Eating an elephant – an update

March 9, 2010 in The Build | No comments

We’re getting a little sick of eating this elephant… it’s stuck in our teeth, we’re choking on it & it doesn’t matter how small the chunks, it’s still taking ages to chew.

But we are getting there – slowly but surely.  We have had a run of dry days which helps enormously with this enormity.  Here’s the view of the side of the shower block a couple of days agao – mud all levelled out & looking tidy:

However, there is still much mud to be moved and we have been agonising over what to do with it.  The first priority was to cover & protect the grey water pipes that protrude from the baths and run our waste water to our gardens.  First the pipes had to be levelled again and thanks to Nik we had a spirit level with blocks attached that give us the level for the 2% drop required.  I am reminded again at what a legend Mr Paddison is.  The grey water system is a triumph largely due to his patience, perseverance and effort.

Steve had a vision of a new terrace wall to give us an edge to level to and to hide the 3rd bath in an attractive structure mirroring the one he had built around the grease trap and first bath.  I have to admit, I was not a fan of the idea.  More rocks to move… my muscles ached just thining about it.  But it was a great way to use some of the excess soil and it would look great.  Here is the start of the sub-project that this elephant task has created – you can also see the mud heap to the right that safely hugs the greywater pipes:

We are in the process of uncovering terrace walls that have been hidden with mud for more than a year so we trawled through old photos to see what the walls looked like before clay mountain.  It was incredible – the land has changed beyond recognition.  That’s a measure of how far we have come…

Today was a beautiful sunny day and more things seem possible with the heat of those rays warming our bones.  So we plodded on as the birds and butterflies painted the sky with bright colours – fragile wings beating orange; yellow wagtails; blue tits; red robins.

I set about prising the mud away from the terrace wall below the baths.  I felt like an archeologist on a dig, gently chipping away at the piled up earth to reveal the stone wall:

Meanwhile Steve was building an awesome wall.  Here’s the view from the side:

The plank was our makeshift ramp for rolling up some of the massive rocks.  Jeez, I’m doing weight training++ at the moment shifting these buggers!  Despite all the agony – cramping hands, aching back etc – it was all worth it when we reviewed our progress at the end of the day:

You can’t really tell from these photos but we have a reasonable wall here (saving us a lot of time as the tyre wall now won’t have to be so long) and we have regained width on the terrace itself – it will look sooo great!

And this is the really cool shot of Steve’s fantastic new terrace wall that made me thank him for insisting – he was right and it will look great.

At this rate we will finish filling this area in with soil on Thursday.  We will sow grass seed and let nature be for 2 weeks (we are off to the UK for Steve’s birthday and fun with friends & family), hoping beyong hope that we will return to green shoots of growth everywhere…

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Snow violets

March 6, 2010 in Nature, The Build | 3 comments

It did our souls good to wake to sun streaming through the windows this morning.  But the snow laying on the vehicle windscreens warned of a chilly day.  White stuff or no, with Steve’s cold much improved, it was time to get back on the campsite and get grafting.  Little snowy scenes still lingered in Malta:

We had a great day, trying to stay in the sunny spots – shovelling & levelling mud.  This may not look much, but this is another chunk of elephant eaten… another pile of mud gone (& check out the weird shadows of Steve & I):

And we drove home knackered but content, with the delicate smell of violets in our noses – here’s a bunch fresh picked from the upper plot where the wild narcissi are starting to bloom too…

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Flowers & frugal serendipity

March 3, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening | 2 comments

I’ve finished digging the new flower bed.  Here it is edged with stones, incorporating the orange tree (covered for wind protection) and the pear…

We have been collecting seeds from flowers for years – foxgloves from a English country garden, nigella from everywhere because its so easy and a few unusual flowers we couldn’t identify.  We have no idea of the viability of many of these seeds and even some of the packet seeds are out of date so it was time to chuck everything in and see what comes up.  This is also untried territory and when digging it over I found that even within a small area the soil quality varied enormously.  I had, almost absent-mindedly, chucked some soggy leaves and rotted donkey poo onto bits of the garden when I began tackling it back in November and was amazed to see how this had improved patches of the soil even in such a short time.  Other areas were much less fertile and more sandy.  And in parts the soil was reasonable but weed-ridden and/ or rocky.

