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August in Review

September 7, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Environmentally Friendly, Filo Sofi, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News, book review by fullmonte | 1 comment

Growing Green

A combination of poor supervision of volunteers, relentlessly hot weather and lack of time has meant that the garden has been systematically under-loved. Despite that, this month we’ve been picking:

Rocket
Silverbeet
Aubergines – Stripey & Black Beauty
Peppers
Chillies
Onions
Courgettes
Marrow
Pumpkin
Tomatoes – regular, cherry, plum & green grape variety (the latter 2 popped up from seeds in the compost…)
Fresh herbs: chives (garlic & ordinary), parsley (curled & flat-leaved), tarragon, sage, rosemary, lemon thyme, thyme & basil

And we pulled a few carrots, including the Atomic Reds (RH side) …

They are still forked, despite sowing the seed in a bed that was deliberately NOT manured. We think they are forking for moisture… They weren’t watered deep enough, soon enough. We are trying to correct the problem, watering well now and keeping the new garden shade structures over them to retain moisture and have decided to leave them longer to see whether they will grow bigger & fatter.

The tyre wall continues to provide colour & interest – even the Asters have finally got going now. And as the photo belwo shows, it’s getting hard to see the tyres…

In the last few weeks the Tobacco plants have finally shot up with some diligent watering by Steve & I and lots of compost tea. In the photo below they are poking their heads about the ‘fake’ tobacco plants, Nicotiana, all of which nature planted as I didn’t sow a single seed…

Baking & Making

I’ve really enjoyed living off the garden this month and cooking with whatever we have a glut of… Pumpkin harvest led to Pumpkin & Sage Risotto (of sorts); since we probably picked 100+ chillies these past weeks, I’ve been pretty much spicing everything up a notch and tomatoes have been roasted, sauced and eaten raw & lightly seasoned by the bowlful.

Cat, Kate & Yvette fininshed making another notice board from corks and it’s hung up in the basement adorned with useful info for our guests.

Feelings & Musings

To be honest, at times this month its felt as if we’re coming undone – the threads of the rich (but fragile) tapestry have started to unravel…

We were feeling a little frayed at the edges at the beginning of the month, just before volunteers left. Sharing space with folk every day for weeks & weeks gets wearing, no matter who they are. It’s great to have helping hands but the hands come with mouths to be feed & characters to be accommodated – some are more voracious & demanding than others… It’s also a stress keeping people busy. So, in some ways it was a relief to be back on our own again at the beginning of August and be focused on keeping the campsite clean & tidy and our guests well provided for. Although at times, as the month unfolded & proved to be noticeably busier than last year, we did feel a little overloaded. Once again the Dutch came in their numbers, some with kids in tow, and the Germans kept coming too.

Our waste water disposal system started to fail. A couple of the filtration baths started to back up and plants had to be dug up to free the roots choking the pipes. The area around the baths started to stink. Surreptitious attempts to cure the problem failed. We tried to mask the smell with fragrant incense (‘for the mosquitos, don’t you know’) and soldiered on.

We had a few episodes of illness during the month which was most unsettling. We agreed to welcome these boys, Louis & Will, and let them stay for free in return for “bringing music & joy” as they so boldly claim! Instead they turned up weak from tummy bugs, having had stuff stolen in Budva and used the camp as a place to rest & recuperate before they set off on their bicycle tour again. Oh well, here’s hoping we get a good write up on their blog eventually!

Then one of our guests – our celebrity guest - fell ill. Well, I say celebrity guest – he was named Tom and he was a baker, so we called him Tom Baker… anyway, he succumbed to the Boka bug that seems to be bothersome in August. He came to us looking like he needed a holiday & being already run down made him more vulnerable. He suffered from vomiting & diahorrea and his temperature rose dangerously. We installed him in the basement, in the cool & near to the facilities and took his distressed wife to get thermomenters and medicine. For 3 days we let him sleep, kept him rehydrated and tried to calm & reassure Franske. He got through it and recovered slowly but it did feel like Camp Red Cross for a while there, especially when 2 German girls turned up and Ana was ill too. I mixed up some potions to unblock her sinuses and banish the flu germs and got them on their way again.

