Homa

Our garden looked fine when we arrived,
Zhanetta had done a good job watering the
trees and the plants but we needed to buy new
soil and get some fertilizer.

Our Greek friends told us to collect droppings from
donkeys and keep them in a hole in the ground and
after a couple of months we could use this as
the best fertilizer.

This sounded very smelly and not too tempting to handle so
we ordered eight sacks of “homa” from Koukoudakis the
fruit merchant and Dimitris the donkey man brought the
sacks of soil to our house early the next morning.

When we opened the sacks and spread the soil under the
lemon trees the smell was very strong and we found out that
the “homa” we had bought was a mixture of
half soil and half donkey shit.

It’s excellent fertilizer, but now, three days after
we spread it under the trees our garden still smells
like a donkey shed.

When we have breakfast on the terrace, though, we can
smell the very best fertilizer and we think about
how good this is for our lemon and
orange trees.