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August in Review

September 2, 2010 in Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Team News | No comments

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Figs
  • Apples
  • Peppers
  • Nectarines
  • Peaches

From the garden:

  • Onions

  • Cucumbers (in the weirdest shapes but all tasty)
  • Tomatoes
  • Chillies
  • Melon

To be honest its been a tough month for the garden.  Whilst the tomatoes, peppers & chillies have enjoyed the heat, other veg have given up.  The runner beans flowered but the flowers mostly died rather than turn into beans; the courgettes have been flowering but no fruit have survived; the radishes may yet form their purply pink fruits under the parched earth but I’m not holding my breath and its definitely too dry for lettuce!  The squashes are starting to form fruit but even the pumpkins have suffered in the heat with fruits forming and withering so I’m not sure how much will grow & ripen.  I planted more peas (soaked the seeds and just shoved them directly in the ground) and remarkably these have grown into plants and are flowering and fruiting but there are only a handful so will only bear enough for a taste.

I am proud of my melon though (no sniggers, please!).  Sadly we ate it before it could be photographed and shown here in all its glory.  It was yummy and a first for the Camp Full Monte garden!

In the flower garden, the passion flower has climbed and bloomed and is magnificent:

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Too hot to sow anything…

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & share crafty moments)

My homemade pizza seems to have been a hit this summer.  I make the dough from scratch using a lovely recipe from Leith’s Vegetarian Bible, make the tomato base using any squashy toms I have, diced up onion, crushed garlic and handfuls of my basil and then bung onto the pizza any odds & ends left over from lunch: kulen (spicy salami), strips of peppers, cheese etc.

And making…?  Ends meet… just about.

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

Finally finished Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed’!   We’ve had a “week off” (more of that later…) so I finally found time to finish this book.  We were tired of each other after nearly 3 months together!

Freed of the ‘have to finish what I’ve started’ syndrome, I then picked up a book that a friend had lent me and one that she said was a really quick read.   I think my brain made a link between ‘quick’ and ‘light’ so I was expecting this book by Chris Cleve to be ‘easy reading’ in the sense of an easy subject matter…

Not so!  But it is a fabulously written, compelling book.  I whizzed through it in a day or so and reflected afterwards that its the first book I’ve read for ages (maybe ever?) where the name of the main character isn’t revealed and where the words all flow together within the sentences and yet this doesn’t irritate me & make me tut: “Poor punctuation!”

I am now reading Margaret Attwood’s “Cat’s Eye” and it occurs to me that as an author, she is growing on me – like a love of olives.  I was unsure when I first tasted her.  Then I kept being given samples and devouring them.  Like an olive, in my opinion the quality can vary but when she’s good, she’s very good.  Also, you have to be in the mood.

This book is brilliantly written.  She creates huge descriptive statements with very few words.  And uses numerous, short sentences to great effect.  It is strangely compelling, this story.  Not in an “Oh, I can’t wait to find out what’s happening!” way, but because one falls for the mood & the style and simply doesn’t want to stop reading the words, those beautiful constructions of words.  Ms Attwood has a lot to answer for – she is stirring up my latent desire to write…

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

Stuffed!

I feel ‘full up’.  It started with the Italians…

We had a group of 6 young folk from Italy turn up at the beginning of the month with great names like Frederico, Fernando etc.  They bought meat and veg and cooked us all a gorgeous barbeque.  They only stayed a night but we had a lovely evening with them, star gazing with full bellies.  This was the start of the increased meteor activity culminating in Perseids on 12th August.  That night the night sky was stuffed with shooting stars.  We 3 Camp Full Monte-ers were alone at the campsite that night and we dragged foam mattresses and loungers down to the lowest terrace to ooh and ahh at the numerous ’svezde padulica’ (new local term we learned thanks to Dragan, our first Serbian visitor who stayed the night before the main event).  We must have seen 50 or 60 and 1 in particular slowly arked across the blackness, leaving a visible trail that had us squealing with wonder.  The absence of the moon made the darkness even darker and more dramatic.

The arrival of our friends Matt & Charlotte and their kids Jacob and Holly brought with it much eating & drinking –   chocolate, Bombay Sapphire, huge lumps of Gorganzola and 35 year old Port… I put on a kilo (mind you the tummy bug I’ve had for the last 2 days that has found me lingering on the loo has helped me shift that kilo… I can think of nicer ways to go).

Sharing precious times with dear friends in the hot August days has made me feel stuffed with life, with sun, with friendship.  Now that our season is all but over and paying guests are almost at an end, we are probably stuffed financially too but we’re too happy to think about it right now.

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Not doing well on breaking into the many ‘unplayed, unrated’ tracks in our expansive collection but enjoyed some familiar foot tapping songs that Jacob and Holly enjoying performing to!

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

We enjoyed a night of great live music at the Herceg Novi EkoFest.

A bunch of people, passionately led by Sasa Cvetkovic, did amazing things to turn the upper fortress in Herceg Novi, known as Spanjola, into an incredible venue for art and live music.  Our mate Nikola’s band was the best and we danced and cheered – de-mob happy after so long on the campsite without a proper night off!

Thanks to Katie, we also made it to Boka Noc for the first time ever.  The ‘Night of the Boka’ sees people creating elaborate floats from their little boats and parading them in the water in Kotor marina.  We were lucky enough to get a ride on Fiona & Dave’s rib to join Katie & Tim and the dogs on Monty B to watch the parade (well, ish… visibility wasn’t that good but better than being jammed in the heaving throngs in the old town) and then enjoy the fireworks over the old walled city.  It was fab!  And the endless G&T’s helped too!

