Sunday Bloody bloody hot...

It is official Cyprus was the hottest place in the Med yesterday and it was stifflingly so.  Even here in Droushia the weather station was showing an incredible 42.4 degrees in the shade at about 12.30pm.  It is really difficult because we have to have the house shut up so that Boris cannot escape and the conservatory is like a pressure cooker.  Mum and Dad were travelling up - thank goodness their car has good aircon otherwise I would have really worried about them.  We had thought we might eat outside but can you believe it - it was to bloody hot so we stuck fans on and ate indoors.  Normally we have about a week when we crave the chill of indoor aircon and then forget about it - this year is going to be a different kettle of fish as the bedrooms are not cooling down at night and we cannot have the windows open.

I think the garden is going to suffer this year - I am having to water everything and normally I only water the pots and I am looking after our neighbours' plants at the moment.  Ollie and Trish have gone away for a week following Trish's Dad's death - I have been going early in the morning because at around 7.00pm it is still hot and sunny in their garden which faces the opposite direction to ours.

Everything is searching for the shade including the insects.  I caught a tiny little preying mantis keeping cool under one of the Allium heads!  The noise from the cicadas this year is deafening - I don't know what happened 17 years ago but there must have been a bumper amount of cicada love going on and they are now emerging from the soil to shed their skins.  If you don't know the lifecycle of these insects then click on this link: Cicadas fascinating stuff!!

During our regular game of Sunday afternoon Noms (which John always wins because he is scorer) we had to keep checking on Boo who was shut in the bedroom building.  He has been sleeping under our bed until the afternoon and then is a complete nightmare.  On one of the checks John had to rescue a butterfly that had got into the conservatory but couldn't get out.  These are so beautiful and generally so flighty that they are impossible to photograph clearly.  In fact Diana had three or four dancing around her lavender and try as she might they never stayed still long enough for her to get a decent shot.

Sometime after Mum and Dad had got safely back to Emba we got a call to nip down to the Veasey's - there have been a couple staying just down the road from them (for the fourth year running) and Rob had struck up conversation with them just as their holiday was ending.  Today was their last day and they had to vacate their villa early and were returning to the UK on the horribly late Jet2 East Midlands flight.  Anyway spookily it transpired that they were from Chesterfield and may have known John's mum when she ran the Double Top Public House in Inkersall.  Rob thought it would be good to meet and so we wandered down to have a chat.

Di and Rob are lucky enough to have some very healthy Lemon Verbena growing in their garden and in a cold drink it is lush.  This is fast becoming my favourite thirst quenching tipple, ice cold lemonade with additional ice and some crushed verbena leaves for extra flavour.

They also have an unusual appendage on their sago palm - they should count themselves lucky because apparently the sago palm only flowers once every three to four years.

Both the male and the female plants can flower and what the Veasey's have is a long cone like structure which is a male sage palm flower.   It is fascinating and reminds me of the smelly durian fruits from the Far East - not that it had a smell about it just the shape and the spikes.

Anyway the tourists pitched up and we had a chat saying it would be funny if they knew people that either John or his Mum knew but after chatting it was uncertain as to whether they had any mutual friends with but spookily we worked out that their son used to work at Birmingham Radio with Wendy and Bill's son.  What a small world it is - who would have thought!!!