Living in a field became tiresome as critters of all kinds made a nuisance of themselves. The edible doormice popped up all over the place – the sounds of them scampering about in the gutters, gnawing the roof timbers and squeaking drove us slightly mad. Occasionally they would stare down at us from various vantage points, taunting us brazenly. Creatures (and not necessarily the same ones) were taking chunks out of the tomatoes, picking off the best figs as they ripened and re-designing the edges of the material we used to cover the sofa…

Bettina & Birgit, a couple of lovely German ladies & their dog Krummel, were living in a trailer tent adjacent to our caravan for a while and a mouse or 2 decided to join them there, getting into dog food and other goodies. The mini drama did encourage them to completely clear out their camp & establish a new one in a tent instead so that there was finally room for the trailer tent of Jonathon & family, on their way to us for the second year running from Croatia. And after that we ensured that all food stuffs were stored in the basement.

When bags of food stored in the basement were nibbled through too and my pumpkin was found, violated, it was clear we had a problem there too. Anything edible was put into cool boxes and other sealed containers and we hoped that depriving the beast of food would send it scurrying away. Piles of chewed plastic indicated that plan didn’t work. Nothing for it but to take EVERYTHING out of the inner basement and uncover it’s hiding place.

It’s not often Steve is disappointed in me as a partner in crime. I muck in pretty well with most jobs and am pretty tough but I totally blew it during the ‘Incident with Ratty’. Spider, scorpions, snakes – I can take them all in my stride, but a rodent running towards me in a confined space… Nah! I totally lose it. Scream. Run out the door and shut it behind me, just as the bugger was making its bid for freedom. To be fair Steve had told me we needed to catch the culprit rather than let it go so my thoughts were: “Don’t let it out, don’t let it out”. But it did mean that we then had to start emptying the outer basement too until we finally chased it out of the door.

Then there was this drama to contend with and we really did start to lose the plot. The 12v lighting stopped working, doubt was caste on the safety of our electrics and even the generator packed up! The worms in the worm compost got drowned through watering too often and draining off too infrequently; half the tomatoes started to die having been unwittingly butchered by Cat who couldn’t tell an inter-nodal shoot from a main stem and most of my squashes withered on the stem. At this point all thoughts of eating healthily and looking after this temple of a body went to ‘hell in a handbag’ as my mate would say… Since most guests were self-sufficient and demand for the Dish of the Day waned, I stopped cooking and defaulted to junk food, washed down with G&Ts to calm the nerves. Half a stone heavier, bloated & lethargic, I’m paying the price for it now. Laying in bed last night (a proper-sized bed in a real house with no fetid-footed hubby sweating beside me… a PROPER night off!) groaning at the pain in my gut, I had an epiphany about my re-addiction to sugar. Time to dust off the Detox Plan and reign myself in…

If you’re feeling dismayed about our drama-filled August, don’t be… We’re not. Much.

We’re pretty good at mending & making do these days so we’ve been picking up the loose threads and patching our life back together. We have syphoned out the grease trap completely and all odours have gone. The rodent situation is under control – glue traps were employed, former hang outs (under the sofa, unsurprisingly) cleared out and there is an increase of owls in the vicinity. We remain optimistic about the situation with Inspectors and even feel relieved – we knew we’d get busted someday so now we can stop waiting for the worst to happen and deal with the reality. The 12v lighting was easily fixed, the generator has oil in it now so is working again and we’ve even revived the worm compost. I’ve pulled up most of the tomatoes so we have less to water these days and am looking forward sowing fresh crops of herbs and veg.

Reading

I finally finished “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles”! Weirdly, trying to recall the sense of it some weeks later and the traces of it are already weak… I liked the main character, Toru, a great deal. He was refreshingly easy to get to know and enjoyable company but somehow this made the weird things happening to him/ around him seem too incongruous at times. I liked the detail about the little routines in his life and the ordinary moments guys like Toru must experience all the time and its a welcome change to see these being paid attention to, cherished even.

Haruki Murakami’s writing style is very accessible – his words (& Jay Rubin’s skill in translating his words) are, mostly, perfectly formed. There is an easy grace about the prose and this book has pages & pages that flow with a gently captivating rhythm. But. Then there are sharp corners that cut me and left me confused and a little vexed as the ’story’ jutted off at an odd angle. The inter-weaving with ‘other worldly stuff’ didn’t always work well for me – ghosts & spirits and mend-melding could get a little wearing…

“I’ll skin you alive!” is not a phrase I can use lightly after reading this book. I spare you details and don’t wish to spoil the stories within a story for others, but there are some descriptive passages in this novel that have left an imprint – simply written stuff it may be, but it is powerfully evocative at times.

