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March in Review

April 1, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Fun Stuff, Healthy Eating, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Team News by fullmonte | No comments

Growing Green

Lean pickings from the garden this month again:

  • Handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
  • Rocket
  • Fresh hebs, including coriander, chives & basil for the first time this year!

It’s been a busy month in the nursery and garden.  Lobelia, Viola, Livingstone Daisy, Pansy, Snapdragon, Nasturtiums & first round of Marigolds have all been planted out, not to mention all the perennial flowers I’ve been lovingly cherishing.

I’ve no idea what the various plantlets will grown into (not a single Foxglove amongst them seemingly – which were the buggers that started my whimsy for English cottage garden-style perennials in the first place!) – so I’ve probably planted them out all wrong for height, colour & sun/ shade conditions, but hey ho.  Aster, Petunia, Cosmos & Stock have all been sown, germinated and potted on ready for planting out next month.  It’s been a labour of love raising enough flowers to fill the bo-flo-grove, the tyre wall and the stream-side beds with colour & scent.  I’m really excited about this year’s display.  I’ve turned into a real sissy, for flip’s sake!

I’ve got half a terrace full of vegetables-to-be: courgettes, marrow, pumpkin, aubergine, peppers, chillies, cucumber, tomatoes (3 different varieties) & runner beans are all growing away nicely.  Poor germination for second round of curcubits though (over-watering – mea culpa!) so I’ve put some more in pots and also shoved in some melon & butternut squash seeds.  I’ve been too hasty to plant out in previous years so I’m trying to curb my impatience and grow the veg on well, so that big, healthy, nourished specimens go in kicking & screaming.

For an impatient sod like me, March & April stretch me to the limit… waiting for green shoots to show; all that fiddly pricking out and potting on; preparing the soil and the growing medium with care.  Please let it be worth it!

I’m mollified a little by watching the wonders in the raised beds where onions, carrots, broad beans, peas, rocket, radish and assorted salad greens are sprouting.

Baking & Making

I found a great new spread to liven up my corn crispbreads (or ‘bits of cardboard’ as Steve calls them).  Zucchini Hummus is quick & simple.  I made it using the local-style pinky spotted beans, which may or may not be Pinto beans but worked anyway.  I would turn up the seasoning next time though, as I found it a tad bland.  The really nice thing about this spread is it’s taste in combo with my green tomato chutney.

Reading

Nothing!  Donna Mazza’a “The Albanian” has been sat by my bed for the whole month.  I’ve picked it up twice but only got as far as reading the cover and having a quick flick.  I don’t know what my mental block is with this book but I’m ditching it and picking a new one.

Work

We’ve been a man down for most of the month so we haven’t achieved as much as we’d hoped.  Steve got man flu at the beginning of the month and was properly poorly (well, you know how deadly man flu can be!) for a couple of weeks.  Just as he was recovering from that he missed the bottom step whilst letting Daisy in one morning when he was half-asleep.  He bruised his foot quite badly and had to rest it for a couple of days.  Then it was his birthday (more of that later…) so we had a day off to celebrate.  The following day we had arranged to collect some free stone from around the Bay but whilst moving the freezer up from the basement, Steve managed to slice his wrist open on the sharp metal plate at the back.  It was a nasty cut in an awkward position and probably deserved a couple of stitches but we taped it up with steri-strips, bandaged it and made him rest for 2 days and remarkably, it’s knitted together beautifully.  We wait to see what mischief he gets up to next month to get off work duties!

Despite all of this, we got a fair amount achieved in March.  All 6 beds have their irrigation systems in place now.  All the gardens have been dug over, weeded and manured.  There’s been plenty of seeds sown in the raised beds and a lot of flowers were planted at the end of the month.  This year I have been thorough and patient (she says, through gritted teeth).  It’s a mission just to mix up a good planting medium but I haven’t cut corners.  I’ve barrowed several loads of soil down from the top piece of land and carefully blended this with shop-bought potting mix, worm compost and rotted animal manure.

This all has to be well broken up and mixed together: removing stones & any bulky or unrotted bits from the compost; carefully crumbling the animal manure to disperse it evenly and breaking up any lumps of dried clay in the soil.  The end result has been satisfyingly friable, rich and pretty much neutral pH.  It will give all our plants a nourishing foundation, we hope.

The project to tidy & de-clutter the workshop, which was started in February:

… was finally finished in March. Rubbish has been cleared out, useless tut ditched, wood re-stacked, various DIY projects bits sorted into new containers,  tools re-hung and floor swept.  It’s a job well done and makes ingress and egress of people weilding things (especially bulky contraptions, like wheelbarrows) much easier.

We scored a load of freshly cut palm leaves thanks to a tip-off from our adorable French friend, Cecile.  We (but Steve mostly) re-palmed the bare patches on both sides of the fence, so privacy and aethestics are intact again:

We’ve started to make space for the caravan which Steve will be towing from the UK with a friend and his Landrover.  So far we’ve re-stacked all the bricks and made a bin store & the worm compost bin is ready to be moved to its new location next to all the other compost bins.  All the spare tiles have been neatly stacked on pallets behind the workshop out of harm’s way and eyeshot.

We have been given a load of free stone so the dream of creating a properly paved (& one day, covered) seating area moves a little closer to becoming reality.  The trusty van moved into work horse mode (after we finally succumbed and invested in a new tyre) and here’s the back of it loaded up:

The bad news is we need 6 more trips like this is the van…

This month we helped move Nik out.  He’s making a new home in a nice spot up the road in town, the place where our Montengrin adventure first began: our friend Mia’s property.  And then we re-claimed our home, moving furniture, tidying, cleaning, moving the house from it’s Winter to Spring configuration.

The news on the business-side of things is pretty good.  We have bookings, enquiries, deposits in the bank, our first proper group booking (30 botanists!) and plenty of volunteers.  The first volunteer to join us as a ‘Team Member’ (see this page for explanation) will be Amy from Dublin and then we have helpers joining us from Japan, Belgium, Germany, America and the UK.

Play

The month started fabulously with a girls night in Tivat.  I zoomed over to Katie’s in the Mazda MX-5 we have use of these days thanks to Jim, one of our guests last year (sadly not warm enough to put the top down at that stage, although we have done since!).  I drove us to Porto Montenegro’s Yacht Club, where the Boka’s first clothes swap was staged.  A bunch of girls (about 20 of us) turned up with clothes no longer wanted and got to “shop for free” for a whole new wardrobe.  I came away with bulging bags of clothes!  New (to me) skirts, trousers, tops, jumpers and a couple of beautiful and almost brand new dresses.  I even got a pair of pink shoes and a new handbag!!

We had all brought nibbles of some description & a bottle, so we twirled about dressing up and down amongst the dips, salads, snacks and cake, sipping our glasses of wine.  I drove Katie back to Muo where the 2 of us stayed up drinking & eating oranges (!!) until 4 am.

Early in March I watched Grace’s debut on stage, at the Herceg Novi theatre in Dvorana Park.

You can see she takes after her Daddy, head and shoulders high above anyone else in her class.  She recited a sweet poem about how special her Mum was and did it beautifully.  Once her 2 minutes of fame were over though, she rather lost interest as the line of other kids all had to say their bit and proceeded to pull up her skirt and adjust her tights.  Me, Amy & Matt were crying with laughter whilst Eloise & Miles looked on confused and bemused.  I’ve a feeling we’ll be seeing more of the little madam on stage so next time I’ll be putting a Camp Full Monte sticker on her underwear for some free advertising!

After the kids were done, young adults performed traditional Montenegrin dancing in full regalia:

And whilst we’re on the subject of dressing up…  Steve’s 52nd birthday was themed: “Skool Dayz”.  Something to do with the book “The Trouble with Jennings” published in the year of his birth.  There was dressing up, Blue Margheritas, some bopping about, loads of junk food (pizza and candy!) and plenty of laughs:

We’ve had a few meals out: a delicious vegetarian feast at Marie & Jan’s place, where the Russian salad was a delightful pinky mound of chopped beetroot, plums, garlic, egg & onion in mayo; and a yummy Indian feast prepared by Katie – 2 different veggie curries, a dahl and rice.

And we’ve had a lot of fun with Daisy.  Most days we walk her on the beach on the way home from a day’s slog at the campsite.  She chases sticks, birds, puppies, pine cones and cats, hareing up & down the sand with sheer delight.  She’s had her fair share of sunbathing this month too, stretched out inside the glass doors basking in the heat:

Nature Watch

It’s been a beautiful month to be in nature.  The bright, warm days have been showing off their best colours: that sky blue that is somehow bluer than the sky; the fresh lime green of new shoots & leaves; the shocking purply pinks of wild Honesty and Daisy … and all about the birds swoop & butterflies flit.  We spotted Southern Festoons, Peacocks and Camberwell Beauties on the campsite:

And we saw the first orchid of the season: an Early Spider Orchid.  Let’s hope there are still orchids for the Botanists to enjoy in May.

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January in Review

January 30, 2012 in Den, Fun Stuff, Healthy Eating, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Team News, book review by fullmonte | 1 comment

A new year, a new format…

Growing Green

Lean pickings from the garden this month:

  • Small handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
  • Brussel sprouts (enough only for a meal or 2)
  • Leeks (if nothing else, they had nice white shafts!)
  • Rocket

Our winter veg was weedy & meagre.  My hunch is that the young plants didn’t get enough food & water & shade.  The broccoli has made loads of leaf but not formed substanial enough heads, if at all.  Any ideas why?

I look at these & sigh, thinking I should abandon brassica growing.  Then I take the fresh greens home, toss them in a pan of boiling water, marvel at the colour.  And then the taste - oh my.  And wonder how I can ever give up trying…

On the bright side, it looks like sorrel, chard & silverbeet have survived being transplanted.

