It Started With an Ouzo

by Stavros Allanopolis

  We marked the level of the water and we know it had started to drink from the bowl and left the cuttings alone. Is that where the expression “we live and learn” comes from?

  The Polecat was probably living here long before our house was built, so we learned to live together. Notwithstanding, it was still a ‘Sour’ experience for quite a while to see all our hard work destroyed by a thirsty Polecat!

  In many ways, does seem somewhat like Noah’s Ark having so many wildlife visitors to our garden.

  Every one of the 30 on the earlier list is daily or regular visitors to our garden and the surrounding olive grove. Of the 30 that I can remember, four visitors warrant a special mention, because of the sheer pleasure the sighting them gives us.

  The Hoopoe is a magnificent bird. Indigenous to Spain, they are spring and summer visitors to Meerkat Manor. They swoop through the trees in an undulating, flowing flight. They hop along the ground on the hunt for insects which they spear with their long curved beak. They sit on a branch and ‘sing’ to each other; “hoopoe, hoopoe.” They also sit atop the telegraph pole and squawk to nobody in particular!

  The first sounding and sighting of them was really funny because we had not realised that they came to the area.

  I awoke at daybreak to the sound of what I took to be a telephone ringing in a nearby house. It went on forever without let up.

  “Somebody, please answer the bloody ‘phone!” I cried out to no one in particular. Still it kept ringing.

  “It must be a burglar alarm then,” I said to Valerie, and, “Nobody is at home to turn the alarm off!”

  Eventually the noise did stop and later that morning I discovered why. I was driving up the track and there were two Hoopoes sitting on the track in front of me busily hunting for insects. As the car got nearer they flew up into the trees, sat on a branch and started ‘singing’ to each other, “hoopoe, hoopoe.” I had the answer to the ‘phone and burglar alarm noises! It had been the call of the Hoopoe that I had heard and there they were with their beautiful, large crests raised high on their heads, resplendent in the sun and showing off their brightly coloured plumage.

  By contrast, the Sparrow is an ordinary bird you might say. However, in Bedfordshire where we used to live in the UK the species was virtually extinct. Once it was such a common bird in the UK, it was the most frequently seen bird in any street or garden but it is now noticed by its absence. So, imagine my sheer delight when I sighted my first Sparrow, or should I say Sparrows, as they fly in large flocks all over the area surrounding us. Such a happy and cheerful bird chirping away all day, but smart too.

  The Swallows and Swifts build their nests under the terraces of most of the houses in the harbour. Built of mud, twigs and feathers, they are a feat of engineering as they manage to stick to the cement come what may. Despite all the coming and goings of the birds as they feed their young, the nests stay intact.

  When the Swallows and Swifts leave their nests for the return journey to Africa, the Sparrows move in. They peck a larger hole in the front of the nest to accommodate their larger size and move right in to raise their own offspring in a ready built home that just needs the front door enlarging! During the day, they will all fly in huge flocks from the harbour and into and around the olive groves, or just sit in their nests happily chirping away to each other or anyone who will listen!

  Perhaps, one of the most unusual sights in the garden is that of Robins and Blackbirds. We had always thought of them as UK residents only, but, lo and behold, we have them living here all year round; such familiar sights and sounds and yet somehow they seem happier here in the sunshine!

  Most mornings, in the olive grove immediately behind our house, I can experience a really magical sight of a pair of Little Brown Screech Owls hunting and playing among the trees. I can see them either swooping low along the ground hunting for mice in the grass, or hopping and jumping together and over each other as they play; or are they fighting? When they see me, they fly up into a tree and sit on a branch, quite still and just watching. If I move very slowly I can usually get as close as three metres from them before they fly away.

  It is truly remarkable to observe them so close up, and to watch them turn their heads through 360°, or just watch them stare back at you with those large yellow non-blinking eyes of theirs. It would seem that they are light sleepers as we can hear them calling to each other way into the early hours of the morning and then they start again from dawn. Also, they sit on the roof tops throughout the day calling to each other. Magical!

  THE ‘CHILDREN’ GET SETTLED

  For the first week, we kept Owen and Minstrel inside for 24 hours every day to acclimatise them to the new house. We kept them in the studio apartment upstairs in order that we could move around freely without fear of them getting out.

  Photo: Minstrel In The Studio.

  For the next three weeks, we did let them out during the day but brought them in at night. There are a few feral cats in the vicinity and we wanted to be sure that Owen and Minstrel would be safe from them until they became secure in their new surroundings.

  By the end of the first month, they appeared to be ‘stir crazy’ so we let them stay out all night long and they became quite used to all the wildlife and the birds, although their first few weeks must have been a bit of a shock compared to their life in the UK.

  Before moving here, they had never seen a cow or heard it moo-ing, nor had they seen or heard goats and pigs. Not surprisingly, they used to run inside the house if any of them put their head over the wall to look into the garden.

  Nowadays, they take all of the ‘wild animals’ in their stride and don’t even move when the animals are around, and even when they are dozing in the olive groves and the cows walk right past where they are lying curled up in the long grass.

