Four & Twenty Blackbirds...

Well the weather is now improving and the spring flowers are beginning to show their faces daffodils cyclamen and wild iris' are in flower (although the pictures don't do them justice) and in another two or three weeks I expect the hill sides to be ablaze with colour. Although the daytime temperatures are beginning to recover, it's been in the mid to high teens today, by night it plummets in fact on Wednesday morning we had a frost. Where the spring water comes out of the mountains and runs across the road it was frozen solid so you get ice patches three foot wide crossing the road and this seems to always occur on or near to bends so you have to take it steady with the car.

First thing in the mornings and from about an hour before dusk (about 6:30 pm here) you can hear the echo of shotguns, we had wondered what they were shooting as the wild boar season doesn't start for a couple of months yet. We had sort of assumed pheasants or partridges but earlier in the week I was given three blackbirds, yes the small black bird with an orange beak, I was told that they needed plucking and dressing and then cooking on a skewer over coals. I was willing to give it a go but Sandra was dead set against it. I know they were treated as a delicacy in England in Tudor times, so if it's good enough for Henry VIII then it's good enough for me! I now just have to wait for a Greek to do them for me.

You perhaps can't see very well on this picture but in the bright spot in the middle of the picture is a huge snow covered mountain which is in the skiing area north of Ioaninna.

On Sunday Jorgos took us out for coffee at a coffee house near Dervisiana which is a large village just a few kilometers away from us on the way there we had an hail storm which in no time covered the road to about a couple of inches deep the hails was about the size of broad beans never seen anything like it although I know in Spain they sometimes get it like golf balls. For the second time running we discovered that there was a memorial feast going on at the coffe house, once again we were invited to eat and drink with the mourners although mourning is perhaps the wrong word as they were all having a great time. Later Sandra and I went out for a meal together, for the first time since we've been here, at a taverna two 2 course meals and wine for about £18 and very good quality.

Oh well that's it for another week....