The Color Purple

We spend all winter outdoors when the weather permits, harvesting olives on a steep mountainside. Once the rains start to fall in November, a transformation begins and the summer-baked earth comes to life.  We rake and hoe and clear beneath our 700 olive trees so we can find every plump purple olive when it falls. It's something like an intense Easter egg hunt.  Each olive tree has its own stone terrace, along which we construct earthberms to hold in as much rainwater as we can.  Despite our raking,  and as the winter progresses, the terraces continuously produce new growth as though we have spread seeds and watered them.  No matter how many times we clear them to catch the windfallen olives, by March the terraces are knee deep in greens, mostly edible. Come April it is impossible to find the olives beneath the dense carpet of growth that covers the mountainside, so the remaining olives stay and become fertilizer for the trees.

Along with the greens appear an  impressive and ever-changing array of wildflowers.  Tiny yellow radikia  (related to dandelions) are the first to emerge after the first drops of rain, like they had been waiting just beneath the surface to poke their heads up for a drink.  In the sheep pasture above our olive grove, fragrant saffron crocuses spring up in the most unlikely hard-trodden rocky places. They are followed by drifts of anemones (windflowers) in soft shades ranging from white to blue to pink to purple.  Among those are great patches of brilliant white daisies.

Fluffy wild daffodils, planted by Giannis' father long ago, glow in the sunlight, their heady scent meandering along the drystone walls. Just as the anemones are becoming faded and tattered, up pop clusters of tiny grape hyacinths, so purple they are almost black.  In the seasonal river gullies are pasxalia (Easter flowers), globular starry clusters scented like heaven.  Almost everywhere stand tall white asphodels, the legendary flowers of the dead in the ancient Greek underworld.  These pale beauties formed the garland crowning Hade's bride, Persephone.

Every day we hike down through a high mountain meadow to get to the edge of our property.  Last week, on our evening walk back to the car, we were surprised to see the whole clearing covered with delicate purple irises. We hadn't seen even one on the way down in the morning.  I guess they prefer the evening sun.  And I musn't forget to mention the snowtufted blossoms adorning wild pear trees that stagger down the mountain like thorny lichen-covered trolls. I always say hello and pat my favorite as I pass it, anticipating it coming into full bloom so I can finally sit down and paint it, with the sea in the distant background.  But that is another story.

Wild Greek Saffron in November

The saffron likes to grow where the sheep have trodden

Little Nora amidst yellow radikia buttons

Anemos (Άνεμος) is Greek for wind;  this is an anemone (windflower)

Another anemone

Daffodils (I think)  planted by Giannis' father Giorgos

A few of our olive trees on the east side of the mountain

A wild pear overlooking Kolpos Geras, an inlet of the Aegean Sea

An unopened asphodel in the mountain meadow

Edible tamus communis in the river gulley (well, just don't eat alot of it)

Purple-black grape hyacinths

Petimezi and my favorite pear tree

A harvest of fresh wild greens to be made into savory pie

A sprinkling of daisies (in Greek they're called Margarites)

Pasxalia in the river gulley

Tiny irises (or they may be orchids) gracing the sheep pasture

A treeload of dark purple olives ready to be pressed into golden olive oil

The Most Beautiful Sea

To celebrate my maiden voyage into the blogosphere, I'll share a song that was instrumental (pun intended) in convincing me to leave everything behind for life on a Greek island.

The most beautiful sea is the one

we haven't sailed yet

The most beautiful child hasn't grown yet

The most beautiful days

The most beautiful days of ours, we haven't lived them yet

We haven't lived them yet

And what's more beautiful,

And what's more beautiful I would like to tell you

I haven't told you yet, I haven't told you yet...*

En güzel deniz:
henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır,
En güzel çocuk:
henüz büyümedi.
En güzel günlerimiz:
henüz yaşamadiklarımız,
Ve sana söylemek istedigim en güzel söz:
henüz söylememiş olduğum sözdür...

These exceptionally lovely lines were written by the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet in 1945.  Several decades later they were translated into Greek by the poet Giannis Ritsos and made into a song by the Greek composer Manos Loizos.

The Most Beautiful Sea is from Loizos' album of songs inspired by the poetry of Hikmet entitled "Grammata stin Agapimeni" (Letters to the Beloved). I hope you enjoy it!

*my translation from the Greek version

Η πιο όμορφη θάλασσα είναι αυτή
που δεν την αρμενίσαμε ακόμα.
Το πιο όμορφο παιδί δε μεγάλωσε ακόμα.

Τις πιο όμορφες μέρες,
τις πιο όμορφες μέρες μας, δεν τις ζήσαμε ακόμα.
Δεν τις ζήσαμε ακόμα.

Κι ό, τι πιο όμορφο,
Κι ό, τι πιο όμορφο θα 'θελα να σου πω,
Δε στο 'πα ακόμα, δε στο 'πα ακόμα.

The Joining of Unrelated Things

My small attic studio tends to get very chaotic.  That works for me because when I walk through, something will catch my eye, and something else too, and something else again.

This fat little robins-egg-blue shank button was saved by my husband's aunt Kleopatra who passed it on to me.  The broken gourd, with its long stem, washed up on a tiny seastrand and I put it in my pocket.  The driftwood nubbin seemed too beautiful to pass up as well.

A quick glance around the chaos of my "atelier" brought these three pieces to my attention.  They leaped into synergy in my mind's eye so I joined them together to make a tiny sculpture that speaks of the sea.  To me they seem like they were made for one another:

 

Seapod:  Dried gourd, driftwood, and vintage button

  Press here to see this item my Etsy shop