Storks adn kittens

And there they were...

Yesterday evening a big colony of storks flew other into the direction of Turkey. Great news for the Europeans: winter is over.

Over here, we had one of the mildest winters ever while normally January and February are freezing cold. At least at night, that is. This is noticeable in the number of bugs and snails I find in the garden. I’m not spending that much time working in the garden, as I did last months. Due to the mild weather we were able to start early with the weeding and today there is hardly any left. We are now in maintenance mode which is a good thing because the campers need some attention and March has been busy.

At the same time, I’m catching up with the housework while Zakaria is – as usual – demanding every tool whenever I’m working with it.

It is a very promising child… he is always observing, catching up very quickly, intervening, taking the lead, and very stubborn.

He is also multitasking. He loves to have his breakfast while looking into 2 magazines and, if he could, he would ride his bicycle at the same time. No need to tell he takes up a lot of my energy.

I recharge in the morning by going out into the garden and see the fruits of my work, absorbing the early sunbeams and enjoying the turtles moving around. When everybody is still sleeping, the whistling of the birds is overwhelming. They are nesting.

Soon the kittens will come out of their hiding places. Last week a beautifully grey striped cat with a big belly has been prowling around the campervans looking for food. She might provide first kittens born in our garden.

Turtles

While everywhere else in the world earthquakes and heavy storms are causing a lot of havoc and misery, we are enjoying early spring.

I was right to put in seeds for melons, watermelons, etc… in February, because they are now coming out.

We discovered that the 2 big turtles are still living in our garden and they do enjoy each others company. The 2 small ones must have escaped while construction works were going on in the garden. I noticed last year that 1 big turtle is male, as was 1 small one which resulted in an uneven match each time they met.

Today a new small turtle was added. Let’s hope it is a female.

The first time Zakaria saw one of the big turtles he picked it up quite gently and showed it to its Daddy, then threw it away. He still has this annoying habit to throw away things quite unexpectedly.

I try to work each morning in the garden. Most of the time Zakaria is enjoying this time on his own, but sometimes it is not possible to get anything done. When he doesn’t want to stay in the garden he just starts climbing the stairs and although he is very quick, he is not always in complete balance which makes it too dangerous to stay downstairs when he is not in the mood.

Nevertheless, I am quite proud of my vegetable garden and happy with the blossoming trees. The weeding work will progress steadily.

While in winter we had quite regularly campers in our garden, the end of February and March is very quite. This is before the big crowd will come in at the end of the month. I’ve had many requests for information of campers planning to be in Syria in April and May.

At the moment, the village is living without direct water supply for about 10 days due to a heavy problem at the water pump going 30 meters below surface. We are all buying water from commercial water wells and pumping the water into the water tanks on the roofs.

We ourselves, we have got 5 water tanks which is quite comfortable. It doesn’t require many fill ups during times like these.

Still there is no shortage. It is just annoying.