O Xeros Potamos -- 'The Dry River'?

This morning when I went to make breakfast at six, I saw that we were out of milk so I set out in the car for the nearest place that would be open, the Market at Mandria Junction.  Crossing the bridge over the river below the dam, I realised that something had changed.  Instead of the usual dark chasm of earth and rock, the space below the span was white and swirling, and even though there was not light enough to see, I knew that the dam had overflowed and that the river was coming down.

A few hours later, I set out under (relatively) clear skies to have a look... Along with, it seemed, the rest of Paphos and his donkey.

First stop was the river side, where I joined an elderly gent who was videoing from his phone.


"O Xeros Potamos?"  I asked him.  "The 'Dry River'?  That's its name, right?" I asked him in Greek.  He snorted.  "That's what they say!"  Then shook his head in wonder... "Πολύ νερό, πολύ νερό..." A lot of water, yes indeedy!

Atop the dam, the populace and the press was out in force.  Even when the hail began.  The Highway Department has blocked ingress from one side of the dam, but a steady stream of cars, icecream vans, fruit sellers, and donut and snack vans kept arriving from the other side, parking, leaving, hooting...  The buying, selling, photographing, laughing, continued unabated.

"Κοίτα! Ξανά χαλάζει! (Look!  Its hailing again!) yelled one man, grinning, and turned his face to the sky.  Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and hailstones gathered in the folds of my jacket.

By this time my shoes were wet and my jeans soaked to the knee.  I decided that I had had enough and ran for the car.

Asprokremnos Dam

Yesterday, Leo did not have a tennis lesson: as soon as we reached the court the rain started again, so his teacher shrugged, pointed at the sky with its complement of lowering grey clouds, and waved goodbye.

“Can we check out the dam and see if it's overflowing yet?” Leo asked. So to assuage his disappointment (Leo loves tennis – a passion I cannot find it in myself to share) we headed for Asprokremnos on our way home.

It seems like a lot of Paphiots had the same idea: both the ice-cream van (“Mum, who in their right mind would buy an ice cream on a day like today?” Pause. “On second thoughts, I would. Can I have an ice cream?” “Are you in your right mind, Leo?” “No!” “Well, no. Sorry.”) and the loukomades van were there, as well as a number of people who, like us, parked on the dam wall to look over the side and cheer on the water level.

I only had my phone camera, and that was a little wet, so the pictures are a little... lumpy.

The rain continued all last night and was still falling when I went to collect Galena the Cleaner at seven-thirty this morning. I didn't want to come back on the motorway, so we mosey-ed back on the old road, and just before the dam turn-off I said: “Let's go and see if it's full yet.”

This morning there were more people than last night – and the ice cream van was still there! A man from a blue pick-up truck and I found ourselves side-by-side looking at the water, now only half a metre below the spillway lip. “Another day or two?” I said in Greek. “Nah,” he answered. “Later today!” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he wanted to put twenty Euros on the question, but I was too shy. Chances are, we would have had a good laugh over it, but I didn't want to seem too forward.

As I dived back into the car (the sky was chucking down cats and dogs and I didn't have a jacket on), even more people arrived to look at the spectacle. I guess there's nothing much to do around our neck of the woods when it's pouring with rain just before eight on a mid-week morning.

It's Raining!

And the system is working – or seems to be from what I can see...

Best Beloved took a weekend last month and we connected all the tanks together at the bottom, leaving a reserve of about four tons should there be a need for firefighting – not that four tons would make a big difference, but having a reserve also helps with cleaning and leaves room for sediment to settle out. We cut a hole for the outlet to which we can connect a portable electric pump (we looked at a permanent solar pump, but it was not cost effective), and connected a tap.

And then my dear husband climbed a ladder and installed air locks on the top of each tank. And then my dear husband fell off the ladder... Yes, he did, from right at the top of the tank – about 2.3 metres up. And he's a big man, so when he falls it is with a thump. A large black bruise graced his hip for ten days, and he felt distinctly like he needed realignment, but there was no permanent damage.

After that came the difficult part: connecting the guttering to the tanks. We used 63 mm hose – and fortunately we had enough lying around that we did not have to buy it – and created a sloping route for the water to flow from the collection/filter tanks that contain gravel and are positioned under the downspouts, over the outside steps, and into the tanks. The hose is heavy and hard to force into the connecting pieces, and two of the connections were in places where BB could get no leverage at all. Watching him, I was terrified that he would fall again because he had to balance high on the ladder that was in turn balanced on the stairs – and both hands were occupied with forcing the hose into the join.

Ugghh!! We were both glad when it was over. It's butt-ugly (no pun intended), so we will need to do some plantings to disguise, or at least soften the starkness.  But first let's see how it works.

Rain has fallen steadily since Saturday afternoon, and the gutters have been doing their job. Standing beside the big tank, I can hear the satisfying drumming of water falling steadily inside, but the tanks have not yet filled to the reserve level, as when I open the tap at the end of tank four, nothing comes out.

