Clean/Green Monday

Today is Clean/Green Monday:

Also known as Orthodox Shrove Monday or Ash Monday. In Cyprus, the holiday may be called 'Green Monday'.

Clean Monday ("Kathara Deftera") begins the season of Great Lent ("Sarakosti") in Eastern Orthodox Churches on the first day of the seventh week before the Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday.

The weather forecast was not good but actually the day was brighter and sunnier than expected - normally we go kite flying - it is one of the traditions for today.  I don't think we have had a good kite flying Clean Monday in the 11 years that we have been here!   So we didn't go kite flying - we had things we wanted to get done in and around the house like finishing the downstairs toilet and some gardening if time and the weather allowed.

It seems a bit uncomfortable carrying on as normal when you see what it going on elsewhere in the world but carry on is all we can do so I did manage to get some time in the garden.  When we went to the garden centre for Valentines with Di and Rob we bought a couple of cyclamen.  One was showing signs of going into 'hibernation' for the summer so I decided to plant it outside next to the wild cyclamen which just appeared a couple of years ago.  The wild one has fabulous leaves but much smaller and less showy flowers but looks to be self seeding in that area which is great.  I have also finally got evidence that the Solomon's Seal I bought a couple of years' ago is eventually putting in an appearance.  I hope Sonia can remember where she planted hers (mine is in a pot) otherwise she may well dig it up by accident.

My next job was to tackle the area at the back of the decking in Wendy and Bill corner.  This is an ideal spot for the new hostas because it is always in the shade.  I cleared out all the weeds and the stones and replaced them with six of the hosta - the six which have put on the best amount of growth - they are all supposed to be different but currently it is difficult to tell exactly how they will look ultimately.  I need to get a bag or a couple of bags of some shingle so that the weeds remain suppressed.  I may see if I can get some from Superhome Centre on Thursday.

We were having an Indian/Thai meal this evening and John wanted to try and make some different sort of onion bhajis - these were called Indian Potato Pancakes and were like the ones which I learned to make with Klaus but with the addition of the onion and Indian spices.  They were ok but I made them earlier and then reheated them - I had hoped they would crisp up a bit more than they did.  Nice flavour though!

The Potato Pancakes were accompanying a Chicken Nawabi Curry and Crispy Chilli Chicken with vegetables.  Both meals were lovely but John and I agreed that the crispy chicken was the winner because it was light and full of flavour.  There was enough left over for tomorrow and I am looking forward to it already!!!

After a nice bright day, albeit with a biting wind, the temperatures dropped sharply mid afternoon and we had a fire this evening to keep us warm which was much appreciated by Boris who snuggled up in the big bed (normally reserved for Charlie) and we covered him up with his favourite blinkie when we went to bed!

It is really cold at night even for March and apparently the temperatures are supposed to drop even further - deep joy.

This evening we had two hours trying to sort out a problem with our TV - it was a strange one - the tv in the lounge did everything bar show a picture or play a video whilst the one in the conservatory was perfect.  We swapped everything but the problem remained in the lounge which was weird but proved it wasn't the box, the cables, the TV.  

In the end we managed to work out that the problem seemed to lie with a couple of the ports on the router (we use them all).  So first stop tomorrow will be to get it checked out by CYTA and then hopefully get it swapped out.  John and I always end up getting a bit fraught when there is a technological issue but we did get to the bottom of it or at least we think we have.