Splendid Skies

The landmark valonia oak in Lieni yesterday, Thursday 12 March.  Buds just emerging but still plenty of bare twigs.

The same tree 24 hours later. Not only are the buds opening but the first tassels are visible - another 24 hours and we'll be sneezing!  At this time of the year things really do grow before your eyes.

 Young foals accompany the trains to learn all the routes but don't actually carry anything until their backs are strong enough. This chap is being introduced to the breakfast bar.

We are seeing some splendid skies at the moment.  In a few weeks the clouds will disappear and every day will be clear and hot, as though the rainy season has never happened.

Before and after.  The lanes of Chorio are a mix of carefully restored and perilously ruined houses.  You can see that the ruined house on the left has been all sorts of colours in the past, anything from ochre to indigo.  In the days before synthetic paints and colour charts, homeowners would buy sacks of whitewash (asvesti) and tint them with ground pigments in their chosen colour.  This was a surprisingly durable finish as it is porous.  The winter damp just passes through whereas the modern paints have a tendency to bubble as the trapped moisture can't escape and  the paint then drops off the walls in unsightly sheets.

There's a cat in this picture.

I don't know how many times I have passed this house in the shopping lane in Chorio and this is the first time I have noticed the delicate blue tracery painted on the gable.  There's always something new to look at on Symi!

Chorio street art with bottle tops and fire hydrant.

The surviving ducks, enjoying the sunny side of the harbour on Wednesday morning.

The big three storey stone building used to be a sponge merchant's head office in Symi's sponge fishing days.  The National Bank of Greece is in the downstairs left hand side.  The ducks in the previous photograph as on the edge of the quay, just behind the small blue and white rowing boat.  The enclosure to the left is where new ducklings are put when they first arrive but they soon work out how to escape and promenade the harbour.

A casual marble column in Yialos.  St John's church at the back of the harbour is on the site of an old temple to Aphrodite and various bits of marble were reused in the construction of the church.  Unfortunately a lot of the marble was also burned in lime kilns to make asvesti, the whitewash I mentioned earlier in this blog.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana