The wall

So it's now August - Where has the time gone? My last post was on 5th April and it was the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying lockdown. 
My brother lives in the UK and loves making bread/baguettes/hot cross buns etc but with lockdown in the UK it seemed that the procurement of yeast was a problem for him. Being of a vulnerable age he obviously couldn't venture far anyway with lockdown, so I managed to find yeast here on Kefalonia and sent it over to him (enough for 144 loaves of bread). 
I was then challenged by my brother to make baguettes. This I took on, but low and behold when I went to source yeast there was none anywhere! My brother laughingly said he could send some of the yeast I'd sent him - back to me, but a few days later it was back in stock and my baguette making session began. I felt the need to send him a photo of each stage of the process......just to prove I was actually making them and not just buying baguettes from the local bakery. 
It was something different for me to try and what better way to spend some lockdown time than making bread. They were delicious. 

Home made baguettes

  

I took the opportunity to start painting the garden wall on 11th April. It had been painted already by the previous house owners but the colours were looking a little pale and I really wanted some sunflowers painted on it, the main reason being that the villa is called 'Sunflower Villa'. We can't have a villa with no sunflowers and we haven't had much success growing the real things. The sunflowers we've grown in previous years have been rather disappointing. We've had them in pots and in the ground, and watched them grow really tall, thinking they would develop big heads, but no, but the heads are teeny weeny. We've tried different seeds too, so now I'm thinking permanent painted sunflowers are the way to go.  Enter the acrylic paints. 
Originally I set out to do a simple makeover by re-painting the original trees and then adding the sunflowers but I ended up taking some trees out completely, changing two trees into a lemon tree and pomegranate tree followed by the addition of a sun and a sparkly moon - and yes it really does sparkle when the sun shines on it and also at night with the very well placed overhead street light. (See video below)
Nothing like starting my new found hobby on a big scale.

2016 - The garden wall when we arrived on Kefalonia.

2020 - Getting to work 

 

Φουντούκι (Foudouki or hazelnut in English) is the very friendly cat from Donkey Trekking Kefalonia. He watched over me and sat on my knee at one point while I was painting! 

2020 - Repainted orange tree, new pomegranate and lemon trees plus the moon

Finally - the sunflowers glowing in the sun next to the orange tree.

  

The overhanging trailing jasmine on the left is real, so makes it look like a tree

Mark painted one of the sunflower heads and me the other. When I stood back to look at them, I noticed Mark's was different. My seeds were dotted randomly about but Mark's were arranged in a more formal way..... according to the Fibonacci sequence. Now why didn't I think of that? After all, I wrote a blog post about it not that long ago!

Now we can have sunflowers all year round. The sun isn't finished yet and I still want to paint a large gecko, a dragonfly, a bee, a butterfly, a ladybird, a bat and some stars on the wall but it's too hot at the moment. Come the autumn..... 

The perfect place for a large gecko

The wall with the sun at the far end 

If you play the video below you will see the sparkly moon but also hear the Eurasian Scops Owl in the background. It sounds just like a submarine sonar - very regular and same pitch throughout. In the four years we've been here we've heard plenty but never seen one. Apparently they camouflage themselves very well against the bark of the olive trees.

Sparkly moon

We had some lovely weather towards the end of April, the beaches deserted. Normally people would have arrived for their holidays but because of coronavirus the only inhabitants were the ducks, much to Bobby's pleasure. One day he ran into the sea after them and started swimming out to sea. His hearing isn't too good these days so he didn't hear us shout at him to come back.I thought at one point he might reach Ithaca!

Sami in the distance

One drenched Bobby later.............and why can't I chase the ducks?

Getting back to the garden, in early May our Passionflower, which is growing up the pergola, flowered. What an amazing flower! It's so complex. In Greece it's known as 'ρολογιά' οr 'clock' plant.

Blue Passionflower

My Greek lessons are coming along nicely. We are just starting to put sentences together using the present tense and the future tense. We had homework recently which involved writing a piece about Sami, our local town and one of the main ports on the East coast of Kefalonia. I decide to write about a statue on the harbour front which we pass on our dog walk pretty much every day and yet know nothing about apart from the fact that I think he has an unusually long body!

Who is this man?

Long body

Sami harbour front - empty (May1st)

Inscription

I've always wondered who the man is so thought it was a good way of combining my Greek literary skills with a bit of detective work. Easier said than done! My homework turned out to be quite complicated, and that was before I even attempted to write it in Greek!

I asked around and got a few different answers to the question, "Who is he?"

