perceptions

Ophrys mammosa, Bosom Orchid


Ophrys sicula, Small Yellow Orchid


Ophrys scolopax


Anacamptis pyramidalis, Pyramidal Orchid

I went again today and found four more orchids. Here's my favorite:


Orchis papilionacea var. heroica, Butterfly Orchid.

More here.

If I'm boring you stiff, please forgive moi. I'm in a spring-related orchid-high and yes, those hormones can get to you.

Back from a long walk with the dog. To explore other regions of the island and avoid too much poisoned bait in the neighbourhood, I'm making a habit lately of driving somewhere first with the dog seated next to me. Fun!
Today I saw many plants I haven't seen earlier on the island and while squinting through the weeds for asparagus I found a species of orchid I've been looking for ever since I first saw a picture of it (sheer luck, since it's only 16cm in height):


Ophrys regis-ferdinandii, King Ferdinand's ophrys.
 
I'm so excited to have found this beautiful little orchid. Its flowers are like insects humming in front of the blossom, aren't they?
 
More pictures here.
 

I have become a bit lazy in updating this thing. I have been sick the last five days (as nearly everyone in the village), so there's an excuse, but mostly it's cushier to sit back and just consume everything others have written than creating one of my own. Hm. That is a passive behaviour I do not particularly like, especially since my character tends to sneak into that from time to time.
But now there's a compost heap of photos rotting away in iPhoto, from our nice carnival party we had last Sunday and pictures I've shot during my frequent walks while hunting asparagus, picking wild greens, walking my belly the dog or working in the garden. Being 'out in the fields' for the above usually means exactly that, walking aside the trodden path through olive fields, under mastic shrubs, climbing up and down over cobble stone walls, in knee deep macchia or -at the moment- lush green gras and greens, watching your step for awaking snakes or slippery stones and thusly seeing the most interesting things you'd never see on aforementioned path. Ah well - come to think of it...such is my life, too. ;)
 
So, off we go:
 
 
Himantoglossum robertianum (or Barlia robertiana) or Giant Orchid. The island is known amongst orchid enthusiasts as we have quite some species growing here in the wild. See for more pics of this wild orchid here.
 ( More pretty flora..... )

 
Yes, I know y'all want to see the men in tights, but you'll have to wait just a biiit longer. I shot too many pics of tights and wigs and (fe)male butts, and I'll need to make a selection first.

First Anemone coronaria (Poppy Anemone) of the year.
 
Ah, and of course the joy of photography:
 
Trying to take a picture of Narcissus tazetta (Chinese Sacred Lily)...
 

...while Nosy Dog is trying to...
 

...catch the camera.
 

 
The last two weeks it rained almost uninterruptedly, to our joy and relief I might say, which led to results scarcely seen in our habitat:
 

Water actually staying on the soil instead of being sucked in greedily!
 
Luckily we bought a 'broxometro' or rainmeter just in time and have eagerly watching every raindrop falling into it since.
 

 
Until now, the state totals 33,1cm, which is much better than we feared it would be, but still not the level we should reach, namely 75cm. Still three months to go, then raining season slowly ends in April, and it would even be better if it didn't rain after that (cos all the nasty buggers will come out if it rains in May; temperatures are too warm by then, and the moist, damp atmosphere will only be great for anything small crawling up our plants).
 
Today was the first warm and somewhat sunny day and I finally managed to wash all remaining mastic sacks; though I'm quite broken right now, it relieves me a lot, as I had meant to do that for weeks and couldn't (and the previously washed mastic tears are nearly finished).
 
By sheer coincidence or divine humor I also happen to have in exactly these weeks a lot of graphic jobs involving car decals, all designed and ready to be placed, which, as you probably can imagine, is an inadvisable thing to do in rainy weather, heh. For two of them I managed to use a garage nearby,  so take a look at them:
 
( ~car decals under here~ )
 
 

 
Hopefully we'll all find what we're looking for in 2009!
 
 

 
When it comes to natural phenomena in the sky, I'm glad to be in Greece and not in Cloudy Germany. Tonight we visited the gathering of the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter (or Jupi, as my Dad calls him):
 

 
(Jupi hangs a bit shyly in the upper right corner)
 
The waxing moon is also reason for us to plant and seed for the following spring/year. I hope next year my newly planted bushes and trees will not suffer from drought, parasites, deficiency symptoms, salt chlorosis and all those other great conditions that made me believe that not only did I lack a green thumb, but it's probably a black one I possess.
 
Fortunately, our ecologically grown vegetables never suffer any severe diseases anymore.
 

 
We have successfully and exuberantly grown cabbage, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, radish, red radish, arugula, lettuce and other seasonal greens. They are of course invaded by whole, daily regenerating armies of caterpillars, but I found out that they'll do good work when I put them on the compost heap, instead of killing them (which I can't do anyway).
 