“Hunting & Gathering” by Anna Gavalda was a breath of fresh air that I breezed through after release from The Chronicles.

I enjoyed the characters immensely – especially Philibert and Mamadou. Paulette’s portrayal wrung my heart; Franck was infuriating but smolderingly gorgeous and Camille’s waif-like persona became more substantial as she found the strength and inspiration to feed herself in all good senses of the word.

The tale was well-paced and rewarding. It’s been a long time since I read a good old love story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well-crafted Ms Gavalda!

And now I’m half way through Isabelle Allende’s ‘City of the Beasts’…

Work

Work projects took a bit of a back seat for most of the month as our focus was on keeping the campsite ticking along and trying not to lose the plot!

Nik made a welcome return to the camp for some stone walling, which was very much appreciated:

And towards the end of the month, fresh volunteer blood arrived in the form of Andy, an easy-going English dude helpful, strong and hardworking. Once he’d got into a routine with pumping water every morning, helping watering the garden & taking Daisy for a walk, the first major project was emptying the grease trap and flushing our system clean.

Our next volunteer, Yvette from Holland turned up a few days after Andy. She turned out to be a competent seamstress and was up for the task of patching together material from old sail bags and tents and making a cover for the small gazebo frame:

Meanwhile Andy got involved with re-building stone walls and Steve finally found someone else, other than Nik, patient enough to work with him on this:

Play

Cat turned 20 on 1st August and it was the perfect excuse to throw a party. We already had quite a few folk on site and everyone decided to join us for the BBQ, plus more people turned up during the day and we invited some of the friends that Cat & Todd had made locally so there was 25 of us crammed round tables stuffing our faces & toasting Cat’s transition from teen to Twenties Queen!

The food, if we do say so ourselves, was extraordinarily good…

There was a mountain of washing up afterwards though but Kate, Yvette and Todd managed it all with smiles on their faces:

Daisy had a couple of playmates in August. First came Krummel, originally from Bosnia, but adopted by Bettina & Birgit in Germany. She was an abused hound and was very nervous around people but she soon mellowed out and Daisy adored her. And adored the treats and attention from Birgit & Bettina…

Then came Ganga, Ana’s hound – another German adopting a Balkan dog, this one from Croatia. Now Daisy was the bigger hound and got to be Top Dog for a bit!

Nature Watch

It’s been hot & dry this month, although it did sputter with rain halfway through the month for a wee bit (Nigel, who visited us in May and returned again in August is now our Rain God because his visits have brought the only periods of precipitation in the summer!).

With all the drama and hard work I lost enthusiasm for taking photos of all the amazing things around us but here’s a few nice shots (taken, for a change, by Steve) of what’s been buzzing about us…

The bird life has been fantastic this month – the skies have been alive with the flitting & swooping of Spotted Fly Catchers, Swifts & Swallows and various Warblers and Bee Eaters have been frequent visitors too. Not to mention the owls (calling very close but still Steve has been unable to spot them with his super long range torch!) and the various birds of prey…

Tags: Funny-shaped carrots, grey water system, growing green, Inspected & Busted, month in review, Of Mice & Men, off-grid living, organic gardening

July in Review

August 4, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Naturist, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News, book review by fullmonte | No comments

July has been a cracking month and we’ve been busy as bees hence the late posting… I’ll hardly do justice to the whos & whats of this sizzling month but it’s better than nowt….

Growing Green

As if it wasn’t hot enough this month, we’ve had a bumper crop of chillies and most meals contain these spicy beauties:

We’re still picking rocket but just the wild stuff – the salad rocket has mostly flowered itself off the menu
We’ve picked a little silverbeet & pak choi but the plants are few & scorched. Here’s some we picked early in the month:

We picked the last of the lettuce for a while – I’m trying to germinate more but think we might have to wait until the late August/ September sowing
Fresh herbs: chives (garlic & ordinary), parsley, tarragon, rosemary, fennel sage & basil.
Tomatoes have been great this month – we pick daily & have tomatoes with everything… chopped up with garlic & herbs on toasted bread as homemade bruschetta for lunch; with basil & seasoning or onion & cucmbers as a salad dish; or skinned & ’sauced’. And I’m delighted to report that a couple of Green Grape Tomato plants were amongst those self sowers that I allowed to pop up from compost & flourish – I have saved seed so I will be able to deliberately grow them next year…. But as was the case last year, just as we start to enjoy them, so do the Edible Doormice! See the photo below of the end of July’s harvest and note the nibbled fruit!

