Spraying Cement

I don't know what it is about Greeks, obviously they like things clean and that is good, of course. But I don't understand the fetish with spraying pavement, terraces, basically non-green stuff every day in the summer. Sure, on a busy street, a shopkeeper might like to spray down the area in front of his shop. But this spraying is well out of hand. Our landlady on Kos, who owned a modest two story home, had a nice terrace both upstairs and down. Granted, there was some vegetation here and there, but she would spend an hour or more sometimes just spraying the tiled areas. Spraying, and spraying, and spraying. She said it was because of ants. Well, in that case, use bug spray, not water! And then, of course, she'd come to us bitching about her high water bill and asking us to pay 2/3 of the bill.

But she was not alone in this. Our currently landlady does the spraying thing, granted, she seems to be technically spraying the small strip of plants out front, but she takes way too long to just be doing that. Not only that, but she aims from the second floor, which lands on our awning, making all kinds of crazy noise and makes our sentinel cat stay on permanent alert. If you look around the neighborhood, you can see and hear scores of people spraying. It is certainly a phenomenon.

I can certainly see spraying down one's balcony once in awhile, to keep the gook off of it, but daily or every other day is just too much. I don't know what the water situation is here in Greece, sure, they are surrounded by water but that doesn't mean you can't have shortages. Still, coming from a country where you are taught how to conserve things (like water and electricity), the constant spraying and waste of gallons upon gallons makes me cringe.