Paperchasing again

 29-31 March 2021

Now that Dave has reached pensionable age, he is able to register an ‘S1’ form for reciprocal healthcare in Greece.  This is good news, and the form eventually came in the post, so we are attempting to get it registered.   Having collected all imaginable documents already, for the new residence permit and the driving licence renewal, we thought we were home and dry, but there is no end to the bureaucratic machinations of the Greek state, and a translated birth certificate was required.

So we set off for Lefkas on Monday morning.

Which was when we found out that the car has a low tyre pressure warning system, and cleverly flagged up our puncture, adding some fun to the morning’s paperchase.

At the end of a hard day’s bureaucracy, a little cider and a vase of freesias 

Next day, on with the moringa bed weeding.  These are two of the three raised beds in which we rescued the top soil from where the pond was going to go.  They are now spare, and some thought shall be given to their next use.

The soil from the raised box spread out across the bed

Two and a half beds weeded in this section, only half a bed to go.

This is a view of our hedge from the field below.  We are incensed that our neighbour decided to set his fires of prunings right up against the terrace wall, with resulting severe damage to some of our trees in two places.  We don’t know if it was careless or malicious, but we are angry.

On Wednesday we returned to Lefkas with the translated documents and successfully registered Dave’s S1.  We understood that it would cover family members too (me), but that wasn’t specified on the form, so some enquiries will need to be made.

Belated Birthday Barbecue

 27-29 March 2021

Although it has been sunny recently, it has also been quite brisk, with a chill wind when you’re not working, so we had postponed Dave’s birthday barbecue lunch for two until Saturday.  It the first time we’ve used the barbecue just for ourselves, and we found it very relaxing, and a nice way to eat.  Char-grilled broccoli and courgette - yum!

Dave doing the man-thing

Enjoying a cider and a Guinness, before we remembered we had seat cushions for those chairs!

Next day, middle moringa bed cleared

But look at the state of the last one - that is some very overgrown rocket.  I will leave a few plants in, which will reseed the area,  but a lot needs to come out to get at the grasses tangled up in there.

Planting and Weeding

 25-26 March 2021

More time in the garden.

This is one of the new Mulberry trees, planted to the west of the house, hopefully to provide high summer shade to the west wall and bedroom windows.  It has started leafing out, which is good to see.

I have moved on to weeding the moringa beds, which are quite overgrown, mostly with straw which has seeded from the winter mulch.  It comes out easily when it is young, but some of it has been left too long and has established itself firmly.  This is a problem with the straw available here - it still has lots of seeds in.  We give some to the chickens to peck through, but the five of them take about a month per bale, which is too slow for the whole garden, so pecked straw goes to priority locations.

On to the second bed, which has this raised box, where we saved the topsoil from the pond location.  The box can be removed now, but because there is some of the lovely dark Italian kale still growing in it, I can’t rake out the soil just yet.  It’ll have to have a lump in the bed for now.

Half weeded, with lump in the foreground.

Lovage planted out in the wiggly bed.

Hawthorn blossom

 23 March 2021

The weather cleared up dramatically, and went back to being warm and sunny, but best of all, the hawthorn tree by the pond put out a few tentative flower buds.  I have a slim little volume from my Mum called ‘Old Wives’ Tales for Gardeners’ which says that once the hawthorn is in flower, all danger of frost is past.  Well, I don’t know how the hawthorn is supposed to know, or whether it counts in Greece, but we took encouragement from this and started planting out again.

First, Dave fixed some guttering over the wires that run down the side of the house.  Much neater and more protected like this.

These are some nice heritage seeds Amanda and we went halves on, these two, red orache and fennel, I scattered around the trees in the new forest garden beds.  These are perennials and will make good understory plants.

Dave put radishes in the heart bed

After doing some strimming, Dave pointed out that the bank and ground under the old pear tree seems to be the most fertile in the whole garden, so we used the pond liner offcuts to start a weed-suppression mulch ready to develop this area next year.

