Lavender, tarragon…and sunshine

Lovely and sunny today. Yippee! It feels like summer! Have put seedlings on the kitchen windowsill along with some other grown from seed plants that need to be potted out sometime soon. My little patio garden is looking quite lush! It gets lots of sunshine in weather like this. A great place to sunbathe, read etc. Have noticed that slugs really seem to like the tarragon. I really like that herb myself. The lavender plants in containers are quite big now and the Cordyline has a nice tropical look to it. Hope the large bumble bee who was a regular visitor a while ago returns to hum around the flowers. He/she was the biggest bumble bee I’ve ever seen…often get bees in my wee garden especially when the honeysuckle flowers.

Went to a wonderful local Church of Ireland fete last Saturday. Bargains included a lovely woven bag, a leather handbag, a bottle of Yardley lavender perfume and a radio/cassette player…for one Euro each! Pleased about the radio/cassette player because I still have loads of cassettes. Played ‘The Year Of The Cat’ by Al Stewart when I returned home with my purchases.. That tape reminds me of my first holiday to Greece many years ago. (I bought the tape around that time.) I remember arriving in Piraeus and thinking ‘Oh God, this doesn’t look at all like the gorgeous Greek photos!’ But then I hopped on a boat and went to one of the beautiful islands (Aegina). I was so relieved that the sea was such a beautiful blue and the countryside looked so enchanting. A fab place for a holiday!

Went to some other islands too, including one that seemed to have been almost undiscovered by visitors. I believe there were tourists elsewhere on the island, but the place I stayed in (a very basic but adequate hotel) had chickens wandering around the back yard and a tiny number of guests. We had the sultry little beach almost to ourselves but, as I mentioned, that was many years ago. If I visited the place now it would probably have many swanky facilities. While there I ate pretty much the same thing every evening at the small and seemingly only nearby cafe (I think it involved the word ‘bifsteak’…that’s how I pronounced it anyway…the menu was not extensive).

I remember buying the weirdest phrase-book I’ve ever come across on that holiday. It was more like a script for a dodgy tv drama than a tourist aid. No longer have it but sentences like these would not have looked that out of place in it. ‘”I am satiated by the view around me” and “Please pick up big cases and heave them to my room. No I do not require trousers pressed. I would like a cup of English tea in a wide cup with much milk…not goat’s milk…from the cow. I would be pleased for you to tell me of shop where hairs are shortened. Do you know of place where there are purchases for Colgate toothpaste?’

I know there are loads of wonderful mainstream Greek phrase-books and that they are also far less entertaining. This one was delightfully quirky!

WARM wishes and sparkles,

Grace

‘She has an assured style and a wonderful insight into the separated
lady’s lot…I couldn’t put it down. I literally read it from cover to cover.’ Re ‘Ordinary Miracles’ by Muriel Bolger, ‘No Jacket Required’ RTE RADIO ONE