Peppers are coming thick & fast now & a decent size
We’ve picked a couple of pumpkins so far & more to come
Marrow & courgette are still growing away though not as prolifically as last month
Onions – kilos of them!

Aubergines, Stripey & Black Beauty, have popped up in many meals this month. The shot below shows off my nice new scales (a birthday present to myself)

We have one beautiful Butternut Squash ripening nicely. The plants on the compost heap suffered miserably (too dry) so we’ve moved them into the main garden. I think one plant has died altogether but the other 3 are pushing our new growth.

Runner beans are flowering but not setting fruit. We suspect its just too hot and look forward to the cooler months in the autumn when the beans may actually form & swell.

The orchard was looking a bit bare – sunflowers are over now – but the zinnia are flowering brightly now & the tobacco plants are finally getting going. Confrey is romping away too & the 2nd bucket of Comfrey Stew is on the bubble!

The tyre wall and stream-side flower beds are looking great – drifts of colour, buzzing with bees and awash with butterflies… And here’s a new garden area I made by planting up random bidets and sinks we had dotted around the place:

Baking & Making

Getting creative with a posh compost pot (so guests know what’s in & what’s not)…

I put together a folder for volunteers to help them get up to speed with how we do things around here and finally got around to putting the photo album together of the early days & the build of the campsite…

Reading

Still reading “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles”. It’s a strange book – compelling in parts and at times almost too odd to follow but I am nearly finished and am intrigued to see where this tale will end and wonder if & how all the frayed threads will come together…

Work

The list of jobs done this month is so long it’s hard to recall! This is mainly due to having so many willing hands this month. Todd & Cat from the US joined us early in July and Yvette from Dublin arrived towards the end of the month. Kate, from Canada, was with us for a week at the end of July. Here’s a rough run down of stuff that Team Full Monte achieved:

Compost chambers and compost tea tank scraped of all peeling limewash & re-painted

Strimming & tidying of grounds
Rock collection
Stone walling
Bead curtain re-strung
Toilet door frames sanded & re-painted
1000 litre water tank patched up with epoxy & put into position at the end of the orchard, near to the veg garden to be the compost tea dilution tank

Big metal gate fixed so it runs smoothly now & can be opened & closed (even by a girl)
Stream-side gate hinge re-welded
All metal worked on & welded by Todd was then painted with primer & finished with metal paint by Cat
Plugs put in place for charging devices on our 12v system (battery is kept chraged by our PV panel) and a nice shelf erected
Signs made (but sadly one of them has already been ‘removed’)

Guest-wise, July has been a phenomenal month. People have been amazing; guests are staying longer and a couple have popped back so regularly this summer we’re thinking of awarding them ‘Bare Miles’. We’ve had folk from the UK, from Holland, from Slovenia, Hungary, France, Australia, America, Italy, Canada, Portugal, Sweden & Poland and lots of Germans! Just as we were thinking that we needed to find a way to attract the German market, the buggers started arriving in droves!

Compared to last July we must be 100 – 200% up on numbers. Incredible! No time to catch our breath though – people just keep on coming…

Play

Jen turned 40 at the end of June but a select few joined her for a special birthday meal at a lovely restaurant in Rose a week later. Here’s the lovely lass herself…

And here we all are in the beautiful setting, enjoying good food & wine…

Steve & I got the best ride home – a speed along the Bay in our friend Alan’s new toy…

I celebrated my birthday with a morning on the beach and then a chilled afternoon on the campsite with lovely guests, Ian, who made lemonade (which went down great with Vodka!) and Alix, who made me a cake. Cat baked cookies and Steve cooked a great BBQ. Friday night we left the campsite in Todd & Cat’s capable hands and escaped. We had a chilled evening on our own at the house and the next day kayaked out to join our friends Fi & Dave who were getting ready to sail off for a couple of months and were moored off near Herceg Novi. We were privileged to join them on their first sail for 3 years as they put the Altair through its paces. It was a very special, very memorable day. Then we raced back to the house, got changed & sped off round the bay to Tivat for a nice meal with mates. This is what 42 looks like…

I had thought not many people would be able to join us but we were quite a crowd – over 25 of us in the end! Great fun & we got to stay with our mate David in his lovely Muo house for the night. The bonus was waking up in a house with a pool and shaking off the fogginess with a refreshing swim!