The biggest load of fun came in the form of the W-B family… It was very special to have them here.  I’ve known Charlotte since we did a counselling course together nearly 10 years ago.  She was quite ill when I met her and her daughter Hol very young.  Over the years I saw her mend and grow.  I got to know her gentle, kind, infinitely patient husband and then introduced them both to Steve.  The 4 of us have many fond memories of evenings filled with food, wine & laughter.  Having another child was a struggle for them but in time Jacob was born and completed the circle perfectly.  Having met most Thursdays for years, me leaving the UK was a big shock to Charlotte’s routine and a test of our friendship.  Having them here was something I imagined but didn’t quite think would happen.  Steve and I were both a little nervous… kids on the campsite for a whole week?

It was a blast, a great excuse to have a week off (well, apart from poor Nik who had some ‘real work’ to do)  and so interesting to see the way the space was used by our friends… The hammock became a ship; the basement became a ‘den’; the kitchen was transformed into an art studio most afternoons.

Charlotte found a spot under some trees where she would do her best reading:

Nik was embraced by the family.  He became known as ‘Sherpa Nik’ as he agreed to take them hiking up to the rock above our land on their last night.  Jacob is a real boy’s boy so he was well into it and despite being scared at the very top, Holly was so impressed with her hike and the view up there she mentioned it in the Guest Book as her very favourite thing.  Here’s most of the family chilling out with Nik…

We had some fun nights playing TacTic…

The temperature was in the mid 30’s when they first arrived, so Matt & Steve decided that getting one of the many paddling pools inflated and & filled was definitely worthwhile.  This was not without its dramas – the ground had to be levelled and 12 (count them, 12!) barrow loads of sand dumped and raked level for the pool to sit on.  Charlotte was on pool cleaning duty but as she dutifully scrubbed and rinsed she noticed many little punctures.  Undeterred, Steve & Charlotte found and patched them all and filled the pool up slowly & deliberately being careful not to empty the stream syphon.  Here’s Steve in the early stages of pool erection, wearing his pool gown!

And here’s the pool up, filled and being enjoyed…

Jacob was utterly fascinated by the compost loos and at night with his head torch on would examine the hole very intently!  It was a bugger to get him to close the lid after he used the loo though!

Here we all are before sad farewells on this, their last morning…

The more observant of you will notice we are sitting on… a sofa!  We have been missing a comfy seat on the campsite of an evening when the 3 of us want to put our feet up with a beer and look at the stars and we discovered an old sofa in the basement of our house.  With much pushing & shoving we (well, Nik & Steve) managed to get it out & into the van.  Once levelled and be-strewn with a throw, it was the perfect crashing out space and since it opens up into a sofa bed, it works well as a comfy place for 2 people to lie in the sun and read a book.

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

The Telegraph Ex-Pat edition contacted us regarding a feature on Montenegro.  They emailed us a bunch of questions and having provided answers the journalist decided that she had enough interesting stuff to do the article solely about us!

The first we knew about the article being published was when we got a call from the national newspaper here in Monte.  The man from Vjesti said he’d seen the article and was translating and publishing the entire feature.  It wasn’t really a question – like “Would it be ok to…?” it was more of a statement.

The next morning we get a call from Jadran Radio – the coastal radio station – seems we’d made the front page of the newspaper and now they wanted an telephone interview.  Initially Steve took the call but because the first recording didn’t take, they phoned back and this time I answered so it was my dulcet tones that went out on the airwaves some 5 minutes later.  A local friend was most bemused when he heard me chatting on the radio!

Whilst all this was going on we were embroiled in last minute preparations for the arrival of the W-Bs.  I had a sinking feeling that all this publicity might attract attention and that our friends may get caught in the midst of it.

Sure enough, just as they had arrived, stripped off and were tucking into lunch, I heard a vehicle drive past very slowly.  It turned around and stopped.  It sounded like a police landrover.  Steve pulled some clothes on and went to investigate with Nik bringing up the rear.  Nik returned to inform us that 2 customs guys were quizzing Steve and that we’d better get dressed as they were coming in!

Steve handled the visit brilliantly.  The Customs guys were asking: do we have rooms for rent?  do we have paying guests?  Steve decided to welcome them in and show them that there was just a few tents and a family of our friends visiting.  They got the full tour and read all the signs in local language, impressed by the compost toilets and the solar systems.  They persisted with questions about visitors and prices and in the end Steve told them how much to hire a tent.  It seemed like they just wanted to know for their own benefit and one asked if he could come back with his wife one day!  The dreaded questions about “where is your camping licence?” never materialised and despite our concerns, van loads of police & inspectors did NOT turn up and the world didn’t end.  The timing was actually perfect as it might have been more difficult to manage the situation with ‘real’ naturist guests.

Later that day as I read the newspaper, saw us both naked on the front page and then saw me in my knickers and boobs a-dangling on page 9 (still never made it on page 3 then!) I reflected that if 5 years ago someone had predicted this moment I would have told them they were nuts!

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

I spent many hours lovingly cutting & sticking corks for this month’s green creation:

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

Hotter than July!  Sounds like a song… Well Mr Wonder, if you were singing about August – you were right!  It’s been HOT.  And dry.  You can almost hear the earth gasping.  We don’t have enough water to irrigate the grounds so we watch it turn brown.  Since the flower garden is also mostly a disaster, that too gets little water.  The brave cinia and geraniums soldier on but little else survives…

July in Review

August 13, 2010 in Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening | No comments

What’s this???  Halfway through August and only NOW a review of July???  I know, I know… Better late than never???

