Waah....

We were all set to watch the next instalment of The Beiderbecke Tapes as light entertainment last night. And the DVD player wouldn't work. Bit of thinking, and maybe my 30 day trial of the nVidia decoder for using with Windows Media Player had expired. So I tried loading my old DVD program - no joy. Ten o'clock last night, and I was still getting nowhere, even after paying to download a PowerDVD decoder. Frustration all round. Things are partially working today - but I want my money back if CyberLink's tech support can't deal with what seems to be a common fault. They suggest I update my graphics drivers - well, I had enough cop to do that before I contacted them.
Anway, today was spent mostly in the kitchen. We have a Tanzanian friend coming tomorrow before she heads back home for good. I was going to make a tagine, but there was no fresh coriander in the local greengrocers, and he wasn't going to be getting any in till after lunch. I hoped to be finished in the kitchen by then, so we're having a curry instead. It's called Beef with Cashew Nuts, but really I think it's a case of a Korma by any other name, with a bit more cardamom than normal. For dessert I'm trying a creme caramel with a difference: the milk and cream were infused for a while with coffee beans and a cinnamon stick. It smelled almost like toasted coconut, for some strange reason. I also made a batch of brownies, and right now it's time to go and cut them, ready for afternoon coffee.

Just two Greek photos today - a beer bottle on the old disused salt flats, and an old Venetian bridge. I think the name translates as five arches. Five something or other; I recognise the five, and am guessing the arches. These were both on the east coast. The salt flats were amazing, very photogenic in an abstract way. Swirls, and cracked ground, and red and white texture. I don't know if the red was just from the soil - not the colour of the rest of the earth in that particular area, or from iron salts somewhere reacting with all the salt.

Still on holidays...

...I wish. Mind you, work was cancelled yesterday, and when it's cancelled at short notice we still get paid. I was just about to sign in when I heard my phone beep, so I promptly headed home again.
These photos are all from the south of the island. I've included a rare one of me. The biggest problem with the dirt-bike (for me - having to to kickstart it all the time was getting to C after a few days) was that there was no storage space, so I had to carry a backpack all the time. Next time I'll remember to pack a bungee cord or two.
The first two photos are both of Marathonissi Island - also known as Turtle Island, for obvious reasons. It is, actually, also one of the beaches that the loggerhead turtles nest on. The following two pictures are another turtle-nesting beach, Gerakas, at the southern end of the island. It has amazing rock structures, clay and red rock. The turtle beaches are lovely beaches to visit - they are all in a National Marine Park area. Because of the nests, people have to stay within 3 metres of the sea, and also any known nests which are marked with little wooden cages. There are also no water sports - beyond pedalos and little canoes - and people have to leave by sun-down. This was our favourite of all the 12 beaches/swimming sites we visited. Even though it was at the end of a pretty windy road with a LOT of hairpin bends over gorges (dry now, but rivers in winter) we went three times.





This is Agios Sostis - no turtles here. The sand was rock hard, the sea stayed shallow for as far as I swam out, and was so warm it was like swimming in a tepid bath. There was a little islet off it which had been formed in an earthquake in the 17th century. But since there was a €4 admission charge to see it, including a *free* drink in one of the two bars, we passed up on the experience. And having seen it from the far side on the morning we hired a motorboat, I don't think we missed a lot. We could see the clay formation in this picture as soon as we came over the crest of the hill above the port.
The next photo is Limni Keri port and village, seen from a headland above it. There is a large marshland area behind it, where there are some natural bitumen ponds. It's so overgrown with rushes and long grasses that we couldn't see them, but my goodness, we could most certainly smell them. And the last photo is nothing special, it was taken at Keri headland, and I've only stuck it in because I am in it :D. The whole headland was lovely, heavily wooded with some type of light-green pine, and smelling just heavenly.

Sunrises and sunsets...

