Cattle roundup

This afternoon, Lainie had booked a haircut at the hairdresser in Stoupa.
The tour operators’ offices, travel agents and some hotels have bookshelves where you can swap books, so I decided to go along and change some of the paperbacks we have read.

As we drove out of our gates we decided that as Lainie would only be about 10 minutes and I would be about the same changing books, we would be lazy and leave the gates open.

I dropped Lainie off near the hairdressers and I parked a little further into the village. We arranged to meet at the car, so I went off and changed most of the books in a couple of the offices. Back at the car I piled them into the back and as I looked up the road I saw Lainie already walking down. Wonderful when a plan works? Here’s where we came undone.

There were still 3 or 4 books that I had not changed so we agreed that a quick stroll through the other side of the village to a couple of other offices would finish the job and allow Lainie to choose books she might prefer. We paused in one hotel as they had a television tuned to Sky news and we listened in horror to the reports about the bombings in London. As we left there we thought that we would call in the ice cream parlour to see our friends and have a frappé.

The afternoon was warm and in the shade at the ice cream parlour it was comfortable so we chatted, and time slipped by. Finally, after about an hour and a half we made our way back home, drove into our drive, Lainie jumped out and closed the gates, I parked the car and we went inside. It was late so we started to prepare some food, then Lainie said, “That cow bellowing sounds a bit close, it’s not in the garden is it?”

We looked out towards the vegetable plot and saw a couple of the tomato plants laying flat, a clear sign that, yes, it had been in the garden. As I walked over to see the damage I saw that the cow was still in the garden, now making a noise as it had discovered the gates were closed and it was trapped. Most cows are hobbled so that they can’t raise their heads to eat the olive trees; this one had also a long rope trailing, which probably should have been tied to a tree somewhere. I ran over, grabbed the rope and dragged the animal out of the gates.

Yes, it had been up and down the vegetables eating some and just bulldozing down a lot more. Apart from the tomato plants, it had eaten winter cabbage plants (these were not looking too good anyway), all the tops off the beetroot, green bell peppers, sweet peppers and a cucumber plant. The dwarf green beans had been knocked over and lots of the remaining plants had been trampled.

Most plants have been stood up again with the help of some sticks and string, so although we did loose some plants we are still getting food from the plot.

Well, that serves us right for being lazy!!!