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Sweetcorn (but not as yummy as ours…)
  • Blitva (mangel)
  • Raspberries
  • Blackberries
  • Nectarines
  • Peaches

From the garden:

  • Lettuce
  • Beetroot
  • Onions
  • Rocket
  • Radish
  • Courgettes

  • Carrots
  • Sweetcorn – best crop yet & soooo delicious!)

  • Cucumbers (in the weirdest shapes but all tasty)

  • Runner beans (about a kilo every other day for most of the month!)

  • Tomatoes

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Too hot to sow anything much except more basil & coriander…

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & share crafty moments)

We’ve been eating a lot of salads and faves at the mo are:

Beetroot Salad Greek Style (cooked & diced beetroot; beetroot leaves wilted in water from cooking the beets; garlic & olive oil)

Cucumber & Dill Salad (thinly sliced cucmbers; cider vinegar with a little sugar dissolved in it; fresh dill)

Rocket & Pecorino (or any hard, strong cheese shaved into the greens with olive oil & seasoning)

Here’s me with a table full of salads, as usual:

And making…? Not much – making our guests happy has been work enough

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

Still reading Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed’  – so you know how busy I’ve been.  The fact that I’ve been reading it for 2 months is no reflection on the writing style or content – it’s a great book!

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

In relation to my gut … bloated!  Have been eating way too much bread and know its not good for me.  Back on the salads now & trying to cut out those carbs!

In relation to our business, this month the mood is – happy!!!  We’ve had more bookings than we thought possible (have had paying guests every week since the second week in June and this is set to continue until the end of August).  And more importantly, all our guests have been happy campers – both in the sense of being sound folk with great attitudes and in the sense of leaving us with smiles on their faces and glowing reports in the guest book!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Not doing well on breaking into the many ‘unplayed, unrated’ tracks in our expansive collection but enjoying some familiar chilled sounds, especially: Zero 7, Damien Rice, Teitur & Morcheeba.

Also had an 80’s revival period during my party when me & my girlfriends danced to some real ole goodies such as: Jocelyn Brown;  Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang etc…

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

Jo turned 40 a couple of days before me & his girlfriend Zuzana organised a surprise party for him.  An extra bonus was that Carrie was staying with us so could come too.  Carrie & I were introduced a couple of years ago when I did a stint in the UK, working as a consultant and our then boss realised we had Montenegro in common (me living here, her having bought a house here).  She & I hit it off but never really got to spend much time with each other.  We met briefly the following year when she (and her then partner) came to try to move things forward with her house here.  We stayed in touch and helped her with Montenegro paperwork stuff as best we could.  Now, a year and many life changes on, she came to Montenegro as a single woman on a mission to decide whether to renovate the house or sell.  We let her stay in our house (which was a bit of extra cash for us & a peaceful, luxurious retreat for her) and during the week she joined us at the campsite a few times and we got to know each other better.  She is bonkers and a total scream!  We had a lot of fun at the surprise pool party, deciding to jump in rather than be pushed!  Here’s Carrie trying to unstick her soaking wet top from her back (that she told me afterwards was wool – oops!) and me wishing I hadn’t worn such white, see-through-when-wet clothes!…

Here’s me & Zuz, the great party organiser:

And here’s the big guy himself:

We (but especially Carrie) had pink-fizz induced hangovers the morning after the party as we drove over to Zanjice to meet Mil and Miso.  We had introduced Carrie to our friend Mil as a useful Serbian-speaking contact and recommended our builder Miso.  The 2 of them met us over at her house to size up the project.  By the end of her visit Carrie had fallen in love with Monte all over again and we hope that she gets a reasonable quote for the job from Miso so that she can renovate the house (complete with olive mill & press, which if she realises her dream, will be the central feature in an amazing kitchen!).

Turning 40 was much more fun than I thought it would be! My actual birthday was on a Monday – a naff day for a celebration!  I had a lovely day nonetheless.  Here’s my birthday breakfast – with the unique birthday ‘log’ & ‘leaf’ cards from Nik in clear view:

We took off to the beach for the day, leaving the site in Olivier & Tanja’s safe hands (really, how lucky were we to have guests like these!?) and I was treated to a fabulous pedicure on the sand by Amy.  Just to laze around all day with the occasional dip in the crystal clear water was a luxury…

The celebrations of me leaving my flirty 30’s and entering my naughty 40’s happened the following weekend and were made extra special by 6 old friends making the trip from the UK to be with me.  Fran & H are work buddies from my TK Maxx days.  We’ve known each other for about 15 years and they know more embarrassing stories about me that everyone here put together! (Ouch!)

I’ve known Gav & Rick even longer – we met at Loughborough University which is pretty much 2 whole decades in my past now…  The boys hung around for a couple of days after the party which was ACE and gave us time to indulge in our favourite things: drinking & playing Bridge:

Dear girlfriend Ditsch (pictured here at the 40th party, on the right) I have known for 25 years and love her even more as the years roll by.  Vince her lovely hubby who has become our friend too, can just be made out behind me in this photo …

The preamble to the big party was an amazing day out on a flotilla of beautiful boats.  Steve had asked all our sailing buddies to help ferry folk out to our favourite beach in Zanjice.  They were all so generous and gave me & my friends an incredible day to remember.  Steve had organised everything for a bbq on the beach and we spent a wonderful day, eating, drinking and cooling off in the water – in between hopping from one gorgeous boat to another!

Skipperesses Katie & Laura are pictured here – Katie & Tim sailed the Monty B and hoisted a special birthday flag for me; Lauar & Tony whizzed me, Fran & H out to the beach on their new racy yacht and my friends were fascinated by the way the couple deftly ‘tacked’ baby Amber!

