It's All Greek (Cypriot) To Me - Life in Cyprus: July 2016

Your glasses steam up when you get out of the car!
AND
When after taking proper butter out of the fridge it takes two minutes to melt.

Enough of the heat, you are probably all thinking that you could do with some of it, but I did read a headline somewhere that summer sunshine is heading towards the UK just in time for the school summer holidays.

So where are we? Nearly half way into July, thats where! We have nearly been here a year! I think that deserves alot of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe how quickly time has flown.

Today Boris will be leaving us, who is Boris I hear you say? Four weeks ago eight German Shepherd cross puppies were abandoned at one of the SBA checkpoints, a variety of folks fostered the puppies while Jo from AyNik Animal Welfare has been trying to find permanent homes either here or in the UK. So Andy came home from work one day with a male and female puppy, subsequently named Boris (yes he is blonde, rather round and just a bit of a plonker) and Belle.

Four weeks on they are weaned and just about house trained and Boris is going to see his prospective owners today, if all goes well then he won't be coming back to us. It is a little sad, but I have to remember we have done our bit, and now it is time for him to move on to his permanent home. Belle will be having her home visit on Thursday so fingers crossed all goes well. Just before Boris and Belle we had a Jura Hound for a couple of nights who we found in a desperate state. We also had a female German Shepherd stay with us overnight while a suitable foster home was found, she is approximately 10 years old and spent her life chained in a yard. We have helped Kayte at Bay Tree Rescue to get a few dogs and cats fit to fly and on their flights to new homes in the UK. The situation here is appalling but also impossible to solve while the Cypriot government do nothing so to protect ourselves our mantra has to be we can't save them all!

On to other creatures now, Bees, the garden was singing with them this morning busy little worker bees collecting pollen to feed their Queen while she is busy laying more and more eggs. There are bee hives everywhere in Cyprus and the honey is just divine. We even talked about whether or not we might have a hive in the garden, we miss the smallholding life and thought maybe it might be little bit of something we could while we are here. Those plans were cut short though when I got stung by a bee a couple of months ago, I m used to being stung, you kinda get used to it if you keep bees. I was a little surprised though when I seemed to be reacting quite badly, anyway to cut a long story short I now have to carry EpiPen's with me wherever I go. So I now have such mixed feelings about the bees in the garden, I love them being there, bees need the flowers in our garden and we need them, they are struggling to survive, a combination of disease and toxic pesticides are killing the bee population. I am a beekeeper and really quite passionate about pollinators and their survival and now I have to be very careful about my beekeeping, Andy would say I can't get suited up anymore and open a hive, he is probably right. I need a plan though because a smallholding isn't a smallholding without bees.

What else have we been up to? There have been numerous functions, a garden party at the British High Commissioners residence, weekend away in Troodos, Officer's Mess Summer Ball, oh and a visit from Jim and Jill - it was lovely to meet you both. There was also the Bi-Communal Football tournament in Pyla, played on the hottest day of the year so far, it toppled into the forties!!!!! We also dabbled in a little beach yoga.

It will soon be the end of term and we have leaving 'do's', another cocktail party, and Abbies boyfriend is over for a visit too and I'm sure I ve missed something?

I appear to have done much more talking than usual so I will end with a variety of photos and hopefully Andy will get a blog in before we leave for Hungary and Bulgaria to meet Sam and Matt for a little summer jaunt :-)

Above and below are two pictures taken in Troodos during our weekend there in June. Tragically Troodos has been ravaged by forest fires this month so I ve no idea if this view still looks like this.