  The stone wall around the plot of land in which the house stands is one metre high, so it is low enough for both of the cats to jump over if they have to run back to the house for ‘shelter from invaders,’ but high enough to keep out what they regard as unwanted visitors!

  They seem to think that the wall was built to protect them if they have to run away from anything.

  Whereas Minstrel uses the wall to sleep on, Owen uses the wall to walk around every morning and every evening, much like a soldier on guard duty as he marches around the perimeter to see what is going on.

  He also uses the wall as his ‘vantage’ point to watch Valerie working in the garden. She calls him the ‘Project Manager’ because it is as if he is checking that she is doing everything properly.

  Whenever he sees her complete a piece of digging and raking the soil smoothly around her, he seems to think that she has done this especially for him to use as his personal toilet digging area; somewhat irritating!

  Minstrel mainly uses the wall to sleep on and, from time to time, moves around it depending on the position of the sun as the overhanging branches of the trees give her shade when she gets too hot. However, she is quite a nervous and ‘skitty’ cat; so, mostly she is in a position ready to make an escape into the house via the window and find somewhere safe to hide where nothing can reach her!

  Photo: Owen Pacing The Wall.

  Remarkably, they very quickly became acclimatised to the heat. They lost quite a lot of fur as their coats thinned out and they lost weight too as they were eating less and exercising more; no bad thing for all of us! Within eight weeks, they discovered the art of catching mice and voles in the grasses around the wall of the house! They were definitely very happy cats with their new life in The Mani.

  LET THE GARDENING COMMENCE

  The first month seemed to go by in a flash. We concentrated on sorting out the house in terms of what went where (pictures and ornaments), and buying new furniture. It seemed like we travelled the road to Kalamata every other day!

  During that period as we settled in, we experienced so many ‘highs’ but also a few ‘lows’ (particularly water leaks!) but never any regrets about moving here.r />
  One trip was solely to find someone to mend our laptop, as somehow we managed to ‘catch’ a serious virus; one so bad that it wiped our entire hard drive files, including our email address list! A real ‘low’ at the time. It took a while, but we did find someone who mended the laptop and ‘cleaned’ it but was unable to retrieve any data whatsoever. Disaster! We had memory stick back-ups of all our files, and luckily either a memory stick or CD with every single photo from the last 20 years; total back-up with the exception of the email address book! So, we very much relied upon our friends keeping in touch with us in order that we could re-build our address book and this time to keep a copy of it!

  Once bitten equals twice shy, so they say, so since that day we have never opened a forwarded email that has a file attachment from anybody because that it seems is how we got infected.

  Although we did seem to be driving back and forward to Kalamata every day, it wasn’t a chore, and to this day it still isn’t. Mind you, now we try to limit our visits to once every three weeks just for financial reasons as petrol is not cheap in The Mani.

  The drive takes us through the villages of Stoupa and Kardamyli and then the climb up and over the mountain range to Kalamata.

  A series of winding roads and some very tight hairpin bends, and all the way stunning views of the mountains on one side, and the sea of the Messinian Gulf to the other. There is one particular vantage point where we can stop on a lay by and look right along the coast all the way back to Agios Nikolaos and we can see our ‘Dream’ home. Although it is a pin prick on the horizon, we have used our binoculars to find Meerkat Manor and now we know just where to look! From the first sighting at that vantage point and until today, on every return journey from Kalamata, as we pass this spot, we still say,

  “Ah! Here we are; nearly home.”

  Also, for any new visitors, we stop there to show them the view and Agios Nikolaos and our home in the distance.

  After countless visits to Kalamata, to get mobile ‘phones and landlines sorted out, and to buy furniture and electrical items, we came to the time when we had to decide what to do with the garden. What garden?

  The house was built on a plot of land that was just hard compacted soil; deep red ochre colour, and as hard as rock! So too was the plot of land that we purchased adjacent to the house. It had no proper fence around it, and was also in the same state, with the exception that although the ground was rock hard, it was covered in knee high weeds! Well we call them weeds, whilst in fact they are wild flowers; Oxalis. It looks like a four-leaf clover and produces pretty yellow flowers on tall stems which look like daffodils.

  The difference between them and daffodils is that the Oxalis swamps and chokes anything and everything; it is so invasive and grows everywhere! A weed? No, just a beautiful wild flower but growing in the wrong place!

  The house we left in the UK was a converted Victorian Workhouse, set in four acres of ground, but tended by a professional gardener, so throughout the 10 years we lived there, we just enjoyed watching things grow without the task of planting them or maintaining them in any way.

  So, where to start at Meerkat Manor? The first thing that we did was to draw a large scale diagram of both plots in order to help us to decide what to do with the available space.

  After a few days of thinking, we made the decision to tackle the adjoining plot at a later date when we had finished the house garden. We felt that we had enough to do developing one garden at a time, yet alone two!

  At the same time we also decided that sometime soon we would have a stone wall built around the plot to increase our security. At that point in time it only had some wire fencing; enough to keep the cows, sheep and goats out but it didn’t look very attractive and wasn’t very sturdy.