My biggest mistake in the past has been not documenting what I’ve sown & where.  So I sat on a rock, admiring my handiwork & drew a plan of the new flower garden.  I identified hazards, noted soil quality and thought about what flowers would flourish under the trees in partial shade (foxgloves and campions), which would happily bask in the full-sun (Californian poppies) and the heights of different flowers.  We have 3 ‘unknowns’ – we have no clue what they are, how tall they grow, what conditions they like, how deep they should be sowed so it’s ‘pot luck’ folks!

Whilst the flower garden was a satisfying project (and gave me a free CV workout in the process – always a bonus!) it depressed me that the garden proper, our precious raised beds were in a worse state than this patch of ground.

They had suffered during the ditch-digging drama.  Most of them were ‘infected’ with clay to some degree or another.  And all of them (bar the onion bed, already planted) need topping up with soil.  As we tighten our belts for our toughest summer ever, we have had to question every expense.  We had to face facts – it was crazy to spend money on topsoil that we would not recoup.  How much produce could we generate this summer (Ninja Cow permitting) and therefore how much could we invest?

When we visited the garden centre today, there were bags of compost for only 4 euros.  We debated and finally splashed out on 3.  We knew this would barely touch the beds but wondered about having one or 2 beds in good condition and writing off the rest – marigolds seemed to thrive there last year, we could fill in with those… We were still having this debate when we drew up outside the lock-up we ‘mind’ in Sutorina and noticed the delicious leaf mould, a year’s accumulation all soggy and rotted down, piled up under the trees.  We just so happened to have bin bags & old compost bags in the van and a shovel.  7 big bagfuls of yummy hummus later we drove to the campsite and began to work on rejuvenating the garden.

The good news is that with our own compost and the leaf mould, we only used 2 of the shop bought stuff and the beds are looking groovy.  So for 8 euros, we might just be able to grow again.  The remainder will be used as potting compost for all the seeds we are due to plant when we return from the UK.  I’m taking copious notes this year of what we manage to produce and the value to us in euros.

And another happy coincidence…  We’re getting ready to move the compost heap and take down the ugly pallett structure to reclaim some flat land for 2-3 tents.  This means we’re letting what we have got rot down and not adding fresh stuff until it’s properly re-positioned.  Meanwhile the compost heap in Topla is coming along nicely so we’re adding our peelings etc to that.  Trudging across the garden with my kitchen slops has reminded me how badly it needs weeding so I decided to give the garden some attention yesterday when Steve was still feeling too cold-ridden to work.  In the process I found a big bunch of coriander flourishing in the cactus bed!  Indian food coming right up!

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February in Review

March 1, 2010 in Den, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Organic Gardening | 3 comments

I have totally re-vamped my Month in Review post.  I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can make this interesting and meaningful to me.  I suddenly had this ‘Duh!’ moment when I realised I could actually use the monthly round-ups as a useful journal to refer back to so let me walk you through my new headings to explain my rationale.

I’m sure I’m missing something but I can’t figure out what it is?  Would love to hear your feedback…

What’s fresh?

(If I want to grow more of my own produce I need to document what produce I’m buying fresh & local so I can then work back and figure out when to plant.  Noting here what we pick fresh from our garden  – including weight if I can remember to record it – will help me plan better for planting plans, managing gluts and to note if different varieties yield for longer)

From the store: ….

  • Carrots
  • Rotkvica (big radishes!)
  • Raštan (spring greens)
  • Kale
  • Parsnips
  • Spuds – a certain, white variety?
  • White cabbage

From the garden: …

  • Rocket – I dug up the plants from the raised beds in December and put them in a pot – is just over & starting to seed…
  • Parsley
  • Chives

Sowing & Planting

(So I can build a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden.  I would like to get more strategic about mulching & fertilizing – organically of course – ahead of time so my plants have the best start in life)

Onion sets – reds & whites.  We were SO chuffed to buy HALF A KILO of onion sets for 80 cents!  It would have cost 5 times that in the UK!  Have planted one bed up already and the edges of the flower garden.

