Week 33

We left you last Sunday just as we settled in to watch a storm and what a storm it turned out to be. It lasted hours and the thunder, lightning and rain just went on and on. It was torrential, easily the heaviest we have had so far, you could not see more than 10 metres and the thunder was right overhead so the noise bounced around the valley. Even the dogs went inside the house as they were scared.

Maizi & Marple playing pre-storm

The now familiar view of a storm from the outdoor kitchen

Monday we wake to a new world. It is scorching hot with no sign of last nights deluge and thankfully no damage. First job today is get the business registered on Airbnb which we are told is a really popular website. As usual this takes a couple of hours by the time you have uploaded all the photos. TH then pops round to tell me that our top land needs to be weedkillered (is that a word?) or sprayed with weedkiller. But I cannot get him to understand that I have other priorities and anyway that area is going to be the campsite so I want grass up there. In the end it is easier to agree but I tell him it will be another day. He will be onto a new task for us tomorrow so will forget all about it I hope. Both of us spend the day weeding and Pammi then harvests potatoes (which everyone tells us not to freeze, but we have and they tasted fine) and peas for freezing. For tonight's tea she picks courgette, lettuce and spring onions. Not long after we have finished our work for the day it starts to rain. Good, no watering needed tonight then.

Our first beetroot

Shelling peas

Todays harvest

Clearing the vines

Another storm

90% from our garden

Tuesday is forecast for sun and showers and they are right. It is sunny and hot then rains, then sunny and hot, then rains again. More weeding for me today whilst Pammi plants another 34 tomatoes into the piece of land I cleared the other day. I soon get the weeding finished, the land slopes steeply and is not fun to work on so I get the job done as quickly as possible. Once done I cut a load of peppermint from the garden for freezing along with flat leafed parsley and some broccoli that Pammi has picked. TH then pops round and gives us some dill and fresh garlic and then is off on his way. TH and his wife are so generous to us, I think they think we are useless so have sort of adopted us. Once the herbs are all prepared for freezing I get round to a job that I have meaning to do for weeks. Give the car a bit of TLC. There are a couple of fuses that need replacing, so a quick youtube search to identify where and what fuses do what (how would I ever had done that before the internet, there are no manuals here), then top up the water bottles and check the oil. According to the dipstick it is nearly empty. Ooops. Off to Opaka then to get some oil. 1 litre later and now it indicates that it is full. Not possible. I check it over the next few days with a hot and cold engine, after short and long trips and everytime it either reads empty or full. At least I know there is some oil in there. Teach me for mending things that aren't broke! Tonights tea is pasta with fresh broccoli from the garden. Yummy.

Herbs ready for freezing

Squash and pumpkin beds weeded

New tomato plants in

Todays entry I thought would be a bit more interesting if you could see almost hour by hour how our day fills up. As it happens this turns into an epic day. Not every day is like this and it is coincidental that I had pre-chose today to do this but it does show what can happen......

0600 - Alarm goes off

0630 - Me weeding the beans on the top land, whilst Pammi picks beetroot and lettuces, then plants more lettuces and herbs

0745 - Efan pops in for a chat on his way to graze his horse. Then I prepare breakfast

0805 - Breakfast of egg on toast with apricot juice and coffee

0840 - Me back to weeding. Pammi washes up, prepares the lettuce for lunch and then weeds the bottom garden

0955 - My weeding finished. So harvest strawberries and potatoes. Then fill all the waterbottles for the potting shed from the waterbuts

1145 - Tea break

1215 - I strim the lawns and Pammi carries on weeding. I then prepare lunch

1415 - Lunch of salad from the garden

1445 - I rake the lawns whilst Pammi washes up

1500 - I prepare the dill for freezing whilst Pammi picks spring onions, broadbeans, peas and cabbage for tonight's tea. Then I beat the rugs to rid them of dust. Next job is to fix a leaking tap in the kitchen but I don't have the right tools so I do enough to stop the leak but will need to get the right spanner.

1700 - I light the clay oven as we are having jacket potatoes tonight. Meanwhile Pammi prepares some of the potatoes I picked earlier for freezing. She then gives the house a quick hoover.

1715 - Play time with the dogs

1730 - Pammi's shower time

1750 - Playtime over I do the washing up from Pammi's potato prep

1800 - Pammi goes to meditate whilst I take a shower

1820 - Playtime with the dogs again

1835 - Time for a vodka and tonic in the hammocks and playing with the dogs

1935 - Tea Time. Jacket potatoes with a pea, mint and mayo relish. Salad, homemade coleslaw and french stick.

2030 - Efan comes round and has some food and a glass of wine with us (our first dinner guest)

2115 - Efan and I go off to collect his horse from grazing. Then up to his house where he gives me a sack of chicken compost for the garden. Pammi does the washing up.

