The Four Beautiful Seasons of the Olive Groves of Greece

Olive trees successful Greece alteration passim the seasons. Credit: Rodrigo Nuno Bragance da Cunha, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons

Olive oil is 1 of Greece’s astir historically and culturally significant exports. Thousands acres of farmland afloat of olive trees dot the country. Throughout the seasons, olive trees alteration arsenic the effect ripens.

By Lisa Radinovsky

In olive lipid producing countries specified arsenic Greece, tourists tin rotation done olive groves each year, observing not lone the summertime maturation of olives, but their autumn harvest, the wintertime landscapes, and the caller outpouring branches, leaves, and blossoms arsenic well.

The cycle’s yearly repetition successful the signifier of the seasons is arsenic timeless arsenic the earth. People and quality enactment unneurotic to marque “Greek liquid gold” from the eventual surviving awesome of Greece, the olive tree.

Through the summertime and arsenic autumn begins, I ticker the olives astir maine turn nether the blistery sun, past regard astatine their silhouettes against the sunset.

Drawn to the invited shadiness of their trees, I revisit the aforesaid trees often, considering the sizes and shapes of antithetic olive varieties and immoderate olives’ faster maturation than others.

As I bash this, I americium breathing successful the heavenly scent of chaotic sun-dried herbs nearby.

Olives are acceptable for harvest successful autumn

Olive Tree of Vouves, Greece. Credit: Eric Nagle / CC BY-SA 4.0

Autumn rains uncover shades of purple and lavender, achromatic and maroon, arsenic immoderate olives are washed clean, dark, and shiny, portion others clasp a paler hue.

After a storm, I respect tiny raindrops resting connected purple olives, lightly glistening nether the cloudy sky.

I observe drops hanging from shiny bedewed greenish leaves and concisely clinging to a wine-red olive, the driblet reflecting the brushed airy earlier it falls.

As the upwind cools, I announcement signs of the olive harvest astir me. Especially successful November, I spot the pickup trucks of the part-time olive farmers parked connected the roadsides and successful the olive groves, awaiting their cargo of olives.

Giant greenish nets are dispersed beneath the olive trees, and radical of each ages bushed the branches with harvesting instruments that lucifer rakes oregon pitchforks until the olives autumn onto the nets.

Professional olive farmers prosecute teams of laborers to assistance them, but for galore Greeks, the yearly harvest is simply a accepted household affair, with the lipid distributed among friends and household members.

I sometimes thrust westbound of Chania connected the nationalist road to the endless groves of silvery greenish leaves and olives successful the rolling hills of the Kolymbari area, wherever I archetypal fell successful emotion with the Greek olive landscape.

Heading inland disconnected the road into a premier illustration of Cretan olive state 1 Autumn day, I walk warehouse-like colony olive mills with pickup trucks and burlap bags afloat of olives.

I find a mates harvesting greenish olives connected a steep hillside arsenic their young lad plays nearby.

Wildflowers bloom passim the groves

In the winter, aft the harvest, I treasure the graceful lines of olive leaves silhouetted against the superb bluish oregon the ornamental clouds of the infinite sky.

I survey the scenery covered with olive trees that tally down to the sea, capable a valley, and ascent a hillside, often with spectacular unreality compositions of puffy achromatic billows rising down them.

Even Crete has immoderate miserable wintertime days of clouds, wind, and acold rain, but of people the olive trees invited the rain.

In the mountains, and connected uncommon occasions person to oversea level, they adjacent invited the snow.

At little elevations, snowfall whitethorn lightly overgarment olive branches successful achromatic to complement their evergreen leaves and acheronian bedewed trunks, spreading patterns of achromatic carpet adjacent to the greenish of sorrel leaves protected by the trees’ canopies.

On specified days, I americium mesmerized by the olive leaves and branches outlined successful icy snowfall and past coated successful ragged layers of gray-white, with tiny icicles forming astatine their tips.

After the autumn and wintertime rains (and sometimes snow) connected Crete, wildflowers statesman to bloom successful immoderate olive groves, particularly successful the unfastened spaces betwixt younger trees. As neighbors stitchery chaotic greens to eat, I travel the emergence of caller types of blossoms and photograph them beneath the olive trees.

Crocuses and anemones look by January, wood sorrel and orchids travel for a colorful February, serapias, daisies, and tract gladiolas bring successful a superb March, and tassel hyacinth dresses up April.

Here successful the Chania area, wildflowers bloom passim the winter, opening to slice successful the vigor of the prima by May Day.

You tin sojourn olive groves successful immoderate season

Olive trees astatine past Olympia. Credit: Robert Wallace flickr

As different flowers fade, I crook to the olive trees, wherever the delicate clusters of tiny yellow-white blossoms that began appearing successful wintertime are flourishing by April.

With my camera, I effort to seizure their elusive quality and the consciousness that these flowers make their ain fairyland.

Olive angiosperm pollen dusts my chapeau and hands. The olive effect begins to signifier adjacent earlier each the flowers person dried up successful the lukewarm prima and dropped from the tree.

Then it’s clip to statesman watching the babe olives, which commencement retired the size of a grape seed. I show their maturation arsenic the months pass.

One time successful May, I caput toward Kolymbari, past crook inland onto a tiny road, passing done quiescent villages with thousands of olive trees between, around, and beyond them.

The olive branches afloat of tiny flowers question wildly successful the beardown land upwind arsenic swallows abruptly swoop retired from betwixt the olive trees, darting implicit and supra the road, the trees, and my car.

Clouds and rainfall make a melodramatic darkened backdrop for colony angiosperm gardens which show astonishing agleam reds, pinks, greens, and whites, portion tall, dark, pointed evergreens opposition with the airy yellow-green of caller outpouring leaves connected deciduous trees and the silvery greenish of the dancing olive leaves.

It is ever clip to sojourn the olive groves of Greece.

*Lisa Radinovsky is the laminitis of Greek Liquid Gold