Being here

Early November 2021? Will it be much the same as early November 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic persisted in being as unfamiliar to its millions of victims as myxomatosis was to rabbits when it first began to kill them, or as the citrus scale insects were to the lemon and orange trees of Corfu – now blighted, and even killed, from one end of the island to the other. We’ve sprayed our two lemons and orange with doses of olive oil soap dissolved in water mixed with cider vinergar – a cup to 10 litres of grey soapy water. 

When we arrived 9 weeks ago, we found to our delight, at least one of our trees laden with lemons, now, in November, turning yellow. The orange is blackened by mould on its leaves, trunk and branches, lacking the new shoots and even blossom that we see on the lemon, whose top growth I can examine from our balcony. At the local garden shop Evangelina has recommended a spray – a mix of Sivanto (2.5 m/l to 5 litres water) and Electro pesticide (ditto mix) - to kill, and by resting on the leaves, break the life cycle of the ‘black spiny insects’ as she calls them.       

  “Yes! They are now all over Corfu since three years. We had a meeting of agronomists from here and from the mainland, where in many places citrus is a commercial crop. They said this infestation is confined to Corfu. 'We are not worried'. They are wrong. It will go there.”   

** ** **

I said to Lin “I’d like to drive to San Stephano to see of I can find out how you get a ferry to the Diapontian Islands” 

"I think you're mad"

Sunday had been sunny. Monday started overcast and by midday it was raining steadily - rain that sets in and does not let up, driven by a confident wind from the north east. I don’t drive much. I set off in our small hire car for Sidari about twenty kilometres north and had most of the roads to myself, turning west in Sidari and winding back a few miles down the north east coast to the small haven at San Stephano where I recorded a weblink displayed on the upperworks of a ferry moored in the deserted carpark, the Diapontian islands Erikoussa, Orthoni and Mathraki on the close horizon. A rock cluster like a sailing ship driving towards the closest of the islands.  The rain had cleared. On Corfu - just 40 miles north-south - there can be several kinds of weather at the same time.

The Diapontian Islands off San Stephano Harbour

Driving south towards Avliotes and Arrilas, I stopped for a coffee and butter croissant at Melisito bakery, where the warm wind, turned even further east, made the plastic screens, between me and the rainswept Trompetta panorama, rattle like a road drill. I'd returned to the rain zone. The peaks of Albania lay across the horizon under the overcast. 

Instead of taking the usual sharp left turn in the middle of Arkatades I took a punt on driving on up towards the web of small roads heading for Paleokastritsa. The road shone with the driven rain. Trees and shrubs drooped with the wet. 

Down a slope, almost in the verge, I saw two trudging figures who resolved into walkers. I stopped and gestured for them to take a lift; travellers from England on a walking holiday, for the whole rainy week. They clambered inside with their wet coats and sticks steaming the car windows. After tea and chat in their borrowed study – cosy and well furnished – down an alleyway in the one way section of Bella Vista, I drove down the mountain to the familiar Paleo road, turned past the donkey sanctuary on the thin splitting road through the fields and hedges to Skripero and home. 

How the days have passed. So swiftly. It’s now a little chilly in the evenings. Lin and I keep warm with more woollies and an electric fire – on and off -  at supper; sometimes watching police procedurals in icy places like Helsinki northwards on Netflix.  For days the sky has been almost cloudless. 

We've been rebuilding the balcony bannisters. They were becoming hazardous, even rotting in places. I’ve just dug out two olive planks, used for a makeshift door that I found years ago in the apothiki. I suspect two house builders were laying a fine tongued and groove floor, and agreed to keep two off-cuts. After removing most of the nails and sanding bare, I sawed squares, drawn out by Lin to miss the cracks and remaining nails in the hard sweet smelling wood. These now top and protect the balcony uprights. 

After I'd carried our luggage down the 13 steps

Ano Korakiana. Welcome rain.