Flowers!  I have been preparing my new flower bed in the ‘orchard’ area…

And yesterday I sowed loads of seeds.  More on this and pictures of my planting plan in another post soon…

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month.  I create things all the time & forget to share my crafty moments)

Veg samosas for the wedding party were a hit – must confess I used the pre-bought filo pastry tho’.

‘Maskenbal’ is the highlight of the Mimosa/ Boka Festival so not surprisingly we were making masks.  We teamed up with the Watson-Lanes to get crafty for Gracie…  The mask below was sent back from school because the teacher wanted only homemade masks – yes, they actually thought it had been shop bought!

Luckily this was the reserve:

Notice how the grown ups are all wearing the masks – not Grace!  WHO’S the kid here???

And I made a tail for the wedding party:


Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

You can tell it’s been raining – look at all the books I’ve read!  Thanks to Fiona, I’ve had some riveting bedside reading…

I finished Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’ or did it finish me…?  What a powerful book…  So was quite grateful for something completely different in the form of the first book in The Millenuim Trilogy by Steig Larsson.  Compulsive reading!

Good but not quite as compelling somehow – the second book in the series:

And enjoyed the quirky writing style of Marcus Zusak – He handled the heavy subject matter gently but not lightly…

Now I am half way through Michelle de Kretser’s strange little book:

It flows as smoothly as a cup of lump porridge but her writing is beautiful at times:

“To the raw ache of solitude he applied his usual balm of work”

What’s the vibe?

(Being a kinesthetic individual, I’m big on feelings & instinctively sum up time & space with a gut reaction)

Soggy.  Chilly.  Bunged up.

Also feeling old… My knees, especially the right one is extremely painful &  get considerably worse in wet weather so I’m sounding like a proper Montenegrin: “Oh the rain!  “Oh my aching bones”

Listening to

(With over 15,000 pieces of music on our computer, I’m making space to listen to some new tunes every month)

The Eels and a load of great DJ mixes from Katie

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

OMG – SO much fun stuff this month…

  • Herceg Novi Wine Festival – where I got even more drunk than last year, if that’s possible!
  • Playing Tac-Tic with some of my favourite boys:

  • Hanging out with some cool kids:

  • Seeing an AMAZING performance by the youth of Herceg Novi: ‘Cinderalla Rockefella’ – a musical/ pantomime of the classic fairytale.  The set, the costumes, the voices, the humour – odlicno…
  • Matt & Amy’s wedding
  • Katie & Tim and Matt & Amy’s wedding party

  • Laura & Cecile’s baby shower

Tim Time

(Tim – like the dialogue from ‘Blood Diamonds’ when Tia is described as the global catch all for expressing the madness & magic of Africa – stands for This is Montenegro & when anything bizarre & extraordinary happens or we are foxed by the latest bureacratic nonsense, we shrug & say “Tim”)

Mmm – I’m not sure about Montenegrin electrics, are you?  The snows not melting but the Garden Centre sign is!


One Green Thing

(1 new eco achievement a month will take me slowly, steadily, gently forward on my green journey)

I finally ran out of glass cleaner so I washed out the plastic spray bottle from the previous bought product and set about making my own.  I used a recipe from this book:

and then improvised… adding pieces of fresh lemon rind to the half water, half white vinegar mix.  It definitely works but smell of vinegar is still too strong so will add more essential oils…

Weather Report

(We keep having these bizarre conversations about the weather: “I’m sure it didn’t rain this much last Feb” etc.  the truth is we can’t remember and it would be good for us and our gardening schedule to chart the weather)

Mostly, this month it’s been raining…  It’s so soggy & foggy here right now.  Here & on the campsite we seem to be in the clouds most of the time.  It rains, then drizzles, then rains, then REALLY POURS DOWN, then rains again.  Occasionally there’s wind and the odd storm too.  Dry, sunny days this month: err, count ‘em on one hand.

