Week 39

This week was never going to run smoothly and it didn't.........

Monday I have arranged to go with Borko to a garage in Ruse to get the annual inspection done on the car. I am up early and at his house by 0700. Once at the garage there is a problem straight away as the inspector notices that my annual taxes have not been paid for the car. We had no idea you were supposed to pay taxes. Anyway, no drama, Borko takes me off to the local tax office to pay them. We have to wait around for half an hour for them to open but it does mean we are near the front of the queue. Once at the tellers window we are told that as I live in Targovishte municipality they have to be paid in that regions tax office. So off we go about 20kms to just over the border into our district. Borko by now should have gone off to work but he stayed with me, what a star. We are then told that the car has not been registered locally so I cannot pay taxes until that is done. This is not just a paper exercise, it means the car has to be issued with new number plates that indicate the region the taxes are paid in. This is a big problem and we abandon any further thoughts of doing this today. I will have to get this done tomorrow. Back home it is the last day of our visitors Reiki 1 course which they both passed. They both had a great time and learnt a lot from the experience so big smiles all round. After the course had finished they had to go home and we waved them a sad farewell. That evening it felt strange to have the place all to ourselves again.

Sunrise over the pool area

Tuesday up early and I head into the regions capital of Targovishte. I have searched the internet to find the office I need to go to to register the car with no luck. So my theory is if I head to the main Police station there they will point me in the right direction. They point me in the right direction of where the inspection office is but after half an hours fruitless driving up and down the road I cannot find it. My usual fallback is the taxi rank, explain where I want to go and follow the taxi to my destination if it is not on sat nav. So a taxi driver offers to lead me to the KAT station. I would never of found it. It was behind a restaurant, well out of town and not sign posted. Still I am here fairly early so hope this won't take too long. In my dreams. I queue to show the admin staff my vehicle and ID papers and am then issued with a number for my turn to have the car inspected. I am number 14 and they are currently inspecting vehicle 8. Cannot be too long of a wait. Two hours later we have not moved forward. Then all the shutters are pulled down and off to lunch they go. An hour later the shutters are opened but no inspections are started until a cup of coffee and three cigarettes are consumed by each of the two examiners. They are clearly in no rush. To cut a very very long story short I was there for six hours before being ushered forward!!!! Then my car is pulled into the garage. The number plates are removed and I have to take them back to the admin office. Queue again to get the paperwork stamped. Then go and queue at the cashier window to pay the fees. Then back to the admin window to get all the paperwork finalised. Then back to the garage where my new plates have been fitted. Phase one completed. But to be able to pay my taxes my insurance docs must have my new registration plate numbers on them so that is my next stop and was a fairly painless process thankfully. By now it is very late in the day and the tax offices are all closed so that is a job for tomorrow. Meanwhile whilst I am being frazzled stood around in the blazing sun all day Pammi is doing the deep clean of the let now our visitors have left, not sure who had the worst day.....

Piles of old number plates at the KAT station

This old bike was at the back of the garage in the testing station

Wednesday after the usual morning chores I head off to Opaka to our local tax office. To be fair it was fairly straightforward and the woman did not even shout that much at me (thank goodness I had pre-learnt all the main words I needed to use, so I must have made a bit of sense to her). Taxes paid I just had to go to the Police station again to have a paper stamped. Job done. Just the actual annual test to be done now but that will not be today. In the afternoon it is ridiculously hot so we decide to go and do the monthly shop and whilst in Ruse we can pop in and see Moni and Zo. On the way back we decide to pop into the swimming baths at Dve Mogili and grab a meal at the restaurant there. We had never been there before and whilst the pool was great the food was not. Opaka is so much better. Still it is all useful information for our visitors.