Sunsets were easy. The only problem was that the old bridge, which features in a sunrise photo, was VERY popular at sunset. We'd go down, and there would be two people already there, one posing on the bridge left right and centre, one taking photos, and then changing over. Sometimes with just a mobile phone camera...that's fine, they're entitled to it... but sunset doesn't last long. After we'd tried for four nights, I gave up and went for sunrise instead. This isn't the best photo of the bridge, but it does show the sunrise. I'll throw in a night photo of the bridge, too. In fact, even in the morning a group of lads arrived for a photo shoot. It took them all of three minutes at the most - they hopped up, took one photo and walked on.
I don't know how these photos will look - I edited them all last night to look as I remembered, and then when I tried uploading a couple for the SCS photo challenge, they looked too dark. Thanks, Elisa, for letting me know it's not just me who has this problem!
So here's hoping...
MORNING
The first three are sunrise. Which was about quarter past seven, so not too early, and the clouds on the horizon slowed it down a bit too. There were several people raking their parts of the beach, getting ready to put out the loungers for the day. And even a couple of people swimming. It was so peaceful and tranquil, I really enjoyed being out that early. Plus, no need for suntan lotion!!



EVENING
This was taken from our balcony. I am glad we were in a hotel a bit over the town, even if it was an uphill walk. It gave us beautiful views over the sea from the balcony, and over some rural inland parts from the back door. One evening there was a storm over the mainland. It was so far we couldn't even hear the thunder, but we could see the lightning - sometimes just an orange glow round the clouds, and sometimes real forks flashing across the sky.
One sunset was taken on the beach. One was from a taverna on the hill above us - an even steeper walk. We did go up on the motorbike for dinner, but we'd walked up a couple of times. The views were wonderful - unfortunately it was probably the least nice of all the meals we had, so we didn't go back.

North Zakynthos

All these photos were taken up in the north of the island. The little lighthouse at Cape Skinari is pretty much the northern tip, and the yacht was taken just below it. The two windmills were just slightly to the east, a few hundred metres. If I was understanding the Greek signs correctly, the house one may have been available for renting. I'd have loved to see inside it, but I'm not sure if I would want to stay somewhere that had so many tourists looking at it! We climbed down a lot of very steep steps and swam at the bottom of the cliff. I think that was where C became addicted to snorkelling...I am too short-sighted to see the fish well unless they're near the surface, so I did better in shallower waters.
The shipwreck is often described as one of the iconic views on Zakynthos, although it's only been there since the early eighties. The story is that it was being used to smuggle cigarettes, and ran aground in the cove in stormy weather. The cove is only accessible by sea, and it is even more beautiful than it looks in the photos. C was rhapsodizing about it. In fact, he had to take some of the photos - I climbed down a long way, and then it just got too steep and sheer. Wish I hadn't lost my head for heights! The sheer cliff in the first photo is the left side of the cove. There were some beautiful butterflies, almost impossible to take photos of. For sure we saw some Scarce Swallowtails. I don't know what this little one that landed on my toe was - and of course I had the wide-angle lens on the camera at the time, for all the panoramic views. A visit to a good butterfly site is called for, as there are still two or three I am trying to identify. It amazed me how far out over the sea they flew - you could be swimming a long way out and still see them, and the morning we hired a boat I saw one a long way out.
More to follow...








This last photo was taken on the way back from the lighthouse. I thought I'd spotted the umbrella hanging by the door on our way, and asked C to stop on the way back. Unfortunately neither the scooter nor the dirt-bike that we hired were very good at starting. At least with the dirt-bike there was always a kick-start option, but it meant I was a bit slower than normal to ask him to stop for photos.

Not much time today...

There was housework to catch up on, shopping to do, two weeks worth of post to sort through, the camera to clean well after all the dust off the last two weeks (thank goodness for the built-in dust and shower-proof cover for my camera bag. Especially when we got caught out in a thunderstorm. My little camera is meant to be pretty weatherproof, but I kept the big one tucked away for the duration. If there had been some way of keeping both the camera bag and our clothes dry, I'd have loved to go for a swim during the storm, but they wouldn't both fit in my back pack. As it was, during the first downpour we had to shelter under a tree, and saw several carloads of people leaving the beach and heading for their villas.
Our little friendly robin is still as curious as ever. I had only filled one side of the feeder and gone back into the porch to get nuts for the other side when he came to see what was up. I have some different seed at the moment which includes dried fruit and dried insects, which he seems to love. So my ambition is to have him feed from my hand...I'll just have to see!!
I can't understand why the same picture looks so different depending on which package I open it in, there's even a difference between the RAW editor and the regular editor in my Olympus software. I think some day I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy calibration software...
We were back to grey weather again today - perfect for ripening tomatoes - NOT.
Hope to size and edit some Greek photos tomorrow - some of today was spent in culling them for the second time.

Back from sunshine to sunshine

We got back last night from two weeks in hot and sunny Greece - Zakynthos, to be more exact. Wonder of wonders, we've come back to a heatwave, and are still in the same t-shirts and shorts we were wearing while away - already cleaned and dried. It's going to take some severe culling and editing before I have some Greek photos to share, so here are a couple from the mixed wildflower seeds that came into bloom while we were away. Alas, I have to say that the tomatoes are scarcely any redder than in the photo in my previous post, but I believe it's been fairly wet and grey while we were away.



There's a gorgeous red poppy too, but it's past its best - luckily there still seem to be some more buds on the same stem. I love blue cornflowers and red poppies - they remind me of wheat fields in France. I think we must use more weedkiller here, I've never seen them the same way in Irish wheat fields.
I guess I'll add one photo from Zakynthos town. We went into a little haberdashery shop and bought some bright sunflower oilcloth to brighten up the kitchen table. It was an old little shop. Well, as old as anything in the town is. After the 1953 earthquake when between 60 and 70% of the building on the island were destroyed, only four buildings were left standing in Zakynthos town. So this little shop had only been there since 1953, but it can't have looked a whole lot different back then. I am sure the metre stick we used to measure the oilcloth was that old!
I could have taken a dozen pictures of all those little boxes of buttons. The owner insisted that I get behind the counter so that C could take a picture of the two of us, and then I got a kiss on each cheek. We don't have a lot of Greek, and he didn't have a lot of English, but as always C singing to himself got a response, and he told us that he used to sing too. Up in the mountains in a little taverna we met another guy with little English, but again we communicated a bit; after I pointed out his bouzouki case to C, he came over and got it out, and played a bit for us. He just plays for pleasure with the family - his wife plays piano and one of his kids plays alto sax. The Greeks obviously use the same solfege system for their music as the French do, because that was how he explained the tuning to us. It's certainly much more universal than C, D, E, F, and so much more useful, I can't understand why we don't use it much here.

Flowers - again

...and green tomatoes. I hope we have enough sunshine to ripen them. These aren't even the ones I planted - these are ones that grew from seeds in the compost. Plum tomatoes, evidently. And the Cosmos has finally decided to flower - I hope it lasts till after we get back from holidays. Maybe I just didn't feed things enough.
Been watching To Kill a Mocking Bird today. I started re-reading the book for the umpteenth time, and then it mysteriously ended up on C's side of the bed. I got it back again, but decided to watch the film too - no hardship watching Gregory Peck. I'd forgotten how many of the little details the film leaves out, though.

