June Favourites...

Not so many, as we were away in Zakynthos for two weeks. Once this heatwave passes, I'll be better able to get on with culling and editing some photos from our holiday. I'll add two at the bottom for now - a basket of pelargoniums in a little alcove in an old monastery wall, and a flight of stairs I spotted in Zakynthos town on our last day.

This month's blog header is a little baby bluetit in the garden last summer. I'm still seeing and hearing plenty of young fledglings in the hedge this week, and am trying to keep the water dish topped up for them.

The wedding card was a commission from a work colleague, with a request for those words, a butterfly, hearts and flowers theme and vintage if possible. The hearts were what I found hardest to work in, and they're pretty so small, so I did add in a pair of intertwined gold hearts on the box envelope as well as a larger butterfly.

Beach Bums

After a very wet and windy week which has brought almost all the leaves down, it was good to look back at some holiday photos this evening. Mind you, the day all these were taken we were far from being beach bums. It was the longest walk we did, several kilometres each way along the beach, and when it did get a little cloudy it was a welcome break from the intense sunshine. Even though we started quite early in the morning, soon after it got bright, it was still getting close to the midday heat when we were returning. Part of this was not intentional. We'd had to cross two rivers, one of which had a bridge, one didn't. C doesn't like walking barefoot on the beach, so to cross the one with no bridge he has to take off his sandals, get across, then dry his feet and put his sandals back on. Well, that's the way he does it...We stopped and turned back when we got to a third river. So, on the way back he decided, rather optimistically, that he could take a running jump over the one with no bridge, and save having to take his sandals off. He still maintains that he could easily have jumped that distance if he'd been taking off from firm ground, but my point is that he knew he was taking off from soft sand. And of course he landed in the middle of the river, and wanted to give his sandals time to dry off a bit by towelling them. At first I just stood in the shade, but even there the flies were biting me, so I decided to go for a swim, and then C decided that he'd get in too and then his sandals could have even longer to get dry. It was a lovely swim, and totally isolated except for one fisherman, but it certainly prolonged the walk.
On the outward bound leg we'd seen so many things washed up along the shoreline... a lot of these tiny little fishes. By the return journey the wasps were feasting on them.



A dead dragonfly...

Some little sea snails - at least these were still alive...



We're pretty sure this was alive too - it moved, and it seemed to have antennae, but more than anything else it reminded me of those little Lithops plants that look like stones.I think the green things were wing cases.



Traces of birds...(we saw the birds too)



And these last photos should really have been first, chronologically speaking.





At last I am starting to feel a bit better, but not quite up to investigating why Blogger is being so uncooperative about uploading photos this week. It seems to have partially cropped the photos, but if you click on them you can get the full picture. I think I'll take the laptop to bed with me now and do some research.

Bits and pieces...

Still plugging away winnowing out some photos and picking the best for uploading. I managed to get through a good few tonight while on the phone to my dad. I mentioned that the old town was on the hill - quite a few of the streets are steps, as in the first photo here.

 

These lovely red shutters were on the Port Authority building. We couldn't see it from the beach at all, but once you'd swum out a little bit, there they were, a lovely splash of colour.

And this cat on a roof under the moon was just across the road from it, on an evening walk.

There were two main churches in the town - one near us, much newer, complete with air-conditioning.
This one was up at the top of the hill near the castle.

No air-con in this one, but benches around the outside and lots of shade from the trees.

Beacons on the hill

When we were looking at the sketch map of Astros, we couldn't work out what one of the little drawings was - turned out it was a castle!
In the bakery where we used to get our breakfast, there were three photos on the wall of Astros going back to the early 20th century, from about 19-something to 1928. At that stage it looks as if it was pretty much a few houses tumbling down the hill with the castle on it. There's a small open air theatre, and a little lighthouse. When you walk up to the castle, there's a hidden bit of the headland, with another beacon on it, this one solar-powered. Someone in the village was telling us that one hadn't been there all that long, only since the area got developed more so that the original beacon was lost in all the village lights. The hill top was covered with almond trees - with tiny, very bitter almonds. There were also splashes of little cyclamen growing here and there - even in cracks in the rocks.  I can't find a date for the castle; it was remarkably spacious inside those walls, but not all that old looking. However there used to be a much older settlement on the same site - you could still see traces of the walls. In the night photo, you can see the lit-up cross on the church that was downhill from the castle.

Athens Miscellany

Just a few snippets to wrap Athens up. On our Sunday morning there we started off by finding somewhere for coffee and then went for a walk in the National Garden just beside the Parliament building.
The Zappion was built in 1878 and donated to the nation by the Zappas brothers from Ipirus. This building was the first to hold an indoor Olympic event, in the 1896 Olympics.

Zappion Palace

On our way from there to the Acropolis we passed this brass band gathered at an entrance. We were hoping to hear them and would have waited around, but it turned out that they were just waiting for a coach, so we didn't get to here them. Last year in Zakynthos we heard a Cypriot marching band one evening - it was lovely.

Dionisiou Aeropagitou, leading up to the Acropolis, is a pedestrian street, full of street performers and buskers but also quite residential, and with a church. The balcony and lantern were along this street, as well as the church.

Athens continued...

Temple of Olympian Zeus

Erechtheion (on the Acropolis)

Herod Atticus Odeon (I think - there were two amphitheatres)

Gate of Andrianos

Roofscape and cityscape

Athens

Thinking laterally about interpretations of "Berried Treasure" made me think of the bottom drawer of my freezer, and the fact that it has far too many packs of cranberries in it, given that they'll be appearing in the shops again soon. So I made these:
Cranberry Spice Squares
1 cup cranberries
1 tsp each soda, cinnamon, cloves, ground nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg

Chop the cranberries coarsely. Sift the flour with the salt, soda and spices.
Cream butter and sugar together till light and fluffy, then add the egg. Add the flour in three parts alternately with the milk. Stir in the cranberries.
Bake in a greased 8" square pan at 350F / 170C for about an hour. Cool in the pan for ten minutes before turning out.
There's an optional frosting which I have tried but don't usually bother with - 3 oz cream cheese beaten till light, then beat in 2 tblsp cranberry sauce, then 3 1/2 cups icing/confectioners sugar.
This recipe comes from Boston Tea Parties - Recipes from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
A much loved and well used book. Back in the days when C started his job in a fine-art supplies company there were three members of staff and the boss, and I used to make a batch of cookies for them every week. By the time I joined the company there were six members of staff including a couple who were not too disciplined and the cookies didn't always last even a day, so at some stage I gave up making them, but by then I had worked my way through a considerable amount of recipes from Boston Tea Parties.


I'm starting my brief tour of Athens with a picture from our last day. We met relatives of C's sister-in-law and had a lovely time with them. They met us at the bus station and we went to where B works before they brought us back to their apartment. From up on the roof there was a great view across to the Acropolis!

I think we were lucky in that both times we were in Athens it was actually cloudy and overcast much of the time and consequently not too hot. It was such a mixture of old ruins in amongst all the buildings. The Parthenon itself is undergoing extensive restoration.

Parthenon

Temple of Athene Nike (I think)

A Fishy Tale

I think I mentioned that Astros was a busy little fishing harbour as well as having some very (VERY) fancy yachts and so on.
Quite apart from the fleet of little fishing boats, this was also evidenced by the number of fish shops in the village:

Plus one other more sterile, less photogenic sign which I didn't bother with.