(Istanbul straddles the border between Europe and Asia, divided by the Bosphorus Strait)

We spent the past week in Istanbul and stayed with Julia’s friend Samantha’s grandmother Rena. One night we were all having dinner and when Julia had finished her plate, Rena offered “dorma.” My turkish vocabulary consisted of about 5 words (yes, no, tea, ice cream and stuffed peppers) and I was pretty sure this meant ice cream. Julia said no thank you which surprised me since this was the only Turkish word she bothered to learn before we got here. I spent a good part of the bus ride hearing about how excited she was for Turkish ice cream and the quality of the ice cream might very well determine her length of stay. I received the same offer when I finished my plate and I said yes despite the fact that I was completely stuffed. There’s always room for ice cream. You can imagine my surprise when Rena returned from the fridge with stuffed peppers. At this point I couldn’t turn away the food, after all I had looked so excited at the offer. So, insisting I only take one instead of the two she was trying to serve me I politely ate it and turned down the real dessert (cake) later. 

When Rena went into the kitchen I whispered to Julia, “I thought dorma was ice cream” at which Julia choked on her water in a fit of laughter. “Dondurma is ice cream.”

Julia’s first attempt to connect with her Greek cousin twice removed was over Skype. The word yes in Greek is pronounced “neh” which sounds a lot like “nah” or “nay” and despite a month of knowing that it’s easy to forget that in english conversations. Consequently, when Julia asked, “is this Christina’s residence?” and someone said “neh” she thought she had the wrong number. Halfway through an email back to her mom informing her about this something possesed Julia to try again, despite the awkwardness of the first conversation. Turns out that, neh, it was the right number. After a few brief Skype conversations Julia arranged to meet Kosta, the husband of the cousin twice removed when we arrived in Athens.

I was more of a spectator than part of the conversation at a nearby coffee shop. Kosta mostly spoke at Julia, which was fine. After all I am not a cousin-in-law twice removed. There were many points where two different conversations were going on. His english was not bad, but definitely lacking, and our Greek vocabulary is only up to about 10 words now. His pronouns weren’t always accurate so it was sometimes difficult to tell if he was talking about his son or his daughter. 

His son seemed to be the most interesting character. Maurius is currently living 9 hours outside of Delhi studying to become what Kosta called a “Yoga Professor.” What he probably meant was a Yogi. When Julia asked if she could have his email address Kosta replied, “You will be very lucky if he responds. He is being silent for 8 months!” Julia was expressing genuine interest in hearing more about Maurius but Kosta insisted on responding with tales of his own trips to the US. “Vegas 8 times! And Washington DC with 10 secretaries!” He was also insistent in informing Julia how unnatural vegetarianism is. But reactions to Julia’s vegetarianism deserves its own blog post. 

The meeting ended abruptly, with Kosta getting up, waving and disappearing into a side street. But not before taking a quick photo of Julia with his cell phone to show his wife who was sick in bed after her travels to visit her silent son in India. 

Facing a 22 hour bus ride to Istanbul, Julia and I thought we might pick up a bottle of wine for the road. Sarah, a Vassar student we crashed with in Athens, recommended George’s wine shop down the street. She warned us, “he’ll insist that you sample the wine… you might leave there drunk.” When we walked in to the shop we were greeted by a tableful of middle-aged Greek men feasting on a large home-cooked meal of salad, pork, bread, cheese, baked potatoes, and plenty of wine. Before we could say anything they had pulled out two chairs and were serving us platefuls of food and wine. We spent an hour eating and listening to a conversation about soccer in Greek. They kept filling our glasses and insisted we have dessert. After everyone was full they wished us a good trip and we were finally able to do what we had come there for. George filled a giant bottle from one of the barrels and told us “you have made very good connections here in Athens!”

It seems that the 4 or 5 entries we made a couple days ago have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately they are saved to my computer. They will be reposted soon… once we don’t have to sit on the curb to get internet access. So many stories to tell!

These past few days we were in transit: from Paros to Athens to İstanbul. We’ve accumulated many good stories to tell.

One of our last nights in Paros we drank wine, sang, and wore hats late into the night.

With the stones collected at the windy beach we grouted the patio floor.

I have a friend named Acacia and, seeing as I spend a lot of time around trees of the same name, I think about her quite often…

In permaculture, acacias are used in the process of growing orchards of other more valuable trees. Acacias grow fast. They then help the other trees grow by providing a windbreak, regenerating the ground with their many roots, and fixing nitrogen into the soil. Once the more valuable trees grow, farmers can do what they’d like with the acacias; cut them down completely or coppice them (cut the tree to a stump, which will then grow long, straight, vertical branches). The branches which grow from coppiced acacias can be cut and used for firewood, poles (i.e. for fences), and mulch. Thus through coppicing, soil improvement from the root structures, and the tree’s nitrogen fixing properties, acacias enable farmers to enjoy a harvest even as they wait for their orchards to grow.

