Forty years ago we bought a tumbledown goat shed and mule stable in a deserted hillside hamlet on the island of Evia. A typical Albanian house, rough stone walls and a slate roof, three single room family dwellings in a row. The idea was to do it up like it used to be, no electricity or running water, oil lamps and a well, the simple life as it was lived for generations. A toilet was the only concession to modernity. We had a similar philosophy towards the garden at the back, to leave it as it might have looked a hundred years before, barely distinguishable from the rest of the hillside.
‘Garden’ flatters our little patch of wild-grassed mountain turned golden in the summer’s drought. The mulberry tree was planted sixty years ago by the father of the last child born in the house. It has pink mulberries and I have just eaten a few. They taste sweetish and bland, no tang of acidity, a fruit for an invalid diet. The tree is noisy with chirpy little birds looking like the wren on the coin I took to the sweet shop for a farthing chew seventy years ago. Bigger birds grub around on the ground wagging their tails so I hazard a guess they are wagtails. Other birds in the tree are black but I don't know if they are technically blackbirds. They squabble in pairs. They all come for the mulberries or the insects that come for the mulberries. A score of butterflies, white, yellow, brown, red, scarlet, flutter round the fruit above me and are picked off on the wing by darting black and white jobs. The Greek for butterfly is the charming petalouda, little flying thing, which sounds as if it means flying flower. They compensate for the paucity of the earthbound variety.
I sometimes think I should get a book and find out the names of the birds. Our Greek neighbours are little help. They classify birds according to whether you can eat them. Flocks of pretty slender things fly past, caramel and cream with a harsh, skittering call, doves I think. A rowdy magpie sits on the roof. I can just make out a stork's nest on the bell tower of the village church down in the valley. They feed on frogs from nearby Lake Dystos, an assumption based on Aesop's fables. The predatory lord of the birds, a fat buzzard, wheels high over us all.
A village cat stalks a cricket in the grass. A pretty little weasel runs along the boundary wall, a red-brown body creamy white underneath. It comes to share the drips from our leaking water tank with birds and wasps. I wish it would make a nest on the premises as they are partial to snakes and mice.
In our neglectful hands perennials become annuals, annuals become seasonals. The shrubs and flowers still with us have survived careless planting, random pruning, overwatering when we’re here and drought when we’re not. Lavender, thyme, oregano, sage, oleander, geraniums, iris, and a couple of other very pretty, delicate things smelling of garlic, whose name I can never remember, thrive on neglect, exposure, drought, flood, sun and snow, as do the bully weeds and spiky grass covering most of the patch. I whack them at Easter, making a golden carpet to set off the colours of the rest of the stuff until next spring when it comes back luscious green with bright flowers.
Let’s not forget the annoying things. Steely burrs and thorns in the grass, big yellow wasps, stingy little wasps living in the oregano flowers, the hornets' nest over the back window, biting ants and spiders, poisonous centipedes, called forty feet in Greek, tickly flies, mosquitoes, snakes, mice, rats.
We are in a cicada boom this year. They make a tremendous din. Ancient Greeks and Romans thought their noise was melodious, and so it is, compared with tinnitus or bagpipes. They produce it by vibrating a sound box called a ‘tymbal’ or kettle drum. Swarms take off from trees as you walk past, spattering you with their pee, sap from the bark of trees they feed on. It tastes vaguely vegetal and is more pure than rain. Aristotle, a cicadic gastronome, thought the females were tastiest when they were full of eggs and the grubs even tastier. If they are not scoffed by philosophers the females lay their eggs in the bark of trees. They hatch and the grubs drop down into the soil where they burrow deep and feed on the sap of roots. After a year or two or more, up to seven, they burrow up again and climb trees or bushes or flower stalks or garden chairs, anything vertical. Metamorphosed into adults they take about twenty minutes to shed their skins. They spread their wings in the sun to dry and fly away, the males to add to the din and the females to admire them before choosing a mate. The sinister exoskeletons remain, still clinging to their perches. If you wake up in the night and find one crawling over your face it can give you a start but apart from that they are harmless to man or tree.
In the evening at the time the French call entre chien et loup, between dog and wolf, a little Athenian owl perches on the chimney. Wolves haven't been round here for a hundred years or so. Entre mouche et moustique, between fly and mosquito, would be more topical. Or between bird and bat, which would preserve the alliteration in English. We occasionally find one upside down on a roof beam. This is the time to break out the ouzo and toast the setting sun in his splendour. Greek for set is vasilevi, to reign, an odd analogy for a dying light but understandable in its glorious thesaurus of red and gold.
During the week the garden is quieter after nightfall. A bright moon casts tree shadows or in her absence a glittering sky sheds shooting stars. Athena’s owl coo-coos before the terminal shriek of its victim, mosquitoes whine, leaves rustle in the night breeze, unseen creatures slither and creep in the dry grass. At weekends these sounds are drowned by the amplified racket of weddings and baptisms in the village below.
This appeared in the journal of the Mediterranean garden Society July 2020
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