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.
 

Endaksi, so this weekend I've been busy making a flickr page for all pictures related to Chios.
I figured that it's a good way to a) show off my island so y'all start queuing up to come and visit me, and b) finally get a grip and organize the gazillion photos I took since discovering the advantages of digital photography and delete the rest that is taking up unnecessary space on my hard disks.
Well, it's far from complete so don't forget and look at it from time to time (link can be also found on my profile page). Some pictures have already been posted here, but not all of you might have seen them. And lots of pics still need to be scanned (pre-digital), and those are the images I took as a tourist way back then, meaning there's lots of beeaauutiifull sights waiting to be added...go check it out:

www.flickr.com/photos/xiostales

The good thing about living on a non-touristic Greek island is the authenticity of the people and their habits, the unspoiled nature and lonely beaches, no overkill of annoying tourists and a thousand other things I have or have not yet written about in this blog.

The bad things about living on a non-touristic Greek island, however, are the costly travel tickets, the difficult connections from most European countries, the long travel and waiting hours due to inconvenient airplane or ferry schedules and the absence of charter planes or high-speed ferries most of the year, resulting in my friends to cancel one after the other their promised stay in this beautiful habitat.

So. This has been the third alleged cancellation this year and I'm quite sad and disappointed. I understand the reasons of every one behind that, and blame it on the economy mostly, but dammit did I look forward to seeing my friends again (some of them I haven't seen since I moved here).

That made me wonder: Should I promote this island just a tad more so you cannot withstand a visit any longer? Did I bore everyone to death with my pictures of nature and flowers? Maybe I should show you pictures of sights/buildings/people worth seeing so you'll skip your thoughts of going to Crete instead? Yes, let me do that, so that someday you'll decide no matter what you'll come and visit me and my life here.

Because the absolutely best thing of living on a non-touristic Greek island is when you trample through the underwood searching for asparagus and totally unaware of everything else literally bump into ( this: )

 
 

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.
 

 
Ok, so I just went with the dog for a longer walk and got really scared. Here's the story:
 
We went up to the cloister on the hill and farther into uninhabited masticland. Lately I've chosen this route mainly, cos the view from the hilltop is spectacular, especially when there's a lot of dramatic clouds hanging over the island or the sun is disappearing in the whole spectrum of reds behind the southwestern mountain range. The last days it has been very stormy and cold, and the shoreline is white from the breaking waves. A lonely ship was still out there, and I wondered why it didn't choose the safety of the bay to last out the strong winds.
 

(that's Turkey over there; or, even more spectacular: I'm standing in Europe, taking pictures of Asia...;)...just sayin')
 
Anyway, it was quite late when we started our walk, and while we were continuing our path round the cape it got dimmer and dimmer. Somewhere in the middle of that path we passed a cave in the mountain, the entrance to one of the many tunnels leading into the mountain, where people formerly used to mine stones. The tunnels are declared forbidden territory, since they do not have any supporting constructions and thusly are very dangerous. I've always felt a little uncomfortable passing by the dark hole (not bigger than a square metre), as it is the farthermost point from the village, hidden from any watching eye, and you are not able to see anything inside, therefore imagining everything. When we passed by today it was dark already, and there, all of a sudden, was a shoe lying on the path, which hadn't been there yesterday.
 

(does it look like the newest NikeAir? Hmm?)
 
Now normally I wouldn't find a shoe too spooky, but this was a children's shoe and apparently very old. I always watch the ground, as I collect garbage thrown away by indifferent farmers or hunters, so I know it wasn't there before, not yesterday, nor last week. And the possibility that today, on a very cold, stormy, rainy day, a farmer went out with his child to chop some wet wood and lost the shoe on his way back is highly unlikely. Most enjoy a self-declared vacation. In addition, it didn't look like a modern-day shoe. It looked much older. I don't know why, but it gave me the creeps; it still does, and while I write this, I still look over my shoulder, feeling nervously alert. Now I don't know how an average mind works in such a situation, but mine started to pop up all kinds of  nerve-wracking, horrifying scenarios ever imagined or seen in movies, especially now that the surrounding environment was dark, the gnarly mastic trees starting to pose as a cabinet of macabre figurines and the running around of the dog in the underwood making all sorts of weird noises didn't help much. I sped up like a race-walker and only calmed down when I saw the first lights of the village.
 

(this was taken the day before yesterday, when it was obviously still twilight)
 
Back in the sanity of my home* I try to think rationally, although that is one of my lesser characteristic features. What was it then? One of the many foxes who played with a shoe he found somewhere? Where did he find the shoe? Inside the tunnel? To whom belonged it once? Is there a body somewhere inside? - I think I have neglected the other routes for a long time.
 
I think I should dress myself and join the nonsense of New Year's Eve. Heh.
 
*where both Yanni and I believe lives a ghost as well...
 

 

©lutos2008

Three weeks ago this amazing rainbow appeared above our village, while I was finishing the last planting of new bushes. After a warm, sunny day it started all of a sudden to drizzle, and looking up puzzled I saw a part of this rainbow. So what better thing to do than chase up to the cloister on top of the hill and take picture after picture, only to figure out that it was impossible to take it all in one shot? The above is stitched together from two pictures, and you can slightly see the seam still. :P It was an amazing sight, and this picture doesn't do it justice at all; it doesn't even show the depth of the hills. I guess that's attributed to the photographer, though to my defense I might say that it was hard to see anything on the monitor, with the sun behind me and the dripping rain that forced me to protect the camera with one hand.
The funny thing was that for me it symbolizes no longer the returning sunshine (as the Bible taught us long ago ;)), but a symbol of returning rain, which is so rare and welcome in this region. Oh well, different cultures, different interpretations. Here's a 360 degree shot:
 

 
It appears too dark on YouTube, even when switching to high quality (recommended), but I hope you'll be able to see it anyway. Our village is located on the far left of the rainbow.
 

 


 

 
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.
 

 

 
 
 

 
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?
 
 

 
Time has come to collect oregano. This week and next at the latest is the ideal (and only, as some might say) period to pick the herb, as the aroma is only now, a few days prior to blossoming, intense enough for us herb freaks. And I know all the spots where the fields have not been gased with herbicides, so there's no healthier one.
As I'm probably going several times in the next days to gather my yearly consumption (and that of my family and friends), I am willing to extend my list of oregano-fans and collect some more.
 
Anybody interested in receiving ecological, hand-picked, carefully dried, most delicious oregano from our island?
 
 

Easter weekend. The night from Saturday to Sunday. Night falls on the island...a silent procession to the nearby church...all devoutly watching the priest...cough...singing the hymn of 'Christos Anesti'....hrkhrm...peace in the village...aah...even the cats have respectfully gone hiding.....phhrrt...:



Yep, it's Eastertime on Chios! But the bunny is not bringing eggs but...canons? ;)


(horrible video, just skip it as soon as you get the picture...)

I'm happily staying in my village coloring eggs for tomorrows feast, thank you.

 
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.
 
  

 
For every month of the year I'm trying to highlight one wild plant that's characteristic for that month. Either because it catches the eye or because of several other reasons that distinguishes it from the rest. Those reasons are subject to my very personal perception and interest, of course.
 
In January the otherwise scantily coloured fields started to look mauve, violet, blue, white, rose and anything possible in that colorscheme from these small flowers:
 

 
Anemone coronaria (Poppy Anemone).
The name is derived from the Greek word anemos = wind, as it was believed that the flowers of this species could only bloom in wind, and the Latin word corona = crown, which probably refers to the crown-shaped blossom.
 

 
"It is a herbaceous perennial plant growing to 20-40 cm tall (rarely to 60 cm), with a basal rosette of a few leaves, the leaves with three leaflets, each leaflet deeply lobed. The flowers are borne singly on a tall stem with a whorl of small leaves just below the flower; the flower is 3-8 cm diameter, with 5-8 red, white or blue petal-like tepals." (from Wikipedia)
I might add that the flowers on this island never cross the 40 cm. And, unlike stated in same article, I have never come across a scarlet red blossom.

 
Yesterday was a beautiful day, a couple of days after the last rain (wish we had more though), meaning the ground was not too muddy. The sun was shining, it was perfect for a walk. This is the season were everybody picks wild greens of the fields, like dandelions, yellow mustard, bear's garlic, ribwort, sorrel and what not. Me too.
 

Samples of edible greens
 
I still haven't learned all the different edible plants, but I like it to be surprised again and again. "What? That's edible? Whattayathink!" Armed with a small classification booklet I cut off any possibly edible plant, carry them home and with the help of my larger herbivory bibles and a huge dose of Google I try to figure out just how dangerous it would be to put this newly found plant into my mouth.