The acacia tree in this photo was coppiced last winter. All of the branches and leaves grew back during the summer.

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The bamboo in this photo grows from sewage water that has passed through a simple reed-bed filter (reeds growing out of a bed of gravel). The gravel provides a great deal of surface area, which houses beneficial bacteria that chomps away at the organic impurities in the water. All the water that’s used in the house (shower, sink, toilets) is cleaned as it passes through the reed bed system, and finally ends up at this bamboo, where it can pass into the earth safely and usefully. Jim and Irini plan to grow fruit trees from this system.

An important principle of permaculture is to identify all the possible yields you can get from one action. In this case, a reed-bed system enables you to primarily get rid of the polluted water safely, while simultaneously enjoying many yields: the reed-bed itself provides greenery for aesthetic beauty as well as a crop of shade materials, and the filtered water provides the possibility of growing fruit trees, establishing windbreaks, etc. The typical attitude is that sewage is a health hazard and should be dumped (into a river or the ground), resulting in a polluted water table. A shortsighted solution that is actually not a solution at all; witness the rivers across the world which are dead as a result of such practices.

On saturday we went to the beach to collect amazing stones for some details on a patio floor. The wind was so strong I thought I might blow away.

Rise at twilight. watch the sun come up. make a fire. start turnin’ out crepes. back to bed. reading. a gentle day. These songs capture the mood.

Ane Brun – Sleeping by the Fyris River.mp3

The Mountain Goats – Wild Sage.mp3

The Ane Brun song ‘Sleeping By the Fyris River,’ which begins It’s dawn, the crack of dawn… perfectly captures the feeling of this morning. I posted the mp3 under Soundscapes.

We woke up early today to watch the sunrise…

I cannot say
which is which:
the glowing plum blossom is
the spring night’s moon

Izumi Shikibu

Jim and Irini had an abundance of hot chili peppers growing in the garden and we had been talking about doing something with them for weeks. A couple nights ago Julia and Jim finally decided to jar them in a chili jelly/paste. I was in the kitchen mixing muffin batter when the chopping began. It started off with the usual nibble of a pepper and the “ah…cough…YAH…that’s hot” followed by another nibble, just incase that last pepper was lying, followed by another “oh…ack…woooo…hot!” This went on for a bit until Jim started coughing which somehow set on Julia’s sneezing and pretty soon they were dancing to the music of their cough and sneeze symphony, spinning from the glasses cupboard to the water in the fridge to the fruit bowl to the sink to the outside, anywhere but the peppers. Somehow all the peppers managed to get chopped despite their potency and by the next day there were 3 jars of delicious, SPICY, pepper jelly. The rest of the evening was spent listening to comments such as, ”my fingers are burning!” and, ”oh no, I touched my eye with my burning finger!”

 Julia has put her jelly on everything she has eaten since. I’m pretty sure when no one is looking she sneeks some into her cereal. She eats it by the spoonful. I think somehow the whole jarring process has completely desensitized her. 

Today Julia informed us we were out of food and would definitely need to make a trip to the grocery store before dinner. Irini is out of town for the week and she usually goes during the day. By “out of food” what Julia really meant was we were out of fruit and tomatoes and we can’t possibly make a meal without the two most important things in the world. That’s like asking my Cuban grandmother to make dinner without white rice. ARE YOU CRAZY?! When Julia, Jim, Charly, Fred and I piled into the car to head to a small grocery store in Alyki I realized that our definition of exciting had been redefined in our month here. A trip to a very small shop on the corner for a few bags of fruit and tomatoes? VERY EXCITING. A new WWOOFer that came a couple days ago opted to stay behind, clearly having just come from the outside world and not sharing in our thrill to be venturing beyond walking distance of the farm. Give her a few weeks and she’ll be eating pepper jelly by the spoonful and jumping up with enthusiasm to go buy some apples. 

As if drawn to food that causes injury, today we drove by a cactus that had edible fruit and Jim immediately stopped the car. Cactus apples. Julia and Jim have been pulling threadlike thorns from their fingers and lips all evening. This has not stopped Julia from saying how good a cactus apple will be in her cereal tomorrow morning.

A bulldozer came and started carving out a hole for water storage and a terrace for olive trees. To the left, where Julia is feeding tree branches through the shredder there will one day be a pool. 

Jim and Irini have a collection of heart-shaped rocks on the porch.