Good Friday

Today has felt like Saturday, it's very strange. This morning we heard band music so I assume the town band were marching (for the Cypriot national day, nothing to do with Good Friday - the Greek Good Friday isn't for another five weeks), followed by the uniformed organisations and schools. We didn't go to watch, it's not very exciting! Dan is in the town band, but decided not to play today; he still has a slight cough and there are plenty of clarinets anyway.

Tim went to the Anglican church for a quiet service, where apparently he was singing with the choir. As this was at the same time as the marching, I don't suppose it was actually all that quiet! It was followed by a simple lunch, then a 'Stations of the Cross' service, something I had never heard of before. I spent some of the morning gardening, tidying up the beds at the front of the house where I planted some bedding plants about a month ago. One of them is doing well - a riot of red, with some freesias (planted in October) smelling wonderful. Freesias are the only bulbs we seem able to grow here; it's not cold enough for daffodils or crocuses, and tulips get eaten by snails. But I do love freesias!

However the other bed is rather disappointing. The plants are still alive and flowering, but very small. I did some extensive weeding of both beds, then watered the disappointing bed with phostrogen - I don't like to use artificial fertilisers, but it's not as if we're going to eat the plants. Then I did put some compost (home made from the heap) around them. I've posted a photo below; it will be interesting - for me, anyway! - to see if this makes any difference.

By about 11am the sun was on most of the garden, back and front, so I came in for a while. It's about 20C in the shade during the daytime, so not extremely hot yet, but I don't do well in bright sunlight.

In the afternoon, once the sun had moved from most of the back garden, I moved most of the remaining compost from the current heap to around some of the trees, did a lot of weeding, and Richard and I mowed the rest of the 'lawn', so it looks a lot neater. There are still huge grassy weeds around the edge of the garden, but it will take ages to get rid of those.

I started using compost from this heap last November, so it's done well. The newest one is enormous, as tall as me, so I was glad to have a space to start another new one after removing the last of the current compost. The third heap - which I stopped adding to last Autumn - is doing quite well, so I hope it will be ready to use by the end of this year when we need some more.

We had one set of hot cross buns about 4.30pm, but decided to eat the others tomorrow as we were eating our evening meal at 5.30, since the boys both had to leave about 6.00pm. Dan is in a performance of FairyTaleHeart in Nicosia this evening, Tim is at the youth group where they're having a sleepover.

At 7.00pm (after a quick shower!) I went to our church's Good Friday service which was informal and organised by the YWAM group. There was a guest speaker from Grace Church, one of the other churches in Larnaka. It went well, although I was saddened to hear from one of the youth group that another youth group member had a terrible bereavement this morning when his mother died suddenly. I don't know any more details, and wondered if they would go ahead with the sleepover - but Tim hasn't returned yet.