Liveloula: Spring tease and snow dumps

Know that feeling? The sun is shining, you're out scratching around in the garden, and your feet start complaining to be in those clam, sweaty winter boots. That's when you remember,... off with those boots and, after a dive into the deepest parts of your warderobe, … into your sandals.
Naked toes giggling from the sensation of fresh spring grass. Spring flowers! That's how last week started.
And then,... 35cm of fresh powder snow, bamm! What a tease. Goodbye sandals and welcome back snow boots.
So far February hasn't really been the sunny month we were hoping for (to stay on track of our full planning). Last week spring seemed to be having another go at pushing aside old man winter. Alas, the old man kicked back with a blizzard-deep freeze-mega snow drop combo.

Not much for us to do but sit it out, make the best of spells of rain and snow.
Our kitchen sink has a brand new and shiny tadelakt surface to replace the worn down clay plaster and the entrance hall to the kitchen is being remodeled.
Sunny days in February means weeding, pruning fruit trees and berries, cleaning up patches of garden and a daily round of collecting stones to dry stack little garden walls.
We've opened up space for 17 new fruit trees and as much berry plants, so last week we made the trip to Patras to go tree shopping!
At sea level spring is already in full swing. The sides of the road are full of cute little yellow flowers and patches of anemones, daisies and wild calendula and the almond trees started to flower.

For now, we can still make the trip down but there's a chance we soon won't make it to the “civilized“ part of the world anymore. Both access roads to Seliana are at many spots at the brink of collapsing. After the massive downpours of snow and rain this last month and a half, the roads are dotted with boulders and rocks, clay and earth eroded down from the mountain flanks.
Worse still, because of the complete lack of policy in road maintenance and planning and a “don't care” attitude towards durability (a complete absence of any kind of guttering resulting in rivers of water that continuously flood the road), the road, at three or more places is just slowly collapsing into the valley below.

In and around Liveloula, ponds and brooks appeared. The old dried up river bed to our north side has a proper stream and a collection of waterfalls. It flows over our road over the lenght of 100 meters, steadily washing away the top layer, leaving only the calcareous bedrock underneath and creating an ever more bumpy ride out. We already made the decision to order a truckload of road base gravel as soon as the stream and the road dry up.

At least the soils are getting a good soak and we can expect enough water this summer. We finally understand why our neighborhood is called “Messolongi, or in the middle of lagoons”

Last week, our friend and neighbor Amber celebrated her birthday with a Mexican theme party. We al turned up in our fanciest poncho's, sombrero's with plates of tortilla and beans, and aye caramba, with the help of some charcoal and bees wax, we even grew amazing Mexican style mustaches!

New ponds around our area....

our road is a river

Ooops....

whoever comes driving, stay on the side of the mountain, even if the road 'looks' repaired...

Greek approach: quick fix...just throw some dirt in the hole

the chickens got a new chicken castle

tadelakt

and more tadelakt....

on the left side our shiny, new tadelakt kitchen surface and on the right a present from our friend Christa, a hay-madam, for shortening cooking times for beans, lentils, rice etc