Tuesday 12th

Mikalis paid us a visit yesterday to do a bit of measuring up and quote for putting down the tiles in the ruin. I felt the price was a bit steep, but he’s putting a waterproof layer down underneath them, using an expensive elasticated tile glue and, judging by the work he’s done here before, I know it will be done right. This morning it’s all go again and hopefully the final jobs will be completed round there by November 3rd when we fly back to Britain.

In a recent post I mentioned a walk to a village called Vori. It was there, last year, that I gathered dried chillies from the ground from which I extracted the seeds to grow some of the plants we have now. I wasn’t sure whether the plant these chillies came from was the same plant, or one planted new every year (as would be the case in England where chilli plants die off each winter, sometimes never having produced chillies). It certainly sits in the same pot. This time I had a chance to study it more closely and saw that it is actually a shrub with a woody stem about two centimetres thick. Therefore, I realise that when I’m told that someone has a chilli plant two metres tall, I’m not being bullshitted. I’ll be transferring our plants into even bigger pots, and I’ll also plant some straight in the ground. I look forward to seeing chilli trees growing here!

Incidentally, on a side note to that, I must go to the village of Pefki and collect some of the fruit of a tree there. It shades the eating area of a taverna called The Pepper Tree and is, you guessed it, loaded with peppercorns. Maybe we can become self-sufficient here as far as spices are concerned.

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