3 X Awarded Blog on Cultural Travel since May 2012 for the promotion of Cultural Heritage & Ecology. Authentic posts in En/Gr thoroughly edited and researched, with my photos. A traveller’s approach inspired by my vision to see the world a better place, beautiful, open, friendly, safer. A home where everyone may find the space for active love and purposeful creativity.

2013 © Copyright. All rights reserved – revised 2019

A tree is blooming at the Greek island of Kea

Last August, a good deal of my summer days were spent in the garden working for hours under a relentless sun. I had tones of city stress and frustration to release.
I remember that at one point I had found myself drowned in a patch of land, a miniature jungle of oleander, shrubs and bushes. I was crawling on the ground picking out the dried leaves and twigs, when a sort of stump sprang out, distorted and anaemic. On closer inspection I discerned there were two trucks stuck together. They have grown so close to each other that they had almost become one. Though in a lush it looked underfed. Apparently no bud, no fruit or flower had ever flourished out of them. Hidden under waves of wild vegetation, they waited invisible, forgotten, both their existence and their potential. The two roots had grown into a symbiotic pair of trunks, almost inseparable.
They were obviously suffocating both from the symbiosis and from the surroundings. They had no choice but to turn to survival instead of following their natural orientation which for every living entity in whatever form is to bloom and flourish. It would have happened if they had caught the well-deserved attention and care of the gardener.

My care turned to each of the two trees cutting the dried stems and tiny branches, leaves hanging out dull and dry. I pruned and removed the climbers struggling the fragile stumps. After I released them of the entanglement the two trees singled out, each standing separate at last and lonely near the edge of a stone hedge, to the example of the traditional xerolithia.

I do not climb up often on the natural inclination above the backyard, which forms a blind spot at this side of the garden, hardly visible from the doorstep – not due to the distance, but due to the change of height. But last summer such was my need for engagement that I did not leave an inch of the land unvisited.

In the autumn I was back in the city. The garden was forgotten, though not neglected; as for me I was preoccupied by many different toils. When I returned in the spring I found my garden blooming in a welcoming spirit of great generosity.
I found out my gemini hidden trees blooming with white flowers as almond trees do. I rushed to take this picture to commemorate their beauty before it fades away.

Happy, free at last, their nature and will, their destiny had taken over bringing them into fruition.

Sometimes the things we mostly need, that would comfort, heal, console and make us stronger would come to us if we only give them the space and time necessary.

                                    2013 © Copyright. All rights reserved – revised 2019

I found out in Kea’s guidebook:
‘The island of Kea bears the shape of an almond, its perimeter is about 82 kilometers’
*Anastassiou Tassos, History, Sightseeing, Hermoupolis 2007

In the Greek edition:
“Το νησί έχει σχήμα αμύγδαλου, και η περίμετρος του έχει μήκος περίπου 82 χλμ.”
Κέα: Ιστορική μνήμη, Περιήγηση, Τάσος Αντωνίου, Ερμούπολη 1994
                           

other posts for the Greek island of Kea or Tzia:
http://to.ly/jEfU    http://to.ly/jEbB    http://to.ly/jEbC     http://to.ly/gGXg
https://urbantraveltales.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/mad-love-goes-to-the-beach/