Nature Watch

Though July has been mostly scorching hot, we did get a bit of rain too. which was very welcome! A few cloudy days and a chance to cool down again gave us some respite in the middle of the month.

The campsite has been alive with insects but not so many birds this year. Fly catchers are scarce – but the plus side of that is that there are much fewer flies!

The green lizards are still about though:

And the Stag Beetles have freaked a few volunteers out this month!

Tags: camping, friends, growing green, homegrown, month in review, organic gardening, solar energy

April in Review

May 1, 2012 in Camping News, Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle by fullmonte | No comments

Growing Green

We’re seemingly some way off from picking much from the garden… Hurrumph. The broccoli is done. Over & pulled. I was saving a few plants & letting them go to seed but after reading this wonderful & informative site on saving seeds, I realised I didn’t have enough plants.

The salad rocket & fresh herbs are being picked regularly and we harvested some radish too:

It’s been a frustrating month in the nursery and garden. Everything was romping away in pots & trays so I decided to plant quite a lot of stuff out just in time for the weather to turn really nasty… The raised beds were water-logged, and there were mini waterfalls in most of the flower beds. I fear my tobacco seedlings have been washed away. The perennial flowers are actually flourishing & the strawberries too but everything else seems stunted, shrunken even. I planted up the tyre wall, hoping things would mature enough to put on a little show at least for our visitors from the Mediterranean Garden Society, but it looks a shambles at the moment.

The Stock & a Pansy or 2, still flowering from last year were providing some brightness but the Stock is over now. Borage (self-seeded) and the delicate Violas are providing a splash of blue here & there but overall it’s pretty bare. I keep reminding myself of the transformation that took place last summer & hope for little miracles again but this year I’ve really been caught out by the weather: crazy rain, winds & a real cold snap…

The weather has played havoc with my veg too. I waited patiently until the squashes & curcubits were big, bold specimens – each with at least 5 true leaves. And then planted them out atop deep holes filled with rich compost & goat poo to keep these hungry guys well-fed. Well, they might not have gone hungry but they were probably over-watered. They are mere shadows of their former selves right now. And I lost the only cucumber that had germinated.

Carrots did germinate, albeit somewhat intermittently and onions did sprout:

And broad beans & runner beans are doing ok. But peas are pathetic, lettuce & salad greens puny and most stuff in the seed bed coming along SO slowly. Agonising.

I did plant my tomatoes out & they seem pretty sturdy. And the veg patch in the bo-flo-grove is looking promising, with artichokes finally getting big, garlic sprouting and sorrel & silverbeet transplanted from the main veg garden starting to take off:

The herb garden is happy though. It’s super green & lush (see below) and starting to look pretty now the sage has just (literally, today!) burst into purple flowers.

Baking & Making

Inspired by my buddy Katie and her delicious veggie curries, I dared to cook an entirely vegetarian feast for Jess & Dunc & Nik ( I won’t hear the last of that from Duncs, I’m sure). However I needed a good curry paste and though I have all the spices, I hadn’t really figured out how to put them all together into a paste. I found some great recipes on Jamie Oliver’s website and made a delicious Tikka Masala paste.

I got creative with the Camp Full Monte Scrapbook this month, printing out photos of wild flowers, butterflies & birds found on the campsite and sticking them in with info about the species & when they were spotted. And made some tomato-waterers out of used plastic milk bottles:

These will be pushed into the ground at the base of each plant and direct water to the roots.

Reading

I’ve started this book by Edmund de Waal but have barely got into it. It was given to me by a good friend who knows me well and usually gives me stuff I enjoy, so I’m going to keep at it but I just seem turned off reading at the moment, for some reason:

Work

April has been a wash-out on the work front. Apart from gardening and starting to dig out the grey water baths we haven’t really achieved much. Poor weather, friends visiting for Easter and Steve being away for a week whilst he fetched the caravan and got it towed over, all conspired to check our progress.

