Half-way through August

Today was a public holiday in Cyprus, I believe it's because of the Feast of the Assumption in the Greek Orthodox Church.

It was also declared, by the government, the first of three days of national mourning for the victims of the terrible air tragedy yesterday. Most of them were Cypriots. It's now thought they probably died before the plane crashed, either through lack of Oxygen, or extreme cold. A lot of people are saying Helios Air is dangerous; I had thought it was good to have a budget airline operating from Cyprus, but perhaps not if they're not careful enough about safety.

On Saturday when I gave the garden its weekly watering, I realised just how bad the weeds are getting. And the 'lawn' (ha!) needs cutting very badly. Richard did about 2/3 of it shortly before our anniversary party - so I suppose it was nearly four weeks ago now. Hardly surprising it needs cutting again, despite lack of rain. Around the trees there's even some grass although the majority is just weeds.

Unfortunately when Richard was cutting the grass - and intended to do the whole lot - the motor failed. This has happened two or three times before, and has been fixed by taking the lawnmower apart, cleaning out the dust and dirt (of which there is a lot during Summer in Cyprus) and spraying in a bit of WD-40. However Richard did not feel inclined to do that at the time, so it was left.

Today I asked Tim to take a look at it, since he was the one who mended it last time. He removed a HUGE amount of dirt - I could hardly believe how much was trapped under the top cover and around the motor. Unfortunately that didn't make it work again. So he removed the bottom of the machine too, where the cutting blade is. There he discovered that some fittings had come loose, so he snapped them into place again, cleaned out yet more dirt... and it worked!

Now all I have to do is to find a time when it's cool enough to do some lawnmowing. The best time from my point of view would be about 6am but I don't think our neighbours would appreciate that. I suppose it will have to be an evening, but it's getting dark about 7.30pm now and is still very warm at that time.

Still, I did about 45 minutes' weeding this morning, around the trees and amongst the flowers (those that remain) at the far end of the garden. Sophia didn't wake me until after 7am, for which I was very grateful. But by 8.30 or so it was too hot and sticky for me to do anything more outside.

The only other constructive things I did today were to get our finances up-to-date in our Quicken software package, and to make some more lemonade as we'd run out. I am so grateful to the boys' friend who suggested we freeze lemon juice when we had a glut! Usually I have to stop making lemonade around mid-June, and can't resume again until at least the start of October, sometimes later, as lemons are small and green in the shops during the summer, and even more so on our trees.

But I still have four more litres of frozen lemon juice and rind, and making it is so much easier when all the preparation of washing, peeling and squeezing has been done in advance. I don't have enough to last till the end of September, but at least for another month. Next spring I'll make sure I freeze even more.