It doesn't show, but they're respectively 2,5kg and 3,5kg, or about 30cm in diameter.
Ah, such is the joy of my simple life. :)
 
 
 

 

 
It finally, finally rained and my ears were ringing with joy from the drumming of the drops on the shutters outside and the sound of Nature slurping the long awaited water greedily.
Between downpours I walked our dog Aris. When I reached the top of the hill where the cloister stands, I could see clouds filled with lightning hanging over the mountain range at Aghios Gheorghios and when I looked east towards Turkey there were thunderclouds, too. It was quite impressive to walk inbetween those two natural phenomena, though I felt very calm in the mild, moist and fragrant air of the mastic tree vicinity.
 
I've not written a lot for quite a while mainly due to exhaustion caused by the mastic work. During the last months I collected, sifted, washed and sorted it, a kind of work resembling Vasilissa's impossible tasks for Baba Yaga, unfortunately without the possession of a helping doll. And still this will have to continue for about two or three months.
Ah well, I am my own boss on the other hand, and working in a .................(fill in boring company here) would probably be much worse.
I will continue explaining the process of producing mastic eventually (even be it only for my own memory, so I'll know what to do next year ;)), but the graphic work for my office has to be done as well, and that of course prevails over all kinds of webdings. Bread on the table and all that, y'know. More soon.
 

 

 
This one's for theirea . It's not a pink one (yet), but at least they're back in the yard:
 

 

 
She was about 9 - 10 cm long and we played a staring contest for a while, which I lost admittedly.
 

 
Heh, it surely has been a while since I've posted here. Life has been busy fortunately, with lots of new costumers and interesting work. Exciting, though the moneymaking is still not my best part; I'm still unsure how much to charge for the different parts, mostly selling my work too cheap, while I'm already spending way too much hours trying to make things perfect. I should most certainly attend a course for time management, if that wasn't such a loathsome word accompanied with similar hair-raising connotations.
 
Anyway, I should've finished a client's ad today, but tomorrow is the second most important religious holiday in Greece (after Easter), "Dekapentavgoustos" - the 15th of August, Maria's, Despoina's and Panagiota's nameday (meaning probably one third of all Greek women are celebrating, not to mention the men named Panagiotis), and I guess my client has more important things to think of than me, so here's to an early start of tomorrow's day off. ;)
 
I have neglected my mastic shrubs a tiny bit, meaning that we're still carving incisions for the third time only, while others are already doing the fourth. Never mind, September will still be hot and the mastic be able to flow. Unless of course it starts to rain all of a sudden, which would be quite disastrous to my mastic tears (they'd be turning black from the soil).
 
So here's what we did the last two month: In June/July we prepared the ground and did the xysimo.
 

 

 
 
 

 Being thrown off, hit, pressed, wrought, turned over, mangled and deformed (or formed actually) by many, many cars to finally be discovered on the street: I  give you... Automade Art(™)!
 

(wire)
 
My subconsciousness is still deciding what it represents. A figure throwing a fishing net? A mountain range? Any Freudians around?
 
 

 
It was hot today and so there was no option: Hubby had to give in and go swimming with me.
But while the saddle under my butt melted from the heat I noticed a couple of couragous plants still alive and kicking amidst the arid vegetation. Thus I decided to take an impression. Let's begin with my brightly flowering bougainvillea in front of our house:
 

Bougainvillea spectabilis
 
 

 
And then we finally arrived at our destination:

Yes, this is my swimming spot. And no, it's not photoshopped. :)
 
Splash.
 
 

 
I'm as small as a pea but not as round,
I'm greener than an olive when timely found,         
you should always eat me while humble and small
or I'll grow out a flower, fairy and tall.
 

 
What am I?
 
 

 
I really, really regret not having my camera here right now. The garden is so intensely in bloom, it's a feast for the eyes with all the gaudy colors around.
The calendulas are bright orange, and next to it there's a succulent plant with thousands of cyclam blossoms, followed by a geranium in bright red. Ah. So beautiful. My white rose is in a romantic mood; her flowers have started blushing recently. And the huge blue German irisses (growing wild on the island, but I redirected them into my garden) are producing flower after flower (an actually amazing process; the flowers open, stay a day or two, then sag away, while the next one underneath it is on its way up, leaving behind a crumbled parachute with a rather large seed on its end. Yes, I'd show you, if only I had my camera.....argh. Can you become addicted to a camera? No need to answer: Rhetorical question.)
 
