It is now five and half years since we came to the valley and my image library grows increasingly huge with each passing month – thank God for huge back up drives!
You learn a lot by living here for five years, you learn what matters and what doesn’t, how to make a life here work comfortably through blazing summers and sharp sudden winters, you learn to wend your way through the rules without having your brain implode and you learn to fit yourself into the brilliant fractured mosaic of life here.
It is all about learning to live here and it takes a while, and whilst you learn the year turns around you and supports you and sometimes dazzles you in its seasonal excesses.
This is my Turkish year, and I could have chosen a hundred different pictures for each month, but these twelve pictures sum up the valley and nature turning.
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- January – Kusadasi on a hazy winter afternoon
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- February – winter sun warms the lanes and courtyards
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- March – the valley is covered in the pink cherry blossom and the white almond blossom
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- April – my husband took this picture a couple of years ago, he loved the poppies, and as they flowered one April he passed away
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- May – cherries by the pool in Cherry Village
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- June – the bride’s red dress is paraded through the streets to her house on the morning of the wedding
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- July – snorkelling in the glass clear waters of the Millipark
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- August – the sunflower fields of summer
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- September – from the Coban Sofrasi we watch the sun set and Jupiter rise
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- October – long walks on empty roads during a beautiful Autumn
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- November – the start of the olive harvest in the valley
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- December – candles outside House of the Virgin Mary after Christmas carol service