Marple and her new bone

Renovations start on the Mayors office

Renovation complete and looks really impressive

Thursday I go and get the car inspection done. I have been told there are three garages in Popovo that will do the inspection but again I can find no info online. I spend a while going to each garage in Popovo with no luck and despite asking for directions to the correct garage I am getting nowhere and am zigzagging through the town. So taxi rank it is then. I get the best directions yet and head off. No wonder I could not find it. It is literally in an estate of high rise flats and again no signage to tell you what they do. Again I had prepared my lines to tell them what I needed in Bulgarian and an hour later I walked away fully legal for another year. Thank goodness we won't have to go through all this next year, unless we change the car of course. Pammi has spent the day ironing sheets and finishing off the deep clean but it is so so hot that when I get home we both head for the shade to read and chill out. Even at 9pm it is still nearly 30 degrees and the overnight temperature has been 19.

Our new number plates after four days of queuing and waiting

Friday I don't have to leave the house at all. Yay. But it does mean that I have to start catching up on some gardening jobs, especially weeding. So I do that whilst Pammi cleans our home and the holistic barn. Late morning and Baba B comes to our gate with the ex local School Director and his grandson to meet us. They are lovely people and the grandson studies English in Ruse so we were able to have good conversations with him. Hopefully in the future we will give him an opportunity to practice his English and he can teach us some Bulgarian. We all chilled out drinking iced lemonade in the courtyard which was lovely. Not long after they had left TH arrived. Obviously as we have had visitors, not too much gardening has been done and that was soon pointed out to me and all the jobs I had to get done. I know. Once he had left, Pammi and I harvested some of the veg and froze as much as we could but the freezer is seriously full now and we have an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, chilli's and potatoes ready to be picked. That night we had a BBQ of mushrooms stuffed with cheese, corn on the cob from Borko's garden and chilli and beetroot burgers.

Peppers

Cabbage

Tomatoes

Chilli's

Onions

Saturday is seriously hot again. Pammi weeds the kitchen garden then plants out some more lettuces before she prepares some tomato sauces for freezing. I do some gardening, digging up more potatoes, onions and peppers. Then for some crazy reason I think its a good idea to start clearing trees from the edge of the top land. The blazing sun soon shows me the error of my ways and we both abandon any more work for the shade of the vines. The rest of the day is spent chilling and reading. After our evening meal of courgettes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, aubergine and feta cheese with crushed potatoes cooked in the clay oven, we go for a stroll around the village and we pop in for a drink at the local bar. Evan, who we met a few weeks ago was there again and we were invited to join his table. We spent a pleasant hour with him and his friends before finishing our stroll and heading home.

Every single ingredient of this tomato sauce is from our garden

An evening at the local bar with Evan and his friends

Sunday we have a much needed lay in. The hot weather is seriously exhausting and no matter how much you rest during the day you always feel so tired. Today we have decided to just rest all day but Pammi cannot stand the heat so goes and cut down some long dresses to make summer ones and with the cut off fabric will be making tops. I did nothing but read all day. Bliss. So once the blog is written it will be meal time and a nice evening with the dogs in the relative cool of the vines in the courtyard.

The sun sets over the village

It is forecast for another sizzling week here again. Hope you all have a great week. Take care.

Week 38

Well, what an exhausting week but we have had a lot of fun too with our first guests who arrived last Sunday. Their first week has been a series of Holistic experiences, Indian head massage, meditation and Reiki, as well as a lot of relaxation time in the sun and in the pool.