The campsite is mostly under a few inches of water.  No drainage ditch we could dig could cope with this much rain.  The raised beds & baths are all full of water.

And in Topla… well things are NOT topla at all, they are damp & chilly & mouldy.  EVERY window has water coming in around it and many walls have mouldy patches.

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A Window of Opportunity

February 26, 2010 in Frugal Living, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 4 comments

Yesterday was a big day.

It stopped raining.

Yes, really, the sun came out and when we visited the campsite it wasn’t  all under an inch of water as it has been.  The amount of water throwing itself from the clouds, flinging its arms around everything and creeping in through the walls and windows beggars belief…

It’s been so frustrating, not being able to finish what we’ve started with the ditch and mud moving project.  It’s been too wet to move up there.  We couldn’t take another chunk out of our elephant because it was slippery when wet…

So – a chance to be on site without ‘mud shoes’ on (the comically large growths that accumulate around our actual shoes as we try to walk around the site!).  Time to make a window.

About 6 months ago, when considering the kitchen area in the campsite building and wishing we could have a little more protection from the weather, I had a green idea.  The open spaces in the kitchen are a bonus in the summer when the breeze wanders around, breathing respite from the harsh heat – so we need ‘pop in, pop out’ windows.  Holding up a 5-litre plastic water bottle and noticing that it’s bottom resembled a cool glass brick, I wondered aloud if we could put these empties to good use in a wooden framed demountable screen, that you could kinda see through…

The appeal to friends to save their big water bottles went out and many people, but especially Danny – thank you honey! – saved us roomfuls of the damn things.  To be honest, I’ve become a bit anxious about the whole project.  Everytime Steve curses the bottles that sit at the table with us in Topla and trip us up in the basement at the campsite, I think “I hope it works after all this”.

Having dismantled the tent up top last week, we were able to liberate the 3 long planks of wood that had been propped on bricks in the field tent & acted as our work surface.  We had wood, we had bottles, we had a dry day.  Time to make a prototype of the window and prove the idea of making a wooden frame and stuffing it with rows of plastic bottles would work.

This is the view from inside the building and this is what it looks like from the terrace below:

What do you think???

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Big Weekend – Part II

February 22, 2010 in Fun Stuff, Team News | 1 comment

As it happened, Matt & Amy getting married unexpectedly on Saturday couldn’t have worked out better.  There was a already a ‘wedding party’ planned that they beautifully crashed…

Katie & Tim got married last September in the UK and folks here were miffed not to have had a chance to celebrate their happy union with them.  So a plan was hatched for a party.  It was supposed to be on the weekend of Valentines Day – how romantic! – but that clashed with other social engagements planned for many of their mates.  No point trying to compete, just pick another date – the following Saturday.

So as the champagne was wearing off from celebrating one wedding, we made our way over to Bigova to prepare to celebrate another…  Steve & I got there early with our speakers & amp to help set up the sound system & to generally get the space and the happy couple in good shape for a night of fun.  Furniture was moved, food was prepared and the beautiful bride was laced into her amazing wedding corset:

You can see from this second photo a bit of the back of the corset although I failed to take a really good shot of it. Jeez it was a bugger to do up  but wasn’t it worth it?  And doesn’t Tim look dashing in his Murray tartan kilt?

The theme (for everyone but the hosts, seemingly!) was: wigs, hats, tails or masks – or any combo of the above and most people really rose to the dressing up challenge.  You can’t really make it out very well here but I made a tail and swung it all night:

And Katie & I had a lot of fun with it!

The prize for the funniest dancing goes jointly to Tony Browne & Paul Currion.  When they donned those amazing pink wigs…

they transformed into extraordinary creatures.  I took loads of shots of Tone & DJ Paul’s impromptu dance routine but they were moving so fast the pics were all blurry.  But Matt has video proof of DJ Paul’s hilarious moves which we just about peed our pants watching…

It was a TOP night – great food (all veggie, all delicious, none of it helping an iota in my bid to trim & tone!); enough booze to drown in; great tunes and non-stop dancing…  Not surprisingly the wigs did  the rounds with everyone trying them on.  This wig really suited Ann:

Not true of Richard, however:

Here’s Katie hoping that Laura the cat doesn’t give birth to her kitten quite yet!