  Having made those two decisions, we then focused all our initial energy on trying to develop a garden around the house. We designed the garden in and around the 17 olive trees surrounding the house, and we made a conscious decision that we would only grow plants indigenous to the region.

  We also decided to try and limit the amount of plants that we would buy and try and grow our own plants from either seeds or cuttings.

  Photo: Our Land Adjoining Meerkat Manor.

  Although we knew that it would be a lot cheaper than just going to the Garden Centre, it obviously set us the challenge of finding out about the regional plant life. More to the point, this decision meant that we would have to learn how to grow them ourselves and this was something that we had never attempted before! In addition, we were soon to learn that there was more to it than just hard work.

  In the coming months, we would experience the tears of failures and also the tears of frustration when the Polecat decided to dig up and eat some new seedlings! Although we didn’t know it then, these decisions would lead to an immense sense of satisfaction that goes with ‘growing your own’ when you see the results.

  We set about a plan to develop a garden all around the house adding colour and greenery. We would grow and plant flowers, trees, shrubs and d vegetables, and it would all be our own work.

  I sourced the raw materials from Dimitris who owns the local Builders Yard, and although he speaks quite good English, Dimitris (and many others) seemed to find difficulty in pronouncing my first name of Stuart, so he used my second name of Steven which in Greek is Stavros. So, it was then that Stavros was born and I am now known by that name by everybody in the village.

  I came to Greece to live and now I felt I had become a Greek with the name of Stavros! Subsequently, my youngest daughter came up with an idea to ‘Greek-ise’ my family name from Allan to Allanopolis. Almost overnight it seems I became Stavros Allanopolis!

  Dimitris always understands what I want to buy, but when it comes to delivery his time keeping leaves a little to be desired. Hence in my Acknowledgements I refer to him and of his phrase, “Maybe tomorrow, Stavros.” Notwithstanding, I managed to buy, and eventually have delivered everything that I initially needed to start developing the garden and the paths we had planned to go around the house.

  He delivered 30 ‘cubes’ (cubic yards by volume equivalent to tons in weight) of soil for the garden and 10 tons of small pebbles to transform the track into a drive through the gate into Meerkat Manor and for the paths around the house. I also got him to deliver the sand and cement that I would need for the construction process.

  Back to the house and the garden; we had decided on a path all the way around the house and I was going to do all the construction work myself. For the plants, we sought help from the owner of a local Garden Centre to advise on the development of the garden itself. Antonis is Greek and owns the Mediterranean Garden Centre.

  He specialises in local plants that will thrive and grow in the extremely hot all-year-round climate.

  Whereas Dimitris at the builder’s yard had the expression of “maybe tomorrow Stavros,” Antonis had an expression too; it was, “Etcetera.”

  I would ask him for detailed estimates of costs for his services and for some of the seedlings he supplied and he seemed unable to respond with anything but a verbal reply of single lump sum figure for the work or plants, plus some Euros for the ‘Etcetera.’

  When pressed for more detailed explanation, he would get out his cigarette packet, take his biro and start to write a long list things he could remember he had promised to do, but each ‘list’ always contained a single total figure and no items listed had a cost alongside them.

  However, there would always be a single additional figure alongside the word ‘Etcetera.’

  “What is this 50 Euros for?” I would ask.

  “Oh, that is the ‘Etcetera,’ ” he would reply. “You know, all of the extra little bits; etcetera, etcetera; too small to mention or list,” He would say.

  “Don’t worry about them,” was his response.

  Round one to Greek culture!

  Antonis arranged for one of his the workmen helped me distribute the 10 cubes of pebbles around the house for the paths a
nd to also create a turning circle come car park just inside the front gate of Meerkat Manor.

  Photo: Pebbles On The Entry Drive.

  The plot to the front of the house was on a slope; downward from the house to front wall and there was little or no soil at the lowest front end, which is why I ordered the soil from Dimitris.

  Antonis also arranged for his workmen to help me distribute these 30 cubes of soil and rake it into a more level surface.

  The cost of this help, and other odd jobs, involved more ‘Etcetera’ costs!

  However, I felt that it was money well spent, especially the support of the workman, because it is not easy working in such extremes of heat and especially when you are not as young or as fit as you used to be, or maybe think you still are!

  Photos: The Soil In The Garden.

  Antonis turned out to be a law unto himself. Many mornings he would just arrive unannounced and sit down at the table on the terrace and ask for a coffee and an ash tray! He would look at the development from the terrace, drink his coffee, smoke his cigarette and then get up and go!

  Other times, we would return from shopping trips to find him already seated on the terrace smoking, as if he was the owner of the house.

  Fortunately he had the good manners to use the lid of his cigarette packet as an ash tray whilst he waited for us to return and provide one for him and then make him a coffee.

  The final straw came when we returned one day to find him and his workman digging in the garden and planting plants that we, a) Did not want, b) Did not order and c) Did not want in the place where he was planting them! The ‘Etcetera’ I could just about manage but not the indiscriminate and unwanted planting. So, I had to tell him that I no longer needed his services and that I would do it all myself from that day on. I was owed a refund on the last ‘Etcetera’ but never got it.