Corona summer – update #1

My dear English speaking subscribers, it’s now more than half a year since I updated my blog. When the lockdown was announced, the air kind of went out of the balloon. I am sorry for that.

We immediately understood that travelling down to our beloved Cyprus in May as planned, would not happen. The plan was to stay for more than a month. We were pretty sure that going down in late August as we normally do, would be fine. Tickets were booked and paid, this time travelling on business class as this would keep us more apart from other travellers. A few days before travelling, Cyprus was coloured red by our government, meaning no point of going. When a country is coloured red, the travelling insurance is not valid any more, and there is something i do not travel without, a valid insurance.

I have been asked how I have been coping with the pandemi and staying alone. I have answered I have had very few problem. I have had to stay in solitude together with my beloved wife, a person I have chosen to live with. My hardest feeling was the months I was not allowed to meet my sons families, especial not being allowed to hold and hug my grandchildren. Otherwise life has been fantastic.

When the lockdown started, we immediately decided to not let it affect our lives, and set up projects that we should go thru to keep us busy. Below is a listing, maybe a bit boring to read about, but I need to get it down for future references.

Painting the house

First project we decided to do, was to paint the house. There was a real need for this, as it was nearly 10 years since last time. In our climate, wooden houses do not last long unless they are maintained. We also decided to change colour, this made it necessary to have 2 coatings and kept us busy for a long while. As you can see from the left picture below, I managed to hire an inexpensive worker to help me out.

Enhancing our back patio with flower box, trellis etc.

After painting the house we decided to go up to our summerhouse and stay there for the whole duration of the summer, in fact we are still here. The location is away from big concentration of people and is a perfect space to stay in a situation where we are now. The risk of being infected up here is more or less zero. At mid summer time the municipality had only had one infected, now during the second wave they have had 2 more.

Because of how the summerhouse is located, we need to have a place to stay during the afternoon and evening to catch the sun. We added the wooden patio last year, but now decided to enhance it with flowers etc. All of is is handmade. The result is shown below. Quite happy with it. An excellent place to enjoy a glass of wine watching the sun set, and belive me, there has been some.

Being self-sufficient with vegetables and herbs

As a son of two gardeners, it was naturally when we couldn’t go anywhere, to start a project of being self-sufficient with vegetable and herbs. We started by sowing seeds indoor in a mini nurserie and developing it from there. During spring the sprouts needed to be taken out during the day to harden, and brought back in again for the night. Finally we could plant them out and all looked nice, well apart from each other. Problem is that plants grow a lot and by the end of season, my outdoor mini greenhouse was to the limit, couldn’t even close the the roof down . However, we’ve harvested a lot. Radish, carrots, lettuce, leek, tomatoes, peppers, chili, chive, estragon, etc, etc, just name it. Only some tomatoes, leek and Jerusalem artichoke is still out there. It is starting to be cold, and by a couple of weeks I anticipate we will have below freezing point during the night. Then the remaining vegetables must be harvested.

Maintaing our bedroom.

One of the last projects up here this season was to remake and maintain our bedroom. Nothing had been done there for about 40 years or more. Wooden pine walls and ceiling doesn’t look good after such a time. This nice and bright pine wood colour turn into a dark brown and dirty colours by the years. So everything was taken out, old bed taken into pieces and now ended ups as firewood. Walls and ceiling painted, a new beed brought in, bookshelves added and the electric system remade by a proper electrician. I never thought I was going to say this, but I am really happy with Ikea. A new wardrobe was brought in from them, all as normal in a disassembled flat packages/boxes. However, it was easy to assemble and fit. All happy.

So now that I have got my mojo back, stay tuned for more updates.

Btw, the featured picture on this blog entry, is from a place called Troll pond. This is a place that is a goal for some of our walks. A spooky place with a proper name.