I do love to attend church festivals, it’s a left-over tradition from my youth (which was a very long time ago). So on this rare rainy cool Saturday I was off. First, a stop at my sometimes church to pick up a box of tree-ripened peaches from the western part of the state. Imagine if you will, peaches that smell like peaches, and are soft and yielding to the touch. And they taste like a peach should, rather than what passes for a peach at the local market. I might give a few to my friends and then eat peaches until I tire of them (if that’s possible).

So the nearby Greek Orthodox church was having their annual fund-raiser festival that day as well. Who can resist such an event? Well certainly not me.

Any church festival is greatly improved by the selling of booze, so “step up ” was a good invitation. They featured Ouzo, local beer and regular Greek wines (no Retsina, that stuff is vile).

They always have these tents set up to eat in, usually it’s to protect one from too much heat and sun. Today it was protecting against a light sprinkling of rain. I was enjoying a freshly made gyros (quite delicious!).

There is typically folk dancing going on, but there was that bit of rain which discouraged this for now. The other necessity for a festival is something to buy, (I did mention that this is a fund-raiser for the tiny church). There were t-shirts, souvenirs, icons, belly dancing scarves (the scarves don’t dance, they are to wear while one belly dances) and Greek food items for sale. So I picked up an expensive jar of olives and called it a day. And next year I shall do it again exactly the same (ain’t tradition wonderful?).