A trip to Pissouri

It was a grey and overcast start to the week but within a couple of hours the sun had got its hat on (hip hip hip hooray) and burnt off the clouds and I opted to walk down to Sheila and Klaus's for my art morning - this is to be the last for a few weeks as next Monday Sheila will be back in Blighty visiting her children and grandchildren leaving Klaus home alone and then the following Monday is Green Monday and so we generally go off somewhere trying to fly a kite - we have yet to have a Green Monday which is conducive to kite flying - we have had rain, flat calm and hurricane conditions!

The weather so far in February has been unbelievable and my walk down through the village via the Vals and the Clampetts was very pleasant indeed.  The almond trees are in blossom - I only saw the white, no evidence of the pink as yet and I cannot remember which is sweet and which is bitter.

I was also graced with my first orchid in the field opposite the Vals and then further down there were three all together. This is the early flowering Himantoglossom Robertianum and I think this is very early even for him.

I am guessing that there is probably the first signs of asparagus in the field where I go but having lost my glasses there last year I am loathe to go back - if I do I will be wearing my new ones and not tucking them into my fleece.

It is great news that the weather is being kind as we have visitors who arrive a week today and their last winter trip over here saw only about two dry days in a whole month!

As always a lovely morning with Sheila and I am going to miss not seeing her for a few weeks but I have taken my homework home with me so if I get a quiet minute I can do some work on my picture.  I thought I would make a collage of last week's work and this week's work so that I, and you, can see how much I managed to do in my couple of hours before lunch with Klaus.  It is now beginning to take good shape but the china cup and saucer and books will probably take quite some time.

This afternoon we were taking a little trip to Pissouri although sadly not to see Wendy and Bill -  John had seen some furniture advertised and we have been looking for a solid sideboard to house our drinks.  We have a cabinet but it doesn't really match the rest of the furniture.  John had spotted someone having a house clearance and they had some pretty nice solid wood furniture at a reasonable price so he had negotiated to purchase a sideboard and a matching coffee table and so off we went taking the motorway which was its normal busy self (NOT).

The couple didn't live a million miles away from Wendy and Bill and it was quite a sad story as to how they came to be selling up and returning to the UK - apparently their kids hadn't spoken to them since they moved out two and a half years ago and so they had spent all their savings going back to the UK to keep a relationship going with them and their grandchildren.  It had put a tremendous strain on their finances and they felt that if there was any chance of them salvaging their family they had to go back.  What a shame and I really felt quite guilty about us benefiting from their misfortune but the sideboard was exactly what we had been looking for and the matching coffee table is fabulous.  It just remains for me to advertise our existing cabinet and coffee table to get rid of them and recoup some money.  I advertised both on the internet and within a short period of time had takers for them both so hopefully they will take them when the see them.

The cats have now lost the space where we put the two custom build beds that John made.  This will confuse the hell out of them and Charlie in particular is less than impressed as he has recently been sleeping in one of them for most of the day.  He and Minnie decided to stage a sit-in on top of the garden door - it didn't last too long - hunger got the better of them and they backed down pretty rapidly.