The short Cypriot autumn is definitely underway. Days are still warm and mainly sunny in the mid to low 20s. It’s been amazing really. Brilliant days. We are still eating breakfast and lunch outside in the sun.

The days are shorter though – dark by 5pm – and it’s a bit too cold to comfortably eat dinner outside now. Although plenty of people are still doing it – I suspect they are smokers. It’s not exactly too cold at night to sit out – 19c – but the food goes cold quickly. And the rain is starting, which is good news for the garden. We had a bbq a couple of nights ago which is probably the last for this visit.

Today (Sunday) we are having a thunderstorm with heavy showers of rain and there will be showers for the next few days. So…. time to turn our autumn fruit into jam and marmalade!!! We have a lot of lemons and grapefruit at the moment. Best year ever for our grapefruit and they are lovely ruby ones. Bob has been having some for breakfast. Our oranges have been non existent this year. They don’t seem to do as well in our garden as the other fruits. Keep trying though….. Luckily they are in absolute glut everywhere else so I can easily get them if I want them. But this time I decided to make grapefruit marmalade. I like to leave some jars in the villa fridge for guests to eat for breakfast when they stay. They seem to like the preserves. They are always all gobbled up by the end of the season. In the spring when the loquats are ripe, I will make pickle with them. They make a fantastic pickle, rather like Branston.

Anyway, today was for Grapefruit Marmalade. I use a very easy recipe. You use a vegetable peeler to just take the top layer of peel off the grapefruit – leave the white pithy skin behind on the fruit. I had 7 grapefruit to use up. And I decided to add 2 lemons for a bit of extra sharpness. When you’ve peeled them all, chop the peel into as thin strips as you can, put them in a pan and cover with water. Cook away until they are soft – 20 to 30 mins. While they are cooking take the grapefruit and remove the fruit from the pithy skin and put into another pot. Chuck all the pips and thick skin away. Weigh the fruit and the cooked peel – keep the water you cooked it in but don’t weigh that. You need to add granulated sugar at half the weight of the fruit to the mix. So, if your fruit weighs 3kg, you add 1.5kg sugar. Add the boiling water from the peel to the pot, top up with some more water to cover all the fruit if necessary. Now bring it to a rolling boil for about an hour. Skim off any foam as you go. After about an hour it should have reduced, thickened and the fruit largely broken down – give it the occasional stir. If you have a cooking thermometer, you need the mix to reach about 105C, otherwise use a cold saucer and drop a bit on it and it should wrinkle. Turn off the heat and let it sit for at least 10 minutes to let the peel settle amid the mixture. Then spoon into clean jars and leave to set. Oh……. yes….. as the mix starts to thicken but before it gets to set point is the time to add any little extras you might want eg whisky, brandy, vodka, ginger wine. The alcohol will cook off in the final minutes leaving a nice taste. No need to add anything of course. I put a slug of whisky in mine. No…. not the Jura…..

My 7 grapefruit made 8 pots of marmalade and it’s a very good set this time. Must have been a lot of pectin in them. They are all potted up ready with our decorated labels on. A nice haul for a couple of hours work which I hope gives pleasure to our guests. And a good use of our fruit.

We are getting ready to come home on Thursday. Have stacked the pool loungers, brought in the outside cushions, dropped the pool level 2 inches to allow for winter rain….. Bob has fitted up our “elephant’s trunk” rain water diverter….. gourd lights are brought inside…. Don’t get me wrong…. it’s not going to rain every day or even every other day. November and December aren’t particularly wet. February is the wet month here. We’ve had guests here several times for Christmas and generally if they have children with them, the children go in the pool on Christmas day. Hmmmm……

We have finished having the area behind the new garden wall in-filled with topsoil and Habibi has planted sugar cane along the run of the fence. It’s really easy to plant. You cut up the canes into segments and each little segment has an “eye” from which a new plant will grow. It is just shallow planted and kept watered. He says they’ll be very visible by next spring. We have also planted 2 trees up on our upper bank now. A conifer and a red blossom tree. They will both grow big in time. All planting here is done at this time of year to give the new plants a good start in the cooler, wetter months.