Dave & Fiona’s rib was the speedy water taxi ferrying people to & fro (Dave’s here on the far left) and Paul’s amazing luxury yacht took us home in style that evening (Paul is on the far right here)

It was fitting that my Goddess Daughter, Grace,  should be there to share the fun.  She was a sweetie all day!

Here’s the view of the boats from the beach, with the little motor boat The Bounty too:

The big party was on Saturday night and was largely due to the efforts of the inimitable Danny Parish who helped decorate the campsite, organised the most beautiful & delicious (not to mention HUGE) cake and provided delicious salads.  Here she is, with Fran beaming at her:

Old friend Dave Bennett had ‘photoshopped’ a fantastic picture of Steve with a comb-over for his 50th, so Steve emailed him for revenge!  Steve calls me his wonder woman (I’ll leave you to figure out why!) and Dave provided a fab pic of Wonder Woman’s body with my face on it which Steve made into a T-Shirt for me with the caption: “Wonder Woman never ages… she just gets badly drawn”.  Here I am proudly (!) wearing it, along with the gorgeous blue necklace & bracelet that Maja bought me before she buggered off to the UK and missed the party!

And here’s a photo of THAT cake – see, I wasn’t kidding…

It’s funny how things turn out.  I ceded control to Steve for the celebrations (much to everyone’s amusement, I think!) and the night turned out to be perfect.  Sure, there were dear friends & family missing – there always are… you just can’t get everyone you love in one place these days.  But I had such a fabulous time with the special folk who were there.  I danced & danced; got drunk but not rudely so; sang ‘old skool’ tunes at the top of my voice; laughed & laughed and treasured every moment.  The weather was amazing – there was a huge downpour just before I arrived (I was banned from the site during the preparations) and was initially worried when it was still raining a little at the start of the evening but it cleared up and the storm moved off to the left and provided the most amazing lightning storm for us to gawp at!  It was like nature had laid on fireworks for me!  The moon was bright, the air was fresh (which was great because we were dancing so much we needed the coolness) and the company was wonderful.  Here’s what one friend wrote about that night:

“At your magnificant party i drank like a fish and danced like a shaman, and only had to stop (not because of my bruised feet) but because i was laughing too much – Joy is a funny thing. Thankyou again for so unconditionally offering me such a release – you are both such remarkable, beautiful and excellant people”

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Steve’s laundry sink has become our new favourite thing in the campsite kitchen (pictures to follow soon, I promise!) but the hassle he had trying to get the plastic trim to edge the tiles & the right coloured grout was frustrating (for him) and funny (for us!).  He started off at one tiling shop on the edge of town.  Nobody there.  He waited & mooched around for a bit.  20 mins later – still nobody.  If he had spotted any mint green tile edging or grout anywhere in the warehouse at this point he would have grabbed it and just left some cash but none to be seen.  So he had to brave the town centre and the nightmare that was a dug-up one way system.  Battling his way to the store he was told – no.  No chance.  What about Azzurro?, he asked (another store on the way into town that he had chosen to drive past because the car park was full).  No. No chance.  Any other suggestions, apart from No?  asks he, bravely.  He gets sent off to a shop right the other side of Herceg Novi – a full 20 mins out of his way…  The woman there looked at the colour he was trying to match and said, accusingly, “But this is an awful colour!  Why did you choose this?”  Not only was she not helpful, she just tried to get Steve to buy any other colour under the sun except the one he wanted, regardless of the actual colour of the tiles!

Exhausted from the verbal bashing he got there and leaving with a grey grout that he didn’t even want (but anything to shut the madwoman up at this point!) he drove, dejected back through town.  He had so hoped to get the materials to finish the job that day…

Driving past Azzurro this time, he noticed the car park was empty.  He decide to try it anyway.  “Yes, sir, certainly sir.  Here’s the grout you need”.  But no trim.  Growling at the (now redundant) grey grout he drove back to the campsite and decided to pop in to the very first store he had visited some 2 hours previous.  This time there was actually a real person there and the right colour trim was whipped out in no time!

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

Struggled to think of something for this month but then realised that our re-use of water is probably worth a mention… We are so conscious about the water we use and every bowl of water used to wash dishes (that isn’t too soapy or filled with meat scraps) is used to irrigate our flowers and grass.

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

July brought summer to us with a vengence.  It went from being sunny & comfortably warm to being hot, hot, hot!  We’ve had the odd crazy storm and downpour of rain but far from complaining that summer proper isn’t here yet, we’re loving the respite from the beating sun and thankful for every day the gardens get watered by nature and not us!

Growing up

June 16, 2010 in Nature, Organic Gardening | No comments

Everything is!

The beans are reaching for the sky, tendrils waving in the air.  Some of the sweetcorn is easily a metre high.  The lettuce is romping away, especially the bitter greens of the endive and raddichio which Steve loathes and everyone else loves!  Radishes are fat and pushing their deliciousness (made up word alert!) up out of the ground – they are moist & juicy, with a good peppery bite.  The cucumbers are climbing their frames and the courgettes are proudly fruiting.  The rocket is rocketing, especially the local style and pea pods are finally plumping up (that must be a word, surely?).

Here’s the harvest on June 10th:

That night we had an omelette with cheese, baby courgettes and wilted rocket, accompanied by a lettuce and radish salad, a rocket & pecorino salad and baby beans and peas.  Divine!!!  The peas and beans were soooo sweet and everything tasted, well, tasty!

And in the flower bed???  Well, the sweet peas are finally started to climb their trellises.  Thank God because frankly, the flower bed has been a bitter disappointment so far.  None of the seeds have taken – not really surprising I suppose, lots of them were years old saved from a life gone by.  The soil is pretty awful there.  I will really invest in fertilizing the area before I plant anything next year.  Any plant that does try to put down roots has to compete with the mass of roots from the surrounding trees and bushes, although I am starting to get these under control now.

