The weather improves...

The weather has gone from dreadful to beautiful in 24 hours.  I suppose that is the beauty of living on this island that sunshine is never too far away.  So from a day when it felt like the middle of winter we woke to a beautiful sunny warm one.  We still have visitors in the field next door, two horses who are making the most of the lush green grazing - it is probably very bad for their stomachs!

This Saturday we had planned a day in together just fiddling around doing some little jobs, a bit of cleaning and a bit of ironing.

John is perfecting his pot hangers which survived the ravages of the weather on Thursday, amazingly and are looking rather smart.  We have been invited to our Cypriot neighbours for their Easter Sunday (which is next week) and he plans to present Argi with one as a thank-you - I have pointed out that they probably have nothing to hang it from but that is a minor detail.

The garden really is looking quite beautiful at the moment and there is even more colour now than I reported on the other day as more and more things spring into life.  It is so much more advanced this year than it was last year but with that comes the additional pressure of keeping it looking nice.

This week has seen the arrival of crocus flowers, field poppies and the blue irises all of which inject a bright flash of colour here and there.  Bulbs seem to do remarkably well up in Droushia - the conditions must be right for them and so I will keep an eye out for ones which flower later in the year.

I was busy in the garden when I received a phone call from Phillippos in the village who is taverna owner and village postie.  Apparently I had a parcel which needed immediate collection so we downed tools and walked into the village to collect said parcel and to call into the cemetery before going home.  The parcel was my new sofa covers which will be so much easier to wash than the ones currently on the suite which have been fabulous but are the biggest cat-fur magnets known to man and I can barely lift them let alone wash them and when I had them dry cleaned they were ok but some of the pesky cat hair still remained stoically in situ.  I cannot imagine living in the UK and getting a personal phone call informing me that I have a parcel needing immediate collection so thank you Phillippos for doing so.

We called up to the cemetery.  Mum is coming up tomorrow and I know she wants to visit so we wanted to make sure it was clean and tidy.  Amazingly the one remaining display of flowers from the original ones we had on the coffin are still valiantly hanging on although will need to be replaced this week but that is nearly 4 weeks ago.  The other plants are all looking fine for which I must thank Klaus as I know he goes every day, or nearly every day, and makes sure all is ok.

On our return we tackled covering the workbench at the back of the house - this was a temporary structure erected 18 months ago to give Louise somewhere to put our Silver Wedding afternoon tea cakes and sandwiches.  It has stayed there ever since and underneath it houses two boxes with wood for burning, my recycling boxes and the rubbish bin!

Over the winter the wipe clean material had become dirty and discoloured and I had purchased some new when I was down in Lemba the other day.

Job done John decided he would shoot off to the winery to get some wine as he wanted to take a nice bottle to Sheila and Klaus's when we go with Mum for lunch tomorrow.  I was going to do some ironing but given the choice decided I would go with John and he suggested we should grab ourselves a glass of wine together as a little tribute to Dad who loved a little glass of red wine or two and in particular Agios Onoufrios although he did drink some right old crap at times always declaring "I've had worse".  It was such a lovely afternoon I thought it would be nice to do exactly that - you wouldn't have had to ask Dad twice.

So this picture is in remembrance of my Dad.  It was busy at the winery so we grabbed a sofa at the fireplace end and sat down to enjoy a quiet glass of wine.  Lovely Maria was in attendance and kept bringing us little plates of nibbles to go with our wine.

We returned home and I set about getting supper ready.  Earlier in the morning I had delved into the freezer and found a nice piece of fillet steak which had defrosted and I made my signature mustard sauce, cooked some chips and onion rings and made a salad.

We topped off our day with a lovely meal and one episode of a series which was bizarre to say the least - I can't think John will want to watch any more so will need to find something else to capture our attention.