Working up a Sweat

Just a brief post about winter life in general. Firstly, weather-wise this winter is proving to be much more normal than the previous two, thank goodness. We're getting rain almost once a week, which is very welcome, and between-times it's gorgeously sunny, without all that much in the way of strong winds up until now. We haven't yet had what we'd really call a cold spell either, although we do light the log-burner in the early evening quite often, just to warm the place through. Often, though, we don't feed it, we just let what's in there burn itself out.

We need to use it because one of our favourite winter pastimes is chainsawing wood for the wood store. My better half is never happier than when she's up to her knees in hard graft. In fact just yesterday she was saying that she doesn't like it when we get past Christmas because, once the new year is upon us, then it's the countdown to starting work in the season, and we so enjoy our winter schedule! I've said many times, both here on the blog, and to people I meet during the summer who ask me about the winters here, that we (and it sounds awful, I know) actually prefer the winters to the summers.

Working up a sweat chainsawing a dead tree in the forest, then setting up the saw horse at home to section it all down before taking all the existing logs out of the store and re-stacking it all, that's a really good day during January for us...

In her element.

Job done. (I did help her stack, plus I swept up afterwards, honest)

One thing one has to do regularly, is take all the logs out and recirculate them. That's why, every few times when we get a new load sawn up, she'll set to and do the job you can see in the top photo.

A few more for you...

Kiotari beach, a couple of days ago.

Ditto, as above. Same moment.

Pefkos in January.

Olive grove with anemones, Arhangelos.

Plus, here are a few (not so high res, sorry; they're from my phone) from a mountain walk we did on Sunday January 14th...

The late afternoon sun through the olive trees when the ground is so green is magical.

This is taken from the bridge near the La Branda hotel. This river bed has hardly flowed at all during the previous two winters. This year, though, speaks for itself.

That's all for now. TTFN.