Wild Asparagus

27 Feb 2017

Working on the boat: scrubbing out the bilges, lifting floorboards for varnishing, Dave struggling with the electrics.  What a joy to come home on a sunny afternoon, and go searching for wild asparagus, just coming into season.

Most of my cleared plants were putting out new shoots, much easier to find than the uncleared plants, and the neighbouring field had a good few shoots that the sheep hadn't yet found.  In all, quite a decent haul:

In contrast, Dave's job on the boat - corroded earth wires, all to be cleaned and replaced

Collecting leaves

26 Feb 2017

We spent the last week mostly on the boat, but there was also the funeral of a good friend, Sue, who's husband Mike died only a year ago. 

We still have Rosa's music school at the house on a Tuesday, so we don't go to the boatyard on Tuesdays.  The choir became homeless this month, so we offered use of our living room to Rosa for practice on Thursdays, so we'll see how that goes.  And we have restarted Greek school on a Saturday evening.  We are now trading lessons with Lin: she teaches us Greek, and we each teach 16 yr old Jade: me English, and Dave guitar.

We are also being tormented by local hunters.  They dress up in camouflage fatigues, carry big shotguns, and shoot blackbirds.  At weekends it sounds like war has broken out, and we are a little fearful about wandering round our garden, in case we look like fluttering in the hedgerows.  It is a menace, and a great disturbance of our peace.  We have been to the police, and it is illegal within 500 metres of houses, but we would have to call the police out each time, and by the time they get here there may be no activity, and the next day it would be someone else.  We are trying to think what we can do.  The season will be over soon, but they will be back next year.

On Sunday, we went up to the waterfalls in search of fallen leaves.  There are many giant plane trees at the car park, and the leaves fall on gravel, where they won't benefit the trees, so we scoop up the leaves and bring them back for our eventual use as mulch or compost.

 Dave by the river, in spate at this time of year,

and looking upstream. 

 I liked this photo and have put it on my phone as wallpaper.

Birthday outing

17 February 2017

My birthday.  As money is virtually non-existant this month, we are celebrating by taking a walk to explore a new location.  We have been told there is an ancient oak wood on Lefkada, and so we set out on an explore.  We think we found it.  The weather was overcast, so the potentially fabulous views were a bit misty, but the trees were wonderful.

 Looking down over the channel between us and the mainland

 Wonderful old oak tree

 Dave and a tree

 Me and another tree

When we got back, I insisted we colour in my birthday pressie: new gardening gloves - hurrah!  Dave did one and I did the other.  Dave's has a little robin on the thumb, which is brilliant, because there is a robin in our garden who often watches what I'm up to.

Tea bench

16 February 2017

I rather feel that the importance of tea to horticulture has been insufficiently acknowledged.  I like to have a bench wherever we have garden beds, so as to make it easy to sit with a cup of tea and watch things grow.  So I have started work on this one, around one of the olive trunks, in what has suddenly become a carpet of wildflowers: iris, anenomes, daisies ...

 Rickety bench, under construction

 View from the bench

 Our spindly mimosa tree has survived its first season, and is flowering jubilantly

And this is a large asphodel which has planted itself and is putting out a monster bud.

Boat turmoil

16 Feb 2017

We're at that stage with the boat where everything is in turmoil.  Everywhere you turn, something is in the way and has to be moved to get on with the next job. 

 Dave, surrounded by chaos

Me, hiding out, not very successfully, in the kitchen

Local Recycling Group

Saturday 11 February 2017

We were invited by friends to attend a meeting of 'Lefkogaia' a volunteer-run local social enterprise group who want to take control of Lefkas' recyclables and make a non-profit going concern out of it.  We were very impressed with them, about 10 concerned Greeks, plus a handful of us ex-pats.  They will need fund-raising and other volunteer help over the coming months, but it seems a very worthwhile endeavour.

Planting strawberries

10 Feb 2017

I had no idea strawberries could go in so early.  But the garden centre said they'd be fine, as long as they were well drained, so I thought they could go on the new little hugel bed by the olive tree.

 So this is that bed, all prepared, but needing to be mulched.  The four little strawberry plants are in the foreground, and there are four new artichokes behind them.  The cat is sticking his head in a spiky asparagus plant, for some reason!

 Meanwhile, on the main hugel beds (see below) there are signs of life.  As we have so much mulching to do, and limited time, I can't see us getting any woodchip on these beds before the weeds take over.  So instead, I thought I'd try a green manure and threw a load of buckwheat seeds over them.  They've started poking up - lovely little red stems.

