Flora

 

I have half a dozen squash plants and they have loads of flowers every morning*.  So far only 2 squash have formed and these have grown to the size of a tennis ball and then withered away.  I have squash in pots and squash in the ground, squash in the sun and squash in the shade. They get watered once a day and sometimes twice.  I give them coffee grounds and egg shells and once I even broke an egg near the roots for a bit of extra nourishment.  The next step is a tin of sardines once again buried near the roots.  Youtube 'experts' say it's just what they need.  That's about 5 euros for the sardines and a euro or 2 for the eggs and many euros for water.   I can buy a supply of squash to last all winter for that money.  But I did like my squash.

They would grow over the wall into the english neighbour's driveway and I'd have to send my tall grandson to collect them at the end of summer.

These little devils are red hot and come up on their own every year amongst the mint.  There are at least 5 plants there now and they are thriving.  

Elderly neighbour Vaso has a line of pistachio trees and they are full of large bunches of 'nuts' just now.  Unfortunately the nuts are empty.  Because she has only male trees the fruit does not mature as it should.  No pistachio harvest alas.  She has had those trees for many years.  I can never understand why she hasn't planted a few of the other kind .  They thrive here.  The next door island of Aegina is famous (in greece) for their nut harvests

This is purslane or glistritha as it is called here.

Glistritha is the word for something which slips and slides.  This keeps low to the ground and slides along the surface.  K says his mother used to eat it as a salad.  I've never seen it on anyone's table here but I'm going to nurture this and use it with lettuce and nasturtiums in winter salads.  It dries out completely in the summer but this one is just starting to grow near the lemon trees which are watered quite often.

Wikipedia  says  it has a mucilaginous quality.  That does not sound very palatable.  Can be made into

 a tzatziki type dip with yoghurt.   Similar to spinach.  Suitable for soups and stews.  I think I'll experiment a little before serving it up to traditiontal people even if they do say their mother ate it

I cleaned up my pot of thyme yesterday.  There were a lot of dry bits to trim.  Inside the pot I found 16 snails and in the next door pot (not shown) there were 27.  I gathered them all up and threw them over the fence under Vaso's carob tree.  They can feed there to their little hearts' content without eating someone else's dinner.  They had better not come crawling back.

Those are just a fraction of the snails in the garden.  I've been getting rid of them for months but they seem to multiply overnight.  I'm going to have to bring in the cavalry.  I'll get the grandchildren and pay them to exterminate.  Well, to pick them up at least.

* Vaso's daughter-in-law gathers the flowers and fries them.

She made keftethes (rissoles) out of them the other day.

You chop up 3 or 4 tomatoes and drain off the excess juice. 

 Chop up the pumpkin/zucchini flowers too.  

Add around 200 grams of flour.  Enough so they are not runny. 

1 tsp baking powder

 1 egg to bind the mix

Add lots of chopped mint and whatever herbs you have on hand.

Parsley, dill, basil.  

A good handful of feta  or other cheese

Mix and put in the fridge to 'soldify' a little

Drop spoonfuls into hot oil