After a few months being glued to my keyboard writing Panayiota, it's time I got moving. Neither of us likes to be too sedentary for too long, so we decided it was high time we went out in the garden and pruned everything in sight.
If you've ever been here at this time of the year, you'll know that the Greeks don't mess about with the trees along the roadside and in the pavements (sidewalks, guys) in villages and towns. They set to with the old chainsaw and literally brutalise them. It never seems to do them any harm, because, usually, by half-way through the tourist season they're once again gently swaying in the breeze with a lush green canopy providing welcome shade to anyone passing on shank's pony.
We've got this tree in the garden that we planted ourselves a few years ago and it's gone ballistic. We like it a lot, but it does have the habit of growing zillions of long narrow pods, that start out green and eventually turn brown and crispy, before dropping thousands of tiny black seeds everywhere, each one of which sets about trying to grow a duplicate of the mother tree. It's a constant battle to prevent the garden becoming a forest.
We've pruned it gingerly on a few occasions, but we've always been too fearful of going too far. This has meant that it's still been left with hundreds of seed pods still hanging in it, all ready and eager to send their contents spraying all over the pathways and beds.
This time I decided to take a leaf (see what I did there?) out of the Greeks' book, so we got the chainsaw out and, since it was such a lovely day today, kept going until we'd accomplished a major change in the tree's appearance. Tonight, as I write this, we're both knackered, but extremely happy with the result, which still isn't as extreme as it would have been, had a couple of Greeks done the job, but the pods are all gone, at least for a while...
I do believe that it was almost as warm here today as in the UK!!
If you've ever been here at this time of the year, you'll know that the Greeks don't mess about with the trees along the roadside and in the pavements (sidewalks, guys) in villages and towns. They set to with the old chainsaw and literally brutalise them. It never seems to do them any harm, because, usually, by half-way through the tourist season they're once again gently swaying in the breeze with a lush green canopy providing welcome shade to anyone passing on shank's pony.
We've got this tree in the garden that we planted ourselves a few years ago and it's gone ballistic. We like it a lot, but it does have the habit of growing zillions of long narrow pods, that start out green and eventually turn brown and crispy, before dropping thousands of tiny black seeds everywhere, each one of which sets about trying to grow a duplicate of the mother tree. It's a constant battle to prevent the garden becoming a forest.
We've pruned it gingerly on a few occasions, but we've always been too fearful of going too far. This has meant that it's still been left with hundreds of seed pods still hanging in it, all ready and eager to send their contents spraying all over the pathways and beds.
This time I decided to take a leaf (see what I did there?) out of the Greeks' book, so we got the chainsaw out and, since it was such a lovely day today, kept going until we'd accomplished a major change in the tree's appearance. Tonight, as I write this, we're both knackered, but extremely happy with the result, which still isn't as extreme as it would have been, had a couple of Greeks done the job, but the pods are all gone, at least for a while...
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| Yes, I had used a stepladder by the way, to get to the high bits! |
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I do believe that it was almost as warm here today as in the UK!!
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