Sunday...

The temperatures are now hotting up and everything has sprung to life.  My pride and joy at the moment is the jasmine which came from Aunty Friday and which, this year, is a blanket of buds and where these are in flower the perfume is incredible.

The other showstopper is the 'hedge' of osteospurmum which has joined up to form one mass of colour and flowers - John would like to have these all round the edges of the new path which goes around the pool.  They are easy to grow, require little by way of care and reward us with months of glorious flowers as do the Gazanias.  Having spent and wasted lots of money on plants which look nice but which do not survive in Droushia I will stick to what I know.

The view today is spectacular - we can see all the way down to the coast and there is no heat haze to obscure it.  The sea looks calm and inviting and our neighbour Persephone from Nicosia has had her first dip in the sea today!!!

We were having a full day of cladding today - my job was to clean the stones with acid - deep joy!!!

John is busy working his way round the corner and he is struggling as he has terrible splits in his fingers and working with things like grout really doesn't help.  He wants to get this finished as soon as because we want to get the water into the pool so it can have time to warm up before Debra arrives in early May plus he has a load of other jobs that he wants to complete before it gets too hot to work outside.

Once the wall cladding is done he wants to turn his attention to the outside barbeque which has begun to deteriorate from the rain and hail bombardment and as we have plenty of tiles left over to match the pool he wants to use them there.

All our work is thoroughly scrutinised by Charlie who likes to join us outside and be in close proximity - sometimes too close as he is a nosey little sod.  He is reclining behind the lovely new lavender that I bought the other day and which is the most vibrant purpley-blue.

The pool project is now more or less complete - John wants to have one last careful look over the grouting inside before the water goes in but apart from that there is nothing more we can do.  The addition of the cladding to the bedroom wall and Bacchus or Dionysos as he is known in Greek looks majestic staring down.  We are now really happy with this project after all the ups and downs.

I drove down to Mum and Dad's on my own as we are lending them Kenny whilst their car has various dints removed from the bodywork.  John was driving on down after me but calling into the Brewery to pick up the rucksack I left there in the week.   I stopped on the concrete road to take some photographs of the surrounding countryside - it is truly stunning at the moment.

The fields are currently full of the wild flowers which they call Lazarus lillies and which look like small gladioli and which I would love to have growing in the garden - Aunty Friday has millions and she says she will let me have some bulbs.

It was a lovely drive down to the coast - the temperatures now are fantastic and it looks like we might have a long hot summer.

We had a lovely evening with Mum and Dad even though Dad and I were right royally thumped when playing partner Whist.  We never picked up a decent hand and Dad was more than happy when we called it a day!!!

We left Kenny for a little holiday in Emba and returned home - exhausted after our long hard day in the garden working.  More of the same tomorrow although not so much for me as I will be able to escape to art for the morning and then I am due to go down to visit Nitsa at C&A tomorrow as she has something she wants me to do for them.