More flowers - and a recipe

Hmm, didn't realise I'd copied the Chicken Kebabs with Satay Sauce from the laptop and already posted it...so what else?
This is my regular Swiss Roll recipe, which we often have at the weekends. I am afraid to say that the two of us can finish it off between us, with morning and afternoon coffee, breakfast on Sunday and maybe Sunday tea.
My recipe come from Alison Uttley's Recipes from an Old Farmhouse. My copy is an old hardback one (1966) which came from my grandmother's house. It was still in print as a paperback fairly recently, because not long after my mother gave me that copy, someone gave her a brand new paperback one. Mine is illustrated by Pauline Baynes, who did the illustrations for the Narnia books.
I loved the Little Grey Rabbit books by the same author (illustrated by Margaret Tempest) when I was little. I still have a little wooden Fuzzypeg hedgehog in a pram made out of three quarters of a coconut, which my dad made for my fifth birthday. I was in hospital having my tonsils out on the day, but when I came home, the cord for pulling the pram along was peeking out from behind the sofa, so that I would find it. Little Grey Rabbit was what I got on my star chart when I was being good and not too sulky - on those days I got a crab. They are one of the books I can remember going to the bookshops in Bray and Stillorgan to buy when I had money after my birthday and Christmas, and I still have them all. Some are more battered than others! She also wrote a very good book for older children about a traveller in time, who went back to the time of Elizabeth and Mary, and a plot by a landed Catholic family to get Mary back on the throne.
The cookery book harks back to her own childhood on a big farm, and is interesting to read, as well as having several recipes I often use.
So - for the Swiss Roll, at last. It's 4 eggs and six ounces (3/4 cup) castor sugar beaten till very thick. Then gently fold in 4 ounces sifted flour with 1 tsp baking powder (about 1/2 cup flour after sifting), and vanilla essence. Also lemon zest, if you like. Bake in a large swiss-roll tin lined with baking parchment in a hot oven. It takes about 8 minutes. Allow to cool for a minute after removing from the oven, then turn onto a clean damp tea towel sprinkled with castor sugar. Cover with the rest of the towel, and when cool spread with jam and whipped cream.
When she made it, they had to beat it over hot water, by hand, and it must have taken forever. I am very glad to have a mixer that only takes about five minutes! Especially when I remember Laura Ingalls Wilder's accounts of beating the eggs for her wedding cake, and how long that took.
More flowers from yesterday...pretty sure the third one is some species of Echinacea, just not the one I have in the garden.

Botanic Gardens

There was such lovely light last night that we were expecting good weather this morning, and planned to go to the Botanic Gardens if we were right. The weather forecast I had looked at said sunny spells, the one C looked at said heavy rain. I think my forecast is more reliable!
We saw very few squirrels today, but were lucky to see a moorhen and some little chicks out on the lily pads. Just look at the size of the chick's feet in the first picture - they are ginormous. The picture of the mallard is older - I was checking out some older moorchick photos from a couple of years back when I was temping in the Cancer Society and used to walk along the canal at lunch time.






A couple of flower pictures - I'll probably post more tomorrow, as I re-sized several. The first one is a reflection in one of the glasshouses, it was fascinating to look at.

Quick shot

My new computer arrived on Wednesday. It's like greased lightning compared to my old one - 2 GB of photos transfer in 2 minutes. And we can watch DVDs again easily. We have no television, so the advent of DVDs for computers was wonderful.
We are currently watching The Beiderbecke Trilogy. I saw it a long time ago with my mother, but somehow C has only ever seen the second and third series, and is now laughing his way through the first one. He chuckles his way through the book too, every time he re-reads it. If you like good writing and dry humour, either the DVDs or book are worth looking into. The book, alas, is long out of print. When a friend thought she had lost ours, I was more than a little upset. After discovering that a secondhand copy would cost over sixty euro, she redoubled her efforts to find it, and succeeded. It will never be loaned out again without a written undertaking to return or replace it.
This is just a quick shot of a little lupin that is flowering in a pot by the back gate. It was perfectly backlit when I went out to open the gate this afternoon before C got home. But a lupin in August - I am sure I have often had them in May. After it's flowered, I'll take it out of the pot and plant it in the border - it should come up again next year.




Also a couple of shots of the little robin. I was just looking at the first ones I took of him, he's grown so much. Being ruthless I deleted 200 photos from my July folder.