Flower in our garden

Monday started out hot and sunny with dark storm clouds gathering in the afternoon which passed us by with none of the threatened rain. Pammi spent the day with our guests doing her holistic work whilst I went into Ruse to get some fans as it is so hot at night now we can hardly sleep. Not long after I got back the storm clouds gathered and Efan came down to ask me to help him to gather his beans in before it rained. He, as everyone else in every village does, had his beans laying the full length of the lane drying in the sun ready to be podded. Whilst he bashed the pods with a pitchfork I swept up the beans and then bagged them in large sacks. An hour later we had them all safely stored away, just as the storm clouds cleared and the sun came out again. Meanwhile our guests had taken a ride out to Opaka. As I was walking home I got a phone call to say that their vehicle had a tyre blow out. So into the car and off I go to see if I could help. The tyre tread was flapping off half the tyre and damaging the wheel arch but the tools I had just would not cut through the steel in the tyre to remove the flap. We drove back in my car to Opaka where some guys were working outside a garage. We explained that we needed to borrow some tools but they offered to help and jumped in their car to follow us. 15 minutes later and after a lot of struggling, they had cut the flapping tyre off. They wanted no payment for their help. Where else would people just leave their work, come and help you, then go on their way again neither asking for, nor expecting any reward. These people are incredible. Safely back home we lit the clay oven and all enjoyed an evening meal together. Quite an eventful day really and once again the Bulgarians demonstrate how kind they are.

The moon is getting bigger and brighter every night

Tuesday is very hot again. Pammi is now occupied full time with Holistic work and I am having to do everything else around the home and garden. Today I spend the whole day weeding, not my favourite task but they are running wild. However it is quite satisfying when the garden looks so tidy. We are picking onions, beans, peppers and chilli's daily and very soon we will have an abundance of tomatoes as they are starting to ripen now. The sweetcorn is growing at such a rate, as are the leeks. Pammi has even had to plant more beetroot and lettuce. Our guests have bought us some dough which is like a super dough which can be used for any number of bakery products. They sell it ready made in the shops, you just roll it out and use it. Tonight we made pizza's and garlic flat bread from it. It is amazing stuff and a real find.

Eagle soaring over the village

Wednesday is overcast but I have to get to a printers today. Our home printer is running low of ink and so far I have been unable to buy any replacement cartridges. We need to print out certificates next week as our guests are also booked in for a Reiki One course. We cannot take the chance of ordering online and the ink not getting here in time so I am taking the certificates to be printed in Popovo. But nowhere can help so off I go to Targovishte which is another half hours drive further away. I do not know this town at all and it takes ages trawling the streets, first to find somewhere to park, then to find printers. Again nowhere has the facility to print certificates. I give up and drive back home through Popovo. Then I notice a shop, next door to a shop we use regularly, that has names of computers on a board outside (the window is full of footballs so I never took any notice of it before, and goodness knows what footballs have to do with office equipment). Anyway it turns out to be an Aladdin's cave of office equipment and they can print the certificates for us! However by now you will know that nothing is ever that easy. The certificates they have do not fit the template I have created and their computer runs a different software. So off home I go, collect my laptop and then back to the store to make the necessary adjustments, an hours round trip, but was worth it. The certificates look great and we have found a store who will order our ink for us too. That evening we spend with our guests in the courtyard and in the hammocks. They seem to be really enjoying their time with us and are getting a lot out of the holistic experiences which is great.

Thursday is a scorcher. After the usual watering, breakfast, testing and cleaning the pool, cleaning the sunbeds and courtyard, the sun is super hot already. There seems a million jobs to do when there is just one of you doing it but it is way too hot today to do anything. The holistic barn is lovely and cool so Pammi and the guests are fine. They fit in sun bathing and being in the pool between treatments and all seem really relaxed. I decide to take a day off and go take some photos, although first I have to go to Popovo to the office shop to pick up a new whiteboard. I just travel aimlessly down lanes I have never been before photographing monuments of local heroes which every village has. But the sun is so hot so go home to sit in the shade and read for a while. One of our guests wants to look at the local villages as they want to move out here permanently to live. So off we go to Borko's house for coffee and a chat as he is selling a house that he recently renovated. It is really great to see him and Ani again and after a tour of the house we head home. After dinner we all sit around chatting and watching the moon and stars which are really big and bright tonight.

These monuments are about 30 feet tall

Lots of villages have these fighters. 

There are over 200 of them in various villages across Bulgaria.