Spring Winds

A khamsin (I’ve lived here for 17 years and still don’t know what they call them here!) started early yesterday morning, and by first light, was roaring out of the south-east, hot and laden with dust. At times the gusts topped 100 kph. It took the side wall of the greenhouse and some of the canes that I had put up as bean supports, and wrought havoc around the house with overturned chairs, buckets whose contents now strew the back verandah, flying boxes, tipped over bins.

My short time working outdoors yesterday had a nightmare quality, driving was a battle of compensation and correction (imagine being in an empty lorry!), no planes landed, and over everything hung a haze of dust particles that blurred details of distance, brought fresh prickling to my already irritated eyes, and made breathing difficult.

And it was hot.

By mid afternoon when I went to the garage to hang the second wash, the wind had backed and came, cooler, out of the west with slightly less fervour. Some rain – perhaps the last before summer – fell.

Night became a game of ‘guess what that was’ as the new wind direction toppled hitherto protected barrels, and a box of empty wine bottles crashed somewhere to the ground. Plastic sheeting tore free from something and flapped, endlessly. Doors and shutters creaked and rattled.

Today dawned grey, the wind still gusting, and after dropping the Big Ones at school, I went to the field to see the damage.

Just as I was lifting the last of ten 25-kilo sacks of organic fertiliser into the back of the Landrover, Best Beloved called from his Nicosia office.

“How is it, Manamou?”

I outlined the damage, adding that the spinning plastic wall of the greenhouse had not only damaged the beans, it had also brought down several sections of steel mesh on which my cucumber plants climb. He told me that this is the force of nature “an act of God, I think they call it,” he continued. “As a farmer, you have to be prepared for this…” he said the same things several times before I asked him if I could please get back to work now, to start repairs.

Later, when I got back to the house, I called him. “I hope some time, darling,” I said. “That when you are on the front line of a big damage assessment and clean-up, some Fat Cat, sitting in his distant office, sipping his cup of Fairtrade coffee, calls you to discuss the Force of Nature, Acts of God, and other things for which farmers should be prepared …”

He laughed and rang off after telling me to 'Get on with it!'

Thursday

I woke up yesterday (Thursday) morning realising that I am flying to England on Tuesday, Monday is a holiday, and my passport has expired. So I got Leo off to school – the Big Ones have half-term this weekend and Zenon was not feeling well – and called Sil (my Sister In Law) at work at eight. “No problem!” She works in the District Office, and if anyone could help me, she could. “Come in when you can!” Oh, it's good to have family in the right places!

My friend Angela needed me to help her move some boxes to her new apartment today, and I had agreed to be there by nine, so at 8.30 I left the house and drove the Land Rover townward, toward a black and roiling sky that was developing a bilious green tinge. Zenon stayed in front of the t.v., and the Big Ones had not yet surfaced. No one else was heading into town. The road was eerily empty – except for the occasional oncoming driver, invariably with headlights on.

At Angela's we loaded the van but decided to leave the trip until later – unloading cardboard boxes and schlepping them up an outside staircase in a downpour is no one's idea of fun. I got to Evzonas Photography for passport photos just as the first drops fell, and fifteen minutes later when I walked out again, the rain was still holding off, though the sky was very dark overhead and lightning flashed ominously. I called Zenon to tell him that there would be a storm, that it would be bad, and that he might lose electricity. “If you get scared,” I told him. “Wake the Big Ones. And if you really need help, Papoose and Yiayia are at home.” He wasn't bothered. Harry Potter has to deal with lightning, too.

I raced across town to the District Office, and of course couldn't find parking within 500 metres.

Sil works in the Old District Office – as opposed to the New Monstrosity next to the Courts. Her building dates from the Colonial Era – massive stone plastered white, with dark green wooden shutters, high ceilings, and graceful pointed Cypriot arches. I found her in a cubicle “Hey, you've been promoted! Got an office to yourself...” the last time I'd been in she was sitting behind a long desk with several colleagues. “Don't let it fool you, it's the same old stuff!” said she, handing me forms for a new passport and an i.d card. I started to fill them out, alternating between the Greek and the Turkish to figure out what information to put in which boxes. Then she took them from me and filled them in speedy Greek. Thank goodness! I can write Greek, but my letters look like a second grader's, and I get confused with the two O's and the five E's, so my writing tends to be a lengthy process.

She grabbed an umbrella. “Ela! Come on!” and off we went, through the labyrinth of corridors and courtyards, dodging the splashing down spouts, and into the cashier's room.

There ensued a lengthy conversation about the rain – no one's complaining, despite the massive inconvenience that twelve days of wet weather causes in a fundamentally arid land. We're all so pleased to see the water, that I've yet to hear any gripes, except about the road works. But that's another story. Then there was a long debate as to whether my Greek surname on my new documents should be spelled with a C in English to match the rest of the family's, or a K to conform to the EU rules about phonetic spelling in Greek. I would have chosen a C (my current passport spells it with a K) like Best Beloved's, but our air tickets had already been issued and the spelling was with a K. “You can change again in ten years time when you apply for a new passport!” Sil said. “For now, you'll have to be the only one of us to use a K.”

