Greece ~ Going full circle? Just maybe . . .

Some youthful memories are better not revisited,

but sometimes you can go home again.

-- unknown

We were looking for new adventures when we purchased our Stone House on the Hill in Greece’s southern Peloponnese. Travel from there to an array of European travel destinations – only a few hours and a few euros away – added to the temptation of having a part-time home base there.

Europe's travel candy: London, Istanbul, Cairo, Jerusalem only a few hours away

Now that we are two years into our ‘here/there’ lifestyle we find we like being in Greece so much that we aren’t as tempted to fly off on these short excursions to other countries as we thought we’d be. We are having too much fun in Greece.

Every day is a new adventure, even doing the most mundane of chores. We find the lifestyle is causing us to rediscover old skills and apply them in a new setting. Many of those skills were learned in our mid-20th Century childhoods.  We are just a bit rusty but slowly that lifestyle is coming back to us. . .

Often times we remark of the similarities of this simplified, slower pace Greek lifestyle and that of our childhood. Skills we learned and used way back when are being dusted off and used again. Whether it is because it is all still so new and somewhat foreign to our biorhythms or because it it is bringing us full circle, back to our carefree days of our childhoods, really doesn’t matter. Whatever the case, as Yogi Bera, so aptly quipped, ‘it is deja vu all over again’! 

                I know they say you can’t go home again.

                 I just had to come back one last time.

                         -- Miranda Lambert

Born and raised in small towns in the central part of Washington, a state tucked up in the northwest corner of the United States, we smile when our Greek friends shake their heads, admitting they’ve never heard of the state, let alone the towns in it. Agriculture, btw, as when we were kids, continues to drive the economy in the central and eastern parts of the state.

 

Like other mid-century ‘boomers’ the ‘new technology’ of our childhoods was the television. Telephones, with chords, were wall mounted. We grew up eating home grown vegetables from the garden and eggs collected daily from the chicken coop.  Computers didn’t exist in our youthful world – we entertained ourselves by reading books or playing outside.

Needless to say, like many small town kids, we could hardly wait to grow up, get jobs and live in the 'big city'. Ultimately, we moved to the Greater Seattle Metropolitan area on Washington State’s Puget Sound.

Seattle skyline from Elliott Bay

Now, after nearly three decades of big city surroundings, we have embraced Greek village life with the force of a bear hug! We love its pace, culture, people –  and its food! -- as we’ve told you repeatedly on these pages. 

So here we are in a house above a small village on a Greek hillside, living a lifestyle not unlike that of our childhoods. We seem to have come full circle. . .the major difference being how we embrace the lifestyle that we once could hardly wait to leave.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

                               -- Frances Mayes, author, Under the Tuscan Sun

Let me give you a few examples, beginning in the vegetable garden. As a child I dutifully pulled weeds and helped harvest, but back then I considered those vegetables-- on the rare occasions we had them -- out of a tin can from the grocery store the real treat. 

My Greek garden - growing vegetables and vocabulary

Now I can’t spend enough time in the garden!

This spring I spent hours working to enlarge the two existing planting strips into a larger garden, now crammed with beets, lettuce, onions and potatoes.

Our first lettuce harvest last December was cause for joy as I served a salad with both our homegrown lettuce and our olive oil!

As for the olive oil, I finally got around to bottling some of it (using sanitized recycled ale bottles from one of our friends who runs a taverna) and labeling it with our own Stone House on the Hill labels. An adult ‘arts and crafts’ project – skills from childhood again came in handy!

Off to the left of my veggie garden stands the wood pile.

The Scout restacking the wood pile

As kids we both helped stack wood – a fuel used in both our homes.  Can’t say it called out to us then, but now we’ve stacked and re-stacked wood to get it ‘just right’.  That wood you see in the photo is part of our olive harvest: branches are trimmed from the trees during harvest and then are cut for use in fireplaces and wood stoves.

                                                                           Myprize: my clothes line

To the other side of my garden stands something I’ve missed for decades: a clothes line. One of my favorite childhood chores was hanging clothes (when I got tall enough to reach the line). Living in ‘modern-day big-city United States’ means no clothes lines – some cities and sub-divisions ban them. Here clothes, bedding and towels are dried outside. Only on rare occasion would we take these items to the commercial laundry for washing and drying (there is no such thing as self service laundromats in the area).

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

Lemon harvest at The Stone House on the Hill

Long dormant skills learned during a childhood spent working in his parent’s apple orchard have come to life for The Scout. While never having ‘worked’ an olive grove before, he amazed me, as he stepped into this new environment with knowledge about the spraying, pruning, watering, and harvest that is required for the new adventure of ours.

Spring wildflower carpet is cut for summer fire danger protection

And like his long-ago apple orchard, the olive grove goes through seasons just like all fruit bearing trees: a time for pruning, a time for mowing down the grass, fertilizing, watering and ultimately harvest.  While we are there, we take care of the grove and hire a fellow to take over in our absence.

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Playing house - grownup style

My childhood included a ‘playhouse’ – part of our woodshed. It was near the ‘playhouse’ (a cleaned out chicken coop) of my best-friend-next-door-playmate, Mary. We spent hours in those make-believe ‘homes’ of ours, honing our domestic skills. Every so often The Stone House on the Hill brings out the child in me and I need to ‘play house’ – each time I do, it reminds me of those childhood dinner parties I once held in that play house of mine.

'Entertainment Center' and 'Great Room' of the Stone House on the Hill

We don’t – yet -- have a television at the Stone House. Much like we recall the debates of our parents, we ask ourselves whether we ‘need’ one. So far, the vote is: we don’t. We do have internet (something not even dreamt of in our childhoods – and it keeps us connected with world news, except when the mouse chews through the cable on the roof). 

When not going about daily chores or running errands or socializing with friends, we read books and spend time outside – just like when we were kids.

While in so many other ways that  this ‘here/there’ world  is providing new adventures and behaviors, it is just maybe bringing us full circle as well.

Each day is a journey

and the journey itself is home.

              -- Matsuo Basho

That’s it for this week from The Stone House on the Hill.  Happy and safe travels to you and your family.  As always, we appreciate the time you spend with us!

Check out the writings of other travel and lifestyle blogs at these linkups:
Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Travel Photo Thursday – 
Photo Friday
Weekend Travel Inspiration