Friday is domestics day. So after the usual jobs I have to deep clean the house which takes most of the morning. Then there is some produce which needs picking and freezing as well. As the bean plants are now finished they can be pulled out of the ground too. But it is way too hot to be out in the garden so by mid afternoon I head for the pool and sunbeds. Today is the first day of the Reiki course for our guests so the garden seems deserted and I have it all to myself. But no rest for the wicked and the course finishes for the day. Moni has given has a selection of areas for our guest to look at so off we go. After our tour we go to the traditional restaurant in Opaka for a meal. As usual the meals are huge and extremely good value for money so we have a great night out. Back home we finish the evening in the cool of the garden watching the moon as it rises and gets bigger every day.

Saturday is day two of the course. I am on bed changing duty today. Changed, washed, dried in a matter of hours. Everything cleaned and my jobs for the day are finished, so now I can relax in the sun for a while. No sooner have I sat down than the course is finished for the day and I am back on duty. It is amazing how much work there is to do when you have guests. It is not an easy lifestyle. Tonight we are having a BBQ so I pick tomatoes, courgette, beetroot, onions, potatoes, peppers, garlic and Chilli. I stuff the tomatoes with feta cheese, the peppers with cream cheese and make a roasted vegetable dish out of everything else. Shredded carrot, beetroot and courgette makes a lovely salad. We have a nice long chilled out evening.

Corn is growing so fast

Big peppers

Plenty of tomatoes ripening now

Sunday comes around far too fast. I get the usual chores out of the way before steaming a load of corn on the cob that Borko gave us ready for freezing. Then it is an office work morning, catching up on emails, a bit of website work and then writing the blog. After Pammi had finished today's course we all headed into Ruse for a look around. But it was so so hot and so we soon turned around and headed home. Once home all the girls hit the pool whilst I prepared a meal, The evening is cool and we are sitting drinking coffee and enjoying the still night air. Tomorrow I take the car for it's annual safety test and it is the last day of our guests course. It has been a full on but awesome week for all of us. We will really miss having S & L here. It has been fun.

Take care everyone. Have a safe and fun week.

Week 37

Bloody hot. Watering. Weeding. In the pool. Eat. Drink. Sleep. Well thats' this weeks blog written then as every day has pretty much followed that pattern............. but having now written it, quite a bit did happen and best of all our tomatoes, chilli's and peppers are ripening.

Onions hung to dry in the courtyard

Monday morning the alarm goes off at 0600 so that we can water the garden before it gets too hot. Everything continues to grow at an amazing rate, even the weeds, despite the scorching heat. It seems as fast as you water, the ground soaks it up, sometimes it is even difficult to tell where you have watered it dries out that quickly. We finish watering by about 0830 when we have breakfast, we already we need the sun shade up. Whilst I groom the dogs and then repair the concrete on some of the paths, Pammi cleans the house and courtyard before doing her meditation and Reiki. I even give the car a spring clean inside and out as it desperately needed it. After our usual salad lunch, mainly picked straight out of our garden, the sun is so hot we call it a day and head for the pool. Lounging about in the sun, reading, laying in the pool .......... we could get used to this. Later that afternoon Emma skyped from Wales but as usual the connection was so bad we had to abandon the call and Pammi ended up ringing her instead. That evening we light the clay oven and have potatoes, straight from the garden, baked. It is a beautifully warm evening and the moon is getting bigger every day, we should get a full moon this week.