We have a mountain of things to be done. Our first Japanese wwoofer is due to arrive tomorow and we haven’t even moved up there yet! Today I mowed the grassy areas around the building so that tomorrrow we can move the tables and sofa currently cluttering up the building so we can start the cleaning & unpacking in earnest. And we will be moving into our new home because we did at least manage to get the caravan towed across Europe, thanks to Ben & his meaty Landy:

And get it towed onto site & into position at the back of the building, thanks to Matt & his amazing manoeverable beast:

I had not appreciated how tricky this whole caper would be! Matt did a great job of getting the van positioned well on the drive. There’s not a lot of room on the road for positioning to get the caravan to turn at the right angle:

Once on the driveway, the issue was stopping the caravan from rolling into the workshop whilst we tried to get it to turn down and parallell with the building. We used a board to give the wheels something flat to move on:

There was a scary moment when the caravan slipped off it’s chock and skidded down the concrete towards the workshop on it’s legs. Fortunately, the metal leg stopped it but it might have got a bit bent in the process…

The boys roped the caravan to Matt’s truck whilst turning it onto the board and getting it to trundle down. In this photo Steve’s checking the clearance under the caravan to make sure it doesn’t ground:

I joined Bobo, our local buddy and proprietor at Konoba Izvor, at the back of the van to help push it over the bumps & ridges and pretty soon we were in position, with Matt zipping in and re-hitching for a bit to push the van back a way whilst boards & chocks were prepared for stabilising & levelling:

Steve did a lovely job of levelling it and anchoring it firmly and getting it hooked up to water & power. Now, everytime the generator’s on, the battery is being charged. Next month I’ll post pics of our cosy new home.

Bookings & enquiries are barely dribbling in now. Is the doom & gloom of Economic recession and worldwide unrest cramping people’s holiday style?

The task list ahead looks like this, in no particular order:

clean
re-camp
pimp out caravan
get gazebos set up
put sofas & tables in position & levelled
re-model the kitchen
re-model & re-decorate the basement
make & affix signs, so people know where they are going when coming off the main road
strim, mow, weed & garden
be ready to receive and feed 28 members of the Mediterranean Garden Society in 11 days time

Gulp. And now I have to admit that I forgot there were only 30 days in April and up until a hour or so ago thought that we had one more day before May 1st! Time to get busy…

Play

Jess & Duncan & Islay were in Herce Novi for their extended Easter break & stayed with us for a few nights. As usual, we had a fabulous time with these folk: proper conversations, the odd heated debate, a bit of Bridge-playing, some puzzling over crossword, quite a bit of drinking & eating nice food and lots of laughs throughout.

Islay, apart from looking like a mini Ducan, is adorable! She’s a serious wee girlie, who weighs the situation up and takes every thing in (she’ll give her daddy hell when she’s older) but she’s dead cool.

Our last night together always seems to be the BIG one. It started with Blue Margheritas and ended with whisky. After nearly 20 years of not being able to touch a drop of single malt after having got hammered on it in a really bad way, I found myself somehow being persuaded (Duncan!) to drink some (admittedly, very mellow…) Highland Park. This man, this bottle, that blue stuff in the cocktail glass – this was my undoing:

It was a fun night and we managed to play some awesome Bridge (alledgedly) but *yikes* did we pay for it the next day!!! We had arranged to have lunch at a friend’s house up in the hills before Jess & Dunc headed to the airport. Bad move. Seriously bad move. I spent most of the day trying not to vomit, whilst politely chowing down pea soup and fish curry (I mean can you think of anything more revolting to have to digest on a hangover???). This, on top of clinging onto the car seat for dear life as Duncan careered up a mountain with a sheer drop often too close for comfort and then having to walk what seemd like 100’s of steps up the hillside to get to their house! Who needs friends in remote places at times like that?

Danny’s birthday at the end of April was an excuse for a lost weekend. Me & Mary joined the birthday girl on Friday night for food & wine. We had a lovely leisurely day on Saturday – we sat in the sun on the terrace of Danny’s new apartment drinking coffee, I gave the girls massages and we had a late lunch. More girlies turned up through the afternoon. This fizz got popped, food was prepared and we ate, drank & danced.

Mary had made the most amazing cup cake tower for Danny. The detail on each cupcake was amazing – mini bottles of nail polish, lipsticks and other girlie stuff all preserved in sugar:

Daisy had a fun month too. Her new friend Waldo came to stay.

She got pampered and taken on long walks by Mel & Blanty (who dog sat whilst I had a responsibility-free weekend with Danny) and then got to hang out with Schoona & Blondie up at Kavac, when Laura kindly minded her whilst I drove 5 hours to Split to meet Steve and tow the caravan into Monte.

Nature Watch

This month we’ve seen so much great wildlife. Around our house in Topla we’ve seen a Flycatcher (either Pied or Collared, I’m not totally sure which), a Hawfinch, a couple of Hoopoes, a Cirl Bunting as well as countless Blackbirds, Sparrows, Finches and Tits.

