Fruits and Flowers

Happy Easter to all of you who are celebrating this weekend! While Western Europe tucks into hot cross buns and chocolate rabbits, the Orthodox world has another week to go to the most important celebration on the Orthodox Church calendar. The preparations for Big Week are well under way and the housewives of Chorio are in a frenzy of cleaning and baking. This is the time of year when the grocers sell whole wheels of cheese for the making of pies and pre-dyed Easter eggs and hand drawn signs go up outside the butchers, telling people to place their orders now for Easter lamb and kid. The week before Greek Easter is a serious fasting week and tavernas and gyros bars generally don’t sell meat or anything that is not on the approved fasting menu. Fish, calamari, prawns and taramasalata are the order of the day.

The weather is warm and hazy with temperatures in the low twenties. There is the possibility of the odd dusty shower but by and large the weekend should be dry. The recent rains combined with mild temperatures have ensured a sumptuous display of spring flowers and the cyclamens are lingering on in the shade. The orange trees are particularly beautiful, laden with heavily scented waxy blossom. Citrus trees carry both fruits and flowers at the same time and can have both for much of the year but this is the peak flowering time for orange trees on Symi. Meanwhile the hawkers are busy selling crates of the last orange harvest from the backs of trucks in Chorio and Yialos.

Down in the harbour the plastic tents and awnings of winter are being packed away and chairs and tables are being arranged in their more open summer aspect, ready for the first visitors. Yachts are milling about, looking for berths – a mixture of Greek-flagged vessels visiting from Rhodes for the Easter holidays and sailing boats from more exotic ports of origin that have checked out of winter marinas in Turkey and are preparing to start on the summer’s cruise across the Mediterranean.

Have a peaceful weekend.

Regards,

Adriana