The garden is about 2000 square metres, (about half an acre), and has about fifty very big old olive trees, and is also home to an abundance of wildlife and flowers.   Nightingales sing in the evening and lots of other birds can be seen from time to time.  The bird on the left is a bee-eater, and we have also seen hoopoes, hawks and any number of swifts and swallows when they migrate from Africa.

Tortoises, lizards and slowworms also make the garden their home.  In the summer cicadas make a backround noise which is a perfect invitation to have a cold drink, lemonade or tsipouro, the local aniseed drink, not to be confused with ouzo, which is served in traditional “tsipouro restaurants” in Volos.  

In the old days tsipouro was distilled in the village, but the Government controlled the issue of licences and stopped gioving them out, a few decades ago.  This meant only very old people could be licence holders.  One such was Yorgos, the village café owner’s, Mum Maria who lived until her nineties, proudly distilling the favourite tipple, with a perfectly valid licence.  Now it is only made by big companies.  A very good local tsipouro is from Tyrnavos in the north of Thessaly, near Larissa.

The garden has a lot of old fruit trees:  Almond, Lemon, Orange, Naranja (marmalade oranges), Mandarins and Grapefruits.  There is even a Cumquat tree.  These citrus fruits are ripe in January.  The whole garden has a riot of colour in the Spring, and there a different blooms throughout the year.  In the autumn there are pink nichto-louloudes or night flowers, which fill the garden with colour.   

We have a lot of Mediterranean plants like enormous agaves with spiky leaves and herbs; thyme, rosemary and oregano. But our favourites are the scented plants; lavender, jasmine and orange blossom whose scent hangs in the evening air.