Too much of a trip hazard

Repaired for now until the new paths go down

Pammi weeded the kitchen garden

After breakfast Tuesday morning Pammi gets on with picking some produce. Onions, fine beans, peas and mange tout all need picking. As does our first ripe tomato!!! Hopefully they will all start to ripen now as there are hundreds on the plants and we cannot wait to try them. Bulgarian tomatoes are unbelievably tasty. We have beef, plum and salad tomato varieties. TH pops in to see what we have been up to but does not stay long and is on his way. It is too hot to do the strimming which needs doing so I weed and thin out the strawberry bed instead. When Pammi later finishes her Reiki we have lunch, which is salad with our own tomato. It is gorgeous, so red, juicy and flavoursome. Lunch finished we head straight for the pool and another lazy afternoon. Georgio comes by later that day and brings us some more strawberry plants. How did he know I had been clearing out the strawberry bed and there was space for more plants? Anyway we all sat in the shade of the courtyard with a nice cold beer before he toured our garden and gave us a few pointers in looking after certain plants, before heading off home. It was my turn to cook tonight so I made pasta with peas, mange tout and mint all from the garden. Dressed in a lemon and olive oil mix it was really refreshing and summery. After doing the dishes I played with the dogs whilst Pammi took the rubbish down the skip. About two hours later she came back having gone to play with Danni next door whom she had seen whilst doing the rubbish. As usual she did not come back empty handed, she came back with some homemade apricot compote. Delicious.

Our first ripe tomato

One or two onions ready to be hung

Strawberry bed all nice and neat

Onions ready to hang

Wednesday the temperature nudges 38 degrees and is forecast to be even hotter tomorrow. So whilst I water the garden, Pammi sows lettuce, onions and strawberries. After breakfast Pammi goes to the cool holistic barn to work whilst I head out to photograph some eagles. There seem to be lots around right now and quite a few storks again so I hope to be lucky and get some good shots. But no, the only thing I got was a puncture after hitting a pothole which was in the shadow of a tree so did not see it. I always carry a compressor in the car so am soon back on the road again. Amazingly the tyre stays inflated so hopefully it was just the impact that deflated the tyre. Frustrating that I never got any good wildlife photo's though. When I left this morning somehow the gate did not latch properly and Marple the escape artist was off down the road. Pammi went off after her but Marple did not go far and soon came scampering back up the hill. Lucky for us and her. Marple is not street wise. When I get back just after lunch, there are a few groceries we need so a quick trip into Opaka sorts that job out. Pammi suggests we go out to lunch so we go to the traditional restaurant in Opaka. As usual the food was gorgeous, Pammi had the biggest and best Greek salad ever and it is so cheap. The rest of the day is spent reading and relaxing before our evening meal. It is a really humid night and the dogs are even struggling to play in the heat so we stay up late to try to get some coolness.

Thursday is crazy hot, when the thermometer tops 40 degrees. We start off with good intentions with weeding but soon stop. Pammi has offered to give me an indian head massage so a relaxing hour is spent having that done. There is no way we are doing anything else today so to the pool we go. I never thought we would use it so much, but it is so nice. The sun warms the water and it is like having a heated pool. I have researched all about pool maintenance and we have got the chemical levels right now. The water pump we leave on constantly and it has made a real difference. After our evening meal we decide to take a stroll around the village and as we walk past TH's house he calls us in. Ani and Thomas are also there. We have the garden tour and are given a bag of plums, apricots and peaches. We are then invited to stay for a glass of wine and something to eat. They cannot get used to us being vegetarians and despite their best efforts to get us to eat meat we just have some spicy potatoes. A few tumblers of wine later we leave before we need to be carried home. It was a lovely evening though and once again everyone is so nice and generous to us. We get home and play with the dogs until very late as it is still so hot. The sky is amazing tonight and I use my phone app for a while to identify all the different constellations we can see. 

The sun setting on our local church

Friday is a cooler 35 degrees :) We have no choice today but to crack on with the mountain of jobs to do before our guests arrive on Sunday. Pammi deep cleans the house and then the holistic barn whilst I strim the lawns and the front of ours and our neighbours houses. It is so so hot and I melt in the blazing sun but we are on a timescale now. Late afternoon I finish as does Pammi who has been doing her Reiki practice. We do not even have time for the pool today. Early evening the sky darkens and the wind picks up considerably. It feels like we are in for a storm but nothing materialises. Oh well looks like we'll be watering again in the morning. But tonight is BBQ night and we have potatoes with chilli (our first out of the garden) and sweetcorn with beetroot burgers for Pammi and chilli and bean burgers for me. They were scrummy and we had a really nice relaxing evening.

