Have spent the last couple of days doing jobs around the villa, principal of which is sorting out the automatic garden watering system after a winter of inactivity. If only….. oh, if only the original house owners had installed an in-ground one!!!! God knows what they did, relied on constant hose watering I suspect. After we purchased in August 2006, there followed several years when you were not allowed to water the garden in the summer (just when you need to). The garden suffered. Then, the water pipeline from Turkey changed everything again and garden watering became a possibility. Since then our garden and hillside has gone from strength to strength but it was too late to install in-ground watering in any sensible, cost effective way. We have had to lay a network of plastic hose-piping around the garden with watering nozzles, all controlled from a 5 tonne watering tank and an electronic controller. The watering tank is fed from swimming pool waste and topped up by the mains when necessary. It works great. Except…. plastic hosepiping exposed to boiling sun in summer, cold nights in winter and water….. becomes stiff and prone to splitting. Which it does!!!! Regularly! So every visit we spend some days, jointing pipe to cut out split piping, replacing lost nozzles…. endless….

it’s done anyway and from tomorrow the automatic watering programme will run through the summer..

We’ve also put the loungers out, the garden dining set, rehung the gourd lamps on the dining terrace. Had several bbqs…. Eaten outside nearly every meal.

Today we worked in the house and garden and then after lunch we had a quick visit to China Bazaar looking for a new cabin suitcase. Our dear old orange one has finally developed a dodgy zip so it will see out its retirement here in Cyprus as a case for our computer printer. Anyway we got one there for about £20 plus some lightbulbs, a new pair of kitchen scissors and two big g&t glasses.

Tonight I made a chicken dish that incorporated olives and also preserved lemons. These are a staple of Levantine/North African/Middle Eastern dishes. You may remember I put up several jars of them last autumn and they’ve been readying themselves in the fridge ever since. I was unfamiliar with them before but….. what a revelation…. absolutely delicious and they add a wonderful freshness to any fish or chicken dish. I made this one Preserved Lemon Chicken and Orzo (goodhousekeeping.com) and I heartily recommend it to you as I do the preservation of lemons -tremendously easy.