After I’d carried our luggage down the 13 steps, while Lin drove on down Democracy Street to park, I returned for our shopping - packed in three cardboard trade boxes. Carried down, I placed these beside the luggage, inside the porch, our closest door. I walked round to the veranda, and opened the other door, in familiar dark I switched on the electric. I walked down to below the apothiki, raised the iron lid above the communal taps, wary of scorpions, and turned the lever on our water meter; and a second lever above the pressure gauge on the side of the house. From the dining room, I opened the sticky front door to heave in luggage and groceries.
The air seemed clean and fresh indoors. “The house feels cool”
Lin had the kettle going. Tea and coffee.
I’d glanced at the tidying to be done – the wisteria sprouting whippy tendrils to be cut back; the reluctant Bougainvillea showing at least some red flowers; invasive pelargoniums to be curbed; dried summer-shed leaves to be swept and put on the compost; litter at the bottom of the path from the street; and the rest of the path, as it passes below the house, needing my sickle to clear our way to the lower road.
I checked to see how the citrus trees were doing since their infestation with scale insects this last year has prevented fruiting. I’d sprayed the trees with olive soap mix in the first week of June. Now at least there was no black mould on the top of the leaves preventing photosynthesis. Although the scale insects had been busy over the last 11 weeks – all my flypapers hung in the branches were covered with their remains. Yet more were stuck on the underside of almost every leaf.

“But” said Lin “they're all dead”
The sticky substance with which I’d circled trunks and veranda pillars seemed to have stopped ants from their suspected symbiotic alliance with scale insects, though wasps were hovering and settling amid the leaves, sipping the remains of the honeydew the scale insects exude.
“And look!” said Lin “I can see at least twenty new lemons”
My heart rose at the sight of them, almost hidden amid foliage.
"Goodness! How that's cheered me up. I wasn't even bothering to look for new fruit yet."
Others in the village have pollarded their trees to skeletons or sprayed insecticide that kills all insects indiscriminately, without guaranteeing that scale insects will not return on new leaf growth.

New lemons on one of our scale insect infested citrus trees

 I suggested we spray again - with olive soap solution only.
“Not so you harm the leaves”
“Perhaps leave it for the moment. Hope for the winter and spring. Pray for new blossom.”
“Sponge off the dead insects from some leaves. Check to see if they return.”
Later our neighbour Katerina spread her arms in exasperated despair. This ‘no-lemons’ problem is "everywhere in the village”
I saw lemons in a net on the fruit counter at Lidl, imported from Spain.
Having lunch in Doukades with Marie and Bo Stille - naturalists,, ecologists, books on the lizards, dragon flies, snakes, slow worms, frogs and toads of the island under their belts - I showed them sample leaves covered in dead insects and one of my flypapers and what we'd done to remedy the infestation.
"Sometimes trees learn." he said "They evolve resistance"
"Really?"
"Sometimes. Yes, Perhaps you should leave things to your trees."

Leaving Corfu

Last night we strolled through the upper level of Ano Korakiana discovering a rabbit warren of alleys with glimpses into people’s homes as they talked and ate or sat outside on small spaces before their front doors. We came to the last street light and walked on in the moonlight. Fireflies were about. The crags of the Troumpetta and many cypress trees rose above us. Back home we sat to a salad supper at the dining table we’d found by the road and imagined how the house might be on our return. “We really have got a lot done in 28 days” I said. “If only we could stay on” said Lin. In the morning it was misty and wet. I put lemons from the tree in the garden in our case, and read the water and electric meters. Leaving 208 Democracy Street the young cats mewed from the top of the steps to the street. The neighbours said ‘Kala taxithi’ signalling they’d keep an eye on the house. Down in Ipsos, we had a chat over tea at CJs with our gang about continued work and staying in touch by phone and e-mail. By the afternoon rainwater was running fast down through the sloping streets of Corfu Town as Lin sought gifts. Dropped off the car and ran for the ferry to Igoumenitsa through a downpour. Once aboard I got hot chocolate and began drying out. At Igoumenitsa we caught the bigger ship for Ancona where we arrive noon tomorrow. On the ship I bought 90 minutes of WiFi for €9.
I hope no shift in habitat, unintended or intended (like some well intentioned anti-mosquito project), will drive fireflies from Corfu. Searching the web I read about a naturalist in Houston who wants their return and wonders what factors in his local environment would return the lampyridae (Greek for shining ones).