Having said that, the pumpkin patch is flourishing and the sole survivor from last year’s passion flower cuttings is finally getting established and climbing the palm fence.  We won’t get flowers this year but it’ll be a picture next year.

And thank goodness for the trusty geranium.  It grows and flourishes there, against all odds.  Contrary to everything I’ve been told, I have been pruning the larger plants and putting the cuttings stright into the ground with a little compost and a lot of water.  Not a single one has failed to take and flower so far!!!

I am also setting off lots more marigolds as the hardy little plants will provide a splash of colour up there and I’ve just discovered that they are considered a good plant for deterring mozzies so it would be nice to have pots of marigolds around the building too!  I have been properly munched by the mozzies this year as the early evening when they are at their height is also the best time for watering the garden…  Oh, the sacrifices I make for my plants!

As for me… well, I’m not growing up at all!  In fact I’m back in the land of kids crafts again, enjoying spending evenings stringing holey stones to make a fanastic wind chime – organic in both sound and shape; and painting glass jars to make attractive candleholders for the building…

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All creatures great & small

June 3, 2010 in Nature | No comments

It’s that time of year when the land seems positively fizzing with wild life.  Every step causes something to scuttle or hop away from the footfall – lizards, crickets, tiny frogs… There’s a few of these legless lizards about, slithering through the grass:

And there’s a beautiful acid green lizard who has set up home in one of the stone walls near the building – I haven’t managed to digitally snap it yet but it must be a good half a metre long from the tip of it’s tail to the tip of its nose!

The greatest beast spotted so far this year (not counting the cows) was a fox.  As I walked down the steps from the shower block a couple of weeks ago, we surprised each other.  He was a real beauty – his rusty coat glowing in the sun…

But it’s the small creatures that are in abundance and causing us grief at the moment.  The mice seem to like the camp and as we evict them from one area, they spring up in another.  First it was the basement.  We cleared it, painted it and blocked up the gap at the bottom of the door.  Having lost a few brethren in the process (peanuts in shells are the best mouse-trap bait – it’s official!), we thought they might fold their tails up and patter off to pastures new.  Nope – then we discovered a family in the workshop:

We wouldn’t mind them using the place as a warm hide out if they didn’t cover everything with wee & poo – it’s smelly and beyond unhygenic… It’s a lot of work clearing up after the buggers.  We have driven them out of the workshop (more cute dead things sacrificed and running the generator daily in there has done the trick!) but they are still living in the rafter of the building at night.  We know this because one of the compost toilets is directly in line with the middle wooden beam of the roof and judging from the droppings on the floor of that loo, its probably Mouse Motorway when we retire to the tent!

The other, smaller creature that is bugging us is the caterpillar.  They come in all shapes and sizes and turn up EVERYWHERE – inside clothes & shoes; all over surfaces and walls and are constantly dropping from trees onto heads and down necks… its unnerving!

We reasoned that they would turn into beautiful creatures like these:

But we have just found out that the caterpillar which is most prolific is also really bad news for our oak trees:

This is a Gypsy Moth caterpillar which chomps away at oaks and defoliates them.  The info on the damage they have cause in North America is scary – see this link.  Now we know why our garden remains pretty much untouched despite the high volumes of caterpillars.  It also explains the strange noise that can be heard, especially on the top piece of land that is dominated by oaks: it’s millions of caterpillars munching!!!!  You want to know what’s ironic about this invasion????  Guess what preys on this caterpillar?  Yep!  Mice!!!!

There are plenty of these creepy crawlies about… No idea what they are but a local friend freaked when he saw it!

And thankfully, these beauties are showing their striking colours again:

We are absorbed by great creatures of a different kind as my dear buddy Kirst has arrived with her partner and I will be spending time with her over blogging, so expect a quiet week folks….

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April in Review

May 2, 2010 in Den, Environmentally Friendly, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening | No comments

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • New potatoes
  • White & red cabbage
  • Spinach
  • Radish

From the garden:   Still just herbs I’m afraid – next month we should be picking lettuce & radish at least…

In Nature’s garden:

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Have sown more:

  • sweetcorn – just want more!
  • cucumbers – planted the first batch out too soon… some got eaten by slugs and a few more rotted in the extreme rain
  • runner beans – need lots more for Steve’s bean fence
  • pumpkins – I saved seeds from last year so now I have my first pumpkins romping away in their patch, I’m sowing my seeds to see how well they do!
  • caulis – not giving up on the brassicas yet goddam it! I took some  tips from this post and, well, we’ll see…

And some more flowers:

  • marigolds – lots of them got munched by little slugs.  I’ve laid my beer traps and sown some more seeds.  These are seeds saved from last years flowers, so I’m not sure what will come of them, but we’ll see…
  • nasturtiums – in the veg garden, another good companion

Lettuces are flourishing in the veg bed; sweetcorn is in the garden but not doing as well as expected – too much rain & not enough sun me thinks; the runner beans are in & romping away; the courgettes are stretching out; I’ve made a pumpkin patch and planted melons in the flower bed; peppers, chillies, tomatoes & cabbage are all planted out; the radish, rocket & beets are all coming on in the garden but no sign of the carrots yet & the first caulis just didn’t make it past the seed stage…

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & sharing crafty moments)

Made a wicked moussaka.

Only managed to get a little crafty this month - Easter gave us a chance to paint eggs!


Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

I struggled through ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston.  Sorry to say I found the language, the writing style and the story difficult to enjoy.

I’m delighted to say that a friend here has trusted me with the draft of her book which I have read and enjoyed.