But despite this prosperous description I wasn't born a gardener and more accurately haven't been one for the first, uhm, thirty-something years of my life, so I'm still prone to many mistakes. Here's what happened:
 
Last year all of my newly planted fruit trees and shrubs died of numerous reasons, the drought, the salty water, the monilia disease our old almond tree developed, and so on.
Because my garden is very open on two sides, I'd like to grow some huge plants to at least cover the insight a bit, so dirty old nosy neighbours won't get all improperly excited when I'm lying there on my camp bed reading a book about, let's say, 12th century monastic poetry, or so (it happened, believe me; the former, I mean).
 
Anyway, a year ago a plant started growing rapidly in my garden, that had gummy blueish-grey green leaves and small trumpet-like yellow flowers.
 

 
I liked it, but it stood next to our lemon tree, so I replanted it a bit towards the center of the garden. All fine, the plant grew quickly, being green and flowering all year round. I still like it. But we had no idea what it was. I googled it, I called in my classification books, nothing.
 
Next case: Last year, I saw a beautiful tree with red, green and bronze colored palmate leaves and prickly, reddish round fruits. It reminded me of a kind of sycamore tree, or a maple tree, but looking for it was as fruitless as the one before. It sure was neither of it.
 

 
The seeds I collected from that tree were beautifully marbled, and I managed to grow three trees out of them.
 

 
One is planted right next to our veranda now, the other two are growing in large buckets, awaiting their final destination, as we haven't finished shifting the soil in our garden, building walls and generally doing work where a newly planted tree would literally stand in our way.
 
Now comes the surprise! I recently bought a book (the one book, I should say) about the flora and fauna of my island. And bingo!, both trees were in there: Number one is Nicotiana glauca, or the tree tobacco (no, they don't make cigarettes of it), the second one is called Ricinus communis, or the castor oil plant (yes, where castor oil is made of).
All fine with you? Seems like I got me some trees with fab names and interesting agrocultural value? Sure do.
But please guess: What is wrong with them? Hm?
 
Yes! They are both highly poisonous for creatures of whatever kind, thank you! Nic and Ric, the fatal duo. Can't miss with a newbie like me.
 
The price for most poisonous plant goes to Ricinus, as he's equipped with irritating leaves, highly poisonous seeds (eating 1-3 seeds can kill a child, 8 seeds a grown up), and is generally so dangerous for everything that I wonder how we have survived so far. We, that's me, and hubby, the four dogs, the ten cats and Mr. Hedgehog's family. Not to mention all the birds or insects.
 
So, what about Nic and Ric? Does this mean I have to rip them out?
I don't know. I'm torn, because they look so beautiful, and are easy to maintain, and quick in growth. And Ric is known to keep the snakes away, while Nic does the same with (unwanted) flying insects.
The dogs are in kennels. My cats usually don't nibble on new plants. And I believe that they instinctively know which plants are edible and which are not, although the ability of that remains a miracle to me. They eat catmint and a flower, whose huge orange blossoms are good for their stomachs, nothing else.
What do you think? Shall I stay cool and look more relaxed at the matter?
 
 

 
I should be in Athens today, to renew my passport* at the embassy, so I'd be able to get my residence permit, so I'd be able to get an Interrail ticket for next month's travel through Europe that I'm planning.
But Athens apparently is on strike, the city is suffocating in garbage piles and there's no public transport today - and with 1 million commuters trying to go to work there's probably no taxi to find either, so I decided it best to stay here in fresh air and peaceful at mind.
 
Instead, I persuaded Yanni to go for a ride south into the countryside at the Dotia Tower, a fortified tower built by the Genoese who ruled the island a couple of hundreds years ago. It lays mainly in ruins and nothing is done by the authorities to prevent that, luckily for a romantic sucker like me who loves those crumbling, abandoned buildings:

 
 
 
 

 
Did February pass by so quickly? Is it already March again? Did I manage to congratulate all of my dear fellow fishy friends?  Oh, I do hope so!
 
What I did forget, though, again, is to give you the conclusion of the Plant of the Month Award for February in due time. Competition is slowly increasing, so it wasn't easy this time. There were two tough competitors, the blossoming almond tree and the plant that surprised me when discovering it's real species; sinapis alba, the white (or yellow) mustard.
 
Sinapis alba is covering most part of the island right now, it is growing as weed, and until I found out that it is this particular spice, I saw it as such.
 

 
White mustard is important for ecological gardening, as it improves the soil as a green fertilizer and it loosens the structure of the soil with its roots. Not to mention that you can harvest the seeds in the summer to make your own mustard: Recommended!
 
But eventually I decided to give the award to the blossoming almond tree, or Prunus amygdalus, as a symbol for the awakening of spring and its ditto vernal feelings in such romantic souls like my own,
 

 
and as a tribute to our recently felled almond tree.
  

 
Whilst writing this, I m listening to 'Mozart in Egypt', a fabulous CD combining Mozart's work with Egyptian music. I never thought I would feel the urge to bellydance to Mozart. You can listen to (very short) samples of the CD here.
 
