Survival strategies

The very first of the first autumn flowers have made their appearance. The ivy-leaved cyclamen have tiny, apparently fragile pink flowers with backswept petals and they recklessly emerge into the harsh, dry landscape of late summer here on Skopelos.

But they are tougher and smarter than they look. They have a specially thickened underground stem which acts as a food store. This tuber looks a bit like a potato and the fact that pigs love to grub them up and eat them leads to one of the common names for this cyclamen – sowbread.

Now, the autumn rains bring out lots of wild flowers, which is why early October is such a popular time for walkers here. Up the mountains with the smell of the pines and the pungent herbs they go, with the weather cool enough to stride out and the sea warm enough for a bathe at the end of the trail.

But, let’s go back for a moment to our cyclamen. It draws on the stocks of food in its tuber and puts out the flowers, no leaves yet, giving itself the best chance to attract the bees. Once pollinated, each flower stem, with its single seed, curls up like a coiled spring. Then the rains come.

Two things happen.

First, all the other autumn flowers start to get moving and second, the ants move to winter quarters, driven to find safer places than their careless summer nests. The ants need energy for this and our cyclamen is ready. All those carefully protected seeds are coated with sugar – a present for the ants who take them into their carefully dug winter larders. Once the sugar is used up, the cyclamen seeds are safe underground in ideal conditions to germinate.

Meanwhile, the cyclamen puts out its marbled ivy-shaped leaves, harvests the sunshine and tops up the tuber ready for next time. Flowering will end in October, that job done ahead of the competition, but the leaves keep going well into the winter.

Two hours ago, we had a short and very gentle shower – a mere murmuring in a corner of the string section of the orchestra, if you like. Tonight we are expecting a big thunderstorm and all day, just on the edge of earshot, there have been muted rumbles – the tiniest of hints of what the percussionists have in store for tonight’s event.

The air is heavy with expectation. Then, sudden bursts of impatient wind flash up the silvery undersides of the olive leaves. Around dinner time we expect to hear the wind kick off the action for real, roughing up the sea with punching squalls and spiraling away, for all the world like the opening bars of the Ride of the Valkyrie.

We have been round shutting widows and latching shutters in preparation.

But, like the cyclamen, the first rain of autumn reminds us of the other preparations we must make over the next few weeks. Jo is busy stocking the cellar with home made jam and sensible reserves of rice, lentils, flour and olive oil.

This year we are stocking up just a little more than usual. With the unstable financial situation in Greece and unpopular austerity biting hard, there may be transport problems or power cuts over and above those the weather will bring anyway. It is prudent to have a few extra packets, tins and gas bottles in store when you live on an island.

Like the cyclamen, we invest in our tubers. Twenty kilos or so of sweet potatoes are happily growing down the garden and once lifted in early November, they’ll see us through.

Today and tomorrow will feel almost autumnal. But it is a false alarm. By Friday the weather will be settled and warm again with highs of 27 degrees clear through to the end of the month.

Time enough to enjoy our late summer paradise. And when autumn comes, we have our survival strategy in place.

Let’s talk.