Spring Fayre in Vrahassi

Despite the very warm day, the Spring Fayre was a great success and enjoyed by everyone. Many thanks to those who contributed to funds by hiring a table for the day and to everyone who worked so hard to raise funds for Flowers of Crete. The International and National profile of our organisation is rising at a terrific rate and there are more and more opportunities to promote the work of education and conservation needed to protect the endemic and endangered flowers here. This success is down to the hard work of everyone concerned.

Wild World Blogspot

In March, Rosemary and I went out with a Swedish photographer, Peter Lilja, who was here in Crete to take photos for National Geographic Magazine. He was in the area around Elounda for two days and we had a delightful time showing him some of the treasures of Lassithi. Here is a link to his blog. His images are great and the articles in National Geographic will be wonderful for promoting the flora of Crete. http://www.wild-wonders.com/blog/?p=3704 We hope to be able to feature some of Peter's images on our website in due course, once copyright issues have been cleared up.

Fund raising

We have now ordered the GPS handheld unit for recording the location of endangered and rare flowers. Unfortunately, the unit we wanted has been discontinued. Thanks to Steve Lenton we have now sourced one in the UK and Rosemary ordered it yesterday. It has, of course, cost considerably more than we initially expected - another £90 and the contributions coming in for the yearly 4 euros subscription will hopefully help to offset this cost. The computer donated by Matthew Jones, although working when it left the UK, is not now - the computer cannot talk to the monitor. Steve has looked at this and thinks it is the graphics card, but could be the motherboard! Any advice and/or help with this problem would be most gratefully received.

Talk by Dr Jennifer Moody

Flowers of Crete is proud to announce that Dr. Jennifer Moody, Research Fellow of the University of Texas at Austin, and co-author of 'The Making of the Cretan Landscape' is to give a talk for us on 25th July at 6.00 p.m at BioAroma in Aghios Nikolaos. The talk and slideshow, entitled "Flood, Feast and Famine - adapting to climate change in ancient and historic Crete", is sure to be very interesting and informative and, as usual, entrance will be free. There will be a voluntary collection towards the work of Flowers of Crete. We are expecting a large turn-out for this event, so can you please register your interest by contacting Julia Jones - julia@flowersofcrete.info If there is sufficient interest, we will be organising a meal after the event to give people a chance to meet and talk to Dr Moody. Again, please let us know if you would like to attend the meal - more details on this will be posted on http://www.flowersofcrete.info/ and http://flowersofcrete.blogspot.com/ shortly.

At the last Committee meeting, it was decided to ask supporters to donate 4 euros per year towards the work we are doing on Crete. The funds raised by this, will be used for printing, the production of various 'Flowers of Crete' merchandise and the day to day running of the organisation. Donations can be made in cash to members of the Committee or through PayPal. A facility for paying through PayPal has been set up on the Flowers of Crete website www.flowersofcrete.info. For supporters in the UK and in Greece we can also provide bank details for payment at Barclays Bank or Geniki Bank.

Sample of 2010 Calendar

Here is a sample page from the Endemic Flowers of Crete calendar for 2010. Further pages will be available shortly, as I assemble the most beautiful images of native flowers month by month.

Cavo Sidero

Dr Rosemary John and I are off to Palehora on Friday to meet with representatives from Minoan the developers for the much discussed development at Cavo Sidero. Although I have been to Vai several times, I have not been on to the peninsula and it should be a very interesting day. We are also hoping to meet with members of the local opposition to the proposed resort, so we will be reporting our findings back to the Committee in two weeks time when we have our next Committee meeting. We will then send out our observations to members in our monthly newsletter. If members have any questions that they feel should be put to Minoan please let us know.

My talk and slideshow

Although no-where near as high profile as Nick's talk in March, we are getting a good response to my talk on the Flowers of Lassithi Province, but are having difficulties coming up with a translator into Greek and someone who will provide a digital projector and sound. If anyone can help, please let us know. We are hoping to attract tourists to the event and would like it to be a success in spreading the word about the flowers here. We can, of course, pay for these services, but as we have very limited funds and the event is free, it defeats the object somewhat if we have to set aside precious funding. I will go and see Sakis at BioAroma this week and try to sort something out, in the meantime, if anyone can help, we would be most grateful. Julia

Flowers of Crete T shirts

I am in the process of designing a T shirt for supporters of Flowers of Crete. It will retail at around £9.00 plus postage and will feature line drawing of Crocus oreocreticus and the 'Flowers' logo. Anyone interested in ordering, please contact me directly. We are also designing a calendar for 2010 and will be taking pre-orders for this. Production will depend on the number of pre-orders we receive. Julia

Cavo Sidero development

Just to confirm that Dr Rosemary John and I are going over to Cavo Sidero on the 8th May to meet with directors and experts from Minoan/Loyalward the company responsible for the proposed golf development on the cape. It should be an interesting day and we will report back to the Committee of Flowers of Crete and then to supporters worldwide.