Waiting the snow
The good days of October are finish already and the weather is cold now again. We have 0°C in Thessaloniki (this is something like 32°F) and I think we will have temperatures under zero the next 2 days.
Carnival Statue in Thessaloniki - Photographer: Klearchos Kapoutsis
I have my seed trays outdoor in my balcony so I cover them with plastic and wait the weather to warm again. The cold in Thessaloniki is strange because we have damp (I am not sure for the word) also. I had lived in highland villages with -10°C and 1m snow but I didn’t feel so cold like in Thessaloniki with 0°C.
These days we have carnival in Greece and you can find people in streets with strange clothes. It will continue until Clean Monday.Well… hhmhmhm Clean Monday is 40 days before Easter every year. These 40 days normally we don’t eat meat (but the last years we continue eat meat most of us).
I am not sure if this carnival is traditional in Greece or we take it from countries like Brazil because the real traditional carnival in Greece I think is the carnival you can find in some areas the first days of January. The carnival of January has connection with the birth of Earth, the crops and winter solstice.
That’s the trouble with spring! Just when you think it’s getting warmer it gets cold again. I hope your plants will be OK.
Thanks for the carnival picture. In Nice (southern France) there is a carnival just before Lent begins – traditionally the 40 days before Easter. I think other countries do this too. The January one, too, I know takes place in Navarra in northern Spain, where some friends of ours live, at the end of January – this seems to be a more pagan tradition, as you say, to do with waking up the earth for spring.
I hope! we had snow finally, but ok not so much we just see some white snowflakes for 2-3 hours.
This carnival in January is ancient tradition I think, we can find it in many countries and I can understand the reasons. The Earth and crops were important.
But I can’t understand the reasons for the modern carnival, I think we have no reasons, it’s just fashion