Currently reading:

This book was given to me by a friend – the most unlikley source; we’ve never swapped books before… I was meant to read this book, right now, at this moment.  Things have been a little tough around here lately and it has reminded me of what’s important, including my relationship with my Self.

‘Tis the season for browsing books – there’s a whole stack piled up on tables: reference books of flowers, veg & herbs etc, etc.  Two favourites at the moment include this little gem, packed with a stack of wonderful gardening tips:

And this beautifully illustrated book, which we consult often as the orchids keep popping up:

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

Clean. I feel ‘cleansed’ on lots of levels…

Thanks to Jenn and her Weigh-in Wednesdays, I am on a mission to lose some kilos.  I’ve been detoxing like crazy the past couple of weeks, drinking cups and cups of hot water and lemon.  This, combined with:

  • minimal carbs, meat & dairy
  • slowing my eating right now and eating ‘consciously’ so that I chew each mouthful and stop when I’m full, not when my plate’s empty (really hard for me thanks to the ‘Want Not, Waste Not’ habit I acquired from my parents)
  • regular exercise
  • and lots of raw food, like this tasty salad:

has left me with a clean, healthy feeling in my gut.  And the pounds are starting to drop off too…

Our house has been cleaned and de-cluttered to within an inch of its life!  Our dear, sweet landlord has suggested we rent out the house this summer to earn some extra pennies – he’s worried he’ll lose us as tenants this winter if we don’t make some more cash.  It was a great incentive to clear out all the nooks and crannies and get the house rental-ready.  Loads of random stuff has been chucked; lots of ‘rationalising’ and tidying has taken place; all paperwork is filed away and archived and when we take all the gear we need up to the campsite over the next few weeks (as we prepare to move into our tent and begin our summer on the land) we’ll leave behind a  house ready to rent.  Anyone interested?

Finally, it was Earth Day on 23rd April and Amy has been working with schools and local municipalities to do great things to promote ‘Earth Awareness’ in Montenegro (check out her website).  In response to this, our friends Fiona & Dave asked for volunteers to help clean a beach and its ruined house, near to them (& dear to them) in Zanjice.  Although it’s a mission getting over there, it’s a beach Steve & I are very fond of – we first went there a few years ago with our friends from Denovici and now we visit every time we dog sit for the Sawney’s.  When Dave offered to pick us up in his rib and motor across the water to the beach (a mere 15 minutes, as opposed to a hour and a half drive by car!), we were sold on the idea.  On Sunday 25th April, 8 of us collected over 120 bags of rubbish and then took them all a further 120 metres up a rough path to a truck pick-up point.  This was the big rubbish mountain we had to climb at the beginning of the day:

and the view of the be-littered beach:

here’s what it looked like afterwards:

You can see all the pictures on our Camp Full Monte facebook page…

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Working our way through the big wadge of tunes labelled ‘Unplayed, Unrated’ and as a result have been getting down with The Boards of Canada’; wailing with Peter Tosh; being thoughtful with New Order and enjoying a whole bunch of other random stuff.

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

I know that some people (my Mum for one!) thinks that all we do here is party and fritter our time away on frivolities and I would try to defend this position, except that every time I come to write this section there seems to be an endless stream of parties and great nights out to record!

This month saw Amy turning 40.  It was a quiet affair (for her!) but a lovely bbq and pleasant evening with good friends.

And Grace turning 3:

I got some great girlie time this month too…

First was Danny’s birthday (which Steve was too full of mung to attend).   We started off at a local restaurant with an awesome view and great food contributed by all the guests and then (predicatably!) ended up at Danny’s consuming copious amounts of pink bubbly and dancing on her podium!  I was on a mission to get trashed so no time for photo taking!

Then some impromtu, last minute clubbing with Maja & Amy at a local disco.  It was a great night – Ames & I were silly drunk and we all bopped til we dropped.  I did some table dancing and some flirting (he said he thought I was 29 so I couldn’t resist!)

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Amy organised an Earth Day clean up in Herceg Novi and the municipal cleaning company were so concerned they would appear to not be doing their job properly they cleaned the area ear-marked for volunteers so that it was spotless and then switched the venue at the very last minute to shunt all the volunteers off to some less visible location.  Sadly, this meant that the 70 or so people that had signed up for the event on facebook and via email were mostly left wondering what was going on and only a handful of people actually turned up on the day!  The crates of bananas, apples and juice that Amy had bought for all the volunteers got hauled off to Zanjice with us to help sustain the hardcore rubbish collectors that day and then we all took shares of the left-overs!

One Green Thing

(One more step along my green journey)

Made lots of batches of cleaning products using baking soda, essential oils, borax, white vinegar and soda water, re-using old squeezy bottles, sprayers & shakers.  I’m very pleased with the results and have saved pennies as well as the earth!

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

April has been… showery!  Lots of rain at the beginning of the month and some cold days & nights but now its warming up and staying dry & Steve had his first swim in the sea this month!

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Life goes on…

April 23, 2010 in Nature, Organic Gardening | 1 comment

The cow came back.

I know, I know… we were supposed to have made the camp cow-proof by now, but Steve only managed to get the barbed wire barrier erected along & across the stream (dodging the hailstones), before the storm soaked him to the skin.  The hammering the weather gave him that day probably helped his man flu to develop.  This illness, plus days away in Dobrota helping a friend, meant we were away from the campsite for nearly a week and on our return the bovine bugger’s recent presence was immediately obvious (the cow only, mysteriously, visits when we are not there…).

The cabbages (they might have been brussel sprouts – they had never actually grown to their adult form… they were munched within an inch of their lives last summer but we left the stalks and they had started to re-grow) were the only victims:

If the munched stalks weren’t evidence enough, the 3 cow pats (on the grass in this picture…) left us in no doubt.  Thankfully, this time it didn’t trample the raised beds so the little cucumbers (in the photo above) escaped a crushing.

