For the next few weeks we have Fridays without pickleball and now that the weather has picked up I have to admit I am not sorry. A couple of weeks ago I thought it would be fine to continue to play but today I know I am glad that we have the day at home and can escape the heat by jumping in and out of the pool or sit in the lounge with the fan on. This is probably one of the few weeks when we wonder whether we should have installed some air conditioning when Mum and Dad offered it to us but then in a couple of weeks time when the weather has cooled a little we just wont need it and we reckon once you have it you rely on it!
We have just received our electricity bill - here they are issued every two months and we have a mystery with ours. We have photovoltaic panels to generate our electricity - when they were installed you could only have a 3 kilowatt system - now you can have a 5 kilowatt system but since we have had ours it has just about provided us with all the electric we have needed but we are careful not to be wasteful. Anyway two bills ago we did have to pay for some usage - this wasn't a surprise because it came after the winter months so our bill was about 60 euros for the two months including all the standing charges etc. On our next bill two months later they credited us back the 60 euros we had paid so I assumed I had paid the bill twice - I do it online and there is an audit trail and on checking I could see only one payment so that was strange but heyho this is Cyprus. Anyway this bill came which should be just for standing charges as our electricity generation has outstripped our usage. This would normally come to just short of 40 euros but once again we had a credit and our bill for 2 months was only 15 euros plus they showed us that they had carried over a couple of hundred kilowatt hours of electicity for future consumption. We have no idea why this is happening when our neighbours a couple of doors down do not seem to be able to get their electricity bills paid for love nor money!
So with no pickleball today and having seen Mum yesterday and she will be back as normal on Sunday I decided that today would be a good day for some early morning and late evening gardening when it is marginally cooler. Some of the garden is looking rather tired, sonme of it has gone mad in the conditions we have been experiencing and case in point is our bay tree. Not so very long ago John and I trimmed it and gave it a right old flat top - this was done so that if John wasn't about I could manage to keep it in check without getting out a step ladder. Well it was fine for a while and then it just bolted towards the heavens. It isn't the pruning that is the problem it is the disposal of the waste although at the moment the goats are still sometimes brought through the field next door and they would probably love the freshly chopped foliage. So the bay tree now looks nice and tidy, the fig tree in front is looking very sad - I didn't have a problem with it last year and kept it indoors the whole time - I thought it would like being outside but now I am not so sure - I know they have a bit of a 'shed' but this is looking like a survivor from Chernobyl.
I have not as yet started my 'old Cyprus chair' upcycle project partly because I haven't had time and partly because the cats are loving the chairs in the garden.
Today John was clearing out the space next to the shed where he keeps the gas bottles - he discovered three small wasp nests so was intent on moving them on. Nests here only seem to be about the size of a large orange - the ones he found ranged from the size of a walnut, to that of a peach and then a satsuma but the wasps were equally as ferocious as if they had come from a much larger establishment. Armed with a stick and some raid he dispatched them but we will need to see if they return.
Anyway as part of his clear up he came across an old glass bottle which probably held some kokinelli at some point - it doesn't look like it was olive oil. I hate throwing things like that away so at the moment it is in the garden with the old chairs. Part of me admires the clean lines of those people who adopt a more minimalist approach to dressing their homes but neither John nor I can do that - we are too sentimental.
On the subject of chairs you might remember that recently we sold our two rather scruffy tub chairs. The cats had used them as a scratching post and Charlie had torn off all the fabric on the underside of one and then on the other the condensation had dripped on the wood on top and dulled it and then ultimately lifted it. We decided that having replaced them with two brown ones to match the sofas the orange ones were now surplus to requirement.
We sold them to a lady who has a business called Wisteria Furniture and she told us that she was going to use a technique which involved painting the fabric with chalk paint and then combing it so that the finish was like suede. I asked her to send some photographs of the finished article not thinking that this could be possible but below is the end result and she has made a fabulous job of upcycling them - I almost wish I had kept them!!!
If you don't believe me that these chairs have been painted then here is what she called her 'squeaky bum moment' when she started to apply the paint and she had reached the point of no return!!
Fair play to her - her name is Kath Trinny Bauchope and you need to check out her work on her Wisteria Furniture Facebook site which I have linked above. I keep saying to John that it would be nice to turn the decked area in the front garden into a craft room where I could keep everything secure and dry but I would start too many projects and then not want to get rid of anything!!! I still have a complete Keter box full of card making 'stuff' that I need to use or cull - I may just ask John's mum or her friend Jackie if there is anything they might like to take back with them.
John and I worked hard until it became too hot and then we retreated indoors to watch some crap TV for a while before going to our neighbours for supper. Argy was making green eggs κολοκυθάκια με αυγα (courgette and eggs) for supper which is one of my favourites. Bless her she knows that John is a meat eater and although orthodox Greeks are currently observing a fast until 15th August (the Assumption of the Virgin Mary) she supplemented the meal with pork chops and roast potatoes! We had a lovely meal and then sat out in their courtyard admiring the work that has now been completed. It has been a long and difficult road for them but now it is all done and it looks lovely - it is exactly what it needed as a holiday home with nothing needing any attention in the garden. They are super excited that one of their son's and his family will be coming on Sunday.