Our first chilli's and wow, were they hot. We were concerned the peppers and chilli's weren't going to grow, but in the last week or so we have gone from a few small ones to large ones and more than we can pick. That will be a job for next week to pick and preserve them.

All neat and tidy, shame the grass is nearly all dead though.

Chillin in the hammock

Saturday we have plenty of jobs to do so after breakfast I carry on strimming the top land whilst Pammi deep cleans the holiday let. Then we both go around tidying and cleaning everything that doesn't move (although the dogs did get groomed too). But with all the will in the world we have to stop, it is so hot. Anyway that pool is calling. A couple of hours in the pool and the world is a better place, but not so good that we want to resume working. Tonight is construct a pizza night so we are eager to eat early as we love this night. I pick the chilli's from the garden and they are on my pizza in minutes. You cannot get fresher than that. We have a lovely meal but have eaten way too much so we go for a walk. We bump into Efan who gives us a couple of strawberries in exchange for me helping him push his donkey cart up the hill. How was he ever going to do that if I had not walked by without him having to fetch then hitch his horse up which would take ages to do. After a bit of a chat we are on our way. But it is hotter than we thought and we take a short cut home. The rest of the evening is spent in the garden with the dogs who find it too hot to play so we all just lounge around in the deck chairs. The moon is almost full tonight and the stars are really bright. Tomorrow must be a full moon.

Pizza night

This hill is steeper than it looks

Today our guests arrive. We spend all morning making sure everything is spotless. Then check and double check everything is as good as it can be. Be interesting to see what we have forgotten or overlooked but we are really looking forward to their arrival. If they get as much out of their visit as we have put into it everyone should be very happy. We really hope so. And we also have another tomato ripen today, a good sized plum tomato which we will have this evening. Lets hope it is the first of many to ripen now as the weather is forecast to be very warm for the next week.

Our first plum tomato

Bean plants laying out to dry in the sun before being shelled. Good luck with that lot!! 

Well hopefully we will have lots to report next week. Have a great one everybody.

    

Week 36

Up bright and early Monday morning, a few last jobs to do before our guests arrive tomorrow. I want to get the pool level and only have a one metre spirit level, a much longer one is needed, I could use wood or a metal pole but where do you find a straight piece of wood or metal in Bulgaria? So after breakfast Pammi cleans through the let whilst I go off to Ruse to get the tools and few bits we need. I only have to go to a couple of stores so am soon back home. By the time I get back Pammi is just finishing. I give all the outside areas a good clean and we are ready for their arrival tomorrow. It has been a gloriously hot and sunny day again today but as the evening draws in so does heavy rain. So after our evening meal of beetroot burgers and corn on the cob we have an early night.

Gardening or Glastonbury?

Tuesday is forecast to be hot so the alarm is set for 0600. No watering needed after last nights rain so Pammi gets on with tying back the tomatoes and weeding whilst I begin the levelling of the pool area again. It is so much easier with the right tools. Strange that. In a few hours the land is level and the pool is being filled. We learn that our first guests have cancelled. Oh well. This is bound to happen sometimes but is still disappointing. I get on and dig up some of the potatoes from the lower garden and soon have another half a sack load. TH pops in with apricots, pears and cucumbers for us, seems happy with the work done on the pool and off he scoots. A little later Dora and Danni come round. Pammi plays with them on the hammocks whilst I light the clay oven ready for tonight's meal of jacket potatoes. Danni watches a couple of Mickey Mouse cartoons but it is getting late now so off to bed he goes. We have a late night meal in the night coolness which after another very hot day today is so welcome. But even though it is 20 plus degrees in the evening we sometimes still reach for our fleeces. Will we become so accustomed to the heat, as all other Bulgarians are, that we will keep our jumpers and coats on until temperatures reach 30 degrees next year?

Levelling the pool area

Level and being filled, smoothing out the base.