Here’s some other hilarious pink wiggers:

Tim was the MOST funniest drunk.  Hard to explain what a character he was that night but here’s a great shot of him in Roger Bathos’ Rasta Wig:

Here’s pics of the freshly married couple looking rather stranger & more dishevelled then a few hours earlier:

And Fiona gets the prize for keeping her masks on ALL night (here she is in the scarier of the 2) AND for being there at the bitter end, still doing Tequila shots with Katie at 4.00 am…

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Big Weekend – Part I

February 21, 2010 in Fun Stuff, Team News | 1 comment

The weekend kinda started on Thursday with a delicious curry at Hayley & Jack’s – tender beef cooked to spicy perfection, stacks of poppodoms & mango chutney.  Shame really because I had just joined Jenn over here in her bid to trim and tone…

And then in this strange country that doesn’t even have a good authentic Italian restaurant never mind a Chinese or, God forbid, Indian I found myself, bizarrely, eating curry & accompaniments 2 nights on the trot (yes, a sideway’s reference to “curry bum” there…).  Friday’s Curry Night at Izvor was hyped a bit in the preceding days because Amy & Matt (who had been trying for many months to muster up all the necessary paperwork & courage to tie the knot in Montenegro) unexpectedly had a slot at the registry office at 3pm on Friday.  Since they didn’t want to make a fuss and invited only Steve & I as Kum & Kuma (Best Man & Woman)  and friends Jack & Hayley, the evening’s do which most of the ex-pat community & friends would be attending would be the perfect occasion to say “Surprise!  We just got married – now celebrate with us!”.

In an interesting twist, the fateful appointment was switched to Saturday at 1.00pm at the last minute.  By now folk were queuing for their hot beef curry or mild prawn awaiting the surprise Amy had dangled earlier in the week.  So the story broke and suddenly we had an ‘event’ on our hands with only 16 hours to go.  Steve got quite freaked when Vesna solemnly congratulated him on his impending Kum-ing… being Best Man in the Balkans is a BIG deal.

Saturday started soggy and just got more wringing wet as the day progressed.  We had a pretty intense morning.  Matt & Steve dashed around buying champagne and stuff.  Laura & I drove to Amy’s where bedlam reigned in the shape of a very loud & disgruntled Grace and Ellie with a massive bump on her head having rolled off the bed.  Somehow Amy managed to get herself & Number 1 daughter in the shower so Ellie was left alone to have a snooze in peace.  Ann arrived with flowers for the bridal party…

and a burek for Grace.  Between us we got Grace fed & dressed…

… and kept her entertained with puzzles whilst Mummy & little sis got dressed.

We made tea, ferried stuff into the car in the pouring rain and somehow got us all up the hill from hell and to the Opstina on time, scooping Hayley up on the way.  It was crazily frantic with little time to breathe  and before we knew it the official ceremony was in full swing.  Remarkably Grace was pretty calm, rings were exchanged…

… old names and new names were forged in ink and important agreements were made.  Here’s Matt & Amy about to seal their official union with a kiss:

Time to breathe a sigh of relief, relax & drink some bubbly with friends at Portofino…

Remember this picture – they’ll look at lot more dishevelled in Part II…

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Moving home…

February 15, 2010 in Camping News, Nature | 6 comments

We realised when we arrived on the land yesterday that it was time to take down the big tent up top because it was getting hammered by the weather and now looked like this:

Steve threw me lots of dirty looks.  Mea culpa.  Sorry.  We should have taken it down in the autumn hun.  You were right.  I was wrong.

