The blues

The blues, as in, the two blue rock thrushes currently hanging out near the house. I took these shots yesterday around dawn, so the colour may be hard to see, but I believe this is a male and a female blue rock thrush. They were up and about early, hanging out on the roof of the house next door, watching over the area around our house and, no doubt, keeping an eye out for breakfast.

I had another surprise the other day when a hoopoe flew past the house. I’ve only ever seen them up in the hills before, around the area of Micro Sotiris, to be exact, and it was the first time I’ve seen one in the village. It didn’t stop, so I was unable to get a photo for you. The same thing happened with a raven yesterday when one came closer than I’ve seen them before. Again, no photo, but at least I was able to capture the blues.

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Green hills

A couple more balcony shots for you today taken with the long lens. As you can see, the hills are green with herbs and in some places with grass, but in other places, the mountains and Turkey in the distance are as rugged as ever.

I was up in time to see the Blue Star come in this morning. With the Dodekanisos boats now down to only two visits per week, I wonder how long it will be before the Blue Star also cuts down on its journeys. At the moment we’re able to order shopping from the local supermarket, and just about all of what we ask for arrives a couple of hours later. That was something of a highlight yesterday as was my exercise session which lasted all of ten minutes in the porch between the two buildings that make up our house. Must try harder, as my school report always used to say.

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Morning chorus

It’s 5.30 on Tuesday morning and the morning chorus has already begun. The cockerels have no sense of time, only of their own importance, sparking up at all time of day and night to make sure everyone knows they are around. I can hear one now, and it’s still dark. As one goes off, so, usually, another answers from somewhere across the harbour or from over towards the Pedi valley. It’s all very rural, another of the things we love about living on Symi.

Yesterday, the brood was in the ‘hood, or the peep was in parish, you might say, pecking around out front and exploring the ruined garden next door, having a good old chat with a few hens presided over by conclave of cockerels. It was a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians if you ask me. The girls were peacefully getting on with their foraging — it was the boys who kept sounding off every two minutes. Typical.

I never knew a collection of chickens was called a ‘peep’, but apparently so – according to ‘The almighty Guru dot com’ at least. (And also my dictionary, though it is a rarely used word, just the kind of word I like to use.) As for a conclave of cockerels, I made that up.

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Balcony photos

Today’s photos were taken from the balcony on my Powershot with its long zoom. Spring turned to summertime with the clocks changing at the weekend, and now every clock in the house says a different time. They were falling behind or ahead anyway, so now’s a good time to go around and bring them up to date. A little job for later today. The swallows are back, some of them, I’ve seen a blackbird, plenty of pigeons and sparrows and we heard the owl the other night. The chickens who live up the road at the bins are wandering further afield and were heard outside our gate the other day, and as you can see, the plants are blooming and new leaves growing. Definitely spring-like, with the temperature up to 20 degrees when it’s not too cloudy or wet, and today has dawned crisp and clear.

I must thank whoever it was in the world who bought nine of my books over the weekend. Clearly, someone intends to do a lot of reading over the next few months. That mention was basically an excuse to remind everyone that my books are available on Kindle, ready for instant delivery. You can find the full list on my author page.

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Saturday

Saturday is usually the day I post several photos, but today I’ve only got one – the view from the balcony first thing this morning. As you can see, it was a grey and cloudy start, though is meant to be clearing later. The temperature is lower than of late, it’s down at 12 this morning (in our courtyard). This week, it has climbed as high as 20, and we’ve done some standing in the sun to catch the rays and the vitamins. On that subject, we’ve also been having our customary half a lemon in hot water first thing, and some extra vitamin C tablets to keep the immune system boosted.

Yesterday at home was a productive day. Neil has spent two days sorting out our DVD collection. We sent it to the mousandra when it became part-obsolete, what with Netflix and other streaming services, but there are some rare gems up there we wanted to bring down. There was also the thought that if the internet becomes difficult to use we could watch DVDs, so we have now sorted them into various piles and stored some in the sitting room and the others in the spare bathroom. That job done, we sat down to watch something we hadn’t seen for a long time only to find the DVD machine is playing up. Doh!

While he was doing that, I prepared a shopping list for our friendly neighbourhood supermarket, writing it out in Greek (and checking it with an online translator), and then sent it off via Messenger. An ‘Ok’ came back immediately, and later in the morning, the shopping wad dropped off on our doorstep. We have a doorbell, so Xan was able to leave the bags, ring the bell and was gone by the time we opened the door and dragged the bags inside. The rest of the day was spent working on a story, watching television and pottering around the house. As for today, well, more of the same with, perhaps, the option to try and fix the DVD machine.

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