March, and Mother Nature’s wand moves fast. She’s not sleeping much, if at all, with all that must be accomplished. I could write a different story every day about the changing landscape but I’m not making the regular trips to Hania right now. Instead my mind returns to a grim, grey late afternoon in mid February driving back from my chores……
There’s an area where the mountains have much exposed rock, appropriately called Kakopetros (roughly translates as Bad Rock) and on this particular day, in that particular light, I felt them glowering down at me. Eerie, it was. Couldn’t stifle a guilty shudder. But what did they hold against me? Which of my recent misdemeanours were they holding up for such scorn? All I could come up with (really…) was a disapproval of the in-car play list…….a wearing thin cd of country hits. Shocking confessions here, no street cred left for this gal…. But I like to live with whatever makes me smile or happy – it’s fine in the car, absolutely and totally fine, especially if there are no passengers, and since that day, it seems also necessary to keep the windows closed when passing Kakopetros on a winter’s afternoon.
I’d opened the window to take a closer look at the newly emerging chamomile flowers. They really were just getting themselves up out of the ground, a mere wispy mist, hovering and not easy to see. While Dolly and Kenny were cavorting about in a Stream, I was trying to focus on the phenomenon of little white flowers so delicate and barely there spread among the olive trees and along road verges. But now that I think of it, maybe it was my appreciation of the chamomile that upset the stark lonely rocks, did they feel left out?.…are my musical tastes suddenly ok again??…. I will still close the window until well past the ominous giants, one never knows….
Further on, tissue paper pink blossom was beginning to show on the almond trees, just enough to signal that Spring proper would burst upon us very soon. That can be hard to fully believe on a dark kind of day when it all looks so slow. But what’s this? Approaching Paleochora, near Kakodiki, and there’s a completely different climate. Clouds are left behind and a bright blue sunny sky changes everything. Rock faces are warmer, benign and very much approving of Mr Denver’s ode to nature, knowing – as those of us wise and open do – that it fills up our senses…….. He may have sung it to a lover but I sing it to the glorious ever changing countryside I have the pleasure of living beside. In fact I really need to get going and take a drive across again, although I know there’s no way I could write fast enough to keep up with the variety of birds, buds, flowers…. fantastic array of colours sounds and scents ………….
As I was putting the finishing touches to this the other day I heard the sad news about the passing of Kenny Rogers, his music will forever be played in my car…..and my house.
Flora, March 24th 2020