I got on with clearing the wiggly bed of flowering rocket.  We have more than enough rocket going to seed around the garden, and it was looking very straggly here.  Also, we want to get other things planted in here, so out it all came.

I also found a lot of self-seeded borage starting up in that bed.  We love borage - great ground cover, great for bees, great for mineral accumulating, edible flowers and good mulch.  What’s not to like?  But it is very large, and would quickly overpower the wiggly bed.  It needed relocating.  The smaller plants went into a bucket of rainwater and I took them down the road to our neighbour and fellow-permaculturist,  Amanda

The bigger plants, the ones less likely to survive transplanting, went down to the forest garden beds, hopefully to establish a new colony there to help improve the soil and shade the ground.

The relocated borage - looking a little dispirited, but mostly perked up by the following day.

The nettle plantation by the compost bins was starting to flower, so I took a harvest of leaves to start making nettle tea.

While clearing the wiggly bed, I disturbed some long lost turmeric.  It looked quite healthy and vibrant, so I replanted these tubers - and promptly forgot where!  But if they come up they’ll be easy to spot.

Bad weather

 18-23 March 2021

It turned out we had been lulled into complacency by the exceptionally Clement weather of early March.  After Dave’s birthday we had days of rain, often turning to thunderstorms, and on four consecutive days there were hailstorms and very cold temperatures overnight.  Luckily it didn’t freeze, but we did lose most of the little plants we put out the week before.  Most worrying are the exotic choco/chayote vines, which like it tropical - we may have lost all three.

I have no photos for this time, because we did nothing in the garden.  We got on with interior chores and spent time in the music room and the studio (which was fun).

On reaching pension age

 17 March 2021

Dave’s birthday, and the day he becomes eligible for a pension.  Much jubilation, and lots of birthday treats ensued.

Dave says that he doesn’t feel any different since waking up as a pensioner

Posh birthday breakfast

Followed by a little pond watching

The next day we took some drinks and nibbles and went to picnic on the boat, which is now back in the water, while waiting for our take-away to be prepared.  Not very warm and sunny, but a rare and wonderful outing, nonetheless 

Raising the fence

 14 March 2021

Following Inky’s demonstrated expertise at escapology, we spent the next day raising the fence around the long run.

We had a roll of 1.5m chicken wire, and managed to find 3 extra long pieces of rebar.  We lashed the rebar to the existing stakes, and then rolled out the wire, ‘sewing’ it onto the top of the current fence.  This was complicated by the trees and broom that had grown up along the length, but we were finally done.

The chickens were let back in while I did all the last bits of tying up.

And Dave constructed an extension to the gate, as well.  We have only done along one side (which was all the wire we had), but we’re hoping that Inky won’t be too clever about working out if she can escape elsewhere.

This is the little lavender bed planted last summer after we installed the arch.  It is flourishing well.

We were very pleased to see one of the little bee orchids that used to pepper the land.  Our soil improvements have changed the habitat so there are not so many any more.

Vertical take-off

 13 March 2021

We have been finding one of our chickens happily pecking around the compost bins and other areas outside the long run.  While we are all in favour of free-ranging, we have lost too many chickens to daylight robbery by foxes over the years, and we have kale to protect, so we had to find out how she was getting out.

We grabbed a cup of tea, let the chickens out of ‘Fort Clux’ into the long run, and stood by with a finger on the camera’s ‘burst’ button.

This was the result:

More Planting

 12 March 2021

Convinced that the good weather was here to stay, we embarked on a programme of planting out all the well-grown sproutlings from the solarium.

The heart bed, after weeding, and with the addition of some shop bought compost.  Dave put some courgette plants in here.

I examined our compost bins and found some nice, nearly ready stuff, so I moved it over into the sleeper bin and covered it up to finish off.

Under several offcuts of pond liner.

The wild pear trees around the garden are full of blossom at the moment

Dave planting out cucumbers around a bamboo tripod.

A few exciting roots from the garden for lunch: carrot and salsify.  We’d never tried salsify before, and it was delicious, so we’ll definitely plant more of that.