We set about dismantling it reliving fond memories.  It was our home for the best 2 months of last summer when us & Nik slogged to get the campsite ready and the tent was our field kitchen, our bar, our ‘living room’ when it rained & the canvas that our 2-man tent snuggled inside.  We hoped we would salvage enough from the wreckage to be able to re-erect it on the main campsite. Mmmm – most of the canvas is rotten beyond repair and the tarps we used to patch up the leaky roof last year are shredded but most of the poles are still (incredibly!) intact.

Poor tent had even got struck by lightning – well that’s the only explanation we can come up with for the burnt canvas right below one of the metal poles:

Turns out that the tent was home to a bunch of other creatures and we (inadvertently) evicted a load of tenants!

A family of ants:

A pair of spiders (well – way more than a pair but these were the biggest and most photogenic!):

A beautiful scarab beetle that shone like a gem.  Unfortunately it had ‘beetled off’ by the time I had retrieved the camera from its dry place out of the rain (yep, nothing like a little grey drizzle to make the already difficult task of tent dismantling even more treacherous – lots of slipping about & wet, muddy bums!).

A salamader-type-thingy dude (sorry – don’t know the exact species – just got lost in the labyrinths of herpetelogical classification and …. aaargh!!):

And most exciting of all… an ickle bat.  We think it’s a Common Pipistrelle.  Sooo cute.  Soft too – I stroked it:

And here’s the site with the big tent gone…

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Long haired lover

February 14, 2010 in Den, Steve | 3 comments

Since today is Valentine’s Day, it seems the appropriate time for an update on my hubby and that hair…

Steve is my friend; the rock that I lean on (& sometimes trip over!) and my (at the moment, long – for him – haired) lover.  He’s decided that he’ll probably never get another chance to grow it and he’s also talking about dyeing it.  What d’you think,  could he be approaching 50 & working up a mid-life crisis? Nah! Never!? (Much!)

Here, in a crafty moment – you can see the curly mop developing.  I mean, he’s using products & everything!  Yep – shampoo (where once shower gel was enough for the barely-there shaved fluff); gel & mousse have somewhere to go on his head now as he experiements with styles!  I KNOW, I should have taken photos of same – Doh!

Compared to Blazo (below) he still has a way to go.  I’m interested to see when long enough is enough…

Anyway – I love all the hairs on his head no matter how long or short!

In case you’re wondering – no, I didn’t get a Valentine’s card.  But I did get to sleep in until 9.30am and he cleaned the cooker.  Did we spend a romantic day with massages & candles & tussles under the duvet?  Nope – we worked on the land digging mud, shifting stone & re-building terrace walls. Here’s a pic of the stairs nearly filled in with mud.  Yeah!  (Also, Steve’s hair is long enough here to show the grey!)

And the newly renovated stone wall is like our love – solid as a rock!

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The power of Nature

February 12, 2010 in Nature | No comments

Last night we had a bonkers storm here.  I lay awake for hours listening to her chucking ice at us & wrenching the night apart with crashing thunderbolts.  Lightning seem to spark through every window.  When I peered out the window as the day began, there were piles of sleet & ice laying on the ground.  I had to chuckle as we had talked earlier in the day about the weather.  Snow was forecast & we had all said, sagely, ‘oh no, it’s too warm for snow’, ‘the time for snow & ice has passed’ & other such nonsense…

When will we learn not to underestimate Nature?  I’ve felt her power as we’ve worked on the land.  That’s the bonus of all this hard graft – close connection to the earth.  Look at this beautiful rock, covered with the prettiest, most delicate lichen:

And the earth that we struggle to lift with hands and shovels is being worked & broken up by these amazing creatures:

Charles Darwin said of them:

“It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures”

And Amy Stewart wrote a whole book on them…

Nature has the power to drive me crazy too.  We’ve been kept company by a whole variety of birdlife as we dig and sweat.  Robins, Redstarts, Blackcaps, Blackbirds & majestic birds of prey.  The Robins particularly have been tormenting me – perching close by, pushing out their beautiful red breasts, eyeing the camera cockily & dodging every shot!

I leave you with a green beauty – a wild euphorbia, I think…

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