Then off to another office where the Lady in Charge told us that the documents would be ready on Tuesday. “But she travels on Tuesday and Monday's a holiday. Why not do them today?” Sil asked. We left with a muttered promise of tomorrow before lunch, and fortunately met a friend of Sil's who works in the same office on the way out. “By this afternoon, and you can take them with you after work,” he promised. Sil said she'd deliver them this evening when she goes home. Phew!

She splashed off to another office, and I headed through the gathering rain to the Land Rover. I had just reached it when the hail began.

The hill down to the post office was, literally, a river. Then I had to thread my way through the canyons of the Kato Paphos road works, at time sinking past the hubcaps in muddy water, profoundly glad that I was not in the white Toyota. How the Boy Racers manage with their low-clearance sportsters and expensive body-kits, I have no idea.

Yerouskippou, the last village before Paphos proper when you're coming from Limassol, has been enduring road works as it's central artery and village square are being renovated for well over a year. A couple of hundred metres are done at a time, necessitating long detours through narrow residential streets to left and right, and massive inconvenience to shopkeepers and residents within the stricken zone. The final stretch is undergoing treatment at the moment, and the roads that have been chosen to host the diversion are suffering badly from the rain and the heavy lorries. Only one lane is passable at a time, sometimes only on the footpath. Each time the trenches are filled in with sand, torrential rain scours them again, and the gutters are full of fist-sized rocks that have washed down from the banks and hillsides.

Inevitably people try and circumvent the detours and cut the wrong way down the one way stretches causing back ups, horn blowing, and raised and gesticulating fingers. This is where I like the Land Rover. It's bigger than almost anything else on the road – except the two Hummers in town – and when impatient young bucks rev their souped-up engines and try to intimidate me, I can occupy my rightful place on the road, smile serenely, and wait while they reverse. We did that twice on the way home.

As I was writing this yesterday evening, I heard a knocking on the window behind, and saw Sil, backlit by the glare of her headlights. “All done!” she said. “Have a good trip.” She dodged through the still-falling rain drops back to her car and I turned to Best Beloved. “Sunny in London, is it?”

February Weather

For the last four days, we have seen little sunshine. Saturday was hazy. Sunday, dark and brooding. “Please put the tractoui – the rotivater – through the vegetable patch,” I urged Best Beloved. “I really hope that it will rain, but if it does, I can do no work for at least a week and if the earth isn't turned we'll lose a lot of time on the spring crops.”

On Sunday morning he did the vegetable patch, and we finished pruning the vines and the trees in the field. Then he put the tractor through the field, as well, turning under the newly sprouted weeds that had given the lanes between the trees a soft dusting of green. He did the olive grove, too, and we started pruning the long suckers that have grown from the trunks and branches that we cut back so radically last year.

Usually we start pruning at this time. This year, because of the unseasonably warm winter, we are struggling to finish before the trees blossom, and as I cut the apple branches, sap bled from them. Some of them had started blossoming already – although they are usually a week or two behind the peaches and nectarines which have yet to break into bud. “The weather's going bananas this year, Manamou!” Best Beloved called from his seat on the tractor.

I cut some apple branches to take into the house so that we can have blossom on the table. The almonds are already out, a pink and white veil floating over the hillsides.

On Sunday night, the wind woke me as it screamed around the house. In the morning, it was still blowing – from the east – heavy with dust, and warm. A grey haze covered everything.

The wind blew throughout Monday. In the Middle East, this wind is called the khamsin, and is said to drive people crazy. When I lived in Israel I heard that a man can be forgiven the murder of his wife after seven days of khamsin (but could a woman be forgiven the murder of her husband? I wondered.)

Last night the wind backed and became chilly. I had just snuggled into my down duvet, slightly muzzy from a glass of wine, when it hurled handfuls of huge water drops against the side of the house, and one of the french doors upstairs slammed. A white flash lit the sky, followed at once by an infernal crack of thunder

I pulled on my dressing gown. The hall light snapped on as Alex threw open his door to see what was happening and if I needed help. We raced up to the sitting room and wrestled the blowing door shut, then I opened the front door to check the car windows. Within seconds, my hair was plastered to my head.

Throughout the night the storm woke me intermittently, but I snuggled deeper into the down quilt. I knew that today there would be no work in the field. There will be no work in the field for at least a week: I am free to plan, to order seeds. To buy another fifty metres of twenty-millimetre hose and six sprinklers for the new lines that I will put in when the earth becomes workable again.

In a lull between showers this morning I went out to the back verandah and looked toward the mountains. The air had an edge, the brittle bite of snow. Chains will be needed above Platres for the next week.

The rain is still falling. On our fields and above them. In the hills, into the dam. We need more, much more to see us through the summer without water rationing. But for now this is what we have, and we are grateful.