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.