Balcony photos

Today’s photos were taken from the balcony on my Powershot with its long zoom. Spring turned to summertime with the clocks changing at the weekend, and now every clock in the house says a different time. They were falling behind or ahead anyway, so now’s a good time to go around and bring them up to date. A little job for later today. The swallows are back, some of them, I’ve seen a blackbird, plenty of pigeons and sparrows and we heard the owl the other night. The chickens who live up the road at the bins are wandering further afield and were heard outside our gate the other day, and as you can see, the plants are blooming and new leaves growing. Definitely spring-like, with the temperature up to 20 degrees when it’s not too cloudy or wet, and today has dawned crisp and clear.

I must thank whoever it was in the world who bought nine of my books over the weekend. Clearly, someone intends to do a lot of reading over the next few months. That mention was basically an excuse to remind everyone that my books are available on Kindle, ready for instant delivery. You can find the full list on my author page.

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Saturday

Saturday is usually the day I post several photos, but today I’ve only got one – the view from the balcony first thing this morning. As you can see, it was a grey and cloudy start, though is meant to be clearing later. The temperature is lower than of late, it’s down at 12 this morning (in our courtyard). This week, it has climbed as high as 20, and we’ve done some standing in the sun to catch the rays and the vitamins. On that subject, we’ve also been having our customary half a lemon in hot water first thing, and some extra vitamin C tablets to keep the immune system boosted.

Yesterday at home was a productive day. Neil has spent two days sorting out our DVD collection. We sent it to the mousandra when it became part-obsolete, what with Netflix and other streaming services, but there are some rare gems up there we wanted to bring down. There was also the thought that if the internet becomes difficult to use we could watch DVDs, so we have now sorted them into various piles and stored some in the sitting room and the others in the spare bathroom. That job done, we sat down to watch something we hadn’t seen for a long time only to find the DVD machine is playing up. Doh!

While he was doing that, I prepared a shopping list for our friendly neighbourhood supermarket, writing it out in Greek (and checking it with an online translator), and then sent it off via Messenger. An ‘Ok’ came back immediately, and later in the morning, the shopping wad dropped off on our doorstep. We have a doorbell, so Xan was able to leave the bags, ring the bell and was gone by the time we opened the door and dragged the bags inside. The rest of the day was spent working on a story, watching television and pottering around the house. As for today, well, more of the same with, perhaps, the option to try and fix the DVD machine.

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Thank You!

Here’s a big thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes yesterday, both via email and via Neil’s Facebook page. (I’m still a bit too jet-lagged to think straight, so haven’t been using FB much as yet). Despite everything, I had a great day with messages and video calls from all over the place. The godboys and mum, just up the road, did a video call complete with happy birthday played on the piano by GS #1 (very proud), jokes, laughter and more than a little madness.

Now, as promised, let me introduce you to some of the plants in the courtyard. For lack of anything else much to show you, I thought we might follow their progress over the net few weeks now and then, to give me some images to add to the blog. As you can see, they’re not at their best after the winter. The cast list comprises:

Sharry-Louise Rose – a gift from the Godboys and their mum, thus it’s named after them.

Heavy Plant Crossing – so-called because it’s in a heavy pot and when bigger, should reach across the wall.

The bougainvillaea, still rather hail-damaged

The stick – which is actually a chilly plant that we had several chillies from last year. It started as a pod from Yianni-Rainbow’s plants and did well once we put it in the shade. It’s now been cut back to regrow bigger this year, hopefully. Still waiting.

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