Olive picking

At the beginning of November we decided to pick our olives. Most of them had turned a lovely plum colour and some were starting to fall off the trees if there was a high wind.

We know that there were very few olives on the trees this year so we decided on a different strategy for picking them. Previously we had pruned the trees as we picked, but if we did that this year we might only have two sacks picked after three or four days. Not wanting them to lie around too long before being pressed, we just stripped the trees of the olives.

The weather was good for picking, dry and warm enough to work in t-shirts. In just two days we picked all of the trees, but this year we only had four and a half sacks of olives. Not too bad, and as we still had quite a lot of oil left from last year we didn’t want or need too much. That gave us about 41 litres of oil after the olive press had taken their percentage.

Then we spent a pleasant few days going back round the trees pruning them. This time there was no rush to get them finished so we could just enjoy being out in the sun. Now we must wait to see if next year proves to be a good year.

Shaken, but not stirred

Yesterday we experienced another earthquake. It was, apparently deep in the seabed to the southeast of us, off the island of Kithira. It was quite severe, with a reported magnitude of 6.8, but being about 125km away and with the Taygetos Mountains between us most of the force was absorbed when it reached us.

We were just getting ready to go out for a walk when we felt it. There was a slight rumbling noise, then we felt the house wobble slightly and loose objects in the room started vibrating. It lasted about 30 seconds and thankfully felt quite gentle. From the TV reports it looks like the old buildings on the island of Kithira, which was closest to the quake, took quite a bit of damage.

Last night I think it was the reporter from TV station Alter, on the scene in Kithira, who nearly had us screaming. His live report involved scrambling round a church that had sustained a lot of damage to its twin towers. Both were cracked wide open and huge chunks of masonry lay on the ground. He kept running over these and standing under the towers. Hadn't he ever heard of aftershocks?

The church is high on a hill, one side of the square around it was on a cliff edge and a huge part of that had broken away and fallen. So what does he do? He charges over to this in the dark with the cameraman and lighting trying to follow to show us this broken edge and the sheer drop. Not content with just showing the damage he stands right on this broken edge and starts kicking bits that look as though they are loose. I was sure it was going to turn into one of those clips shown on disaster programs!

Anyway, for us here it was 'shaken, but not stirred'.

Loss of web site

If you have seen our site before, but under the name www.living4thesun.com then you may understand my frustration. I had registered the name for 2 years, but the person who did this for me failed to send me proof of ownership. My fault as well, I totally forgot about this until the last moment when the 2 years were about to finish. I was unable to contact the person who registered the domain for me, so, when the domain name expired at the beginning of October 2004 I could not renew it straight away. Without proof of ownership you have to wait about 75 days for the name to fully expire and then purchase the domain again. It finally expired over Christmas while we took a break in Kalamata, and guess what, someone took the name within seconds of it becoming available!

When you look at the site www.living4thesun.com you now see an 'information' page, sometimes with a link asking if you are interested in the domain. You can make an offer to buy the domain, but the minimum bid is $90. Well, as you can guess I was very happy to do so!

That's why we are now www.living4thesun.net. Hopefully, there will be no mistakes at the end of this year!