Back to Normal after Easter...

 It was a day of wall to wall sunshine today and we sat outside under the gazebo for breakfast.  This was the first time this year and it was glorious.  Once breakfast was over we embarked on an exercise which shows just how spoiled our cats are - we sorted their Brekkies so that we removed all the long green biscuits which are presumably vegetables.  Our cats don't like them and give them a stiff ignoring even though we try and hide them in amongst their food so that they get a balanced diet - John says they are the cat equivalent to Brussels Sprouts and that both his mum and my mum would sympathise with trying to get children to eat them when they clearly don't want to.  I am still traumatised by my childhood recollections of Sunday Dinner when there used to be a Mexican stand-off between Dad and me.  I hated Sunday Dinner and used to cry and cry and Dad had no sympathy and would make me sit there pushing my cold food round and round and round and round (get the picture?).  As John says - sympathy is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary whatever that might mean!  Anyway we sorted out all the green ones and then Chivers decided he quite liked them because on their own he thought they were a treat!

The warmer weather is bringing out the bugs and today John discovered an army of ants trying to make off with some sort of cricket which was many many times larger than they were.  The cats were fascinated and will try and eat them so we had to removed it from the garden.  It would be that either Chivers or Minnie Mou caught and killed the cricket in the first place and then the ants moved in.  No sign of the praying mantis as yet - remember Dave and Samantha who were here last year? and no sign of any tarantulas thank goodness although I am very careful when I lift up the edging stones when I am weeding!

John, who normally remains resolutely indoors because he doesn't do the sun, chose to stay in the gazebo with his laptop so that he could catch up on the news, emails and facebook.  Who can blame him when, if he raises his eyes, he is looking out to Chrysochous Bay?

It has been very quiet here today even though we think that for some it is still holiday time as our Nicosian neighbours have yet to go home.  No fireworks today thank goodness and no builders either - bliss!  Having said that, when the builders are here they seem to galvanize us into action - maybe hearing them work makes us feel that we should also be doing some work!  We do have plenty of jobs on the 'to-do' list but John says he likes to take advantage of days when I am at home so that we can take things easy together - what a load of sh*t!!

I am rubbish at sitting doing nothing particularly when the weeds don't care what sort of day it is!  The area at the front of the house must have been sadly lacking in polythene under the shingle as the weeds just love it there and they have succeeded in making the place look very untidy.

This was what I wanted to tackle today even though it was the hottest day we have had up here so far this year.  My shoulders can testify to the fact that the sun most definitely had its hat on as they are feeling rather tight this evening.  Anyway back to the weeds - you can see from my before and after photographs that I cleared the area and it looks a damn sight better as a result!  We will get round to paving this at some point but this is going to take time and money.

This afternoon we were in two minds as to whether to go down to Polis to do some food shopping but we did a recce on the freezer and realised that we could probably eat out of it for about a month!  With the afternoon to ourselves I decided to sort out the old greetings cards that Irene had dropped off this morning and decided to recycle them so that she can sell them on her market stall.  You can't believe how much time it takes to sort out cards for the bits and pieces you want or can use - after two or three hours I had just a couple of cards to show for my efforts and they will probably only make a euro or so each.

This evening whilst preparing tea I made a fatal schoolboy error - I chopped up a chilli and then rubbed my eye - sympathy?  As I said earlier John says it is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary so I got none until it was clear that I was an absolute agony.  All John could say was I looked just like my Dad.  It has settled down now and even though I have washed and washed my hands I know not to go anywhere near my eyes!!