First month with Quinn

New canine family member, new car, new house. New plants, new customs, new friends! Everything is ever-evolving.

In early April, Quinn arrived and stayed for a month. As seems to always be the case, this month, too, was characterized by a feeling of generally running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and then being surprised at how much ended up getting done.

The evening ferry from Athens with Quinn on board.

Within a week of Quinn’s arrival, we adopted Lilika from the dog shelter in Chora after seeing her on the Andros Animal Shelter’s Instagram account. She’s perhaps 2 years old — a sweet, gentle, curious, very smart dog who loves to smell everything. She’s also very frightened of quick movements and loud noises. On the car ride home (and each one since), she puked in the car. She didn’t want to be touched. She was completely uninterested in food. So: she’s a traumatized dog, likely because she’s a Gkekas (a Greek hunting dog), was trained as a hare hound, but abandoned when it became clear that she’s afraid of the sound of guns. So: she’s also a reasonable dog.

Lilika has many poses. Every day ends with pretzel pose.

Now she eats treats from my (and some select friends’) hand. She accepts being petted at night and in the morning in her bed and sometimes shows me her belly, but she still never seeks out being petted. We’ve reduced the time to get her in her harness from 25 minutes to 25 seconds. She tends to stay close to me when I’m working on the property, with some exceptions when she goes to do the rounds and say hi to the neighbors. About three weeks in, her hunter nature kicked in and a few chickens lost their feathers. On a run to the beach where I experimented with letting her off-leash, the temptation to chase goats was greater than her desire to please. I found her half an hour later at home, inside the gate. So we still have some work to do. But she’s a delightful, loyal companion.

Six-week transition from tiny fluffballs with timid first forays into the outdoors to raucous dinosaur-resembling teenagers shitting all over the patio.

On the animal front, one other situation remains unchanged and another one is constantly evolving. The unchanged one: we’re still inundated with an obscene number of cats, anywhere from 16-20 on any given day, fewer on the weekends when their people come from Athens, more during the week when we’re the only reliable (once a day) source of food around. Ioannis keeps promising to take a bunch with him when he finds a house. We’ll see. Some of them are delightful, but many of them are just furry cockroaches (though, of course, as ever, compassion for all sentient beings, etc). Mostly unambiguously delightful, in contrast, is the new chicken family. The nine chicks have evolved from tiny undifferentiated fluffballs into small dinosaurs. Two weeks ago I first detected that two of them seemed a bit bigger than the others. Since then, those two’s combs and wattles have come in more quickly, their tail feathers have developed differently from the rests,’ and they are a little more boisterous than the others. These are our teenage roosters, one light, one dark. In a few weeks the hen will abandon them and we’ll have to decide which ones we integrate with the flock and which ones will find a new home. And it’s time: their only not delightful property is that they’re now shitting all over the patio.

Andriotic moods.

In the weeks leading up to Easter (May 6 in Greece this year), we made two big purchases that required trips to Athens. First, Quinn left on the ferry. After a series of customary Greek magic tricks involving many people — including Ioannis; Dimitris, who owns the car dealership and is the nephew of one of our neighbors; and George, the accountant — as well as the bank and the opaque government website, Quinn showed up again 24 hours later with our brand-new used 2015 Nissan Qashqai. I have a hard time caring about cars, but I appreciate that it will serve us well on the island’s steep and windy dirt roads.

Ioannis and his murder παπάκι/papaki in Εξάρχεια/Exarcheia.

Then the phone calls suggesting that a house purchase contract signing date was imminent started intensifying, so I went to Athens. I stayed in Εξάρχεια/Exarcheia, the anarchist quarter. A gritty vibe, small bars and restaurants and bookstores, and graffiti on the wall across from my hotel room: “Fuck off, tourists.” Fair enough. The Airbnb-ification of Athens (and Greece generally) has made housing extremely difficult. Then Ioannis (different Ioannis), a friend who we met when he worked at the Aegea Blue 7 years ago, showed up on his παπάκι/papaki. We drank freddo cappuccinos on my small balcony as he shaved off my hair and we caught up. We rode around the quarter on his precarious papaki (he’d had two accidents since I knew him, and another one a few days after I saw him) in search of food, but almost everything was closed for May 1 protests. In the morning, the big moment at the notary’s arrived. Ioannis (our Ioannis) and I both put our signature on the contract, I sent a horrendous amount of money with a single tap of my phone, and the property changed ownership. It was an emotional moment. In the evening I returned on a ferry packed to the brim with Easter holiday guests.

Easter Sunday. The unfortunate lamb being roasted in the shed because of the wind; Quinn and Rocco writing a song; Spyros and the kokoretsi.

