colour I needed for the jim-jams Mum needs shortening and they were so bloody slippy they nearly got lobbed out of the window!

The day ended pretty much as it had begun - with a spectacular sky which hopefully means we will have another lovely day tomorrow.

Just time to shoot up to the roof terrace to take a quick photograph before Diana picked me up for belly dancing.

We now have a routine which we are supposed to be perfecting but we struggle to remember the sequence of steps.

Sofi tells us we are her best group - if I was her I would cry - five women of a certain age with a variety of aches and pains - no sense of rhythm and no memory and we are the BEST she has got?