Welcome back to life here in Cyprus.
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| 'A new day' |
Savvas has told us that the vines have been left unattended to for many years and are now old and in bad condition. It would be better to take them all out and plant anew. This sounded a very daunting task for us. What did we know about growing grapes. Savvas informed us that his brother who owned a digger could do it for us for a reasonable fee. We finally agreed and without any hesitation Savvas was on the phone. Yes, his brother could come that night and do it for us. We pointed out that we had not been to the bank and did not have that amount in cash on us. Maybe we could arrange another day.
Savvas put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a wad of money 'No problem' he would loan us the money to pay his brother, and we could pay him back whenever, 'No problem' This was from someone who had never met or seen us before, and did not know us from Adam!
Later that night his brother turned up and that was the end of the vines. Dug up the old vines and removed them for us as well.
Buying wine at the winery with some tasters while we sat and chatted with our new found friends was much more pleasant than slaving away looking after vines! We made sure we rushed down to the bank the next day to repay Savvas, who with a shrug said 'There was no hurry, we are neighbours, and that is what friends do for each other' Who could ask for more.
After this Savvas would pop in for a coffee and check how things were going for us and give any help if needed. Having some local advice was very useful.
Now that we have an empty plot, we could plan out a garden and maybe have a few fruit trees instead.
Whilst we were settling down into our new house we had an old dirt road to our house and going on to the fields of vines around.
One afternoon we hear some heavy machinery coming up the road and watched from the window a truck dumping some tarmac along the outside boundary of the front of our property. Then a roller came along and roughly smoothed it down the drove off.
We knew it was not from the council when asking around, and several months later, we found it was from an owner of one of the fields who had taken pity on us, and all the dust when driving passed. He owned a road construction firm and had some of this stuff left over, so thought he would make the road nicer for us. We were very thankful as it certainly helped with the dust.
In a field opposite us there was a plot of land owned by a little old boy. He would come most days to tend to his trees and veggies he had growing there. We would chat with him when we saw him, and he often gave us veg. When baking I would take a cake across to him and quite often just leave it on the seat of his pick-up, but when he saw me, he would call out 'For me, that's for me', he had no immediate family, and certainly loved his cakes.
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| 'Well, you do have to taste! |
After the road had been done, he drove up and always had trouble turning into the field, had very poor eyesight, should not really have been driving. anyway he stopped and got out of his van and shielding his eyes peered down at the road. He then took some tentative steps onto it. That's how bad his eyes were, did not know it was tarmac!
There was also another restaurant owner who had his veg patch nearby and grew everything himself organically. You have never seen or tasted tomatoes like his. They were huge and so sweet, and we would be given tips on different herbs etc. The cabbages were huge.
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A new picture to start this week. The elephants called out to me to do them. I know I will enjoy doing this picture as I love elephants. From anyone going through my pictures will probably have noticed there are quite a few.
I have started with the background, not a lot to say about it, just filling in some sky and clouds.
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| All framed and ready |
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