Keel Grinding

8 Feb 2017

It's not all fun down the boatyard.  Dave pulled the short straw, and did the keel grinding - taking the surface down to bare metal, to be primed and then antifouled.

 Two days of toxic red dust - not nice.  Then I did most of the primer - making it all bright shiny white.  The smartest keel in the yard!

It's raining walls

8 Feb 2017

With a handful of rainy days due, we went to the woodyard for the final order of wood for laths.  Hurrah!  And a few plants from the garden centre while passing.

 Living room wall - the last bit to be built, that was left open as a temporary doorway into the kitchen

 The bit by the little window near the front door - this involved a lot of clearing and tidying as it has been a bit of a dumping ground

 The wall between the front door and the living room.  All filled in.  And there's the last bale, that we're keeping to make chopped straw for all the remaining plastering.

 A tiny triangle to be plastered over the arched window

 and a funny little space between the mezzanine floor and the woodframe, currently infilled with a cardboard template, eventually will be painted plywood, we think.

A little bit of sunshine, so I planted out four new parsley and four new celery plants in the kitchen garden.  Then we must have left the gate open, because two plants had been pulled out and mostly consumed the next day.

Can't keep me away

6 February

The days are falling into a new, boatyard-y pattern.  We varnish and otherwise prep for the yard at home first thing, then arrive at the yard about 10ish.  Then, with the help of bananas, nuts or home-made oat & buckwheat ginger biscuits, we last out till 2ish on a couple of cups of tea before going home for a late lunch.  This leaves the afternoons free, and as the weather is still a bit chilly, and we don't want to fire up the stove too early (to conserve wood stocks), there is time for some garden pottering.  And this time of year, it's hard to leave it alone - there's an urgency about preparing for the new season, and it drags me out time and again.

 Here's the olive tree terrace bed covered with old sheets encrusted with lime plaster blobs - which stops them blowing away.  The gaps are where wild asparagus plants have been left standing

This is a little space upslope from the same tree.  Last year I put down some manure here and covered it with a sheet.  This year, I pulled away the sheet, but left the fallen leaves to mulch the soil there.  I've put in some chicory, which may come up.  Meanwhile, I found about three more asparagus plants, so I cleared some space around them.

Going Boaty

1 - 4 February 2017

Having neglected our poor boat for the last few years, we had to get her hauled into a boatyard for some attention this year. She will be launched again when the charteryachts go in, so we only have until the end of March, approximately, to get everything done.  So the house is mostly on hold - except on rainy days, and the boat gets lots of attention for February and March.

 Day one: Feb 1st, Dave squished into the locker under the sink in the heads, renewing seacocks.

 We brought home the battered floorboards, for sanding down and new varnish

 Then it rained, so this interior wall between the front door and the living room started to fill up with laths

 And this wall between the stairs and the studio - destined to be the 'library', got tidied up and the diagonal laths installed.  We're all out of wood now, but all the remaining bits to do are straight-sided, so we can measure lengths and get them cut at the woodyard, to cut down on sawdust in the house. Phew!

Wrapping up January

30-31 January

I just didn't get all the photos in time for the last blog post last month.  So here are a few shots that wrap up the month's activities:

 After finishing the big hugel bed, I moved some more rocks to start terracing around the canopy extent of this big olive.  The wall will need building up some more to be fully level, but for this year, we just intend to dig it over roughly, and cover it with sheets to suppress weed growth.  Then next year, we will improve the soil and build up the wall.

 While digging out round the olive tree, I kept finding wild asparagus plants, like this one.  Wherever I found one I staked it up - they tend to spread out along the ground and would get trodden on otherwise. It should be easier to spot the new shoots next month, now.

 Almost by accident, another little hugel bed grew up below the rock wall.  There was quite a lot of half-rotted cut branches tangled in the grass, so I collected them together in the space between the wall and the path, to make a little extra bed.  As you can see, it already has an irrigation pipe, supplying the unleafed fig tree centre front.

 Indoors, here are pics of the little jobs we'd tackled in the rain: lathing this external corner of the bedroom, which will eventually have a sewing table, so there were some electrics to fit, for sockets and light switches.

And downstairs, a neat corner (at last - one!) where I installed a bookshelf, and we made, varnished and fitted a tiny little shelf for phone and wifi.  If you ring now, there's more of a chance we'll get to the phone before it rings off.