Danni watching Mickey Mouse

Wednesday morning comes round far too quickly and the alarm lets us know it is garden watering time. Pammi is spending the day doing Holistic practices so I carry on filling the pool with water, but we dread to think what our water bill will be this month. We have a few offcuts of warped and less than perfect wood but as I only need short runs, I make an entrance way to the pool. I even put up safety signs. It looks like a proper pool area now but still needs a few finishing touches. The rest of the morning I spend pottering around the garden until the sun is so hot it is impossible to carry on. Wish the pool was full, it looks so inviting already. Whilst Pammi finishes off in the holistic barn I get the instructions for the pool pump out and having read the instructions that came with it, it appears we also need chemicals to keep the water safe. We thought that's what the pump would do and of course there is nothing on the box to tell you what you may need. We cannot use the pool until the water is safe so we both go into Ruse. Not knowing anything at all about PH levels, chlorine, algae or any of the other two hundred chemicals that it seems we may or may not need we are looking hopelessly at all the chemicals on the displays, but are none the wiser. Of course nobody speaks English and more importantly our Bulgarian does not cover chemicals, and the boxes are in every language except English. Not even our translation apps help. So we go for a chemical testing kit, colour coded so should be easy enough to understand, yea right!!, and an all purpose, do it all chemical tablet. We'll just have to take it from there and do a bit more internet research. We also get some fake grass on a roll. We hate it but it will be the best option for our guests to have a nice clean entrance to the pool area. Pammi does not often come into Ruse with me and she realises now how long everything takes to do. She vows only to ever go again once a month for the big shop. We get back mid evening and TH comes straight round with a tennis ball for the dogs. Takes a stroll of 10 meters up the garden turns around and is on his way again. His exit heralds the arrival of Dora and Danni. Pammi plays with Danni for a while with a bubble making toy we bought for him today. He soon gets bored with that and is more interested in Pammi making noises with her finger rings on the plastic of the sunloungers. We have a nice cool drink in the courtyard before Dora takes Danni home. Tonights meal is courgette stuffed with feta cheese which was supposed to be cooked alfresco but it is so late now we have to do it in the oven for quickness. It was still delicious though.

Dora, Danni and Pammi

Pammi plays ball with the dogs

But it is still too hot and the dogs go for a rest

Thursday morning and the sun is hot already by 0700. Watering done, breakfast in the courtyard finished, Pammi picks beans and onions whilst I level the path to the pool area. Pammi ties up the onions and hangs them in the outside kitchen to dry. The beans are trimmed, bagged and frozen. Whilst Pammi meditates I tie up the vines which are getting out of hand again, almost every other day they need attention, before grooming the dogs and then siliconing the floor edging in the holistic barn, another job I have meant to do for ages. TH pops in, sees I am busy and says he will pop back later. A short while later Efan comes round. We all sit in the cool of the courtyard under the vines drinking tea. He then shows us how to prune our quince tree, pinch out the tomato plants so that they bush out and then trims a few vine branches for us. We are still unsure about this pinching out of tomato plants though. Next job I want to do is tidy the compost area but there is so much of it, including loads of old branches that obviously won't rot down this millennium. So I throw a match on them. Best bonfire we have had and is soon in danger of spreading out of control. How does that work, when you want a big bonfire nothing burns but when you want a controlled fire it is Blazing Inferno revisited. Still, it soon got rid of all the stuff that won't rot down. Then it was off to the wood yard to see if they had any old pallets that they did not want as I wanted to use them to make compost bins. A rummage around their yard and we soon had all the pallets we needed. They even delivered them for us. It was now way too hot and too late in the day to do any more work so we chilled out for the rest of the day before having pea quiche and salad for our evening meal.

