Gifts

TWO EGGS AND A LEMON

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Today started just like any other day, with the sun shining into the bedroom window showing us that it was going to be another blue sky, and sunny day. Though the temperature has gone right down in the Maltese islands, there is always the sun to warm you up. Something else has been very warming today, it has warmed my soul rather than my body. The story goes as follows:

After my morning walk and as I approached the entrance to our flat, our neighbour woman came walking across the street with a tin in her hands, in it she had some eggs laid by her own hens whom she keeps behind a wall in our street. We got talking and we must have stood there in the sun for half an hour. Then, with a smile she handed me over two of her precious free-range eggs, here she said for you and your husband, one each. I thanked her and was touched by her kind gesture.

Later on today I again nipped out to go to the shop, and this time from across the street, out of the house where Rita lives (another friendly neighbour who has connected with us)came Tessie. Now I’ve never in my life met someone as generous in her approach to a stranger as Tessie, she chatted and told me all about her life, and brought me into her home, as she lives only around the corner, to show me the huge nativity scene that her son had made. We immediately hit it off with each other and talked ten to the dozen about life here on the island, how very interesting! When I left it was with an invitation to come and visit, and then she ran out into her garden and handed me a home grown, beautifully scented lemon.

It is not about the lemon or about the eggs, but it is about the friendship that these local women are generously offering us. It is exactly what I wanted here, to meet the people of this land, and to hear all their stories, stories about their lives on Gozo.

For me this is a perfect ending to 2016! and a great beginning to 2017 – the year in which I would like to give the gift of my time and attention to new friends, and to friends from the past.

A hearth warming way to end the year!

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My feeling about seeing the world is that it’s going to change you necessarily, just the very fact of being out there and meeting people from different cultures and different ways of life. Ewan McGregor

THE GIFTS OF MOTHER EARTH

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Just when I thought that it could not get any better, and this while I was taking delight in the garden the day after we arrived home again in Ireland, mother nature has given me another two beautiful surprises, first I discovered that there were several patches of forget-me-nots flowering, their blue a delight to the eye, then I discovered that there are several lilies of the valley flowers almost opening, how truly magical! I had not known what to expect of the garden on our return, no sooner were we home than I went to inspect, and that’s when I found lots of surprises, vegetables wild and not so wild, and waiting for me to make soup of them, kale and leeks and other goodies, they were not ready when we left in March, but now they are just waiting to be made into delicious dishes. Herbs too are doing well and looking very lush, the lemon balm has never looked so good, rosemary, lavender, comfrey and others are all ready to be used. Then I saw that the cold frames looked a bit bulky, and checked it out, to my amazement there was one plant of lettuce which had grown to become a monstrosity, the leaves so huge that one leaf would do a whole meal 🙂 Not sure what happened there!  Some grass had also grown large inside. Lots of work to be done that is for sure, but I already have helpers lined up, my grandchildren, one of them had a birthday today, she is now four, and she wants a wheelbarrow, she wants to do gardening, and no fear of that, because she is small she can fit into the cold frames easily so she can do the weeding in there if she likes, looking forward to that. Anyway we are back in West Cork, and we are now already fully occupied with our work here in garden and house. Plans have been made for later in the year when we will be returning to the island of Gozo where we spent a wonderful two months, a time that will stay with us for very long.

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On the last lot of photos, some onions which I had left in the kitchen sprouted, and are now ready to plant out.  Also I had some oca tubers in a pot and I found the shoots creeping through a hole in the lid and the whole pot filled with sprouts, how funny!