On my walks with Daisy on the beach, I’ve seen a Scops Owl, Grey Heron, a variety of Gulls, a bunch of Hoopoes, Yellow Wagtails & White Wagtails, Greenfinches, Goldfinches, Blackcaps and Northern Wheatears.

On the way to the campsite Steve saw a Jay catching snake and on a drive round the Bay we saw a Dolphins in the bay just off Risan!

The rain followed by the strong sun, that’s now appeared as if someone flicked a switch and said “Let it be summer”, has made the grass grow green and long and flowers appear everywhere. Yellow Asphodel popped up in our garden from seeds we’d saved whilst on a trip to Croatia:

The white Common Asphodel are everywhere now, as are Honesty and Bearded Iris. Tongue Orchids are popping up on the campsite and when picking Daisy up from Mel’s place on the Lustica peninsula, I saw swathes of wild Snakeshead Fritillaries. Perfection – naturally…

Tags: Blue Margheritas & Whisky, caravan caper, Dolphins in Boka Bay, Hawfinch, Hoopoe, radish, the importance of saving seeds, Yellow Asphodel

Getting Organised in the Garden

February 10, 2012 in Den, Frugal Living, Organic Gardening by fullmonte | No comments

This is year 4 of growing green at Camp Full Monte. I found this hard to believe when counting up and now feel slightly crest fallen that we haven’t come further with our learnings & success.

The past 3 years have taught me many lessons, but it all boils down to one major one: “Make life in the garden as easy & simple as possible”. As ever with things in my world, this is caveated with “As long as it’s cheap & eco”. So, #1 on a list: ‘Pay someone else to do it all’ and #2: ‘Buy everything in as plants’ are immediately binned!

I’m thinking back & identifying all the things that tripped me up or wore me out and planning ahead for success. Here are the 4 things I’m doing differently this year:

Not growing flowers & edible food together. As much as I love to see flowers & veg interspersed, it complicates things on the watering front to grow them together in our garden. We have a lot of ‘compost tea’ to use up every day and since this is essentially diluted human urine, we want to keep it away from the fruits and leaves of herbs and vegetables we may eat that day. I will still plant Marigolds (the classic companion plant) in my garden because their value in keeping other plants healthy is undisputed in my experience and since the leaves & flowers of Borage & Nasturtiums are edible, they will also be planted in the main veg growing spaces. Other than that I will plan the planting carefully so I can safely feed my flowers. It also means pulling or moving edible food (notably tomatoes & squashes) when they appear amongst the flowers having germinated themselves from seeds in the compost.
Organising my seed box into “Idiot Proof” folders
I came a long way last year with organising the wealth of info I had about plants (see this post for a reminder) but I still failed to plant everything at the right time or to succession sow as much as I should have been. Enter my new gardening box…

I made lots of rough pockets using the mountains of scrap paper we have with a few staples to hold them together. Each pocket has the month the seeds are to be sown and whether they will be sown directly or sown in pots/ seedbeds indoors. It took me several hours to sort everything out and make sure seeds like herbs & lettuce are in every month’s folder to ensure a continuous supply. But it will save me time & stress as the season progresses.
Preparing all my ‘materials’ ahead of time
I’ve scrubbed all my pots & trays. The labels I made last year from old margarine tubs worked a treat. I’m re-using most of last year’s and have cut fresh blanks for new plants. I intend to prepare a stock of stakes too. Plants were sometimes poorly staked last year or not supported at all. Driving stakes into the ground is no mean feat and I never seemed to have at hand a sturdy enough support or one that was whittled at the end to ease it’s progress into the often dry & stony earth. I will not be caught out this year.
Getting the feeding & watering right
We’re feeding the ground this month with plenty of goat poo, a bit of leaf mould & some of our own compost. I’m planting an entire comfrey patch this year to feed my fruit & veg. If we make enough money this year, a water collection & distribution system is a priority. We are going to try to provide shade for 2 of the raised beds, using pipes bent into a hoop & covered with netting, which will help minimise water loss and prevent the plants from getting quite so parched in the first place. And generally I need to pay more attention to feeding & watering plants in the appropriate stages of their progress to increase my chances of a good crop, so I’m making the relevant notes in my garden folder as prompts: “water pumpkins until fruit forms and then feed”, etc.