Here are some recent pics of the house, taken the other day and probably the last exterior ones I will take until Autumn actually comes and things look a little different.  Here the endless summer goes on and on and things just keep on growing!

I last saw rain here on the 23rd May and then it was nothing compared to what we should have had.  Now it is mid September and the clear skies and endless heat go on and on.  Still no rain!  The forecast for the olive harvest is gloomy and the farmers are prepared for a bad season and housewives are prepared for high prices on a staple foodstuff next year.

It is Ramazan here, the thirty days of fasting during the hours of daylight that commemorates the finding of the Koran.  This being Aydin and specifically Kusadasi, the fasting is pretty half hearted and almost everyone ignores it but still tucks into the big celebratory meal after sundown!  This is chilled out Muslim; it takes the bits it likes of the religion and kind of forgets about the tough bits which are okay by me as I hate feeling guilty if I have lunch in town.

We have been pretty lazy since August when the UK had a bank holiday and we decided we ought to have one too and we haven’t really got back into the swing of working ever since.  We potter around doing little jobs, tending the garden, hanging curtains and fitting shelves – that kind of thing.  We have been a bit bogged down with meetings and Phil is designing two new websites and we have a new house to design but it isn’t a heavy workload and allows lots of napping time so essentially we are on holiday at the moment
 
Holiday time means getting to do tourist things now the tourist crowds are gone.  Last Friday we had a lovely gullet boat trip up the coast with a friend exploring the coves after Pamucak beach towards Ozdere.  We swam in the sea, looked for octopus in the rocks, bbq’d chicken on the boat and wolfed salad and fresh bread and fished and lazed under the canopy and watched the jellyfish sliding south on the currents.  Great day, really enjoyed it, must do it more often, must get a boat – yeah we always say that and then we get sidetracked by some ruin that has potential and we put ourselves through another year of bucking the trend and building something decent in Turkey!  Sometimes I think we are such suckers for punishment!  So do most of our friends!

I am so impressed with my garden.  Some mornings in a flush of heady happiness that stuff is growing and flowering I think it is due to me, but it isn’t, it’s day after day of steady sunshine and regular watering.  The bougainvillea is flashing sexy cerise flowers, the jasmines put out delicate white and pink tipped scented stars and the evening primrose produces wafts of scent from its corner of the courtyard as soon as the sun sets.  My brick border is doing just what I wanted it to do, trailing flowers out onto the paving and the aloe and dwarf palms are giving some architectural standing to the whole thing.  I am, to put it mildly, well chuffed!
posted 19-09-2007