We have just received our electricity bill - here they are issued every two months and we have a mystery with ours. We have photovoltaic panels to generate our electricity - when they were installed you could only have a 3 kilowatt system - now you can have a 5 kilowatt system but since we have had ours it has just about provided us with all the electric we have needed but we are careful not to be wasteful. Anyway two bills ago we did have to pay for some usage - this wasn't a surprise because it came after the winter months so our bill was about 60 euros for the two months including all the standing charges etc. On our next bill two months later they credited us back the 60 euros we had paid so I assumed I had paid the bill twice - I do it online and there is an audit trail and on checking I could see only one payment so that was strange but heyho this is Cyprus. Anyway this bill came which should be just for standing charges as our electricity generation has outstripped our usage. This would normally come to just short of 40 euros but once again we had a credit and our bill for 2 months was only 15 euros plus they showed us that they had carried over a couple of hundred kilowatt hours of electicity for future consumption. We have no idea why this is happening when our neighbours a couple of doors down do not seem to be able to get their electricity bills paid for love nor money!
So with no pickleball today and having seen Mum yesterday and she will be back as normal on Sunday I decided that today would be a good day for some early morning and late evening gardening when it is marginally cooler. Some of the garden is looking rather tired, sonme of it has gone mad in the conditions we have been experiencing and case in point is our bay tree. Not so very long ago John and I trimmed it and gave it a right old flat top - this was done so that if John wasn't about I could manage to keep it in check without getting out a step ladder. Well it was fine for a while and then it just bolted towards the heavens. It isn't the pruning that is the problem it is the disposal of the waste although at the moment the goats are still sometimes brought through the field next door and they would probably love the freshly chopped foliage. So the bay tree now looks nice and tidy, the fig tree in front is looking very sad - I didn't have a problem with it last year and kept it indoors the whole time - I thought it would like being outside but now I am not so sure - I know they have a bit of a 'shed' but this is looking like a survivor from Chernobyl.
I have not as yet started my 'old Cyprus chair' upcycle project partly because I haven't had time and partly because the cats are loving the chairs in the garden.Today John was clearing out the space next to the shed where he keeps the gas bottles - he discovered three small wasp nests so was intent on moving them on. Nests here only seem to be about the size of a large orange - the ones he found ranged from the size of a walnut, to that of a peach and then a satsuma but the wasps were equally as ferocious as if they had come from a much larger establishment. Armed with a stick and some raid he dispatched them but we will need to see if they return.
Anyway as part of his clear up he came across an old glass bottle which probably held some kokinelli at some point - it doesn't look like it was olive oil. I hate throwing things like that away so at the moment it is in the garden with the old chairs. Part of me admires the clean lines of those people who adopt a more minimalist approach to dressing their homes but neither John nor I can do that - we are too sentimental.
On the subject of chairs you might remember that recently we sold our two rather scruffy tub chairs. The cats had used them as a scratching post and Charlie had torn off all the fabric on the underside of one and then on the other the condensation had dripped on the wood on top and dulled it and then ultimately lifted it. We decided that having replaced them with two brown ones to match the sofas the orange ones were now surplus to requirement.We sold them to a lady who has a business called Wisteria Furniture and she told us that she was going to use a technique which involved painting the fabric with chalk paint and then combing it so that the finish was like suede. I asked her to send some photographs of the finished article not thinking that this could be possible but below is the end result and she has made a fabulous job of upcycling them - I almost wish I had kept them!!!
If you don't believe me that these chairs have been painted then here is what she called her 'squeaky bum moment' when she started to apply the paint and she had reached the point of no return!!
Fair play to her - her name is Kath Trinny Bauchope and you need to check out her work on her Wisteria Furniture Facebook site which I have linked above. I keep saying to John that it would be nice to turn the decked area in the front garden into a craft room where I could keep everything secure and dry but I would start too many projects and then not want to get rid of anything!!! I still have a complete Keter box full of card making 'stuff' that I need to use or cull - I may just ask John's mum or her friend Jackie if there is anything they might like to take back with them.
John and I worked hard until it became too hot and then we retreated indoors to watch some crap TV for a while before going to our neighbours for supper. Argy was making green eggs κολοκυθάκια με αυγα (courgette and eggs) for supper which is one of my favourites. Bless her she knows that John is a meat eater and although orthodox Greeks are currently observing a fast until 15th August (the Assumption of the Virgin Mary) she supplemented the meal with pork chops and roast potatoes! We had a lovely meal and then sat out in their courtyard admiring the work that has now been completed. It has been a long and difficult road for them but now it is all done and it looks lovely - it is exactly what it needed as a holiday home with nothing needing any attention in the garden. They are super excited that one of their son's and his family will be coming on Sunday.
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