2145 - Back home to sit and chat with Pammi for a while

2205 - Samantha Skypes us

2220 - Back to the hammocks with a glass of vino and play with the dogs

2350 - Bedtime

All these from just one row

Preparing potatoes and beetroot for freezing

Playtime and chill time

Efan and his horse

Thursday is extremely hot, by 0830 it is 37 degrees. Pammi does some weeding where it is a little shady and I go up to the top land to chop some trees that I cleared a while ago into logs. But it is soon way too hot to carry on working so we call it a day mid afternoon. We need some groceries so make the most of our afternoon by going to Opaka to get a few things. Not long after we get home TH pops in to make sure we have weeded correctly, which we have for once and he seems impressed by the amount of work we have got done despite the hot weather. Efan then pops in to see what we have been up to. The evening is incredibly hot and we stay up very late just so we can play with the dogs when it is cool, when it is this hot they either stay indoors or on the cool floor in the palace, so it is good for them to be able to get some exercise in the cool night air.

Efans goats are growing up fast

Bob (beans) need weeding

That was hard work

Friday is another beautiful day and we wake to 37 degrees again as we have had a bit of a lay in today. It is crazy hot by the time we had breakfast of boiled eggs and cheese with bread, juice and coffee. We decide to spend the day chilling in the sun. But neither of us stays still for long and Pammi has to meditate so whilst she does that I shoot off to Popovo to get some new boots from the market. They have none which given the weather and time of year I am not too surprised. But I do get a water melon from a guy who has a trailer load of them and they are crazy cheap, less than 1 GBP for a 5 kilo melon. Wasted journey over, I go home and resume chilling with Pammi. That evening we are watering the garden when TH pops in to scold us for not finishing the weeding today. Does he not know how bloody hot it has been?? So he wades in and starts weeding the lower bean and potato beds himself in exchange for a cup of chamomile tea, fair trade I reckon. He soon forgets about the weeding though, has his tea, then off he rides. Not long after he has gone Efan and Eva his granddaughter arrive outside. We have wild Chamomile growing outside the gates, so after he has given me a lesson on how to pick and make tea from them off they go. As the evening cools we have a BBQ. I make tomatoes stuffed with feta, peppers stuffed with tomato and cheese, new potatoes with garlic and herbs, salad (prepared by Pammi - she said I had to write that as it looks like I do all the cooking), grilled aubergine slices and grilled whole chilli's (the chilli infatuation continues!!). We sit up late into the night enjoying the cool air and listening to chilled out music in the new sunlounger area under the stars. A great night.

Saturday is crazy hot again. 38 on the thermometer in the shade with a feel-like temperature of 43. Neither of us can work outside in this heat so Pammi cleans the house but does not want me in the way. So I am sent off to Ruse to buy myself a new rifle. Wow, those subliminal message tapes must work. Not sure why I got the green light on this but I am in the car and on my way before she changes her mind. I spend a great day in every gun store I can find, ending up in a store I have used before where, after a long 'discussion', two other shop keepers and a policeman turn up to advise me on what to buy. None of this in English but I am getting used to making sense of some Bulgarian words. Eventually I get a nice new rifle complete with telescopic sights, a box of ammo, targets and case. Sometimes it feels like I am in a 'boys own world' dream. I get to use industrial strimmers, chainsaws, axes and have guns. I am so lucky, I hope the dream never ends. That night Pammi has made us a gorgeous ratatouille out of just left overs from the fridge (see she does cook). Another lovely evening watching the stars, which incidentally our neighbours just do not understand. They cannot reason why we have no TV and spend nearly every waking hour outdoors. We love it though and would not want to live any other way.

Fresh watermelon for breakfast

Sunday we wake at 0600. The temperature is perfect for the gardening we have planned for today. So we roll over and go back to sleep after letting the dogs out to play. When we wake nearly two hours later it is, not surprisingly, very hot. Idiots. Still the extra sleep was so nice and we are staying up so late we cannot expect to be up at the crack of dawn and not be tired. Breakfast of watermelon and omelette finished we both get into the garden. I notice that there is a stack of branches outside our gate. No idea what they are or from whom so I drag them all in and leave them by the gate. Pammi gets weeding and me tying up the grapevines when TH arrives. The branches are from a linden tree and the flowers need stripping and drying out in the sun to make herbal tea. Guess who spends the next few hours stripping the flowers off, yes the rest of my jobs are on hold for now. When they have all been stripped and laid out in the sun I resume tying up all the grapevine branches, they grow so much every day. Next job is to weed the strawberry bed. By now the sun is so hot it is time to call it a day. Pammi goes off to meditate whilst I spend a few hours zeroing the sights on my new rifle. When that is done I make us lunch of egg mayonnaise salad. After lunch Pammi cuts down some old dresses to shorten them as it is so hot and she has no need for long dresses here. With the material she cuts off she makes fabric ties for the plants as they grow so fast and we keep running out of ties. I spend the afternoon writing the blog which can take up to 4 hours with uploading photos etc. The wind is getting up in the garden so maybe we will get the storms we were supposed to have last night that did not happen. If not we will be watering again tonight. Deja vu.

Stripping linden flowers

Linden flowers drying in the sun

Candles melt even in the shade. I should have realised really

Tying up the grapevine branches 

Pammi picking more produce

The incredibly hot weather is forecast to last well into next week with average temperatures of 35 degrees every day. It takes some adjusting to and it is not all roses, but we are so so lucky to be having this life.

Hope you all have a great week. Thanks for reading. Take care.