This week has been the half-term school holiday, and for us it’s been a quiet one. Illness (Matt), post-viral tiredness (Goobie) and injury (me) has left Matt in bed, me dosed up with painkillers and Goobie asking to go to bed BEFORE dinner. It’s been weird.

So we’ve been finding gentle things to do at – or near – home. The weather has felt like a British summer, in the mid-20s and balmy. Perfect and sleepy and serene. We’ve spent time enjoying the sunshine on the veranda and making things with pine cones and pebbles. I’ve done some oh-so-gentle yoga to stretch out my sore muscles. And late afternoons, we’ve wrapped ourselves in a fluffy throw and watched a family movie. I never knew Nanny McPhee was so good.

And then there have been times when we’ve had to get out for a change of scene. So we’ve taken our lunch down to the beach at the bottom of our hill and had a picnic. The sea was so calm you could barely see where sky and water met – the stillness matched our mood.

Just inland from the beach is a little valley full of orange trees. It’s totally idyllic and completely secluded. So today we decided to have a picnic in the orange grove. As we relaxed on the blanket and ate our lunch, I breathed in the smell of oranges, grass and earth. It took me back to my childhood in the country.

In February you see field after field of orange trees, heavy with fruit. Just wind down the car window as you are passing and inhale. Honestly, there is no better smell. I passed the most wonderful orange grove recently – the whole grove looked golden – and I couldn’t resist taking a photo. The farmer stopped in his car and said hello quizzically. I asked him if I could take a photo of his beautiful grove. I expected suspicion; I got a smile and permission to pick a bag of his oranges. The friendliness of the Cypriots that I’ve met is what makes this country so special to me.

Picnicking in our orange grove, I find a rare moment of stillness and notice that we are surrounded by hundreds of butterflies. They are everywhere! On oranges, grass and the yellow and purple flowers. I see white ones with orange wing-tips, light green/blue ones, and one AMAZING yellow one with two red spots on its wings. But mainly, red ones, dozens and dozens of red ones. I later found the very comprehensive website Cyprus Butterflies which helped me identify the ones I’d seen. For anyone with an interest in butterflies, head over to this site – not only is it very informative, it also needs people to send in records of their butterfly sightings.

I can be very greedy gobbling up all the delights that Cyprus has to offer. Sometimes, before I’ve even finished exploring one thing, I’m thinking about the next place I’d like to visit. Our recuperative half-term holiday reminded me that sometimes it’s better to slow down and savour things – because then you might just find something you didn’t know was there.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Henry David Thoreau