Pammi cutting ties for the plants

That's reduced the pile a bit

Pammi hanging onions out to dry

Today we are going to take the day off. We have not had a full day off for a while and the forecast is for a hot but not scorching day. We still get up with the alarm at 0600 to do the watering but that is our work for the day done. We then have a day that feels like a proper holiday, we chill out on the sunloungers, in the pool and have a BBQ. Stuffed peppers and twice baked potatoes with salad for lunch,  a glass of wine and some cheesy summer songs on the laptop coupled with the gorgeous weather is just what we need. Then TH and his wife Ani come round. Ani has come to show Pammi how to pinch out her tomato plants. In a totally different way to Efan so we are still confused. They do not hang around long and after Ani has had a tour of the house and garden are soon gone. Although we have done nothing all day we are exhausted so have an early night. Work starts again tomorrow and the weather is now forecast to get hotter and hotter.

Entrance to pool area

Chill time

Pammi in the pool

Saturday morning starts as usual, alarm, watering, breakfast. We decide on the jobs for the day and before it gets too hot I start to dig up the potatoes from the top land. They have had absolutely no TLC at all but are by far the best potatoes we have had. One row fills a sack. We still have about another six rows to dig out but for now they may be best left in the ground. Until we find out differently. Anybody would think we have no idea and make it up as we go along. Not too far wrong. Toot, toot, toot, toot. TH arrives to say that we should be picking our beans from the top land. They too have had no TLC and are all dried out, which I have read on the internet is when you are supposed to harvest them. So we pull out the entire plant, spread them out on the concrete to dry and I am told to make sure I turn them in the sun and TH will be back later this evening. There is a huge pile of them, I am not looking forward to shelling that lot. But for now my next job is to make the compost bins. How difficult can it be to make square bins out of square pallets? Not difficult just frustrating. Even with drilled pilot holes the screws still bend and snap. argggggggggghh. After making a couple of bins and getting them fairly straight and solid, the heat beats me and I call it a day. But that pile of beans is staring at me and I cannot face doing them this evening so Pammi and I start to strip the pods off the plants. It is so so boring and seems to take forever. Soon though TH arrives with a pitch fork and industrial sized sieve. He bashes the piles of bean plants so that the pods fall off. The mess is horrendous. Then the pods are bashed so that they burst open and the beans, which are hard and white, are dispensed. I reckon we lose about one fifth of the crop after sifting out the debris from the beans and the smallest beans are discarded. Everyone here is obsessed with growing beans. It seems so inefficient to us. We are only left with about two kilos of beans from three, forty metre rows. They are so cheap to buy anyway, next year we cannot justify the space on something with so little return. TH could tell we were not impressed with the amount of effort needed for so little produce. Cannot wait to see TH's face next year when we tell him we will not be growing 'Bob' again. He soon made a quick exit. For tonights meal I made a salmon paella which was soooo good. A few glasses of vino and a game of ball with the dogs under the stars completes our day.

All this....

.....only produces this amount of dried beans

The Day of the dreaded Bob is behind us. Sunday morning is a scorcher. We water first thing and do some weeding before the sun gets too hot. Pammi is having a cooking day today to make some quiches and pies for the freezer. So after breakfast I finish the last compost bin and they tidy up that area perfectly, might even give them a coat of paint at some stage. By 1100am it is so hot I have to come out of the garden and so whilst Pammi finishes her cooking I write the blog. In the afternoon we take time to enjoy the pool and the blazing sunshine before sampling a salmon quiche and the Mediterranean quiche that Pammi made earlier with salad and potato salad for our evening meal. Just time now to play with the dogs and enjoy the evening.

Compost bins

Garden looking good. The squash's are going mad

Palm sized tomatoes

Our first red tomato

We are going to have so many chilli's and peppers. There are about another 30 plants like this

This corn was only sown a week ago

Cabbages

Pammi in the food factory

The fruits of Pammi's labour. Bean burgers, chilli burgers, quiches, falafel and a mixed veg pasty

 Next week the weather is forcast to get even hotter so we have vowed that early morning starts must mean we stop work by lunchtime to spend some time actually enjoying this summer weather.

Enjoy your week everyone.