He stands on a stone plinth with pictures of boats and an inscription which I photographed and then translated using Google translate. Gobbledegook! I couldn't make head nor tail of it.  Even someone who IS Greek had trouble understanding it. There was a name at the bottom - ΚΑΒΒΑΔΙΑΣ - but was that the name of the man or the man who wrote the words on the inscription? 

More detective work ensued. I have to get to the bottom of things. It turns out that the statue is of the unknown sailor and the words on the inscription are by the Greek poet, writer and sailor Nikos Kavvadias whose parents were from Kefalonia. (Confusingly there is also a statue of Nikos Kavvadias in Argostoli, the capital, on the West coast of Kefalonia). The statue here in Sami was made by the Kefalonian sculptor, Memas Kalogiratos.

Now give me a few years to write that in Greek. My homework might be late....

In the middle of June we attended the funeral of a local Greek man whom we had come to know. He and his wife were a lovely couple who had often dropped by to give us a tray of home made orange cake, marmalade or plants and seeds. We had seen him chopping wood earlier in the year and walking with his wife along to the local church which they maintained immaculately. Then he was gone. We hadn't realised he had been ill.
Here on Kefalonia, like in most of Greece, the death and funeral notice is advertised on paper stapled onto telegraph poles or trees around the area, to inform people of when and where the service will take place. 

                                                               

In the first photograph below, you can see a tall sunflower just in front of the bell tower on the left of the church. These are slightly different from normal sunflowers as the flower heads look like pom poms. He had these growing in his garden too, and I had mentioned last year that they were really pretty and unusual so he had given us some seeds to grow some ourselves. 
As I write this post in the middle of August, ours has flowered.

Local church

Our 'Pom Pom" sunflower

Local graveyard, not far from the church,

On the night of 18th July we went comet hunting. Comet NEOWISE was only discovered in March this year and as it doesn't approach Earth for another 4400-6700 years, we thought we'd better catch a glimpse of it. No clouds and dark skies with little light pollution. Perfect astronomical conditions. Five days before its closest approach to Earth and it was approximately 70 million miles away. My Panasonic Lumix camera can deal with that I thought. Ha! Not a chance. All I got was a pitch black sky, even on the starry night sky setting on a tripod with a 15 and 30 second exposure. No stars, and more importantly, no comet - nothing. Very disappointing. Fortunately Mark took his camera, a Nikon D3100 so these are a couple of his photos.

Comet NEOWISE above Agia Effimia, as seen from Loutro Beach - Sami

Comet NEOWISE as seen from Antisamos viewpoint

We had a boat trip to Ithaca in August with friends. I love a boat trip. I love Ithaca. We've been a few times now either by boat or by car. This time we went round the southern headland of Ithaca for a change and kept to the southern part of Ithaca. 

Our trip around the southern part of Ithaca

Soft drinks, watermelon, and riganada as a bit of brunch and all for 25 euros. Three swim stops and lunch in Vathy. What a great day! 
We set off at 9.00am from Sami and arrived back at 4.30pm.  

Setting off at 9.00am. Leaving Sami behind.

A different view of Antisamos beach. The yachts are arriving already for the day

The Eastern side of Kefalonia that you don't get to see. No roads here

The Levante ferry 'Κεφαλονια' (Kefalonia) passing by in the Strait of Ithaca

That was close! Ithaca on the right. Kefalonia on the left

Our first swim stop was at a small jetty on the island of Λυγιά (Ligia) just off the coast of Ithaca. The water was a little rough but that doesn't stop us. Out came the snorkels and masks.

Λυγιά island

Mark and I 

It was touch and go whether we could continue as the sea was getting a little choppy but the sea calmed down for our next swim stop. 
Two large yachts were hiding in secluded bays. They can't hide from us though. The captain takes us close in to the shoreline.

We all really wanted to go on the slide 

A recent beach made by an earthquake. We can't stop here. Too dangerous.

We can stop here though - and we did!

So refreshing - We like a bit snorkel

Next it was onto Vathy (Capital of Ithaca) for some lunch. Vathy is hidden from all passing ships and boats sailing around Ithaca because of its location (see map further up in post). It somehow seems secretive. We pass St. Andreas church on the way.  This is my favourite church and I STILL need to paint it. I mentioned painting it in a previous blog post. I have sketched it out though.

St. Andreas church at the entrance to Vathy  

Sketch

St. Andreas all on its own

Hidden Vathy 

Gidaki beach (another swim stop)

It was back home after this swim. Everyone was very relaxed and there were a few tired eyes. Sun, Sea, Sand and Swimming. The panacea of life. 

In Greek mythology, Panacea (Πανάκεια in Greek) is the goddess of universal health, but the term 'Panacea' is used figuratively as meaning 'Something used to solve all problems' 

.........if only - in the present world health situation.

Until my next post........ Stay safe.