Post by artisans on Oct 12, 2008 18:56:42 GMT 2
Another text from earlier days that is particularly applicable at the moment:
'Not wanting to wish my life away but, once the mellow fruitfulness is behind us and winter starts to take its icy grip, I can’t wait for spring again. Many of us who enjoy being outdoors, struggle with the prospect of wearing several layers of clothes or sitting by a radiator when outside the weak and sickly sun is making a feeble attempt to cheer us up.
Roda has a winter, of course it does, and rain plays a big part in making Corfu the emerald isle that it is. However, winter is much shorter than in northern Europe and one of its best-kept secrets is that here, we have two springs instead of just one; how’s that for being lucky!
As with birds, plants are opportunists; give them an inch and they take a mile. Even in northern Europe, plants like the Mexican Orange Blossom (‘choisya’) will often flower twice and I’m sure there are many more examples. In Roda, some October days can feel more like April with whole drifts of cyclamen under the fruiting olive trees looking like a bluebell wood six months earlier. As soon as we’ve had the first hour or two of rain, up pop the colchicums doing their impression of the spring crocus and last year, for the first time, I even noticed snowdrops in October. Add to these there are the plants that normally flower now, beautiful ‘plumbago’, velvety ‘morning glory’, bright yellow ‘cassia’ and the hardy ‘tecurium’ with its ‘fishing-rod’ stamens don’t forget the wild sunflowers that pop up everywhere.
Outside of the village the lanes around Roda can be a riot of colour in October and the wild headlands have all sorts of fruits like ‘myrtle’, blackberry and the prolific wild Strawberry Tree (‘arbutus’). I’ve even found sloes growing here – known locally as ‘balotinia’.
This has been said before, but when friends and relatives in the UK tell me in the winter that ‘I missed a lovely spring’, I really don’t know what to say. Any suggestions? (polite, of course!)'
'Not wanting to wish my life away but, once the mellow fruitfulness is behind us and winter starts to take its icy grip, I can’t wait for spring again. Many of us who enjoy being outdoors, struggle with the prospect of wearing several layers of clothes or sitting by a radiator when outside the weak and sickly sun is making a feeble attempt to cheer us up.
Roda has a winter, of course it does, and rain plays a big part in making Corfu the emerald isle that it is. However, winter is much shorter than in northern Europe and one of its best-kept secrets is that here, we have two springs instead of just one; how’s that for being lucky!
As with birds, plants are opportunists; give them an inch and they take a mile. Even in northern Europe, plants like the Mexican Orange Blossom (‘choisya’) will often flower twice and I’m sure there are many more examples. In Roda, some October days can feel more like April with whole drifts of cyclamen under the fruiting olive trees looking like a bluebell wood six months earlier. As soon as we’ve had the first hour or two of rain, up pop the colchicums doing their impression of the spring crocus and last year, for the first time, I even noticed snowdrops in October. Add to these there are the plants that normally flower now, beautiful ‘plumbago’, velvety ‘morning glory’, bright yellow ‘cassia’ and the hardy ‘tecurium’ with its ‘fishing-rod’ stamens don’t forget the wild sunflowers that pop up everywhere.
Outside of the village the lanes around Roda can be a riot of colour in October and the wild headlands have all sorts of fruits like ‘myrtle’, blackberry and the prolific wild Strawberry Tree (‘arbutus’). I’ve even found sloes growing here – known locally as ‘balotinia’.
This has been said before, but when friends and relatives in the UK tell me in the winter that ‘I missed a lovely spring’, I really don’t know what to say. Any suggestions? (polite, of course!)'