 

 
I love the Greek news coverage. Today they screamed it out:
 
 
'Greece in the grasp of a white claw'
 
'Polar temperatures in Greece'
 
'Greece has become Siberia'
'People have started hoarding food'
 
 
For your information: It was -2º Celsius today in Athens (and here), and it will be approx. 6ºC tomorrow with possibly a bit of rain.
The only difference between Chios and Athens was that they were so lucky to have a good scoop of snow.
 
The TV Channels searched all day for the chaos, the accidents and the tear-provoking human dramas, but when they couldn't find really interesting ones, they stuck to blaming the government for not cleaning the streets early/well enough.
I know that two islands didn't have electrical power, and that surely is quite an inconvenience, but it's not a surprise. Power failure is a daily phenomena in Greece, and I have to admit that I was highly astonished that not only did we have power yesterday (with 10 Beaufort windforce) but my email was working too.
 
News flash from my afternoon walk:
 

The Courageous Chian Sun Fighting With The Merciless Siberian Clouds.

A Lonesome Fig Tree Raising His Frostbitten Arms In An Attempt For Help Against The Deadly Oncoming Snow.

All Of Chios Rapidly Covered In A Possibly Poisonous Green Substance Of Unknown Origin. Danger For Public Health Not Excluded, Says Physician.
 
  

 
Because it was raining, Yannis didn't go for his usual Sunday morning hunting trip, but went for mushrooms instead. He came home with a bag full of orange-reddish mushrooms which looked suspiciously different from the champignons, chanterelles or morels I'm used to and declared we'd eat them today.
 
Ugh.
 
Now I wouldn't mind if it hadn't been his first hunt for mushrooms and I am slightly worried that specification might not be that easy as he wants me to believe. Disappointed with my weak enthusiasm for his newly discovered skill he left the house with the mushrooms declaring that he'd eat them with his friends alone.
I was left with the name "Amanita pevka' (that's what they call'em here) and a quick search on the net assured me that most of the Amanites are poisonous, in its kind such stars as the well-known fly-mushroom . I couldn't find the one he collected, but determined to save my husband's life (and mine cos I wouldn't leave the chance to eat tasty mushrooms) I nervously rummaged the internet in all possible languages and finally found the one* he brought home:
 
Meet Lactarius Deliciosus
 
And that, my dear friends, makes this island unique. We do not only have morels in springtime and wild green asparagus (which my humble persona is 'hunting' enthusiastically), but we apparently also have the delicious red pine mushroom**, and for each of the three you would pay a fortune...***
 
 
*At least I am a 90% sure it's the one. It has all the typical characteristics, and if I'm wrong, then I hope this wasn't my last entry...o-O
**Note that the mushroom Lactarius deliciosus found in North America differs immensely from the European one.
***This sentence is written in green & yellow ink, as you might have noticed...;-)
 

 
This morning I sifted the recently washed wood-pieces-with-only-few- mastic-tears-but-still-enough-not-to-throw-it-away into different sizes and did the tachtarisma* as good as I possibly could do. Which probably isn't enough, sigh.
 
Then, after a joyous lunch shared by the cats (which means I ate the bread and they enjoyed the turkey breast fillet that was originally on it), I dug the garden and casted seed for a variety of vegetables. The waxing moon phase is over but I couldn't do this earlier as the soil was too wet from the last rains (waxing is for sowing, while waning is for harvesting; dude, I'm such a farmer!).
I'm still figuring out when to sow what, as I apparently cannot follow the directions given on my German seed bags. Two years ago I followed the instructions and had no crop at all. So last year I sowed three months earlier than prescribed because summer is setting in earlier here and I finally had some crop but it was of meager size.
I even don't have a clue if everything I plant is possible in this climate zone, but I'm still trying to improve our daily diet and hey, if all fails, we still have the 40 broccoli, 40 white cabbages and 40 cauliflowers Yannis insisted on planting two months ago...How I am supposed to cook, preserve, pot or dry (let alone eat) all of them remains a mystery. Anybody interested in an aid package? ;-)
 
So, if all goes well, I'll have the following by springtime: Carots, Chinese cabbage, kale, Belgian endive, red and white cabbage turnip, black salsifies, lots of arugula, sorrel, borage, leek, red radish, horseradish.
 
I also sowed the blue lupine as a 'green' fertilizer for the garden.
Tomorrow (if it doesn't rain) I will probably seed herbs and spices. That'll be an extended list due to my enormous consumption of spices and herbs for cooking, magic tasty teas and healing purposes. When I'm eighty, I'll have a hump and a crooked nose and I'll limp around with my black cats mumbling weird things to myself and shout at the little bastards children.
  
*ταχτάρισμα (tachtarisma) = the special way of tossing the wood/mastic-mass in a sifter that it splits into wood and mastic.