I think that I have published articles similar to this before but it is a point worth making again and again, there is a hidden Greece that so few of we Northern Europeans never see. for most of us Greece is a place we only visit in the stifling hot summers. If we bother to leave the coastal strip we see grass burned brown by a constant sun, if not scorched black by the forest fires that happen all too often. But there is another Greece, the Greece of winter and spring.
The fields all around me are, as you can see below, green. This could be England or Switzerland in the summer. And the flowers are everywhere: reds, yellow, whites, purples. It is a glorious view.
But all too soon it will be gone. By May the sun will have started to have its effect. as the snakes come out to play after their winter sleep, green turns to brown and those flowers disappear. Right now it is T-shirt weather both down in Kalamata and up here at the Greek Hovel in the lower reaches of the Taygetos mountains. there are no snakes around and the view is wonderful. It is, in many ways, the best time to be here.