How now, <insert colour> cow? <insert rude word>!

Due to all the rain, the soft mud had preserved it’s hoof-marks well.  We followed these prints carefully, noting the direction of the hooves to determine which way the cow was ambling.  Flanking my Sherlock, I pointed out be-headed tufts of grass and we noted more droppings.  We paced the entire site, methodically and carefully, looking for clues; flattened undergrowth, trampled ground… We had been told that cows don’t climb steps – was this an old wive’s tale or fact???  We detected this may be true…

The stream defence (we are 99% sure) is cow-proof so we have eliminated one line of enquiry.  It seems the cow entered through a gap in the boundary at the lowest terrace.  The route from the land beyond onto this terrace is an overgrown slope but not impassable for a determined beast.  The route from the lower terrace to the next one up is a walk along the top of a stone wall.  It’s precarious for us, but apparently cows aren’t unphased by tiptoeing along the edge of the wall!  The route from there to the next terrace up is via a couple of steps… There were hoof-marks either side of these steps to suggest it avoided them but the climb wasn’t high enough to deter the cow.  The new terrace walls with their steps, were simply walked around and over by the cow and, interestingly, whereas last time the cow barged up the slope leading to the orchard/ flower garden area and gobbled the newly formed fruit on the pear tree, this time the simple steps cut into the mud bank had seemingly deterred the animal and the pear continues to blossom, unmolested:

And at every point where the way down was via a long set of steps and where all other routes down or up were too high a climb, we saw the hoof-marks turning round and going back the way they came….

We have erected a barbed wire barrier across the gap in the lowest terrace – too low to be got under and too high to get over – and have started to pile up against it all the prickly, thorny undergrowth we have cut down.  We hope that by the time all the strimming and clearing is done this Spring, all the cuttings are piled up against the boundary and the brambles start to grow up it, the boundary will appear to be naturally intact.

We await further visitations.  If it comes again we will be beyond baffled.

In the meantime, let’s celebrate the green life that continues to flourish.  The beans are running away (we noted that one leaf was munched from one plant but seemingly the cow prefers its greens older and stringier!):

The courgettes may have suffered from a little slug damage but they are mostly flourishing:

And the green shoots of the lovely legumes proves Steve (and John Lennon) was right: Give Peas A Chance

The herbs remain lush… here the parsley, mint & thyme is flourishing:

Above the flower garden, the passion flower – the sole survivor of all the cuttings we tended last year – has made it through the winter and is now growing new leaves and extending its tendrils up the palm fence:

And the sweet peas are leaning towards their supports in the flower garden, hopefully getting ready to stretch themselves up the trellis and begin their scented ascent.

Last autumn Steve put 3 walnuts in 3 pots and we mostly forgot about them, occasionally checking for signs of life.  Two of the seeds have sprouted and here’s a tiny nut tree:

However, in the third pot, the seed had been dug up and the nut-muncher left behind some hair:

Phew, it’s survival of the fittest here in our organic garden!

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Eating a very small Elephant – with a side dish of veg!

April 12, 2010 in Nature, Organic Gardening, The Build | 1 comment

The elephant task of dealing with the ditch and its resulting spoil is almost done.  There’s just an ickle little (not-so) jumbo Dumbo left!  We’ve been so busy working, my blog’s been abandoned and now I’m struggling to catch up with myself…

Most of the landscaping on the first 2 terraces (well 3, if you include the flower garden by the palm fence) has been done.

This is the view of the newly levelled ground, covered with as much top soil as I could find in the surrounding area (no budget for loads of bags of compost) and then sown with grass seed.

This terrace is doing ok, but the one below it has been ravaged by ants.  The day after we sowed all the grass and watered it in, we arrived to find mounds of seed everywhere that the ants had found, stockpiled in one place and were ferrying down into their nests!  We’re just hoping some germinate before the busy little workers get them all!

Steve continued his dry stone walling all the way to the raised beds, so all the greywater pipes are hidden under earth and contained within mini stone-walled beds.  There’ll be a separate post on the greywater system, coming soon.

To finish the whole series of stone terraces off and link to the garden, he found a railway sleeper bowed perfectly to fit the space and give an attractive curved finish:


We’ve done a ton of stuff I haven’t got pictures of, including:

  • moving the pallet fence monstrosity that contained our compost heaps.  We now have a bigger grassed area in between the stream and the garden, a perfect 4-man tent pitch.  (No new compost heap yet though, a new addition to THE BIG LIST!)
  • tidying up the remaining soil and clay we haven’t had a place to put yet by cutting rough steps into it so we can more easily access the flower bed & orchard
  • raking, tidying and sowing grass seed all over
  • planting flowers (marigolds, cinias and geraniums) in the new bed at the bottom of the stream steps
  • making a start on cow-proofing the boundary with barbed wire

We also had a tidy up of railway sleepers but needed some hunky lads to help us shift the buggers.  Shame we could only find these lot!

But they were super stars, helping chuck the sleepers down 2 terraces for Steve to use for his tent pitch project.


I’ve been busy planting flowers & herbs all over the place.  You can’t really see much in this photo but trust me, this new bed around the first bath in our greywater system is full of aromatic herbs: basil, coriander, fennel, chive, mint…

My veg plants romped away well on our sunny terrace…

This year we have taken more care to harden the plants off before planting them out and resisting the temptation to plant them too soon.  The ‘babies’ have become my new obsession, lots of veg on the menu to help digest the last of that elephant!