Easter in Greece is no joke. For almost a week there are events. On Saturday night, we went to the church on the hill in Kalivari around 11:15pm. Like everyone else, we put some money in the box and took some candles while the priest recited things in Ancient Greek and he and Ioannis intermittently sang. Every now and then Maria tried to explain what was going on. People kept arriving, there were lots of conversations, and in general it felt very loose. After the ceremony, we went outside with our lit candles (which immediately went out in the wind) and Savoula’s sons set off crackers that rival the ones you hear in the Mission after a 49ers win. Χριστός Ανέστη/Christos Anesti! We were too tired to attend the traditional meat soup dinner that goes till 3am, but the next day we went to Maria and Giannis’s for the equally traditional Sunday lamb. There was too much wind so they didn’t roast one on the spit over the fire, but the neighbors were undeterred and roasted theirs in the shed. We instead just had a few κοκορέτσι/kokoretsis — lamb intestines wrapped around offal — which can be made on the grill. And lots of other food. We unfortunately missed the big Monday nameday celebration for Άγιος Γεώργιος/St. George, but there is always next year!

Beds, shaped and with connection to main irrigation line, ready to be planted. Eggplant layout. Stavros and Georgia placing thyme in the wind. Onion sets. Completed onion bed with drippers. Zucchini bed after dripper test. Tiny natal plum sending out a flower, ready for its future in the windbreak hedge.

The big farm development of the month: we finally got all our annual summer vegetables in the ground! Stavros and his wife Georgia returned to finish putting in the irrigation, shape the beds, and plant a bunch of things. Not everything got done, but they taught me enough that I was able to finish it on my own. The list of everything now growing on Terrace 4: black beans, watermelons, coriander, carrots, parsley, celery, zucchinis, tomatoes (big and small), sweet corn, popcorn, cucumbers, onions, peppers (fat and long), eggplants, radishes. Plus pest deterrents: basil (big for pesto and small for salad), oregano, rosemary, thyme, marigolds. I’ve also been working on getting some nasturtiums germinated and will add those soon. Finally, the windbreak! We put in 6 num nums and 5 strawberry trees, still small but hopefully soon to grow into a big edible hedge. The pineapple guavas never arrived, so we’ll see if I replace them with something else or keep hoping.

Attaching a 4l/hr emitter to the drip line.

During planting we amended all the holes with compost but didn’t do anything else. I’ve since been working on figuring out how to procure a ton more compost to add to the top this first year while I don’t yet have my own compost (without spending a fortune). And how to procure different kinds of mulch I can add on top of that. All to keep the heavy clay soil from turning into a rock-hard surface, keep weeds down, keep moisture in the ground, and help the soil life — more on all that in a separate post with detailed plant updates!

Plan of annual and perennial crops on Terrace 3 and 4.

Of course we also went on a few hikes. Below some impressions from just two of them, the first a maintenance hike with the Andros Routes group from Ιερά Μονή Παναχράντου/Panachrantou Monastery to Μεσαριά/Messaria. The monastery peacock screamed at us during introductions, then we descended down into the valley in the sun, pruning shrubbery that had grown into the path and replacing stickers on signs. Afterwards, Alexandros from Livada Farm gave us a tour and we ate delicious pita with local cheese and some of his fresh and preserved veggies.

Impressions from two hikes. First four: Andros Routes maintenance hike from Panachrantou Monastery to Mesaria, followed by Livada Farm tour by Alexandros. Rest: circular route in Kapparia with new Canadian friends Bill and Alison.

A week later we went on a pure leisure hike with our new Canadian friends Bill and Alison (who we met on the maintenance hike), the circular route in Καππαριά/Kapparia. This was also an experiment in hiking with Lilika. She generally did well but when we let her off leash in a little fenced in church courtyard she managed to escape. She’s a very nimble creature. Lucky for us, she decided not to chase the nearby sheep — the shepherd was also there, and we have learned that the shepherds here don’t hesitate to shoot dogs that threaten their herd. That, too, is an issue for a separate post. I managed to lose my phone in one of the tiny old towns we passed through, which I noticed once we arrived at the restaurant in Κόρθι/Korthi. Bill called the woman who runs the sweet shop in Kapparia and she sent her son to find it. We bought lots of delicious sweets and an equally delicious Easter bread when we dropped by to pick it up on the way back.

Quinn digging a hole for one of his peach trees.

Many other things happened, of course — we planted two peach trees, perpetually almost finished installing the weather station, fixed things, cleaned, installed, spent too much money, had some moments of despair, met new friends, swam in the sea. And: after 5 days of hard work, Ilir and his colleague painted the entire interior of the house, patched up the holes (no more weird millipede worms in the downstairs, no more protruding rotting wood), and generally gave the house new life. Now our container can arrive! Then Quinn left to Paris to start his monthlong tour through France and Spain — a day later than planned so we could all together attend the Eurovision watch party hosted by the Kalliberry friends and witness Nemo’s win!

Camilla, the chamomile lover.