I have to admit something which makes me “different” from a large part of the general population – I HATE noise! Last weekend was characterised by joyous Greek Easter celebrations. There were fireworks at midnight on Saturday, but these were over relatively quickly, and I know they are “traditional”, so that is fine. On Sunday, our nearest neighbours were partying most of the day – again fine, and I enjoyed the music coming across the fields as it was (mainly) of the “traditional” Greek variety, and I love Greek music, though I did find the reggae take on some of the songs a little strange! What spoiled the day was the continual letting off of firecrackers and some shooting. I’m at a loss to understand what this is about. I have tried very hard to absorb Greek customs since we’ve been here; although we will always be foreigners we feel welcome, and we understand the thinking behind most of what goes on, but the firecracker thing drives me nuts. We have dogs who are either terrified by it or view it as a challenge to bark at – all in all Easter Sunday was not a good day for us. Having said all that – in the UK we were in a built up area where there seemed to be more or less constant fireworks for some reason or another from Halloween until after New Year – why??
Just as we were recovering from that lot of noise then the wind got up – Tuesday night was the worst since we’ve been here. The forecasting websites we use said that the wind speed/Beaufort was force 7 or 8. I do not believe this – more like 9 or 10 was nearer the mark. Absolutely terrifying in its destructive power; I lost all of my precious seedlings and had some smashed pots, but we were lucky. The frames for the canvas awnings at our local branch of Lidl were bent in two – that is scary. We’ve seen the canvas ripped off in the wind several times, but never that.
Yesterday was a lovely day, and we managed to burn a lot of olive prunings, but it is windy again today, so can’t work outside. We have only until the end of the month to burn things, so just hope the wind will drop enough for us to finish. There are really stiff fines for having fires during the summer months, but there are always some people who do so – I wouldn’t dare risk it, even without the fine; after the wettest winter on record the ground is now quite dry and undergrowth would catch very easily. We’ve seen a couple of bad fires since we’ve been here and are very, very wary about the size of ours, even if it takes much longer to get the burning done.
The fields are covered with wild gladioli & orchids now. Since we’ve converted the land to organic production the number of wild flowers has gone up considerably. They are truly beautiful.
katedefleury 
#1 by Heidi @ homeingreece on April 20, 2012 - 9:46 pm
We spent Easter ’10 and ’11 in Folegandros and they have some of the loudest Easter celebrations in Greece. They set off hundreds of thousands (seriously) of fireworks, over a 3 day period. It’s absolutely bonkers. Up here in Komotini Easter could not have been more underwhelming – since the city is only half Christian, that partially explains it, but especially after 2 yrs in Folegandros. And every single year there are the reports of the people who have died or lost limbs from this stuff. So sorry to hear about your seedlings. Is it too late to start over?
#2 by katedefleury on April 26, 2012 - 4:18 pm
Weather has calmed down now, thank goodness. I’ve started again with some of the plants, but lost all my “heritage” tomato seedlings, and I have no more seeds, as I’d saved these from tomatoes given to me by a friend. I have some healthy looking “normal” tomato plants, though.