So far we’ve planted out:

  • sweetcorn
  • 6 types of lettuce (might be too soon for them, but it’s a small window of opportunity before it becomes too hot & too late)
  • cucumbers, this time around a trellis so they will climb UP   (the way the locals do it,  saves space in the garden and makes them easier to pick when they hang down)
  • courgettes (ditto as above for trellis)
  • runner beans
  • marigolds – everywhere as they were the perfect companion plant last year to just about everything and were such good value, flowering for months

Pumpkins, cabbages & sweet peas should have been planted out today but the torrential hailstorm rather put a damper on those plans.  Hopefully tomorrow!

Andwe have  sowed:

  • peas (not a single one has come up having been planted direct into the ground – have sowed some in pots today as insurance!)
  • carrots
  • radish
  • rocket
  • various herbs: dill, parsley, oregano, basil, coriander, fennel, chives

(Beets should have been sown today after soaking overnight but they’ll get sown on the next dry day)

The melons, tomatoes, peppers & chillies will be ready to plant out soon and I’m sowing more sweetcorn and beans because I want lots of them!  Failures this year were caulis (again!).  Lesson learnt: don’t plant these in toilet roll tubes – that method is only for things that germinate quickly (like corn & beans).  Also, parsnip seeds didn’t germinate – they were gifted by a local friend and I think they were old seeds).  Successes: peppers & chillies using last year’s collected seeds.

Today I read a great post over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op which is very timely because it’s given me some new ideas for companion planting and there’s still time to juggle my planting plan around to accomodate some ‘helpers’.  Interestingly, I read that you should avoid putting carrot in the proximity of dill.  I’m sure last year I read something to the contrary and planted dill in my root veg bed.  The dill flourished but the carrots did not!  Time to try something different and see if we get better results.  Aliums are good companions apparently so will plant the last of my onions there; peas & chives will be fitted in too, as healthy helpers.

I have a few random pots with seeds of fruit I’ve collected (plums, dates, tamarind, japanses apple).  Nothing’s really sprouted but a walnut that Steve stuck in a pot last autumn has!

So now it’s time to sit back and let nature do it’s stuff… let the grass grow over the elephant, let the vegetables flourish in a cow-free zone and let the flowers & herbs blossom to attract nicer beasties like birds, bees and butterflies.

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Green shoots of hope…

March 30, 2010 in Nature, Organic Gardening, The Build | No comments

Monte welcomed us back with warm sunny arms.  When we left England it was in it’s ‘yellow phase’ – the daffs just blooming, forsythia about to burst forth, broom blossoming – whilst here in Monte the wild narcissi are nearly done and everything is white (daisies, star flowers) and pink & purple.  We stomped around the land admiring nature’s new growth and were delighted to see the orchids were back…

In some fantasy, I imagined returning to the site to find the garden aburst with flowers and green lush grass covering the clay.  But it had only been 10 days and who was I kidding…  The clay was still there, looking very un-green, just dried up rather than claggy.   And on first glance nothing appeared to have changed in the flower garden at all.  Gutted…  But on closer inspection I noticed lots of tiny green shoots!  There are lots of little flowers-to-be and if I close my eyes tightly I can see the bright hues and pleasing forms…

There were more hopeful green shoots in the garden where the garlic was getting big and the onions were taking off:

Unbelievably the cabbage that got munched last year was still holding its ground and putting on another growth spurt!  (If you concentrate, you’ll be able to smell the very niffy animal dung that we have spread around the beds that you can see in this picture)

We daren’t sow the seeds for this years crop before we went away because they’d need too much tending in the early days, so it was one of the first jobs we did having got settled back in.  Here’s a picture of our bedroom which will now double as the nursery for the next few weeks:

We have sown runner beans (enorma), tomatoes (local variety this year), peppers, chillies, sweetcorn, cucumbers, courgettes, cauliflowers, cabbage, melons, pumpkins, a whole host of different lettuces, lots of flowers (sweet peas, cinia, marigolds) and a some fruit stones saved from plums, dates, japanese apple and tamarind.  I am trying to chit parsnips and we have a bunch of other seeds that will be sown directly into the ground in the next month (carrots, beetroots, radish, more lettuce, rocket, more lettuce).  I was aghast to find I had NO marrow seeds!  Our marrows were the STAR crop last year (see… this post) and I can’t believe I committed the fatal error… I didn’t save a single seed!!!!  All those marrow!  All those seeds!  And now I have to get a packet of seeds bought and brought over from the UK (they don’t do marrows in Monte!). BIG lesson learnt.  Luckily the lettuces cheered me up, bursting forth in just 3 short days (this is a crap picture, but trust me, there are tiny green shoots here & yes, this is an old egg box…):

Shorts on & shirts off, we were back to work on the campsite where the next new terrace wall is taking shape:

Here’s a shot of the old wall I’ve been uncovering.  I started chipping the clay away from the wall at the point where the spade is and have uncovered about 2-3 metres of old stone…

Having cursed the claggy clay that had to picked up with hands and thrown, we are now cursing it’s dried up form which is rock hard and has to be whacked with a mattock to be broken up.  But as we see the land really taking shape, nothing can stop us now.  We are spurred on every day by the appreciable difference we are making.  We are desperate to get all the new walls built, all the clay shifted, all the ground levelled and then to sow grass seed mixed with compost and muck, stick the sprinkler on and keep everything crossed as we move to indoor jobs and let nature take its course.  We are hoping against hope that green shoots will appear and the newly landscaped land will be carpeted with something other than clay chips!

We should be ready to move onto the internal works (tiling & painting and kitchen-building) in the next few weeks.  We’ll have to see how much work we can do whilst holding our breath and compulsively checking for signs of growth!

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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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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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