Tomorrow’s excitement at the Greek Hovel is the arrival of a diesel powered machine for dealing with the frigana – the horribly prickly bushes which are dotted across the property. At the edge of the garden are a row of very large bushes which I suspect of being home to a wide selection of unpleasant wildlife diversity. Of course my new thin yellow line prevents them encroaching closer to the house but none the less I want them gone.
The much larger task is clearing the olive groves of this accursed plant. Due to Greek Forest Fire laws all that my guest and I can do is hack the bushes down (they can be anything from 2 inches to ten foot tall) and them cover the stems with a vile poison to kill the roots. When I come back nearer Christmas there will be a good spot of burning to do lest the wildlife diversity things it has a new home.
Pro tem I have been busy clearing the area around the hovel of more than a decade of leaf mulch which the snakes find very pleasant to slither through. My guest has been a bit of star in this process when she is not going on the sort of runs which I would consider a crime against humanity. And so I show you first …the snake patio (as opposed to the snake veranda) which is now clean. There are still some frigana roots but these have had their “medicine” and will wither in due course. But it is a “safe zone” in which to sit or shower.
The second phot is of a curious sort of bird bath which is about a yard away from the patio. I really have no idea what it is for. But you will see that on one side we have not yet dealt with the leaf mulch. On the other side it has been cleared to reveal a paved extension to the snake patio.
The path is clear, the steps to the house are clear, the snake veranda is clear and the area outside the rat room is clear of snake friendly mulch. That area is also paved, a fact of which I was totally unaware of until the other day.
So far about thirty big plastic sacks of leaf mulch have been collected. Around twenty of them now sit outside the garden and just outside the snake exclusion zone. At some stage Foti and his made with a van will come to collect them and they will be gone.
The Greek Hovel becomes more habitable by the day.