A note on characters and
setting: Alex is my 15 year old son, Sophia, my 13 year old
daughter. Zenon and Leo are my Little Sons -- nine and six,
respectively. Kay is the Mother's Help. We (except
Kay who lives in nearby Paphos with her Cypriot husband) live on
certified organic land that grows olives, vines, various fruit
trees, and a selection of mixed vegetables.
Every evening when my husband, Christos, is at home, we sit out
on the back verandah with a glass or two of wine. Sometimes
we talk. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we
argue. But at least some of the time we look out over the
valley and down to the sea in silence.
The view has changed these last few weeks. No longer green,
the meadows and plateaux are pale gold with ripening wheat and
barley. Within a week we will see tractors crawling slowly
along, leaving swathes of cut grain that will be gathered into
great rolls and loaded onto trucks.
Bright green has retreated, olive has returned. Slight
humidity has brought a haze that hangs lightly over the land and
blurs the once-sharp horizon. The sea has gone from blue to
grey.
Last week we watched while eight hysterical hounds chased a hare
across the opposite hillside, eventually losing him when the
hare, with complete aplomb, zig-zagged, doubled back, and dived
into a thicket of lentisk. This evening there’s no such mad
activity. Someone’s exercising their dogs on the slope, but
the occasional clanging of the dogs’ bells is the only clue to
their presence.
We have started watering the olive trees. Last year the
crop was poor. But last year we had water cuts following poor
rainfall and I was being stingey. We are also minding
the field trees better – applying zinc and iron through the
watering system, spraying (at least Christos is – after last year
I washed my hands of it) M-Pede on aphids and sulphur on the
mangoes. We think that there are some micronutrient
deficiencies – apparently the inspector said that they were short
some things, but I missed that part of the conversation because
of my poor Greek.
This evening we are happy. Alex is off camping with his
class in Polis (‘Getting pissed with his mates,’ Christos
intoned); Zenon and Leo are staying overnight with Matthew and
Thomas in honour of Matthew’s eighth birthday (‘Do Cleo and her
husband know what they’re getting into?’ he wondered); Sophia is
stuck to the computer, her nose in MSN.
And I’m happy because I got so much done today. Lok, the
Nepalese helper (he’s happy, or at least his father is, because
after 16 years with the Gurkhas he now has not only right of
residency in the UK, but the pension and medical benefits that
someone who has put his life on the line for Britain deserves)
came today and together we cleared for a new double line of
hoses, laid the hoses and the plastic mulch, planted 72 new
cucumber vines and at least that number of green and purple
beans, and cleared all the weeds out of the side garden, ready
for a new round of cultivation and planting.
Best Beloved and I made a celebratory dinner: scallops perfectly
cooked in butter, finished with a splash of cream, and served
with saffron pasta. The Condrieu matched it
perfectly. Kay had suggested that we go out, but I don’t
like going out for dinner. I can’t drink, because I drive,
and I get ansty paying out for food that’s not as nice as we can
make.
And nowhere has a view that compares.
