A lemon tree of our own

The lemon tree survives and thrives

Although I've mostly been writing about Macau the last few days, we did in fact arrive back in Crete a week or so back, and today we will be at the Greek Independence Day parade in town. Now, I know the most important thing you'll want to know is how the lemon tree got on whilst we were away for a month. It was last seen looking rather bedraggled and sorry for itself in our front room, as we tried to protect it from the rest of the storm that had basically de-nuded it of all its leaves.

The good news is that not only is it alive, but it is thriving!

Before we left we put it in the back courtyard where it could get some direct sun and any rain that fell, and hoped for the best. Well, it has lots of fresh young leaves, and plenty of buds, so we might actually get some new lemons growing this year. Assuming the 'horses of god' don't decimate it first, of course.

The end of the road for our lemon tree?

The weather has been appalling here over the last couple of weeks, and we had some really bad storms at the weekend, which left us virtually house bound. We did take a stroll down to the beach, to find the normally placid spot looking like it had Atlantic rollers on it, and there were actually people surfing. In this video clip you can just make out the waves crashing over the top of Lazaretta - it must have been terrible to have been forced to live on that tiny island at this time of year. Odd to think that in just a couple of months people will be stretched out on that beach enjoying the sun.

It looks like the storm has taken a casualty in the shape of the lemon tree that gives the name to this blog. On the first night the wind got really bad it was suddenly denuded of all but 19 of its leaves. I don't reckon it has much chance...

Green and black olives are the same - the proof!

There has been some debate in our household as to whether green and black olives were different varieties, or whether one was just a more ripened version of the other. Fount of all wisdom Wikipedia suggested the latter, but without proof we were still skeptical. Finally, just down the road from us, we saw the evidence we needed with our own eyes - green and black olives hanging next to each other on the same tree ;-)

Our lemons slammed

Although we didn't think they were 100% ripe yet, with our imminent departure for London we thought we ought to enjoy our lemons in case they fell off and went manky before we could get back to them.

And so, with much ceremony, pomp, and circumstance, we finally picked one of our lemons.

It immediately found its way into tequila slammers to go with a home-made Mexican extravaganza!