Lunch with dear friends...

My head will be all over the place today because Mum is coming up for lunch with Angela and Richard and so I keep thinking it is a Sunday and know it will seem like that for a day or so.  It continues to be exceptionally hot with increased temperatures forecast for the weekend which will tip the mercury over 40 degrees.  This makes it difficult to sleep and I am leaking so we are very grateful for the pool.

I had been watering every other day but now am having to do this every evening - only the plants which are in pots - everything else has to survive on its own merits.  The garden is beginning to look tired but there are a few hardy stalwarts like the Morning Glory that flower irrespective of the conditions.

We got the house and the garden ready for our visitors.  They haven't been up for a while so may see some changes.  John was hoping to get the potting bench finished but the marble people have let us down.  Having given us a price they now say they cannot fulfil the order which is a bit of a bugger to say the least.  When it is less hot we will go and find another supplier.  John was less than impressed.

It was like Wildlife on One in the garden today.  Firstly we had a large blue dragonfly hovering around the pool but too quick for me to get a photograph.  It was huge and a beautiful airforce blue colour.  Then we had a swift or swallow fly in through the front door and then straight out of the conservatory doors - narrowly missing the tops of our heads when we were having coffee.

We then had this big old Cicada in the garden outside the kitchen door.  It appeared to have a problem with one of its wings.  This was too big for me to deal with so I got John to collect it in a dustpan and put over in the field.

Then we had a pretty little moth attached to one of the conservatory doors - it had the biggest and bushiest antennae I have ever seen and a face that looked like it was smiling.

We love all the creatures over here - even the snakes, scorpions and spiders - they leave us alone and we leave them alone - Cyprus doesn't have much by way of wildlife anyway so we are happy to protect what we can.

So back to lunch we had decided to have something light and simple and we had got some really nice looking ham from Paps and some oven chips (for convenience not through choice as I don't really like them) and some fresh eggs for a gourmet lunch of ham, eggs and chips with some home-made coleslaw on the side.  We also had a range of fresh fruit or the spiced plum and pear crumble we were meant to have on Sunday.

John had got up early this morning to put the brollies up so we had plenty of shade and bugger me if some random gust of wind didn't lift the new one at the end of the dining table and plant it up on the metal ladder to the roof terrace breaking one of the spokes.  Would you bloody credit it???  John has made a repair to it and it will last another year but we had only put it in the garden a couple of days ago and that must have been about the only bit of wind we had all afternoon as it was really hot in the garden..

Angela and Richard kindly brought me a Mandevilla plant and when it got cooler I made sure we put it in the garden next to the one which I had bought recently - if they survive - and I am hopeful that they will - they will fill the new trellis that John has erected and give it some colour.

We had a lovely lunch and afternoon with Mum, Angela and Richard - we go back such a long way and I managed to dig out some history books from Keinton Mandeville and Yeovil that they want to borrow to have a look.