Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

My OH is pretty good but it's an awfully difficult language to learn! It's not the same as Greek, even Greek nationals find the dialect difficult to understand!

I always converse with locals with the good manners I have learned like Efharisto ( thank you) Kalimera ( good morning) kalinikta ( goodnight) Yassas ( hello and goodbye) parakalo ( you are welcome and please) etc, but 90% of Cypriots will answer you in English but they appreciate the effort that you make.

But have learned off pat 'ena bera parakalo' the Keo beer here is quite moorish.

Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

Those are the most important polite words that you have learned. We in the UK are so fortunate that may countries abroad appear to know the basic English ...... we here, are the lazy ones when it comes to learning a language!

'ena bera parakalo' ....... glad you got your priorities right!

Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

Yesterday we raked the olives off the trees, as they are ready. We have only ten trees some which are young but nevertheless quite a few baskets of olives, not enough at all to take to press into oil, but enough to pickle, trouble is I don,t like them! so OH will do some jars for himself and has given the rest away!

Things grow so quickly here and in abundance, you end up giving lots away. At the end of many village roads you will see 'trust tables' piled with bags of oranges, mandarins lemons etc and a tin for leaving a little bit of money. But often once they know you locals will leave fruit on your doorstep, we have had the local farmer grow water melon in the field just at the side of us. He shouted one night when he was harvesting to just pick whatever we wanted every night!!

The next crop of fruit that I look forward to will be strawberries Cyprus has the nearest flavor to British that I have tasted. The first strawberries of the season we ever had here was the day after Boxing day! They start off expensive, then once the glut starts it drops down considerably.

Once evert two years in a village nearby there is a strawberry festival, strawberry everything is sold or given away! Fabulous! The strawberry liquer is moorish

There are lots of festivals related to fruit over the island, plus peanuts! One of the popular ones has to be the wine festival in Limassol. The vineyard areas in the Troodos very popular.

We grow strawberries in the garden but have trouble keeping the birds off them.

We have just picked the last of the pomegranates but the figs are still coming in thick and fast, will have to find alternative uses for them soon. Figs and ice cream is getting boring!

Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

For the last week we have been trimming the conifers, unlike the British variety they are much less dense and thinner branches, much easier to trim, but again in just three years they have grown from small plants of under a foot to well over 10ft. It's a big job as around the boundary fence we have planted 350 of the damn things! But they protect the garden from the wind, the dust is much less and of course a natural privacy. We think that in the coming years we may well have to get a man in to do the job! Our petrol hedge cutter is good but a long reach one next year might do away with the need for high stepladders.

Much trimming and tidying happening now, the rains will soon make the weeds appear, it's rained twice this week for half an hour each time. I trimmed back the honeysuckle this week, the overgrowth was huge and filled the back of the pickup! The next big job is the Bourgenvillia that needs tough gardening gloves, and is always a shame to chop back as it's still in full flower! But it would be over the roof if we didn't.

Our next house will be most definitely small in size and the garden will have just pot plants in it we have a labour of love here, but it's work intensive. It does keep you trim though.


It will though be our last big project, one day in the near future we will sell it on and feel satisfied at what we've achieved. We both reach 60 in 2013 so that's when we decided the next move may well be. Not sure where, not sure if but do know that we thought another 7 years somewhere else would be nice. Maybe a bit closer to the UK, and this time we won,t buy anymore just rent. Then back to the UK after that, but who knows?

OH has decided to finally finish tiling the outside 'bandstand' a semi circular raised veranda in a quiet spot in the garden, ideal for watching the sunset over the mountains. Then I have to paint the metal railings around it. I stand in it most days wondering when it's finished completely what garden furniture to put in it. Something robust is needed. The sun is unmercifull in that area, the trees though on each side of it are growing nicely, so hopefully a bit of natural shade will soon be on it.

Once we finish tidying and trimming it's just a case of weed watch and snail watch for a while! The snails are a nightmare, after rain they come towards the house like the day of the triffids!

Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

It sounds like you have been very busy over there, Lyn. I like the thought of all that fruit...... and fresh strawberries on Boxing day would be heaven for me!

Regarding the figs, I have started buying fig jam and love it ....... could you, perhaps, make jam with your abundance of figs?

My daughter's F-I-L comes back from Protaras today, he did mention how much cooler the evenings are getting there.

Re: Milo's Garden in Cyprus

Fig jam is a good idea could give some to neighbors at Christmas! Will look into that. I will attempt some baking with the figs as well. But we have to give some away, we just cannot use them all. We have learned to our astonishment that we have too much to use, but it's nice to hand it out.

The veg patch is the next job, in fact we are going to reduce the size down quite a bit, we just grew too much so have decided to divide it up into usable box sections in each corner and line and gravel the centre. I got to the point I was getting worried about how many cucumbers you can eat without possibly doing some harm. The tomatoes I also made into pasta sauce. Courgettes too became a problem lol.

Going to plant some potatoes this year, lots growing in the fields nearby, Cyprus potatoes are lovely.