1st July: The cicadas must have known it
was July this morning. After a couple of days when they only
sang at dawn and dusk, we now have a full choir chattering away
all day. There are also an increased number of roaches managing
to get into the house, although I'm methodically spraying biokill
indoors every month (every week in kitchen and bathroom) and
a more potent Aroxil spray on the outsdie of the house and outer
window-sills in the hope of deterring them. I haven't put poison
in the drains for a couple of years now; I never did like using
something quite so drastic, and as I can no longer find anywhere
that sells it, I wonder if it's been outlawed by EU regulations.
We still seem to get two
or three roaches appearing per week, mostly lying on their backs
almost dead by the time I find them. I don't think that's any
more than we had in the years when I used the drain poison. When
we see a roach - dying or alive - we cover it with an empty large
yogurt pot and wait for it to die. I don't know why they're so
much more disgusting than any other insect, but even after all
this time they seem absolutely vile. One good thing about the
hotter weather, however, is that the mosquitoes die out!
Watermelons are huge and
unbelievably cheap in the supermarkets at present (something
like 6p per kg!) and other soft fruit is just starting to appear
- early grapes, although they're rather bitter still, and some
plums and peaches. These are all very seasonal in Cyprus so we
make the most of them when they appear.
14th July: Summer is here with a vengeance
now. It's fine when I'm sitting in the air conditioning, set
to 28C which feels cool as it also removes the humidity, but
distinctly hot in the rest of the house. I tend to get up early
in the summer, about 6am, to do a bit of weeding and watering
outside, but this morning even at that time the temp was 30C
outside already! Usually it feels pleasantly breezy and about
25C that early, so I hope it's just a brief heatwave that won't
last too long. I nearly melted walking to the bread shop just
before lunch. I should think it was easily 40C in the sun.
Most of my bedding plants
have died out since the weather became hotter, but some of the
antirrhinums look as if they will last another year, and to my
surprise one flower bed in the front garden has petunias which
are still going strong. I'm not quite sure why they have survived
whereas the ones in another bed about a metre away have died
away. Having got this far I wonder if they'll last another season
entirely.
At the end of June the
boys went camping with the youth group for a long weekend, up
in the mountains; I gather that went very well. They came back
quite tired, although Daniel said he'd had a reasonable amount
of sleep - just as well, since he (ie Dan) was only home for
eight hours, since the town band flew to to the Czech Republic
that night! There was a European festival in the town of Cheb,
and as they're the only wind band in Cyprus they were invited.
I gather it went fairly well, although it was highly disorganised
and in the end they only really played in one proper concert,
plus some combined efforts at playing the EU anthem.
They didn't cater for
vegetarians at all, and didn't even have much fruit or vegetables,
so most days Dan ended up eating rice for his main courses and
not much else! However he bought some ketchup to make it slightly
more tasty, and he said there were lots of stodgy puddings which
were OK though a bit school-dinner-ish.
30th July: I'm not sure where the time has
gone this month. I don't seem to have done anything very productive,
really. I've read a lot of books, done some writing, read and
responded to a load of email. I've also started making some juggling
balls for Daniel, who is probably going to be teaching a small
group to juggle in the Autumn. We couldn't find any supplies
of juggling equipment here in Cyprus, and importing from the
UK would have worked out quite expensive.
So I did some research
and discovered this
site which has some printable patterns to download, and this
site which has detailed and extremely helpful instructions!
So far I've just done some experimenting - mostly round balls,
in various types of scrap material, but it was quite fun making
both a tetrahedron and a cube. Daniel mainly wants round ones
for his classes, at least six per student as they'll need a set
to take home to practise, and another set to have in the class,
since he's pretty sure they'll forget to bring them!
Our sewing machine, although
highly unorthodox (thus a 'Protestant' sewing machine, as a friend
suggested!) seems to work very well making these things, and
my only slight concern was the stuffing. The instructions said
that millett was the best thing to use, and I easily found millet
in the pet-food section of our supermarket, at only 48c per kilogram.
However in this country where insects seem to find anything remotely
edible, I'm a bit worried that the juggling balls may become
infested with ants. We've been spraying the material with biokill
but don't want to drench them or the millet might sprout!
The poor garden looks
dry and brown. I give all the trees a good soaking with the hose
once a week, but we decided that trying to water the 'lawn' area
would take too long, and would be far too extravagant on water.
Besides which it would mean that we'd have to use the lawnmower
more often, and it's no fun in the hot weather.
times since 13th August 2004