I’ve sowed sunflower seeds in pots and the first round of herbs this year: coriander, basil & garlic chives.  I’m also trying to germinate tobacco plant seeds (below, under damp newspaper) and some Oriental spicy leaf mix.  I’ve had a bunch of random seeds (saved from various bushes, plants & fruit) knocking about for a while now, so I’ve stuck them all in pots and we’ll wait and see what, if anything, comes up.  I’m also trying again with a perennial flower mix from the UK.   It’s very whimsical of me, but I’d love to see our gardens dotted about with foxgloves et al.

Baking & Making

We returned from Dobrota with a bag of sour oranges.   The crazy winds in early January freed them from the ‘hard to pick’ places on the tree and sent them scattering about, so we scooped them up and thought… marmalade.  They were perfect for preserving and I finally made a yummy spread that really tasted as tangy as it should be (with the sour edge that proper marmalade should have) rather than orange jam.  Here’s a taster:

I made my first lemon marmalade, which is so tangy and sour it’s too hardcore for Steve.  But a zesty addition to cereal bars…

After the excesses of the festive season, it was time to fully embrace the Harcombe regime again. I’m still struggling with my sugar addiction and looking for healthy snacks to satisfy the craving and fill me up, so this turned up at the right time: a recipe for vegan cereal bars. It’s a brilliant recipe, really quick & easy & by taking out the nuts and adding more seeds (I used poppy) and dried fruit (raisins were all I had), I avoid mixing my carbs & fats.

I’ve since made a second batch with sunflower seeds, dried apricots & cranberries, less cinammon and the addition of ground clove & a dollop of lemon marmalade.  I also toasted the oats first in my second baking.  The 2 batches were significantly different, so by adjusting the variety of fruit & seed and spice I can keep from getting bored of these healthy treats.

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out what to eat for lunch on my new eating regime.  Salads are quick and easy but frankly, when it’s freezing cold weather and I’ve been labouring hard with a spade in the garden, I feel the need for something more substantial.  Soups are warming but it’s a faff making them and all the local soups are full of nasties (e numbers, msg, dried pasta).

I’ve found some fabulous rice cakes in local supermarkets that are tasty and healthy and cheap. But what to put on them?  No cheese, mashed egg, ham, tuna or peanut butter allowed because they are all in the ‘fat’ category & can’t be mixed with carbs.  Marmite’s fine but really not the same without the layer of butter & after a while it gets pretty boring.

I googled about for recipes for which I had all the ingredients and which didn’t combine fats & carbs and found this vegan pate recipe.  It’s so quick to make, and apart from the lentils (I used red but I guess green would be fine too), everything’s raw.  I cut back on the amount of seeds in my version of the recipe as their fat content is almost as high as their carb content.  I didn’t have courgette or celery so I used half a red pepper and half a green one, an onion and a couple of carrots.  I used less oil than the recipe suggested too – just a splash.  It’s really tasty and a good texture & consistency too.  The great thing is that I reckon with a bit of tweaking on the herbs, spices and veg used I can keep this pate ‘fresh’ for months.  Go out & make it NOW!

Reading

‘The Knitting Circle’ by Ann Hood is a great read.  I have thoroughly enjoyed snuggling up and losing myself in the lives, loves and assorted knitted garmets of the brave folk in the Knitting Circle.  The central character, Mary, is struggling to function and make sense of her life after the loss of her daughter and she journeys through her pain as the strong, supportive folk around her share their tales of life & loss… and knit.  The dull clanking of needles knitting & purling provides a soothing undertone to the book – as the story unfolds, so do the skeins of yarn.  The description of the wool itself makes me want to hold a ball in my hand and fondle it:  it’s seems so good to hold and simple and often brightly coloured, whilst the stories are complex, dark & untouchable somehow.

There’s a lot of pain in this book and I more than once had a lump in my throat and a tear at my eye.  Grief & loss are difficult things to handle, but Ms Hood writes with sensitivity and care.  Although the experiences of suffering are dramatic, they are eased onto the page, respectfully, without drama.  There’s a point during the book which describes Mary’s process of living without Stella.  She drags herself through each day and those days turn into weeks and I had an awakening, a real sense of the reality of living without someone you love.  It’s mostly not about the big breakdowns and the floods of tears, it’s about waking up with the same dull ache in your gut and going through the motions of existing, bereft of joy or hope.

I have lost people I love, a dear friend, a dear nephew… but my life wasn’t entwined with theirs on a day to day basis.  I have cried & ached but I haven’t had to wake up every day with the loss so present and I begin to understand the pain of others.  This understanding was particularly poignant since the person who gave me the book is journeying through her own shattering grief.

We’re also reading “Dog Problems” by David Weston & Ruth Ross.  The ‘Training Miss Daisy’ caper has begun…

Work

We’re finally back to work after the extended yuletide break.  I excavated all the irrigation pipes from the raised beds and transplanted any remaining herbs and veg.  Steve dug the beds over and is half way through re-laying the pipes, which were surprisingly not badly clogged or damaged.


I have emptied the tyre wall of all the herbs and strawberries and re-potted or relocated them.  I’ve created some new planting areas between the sleeper wall and the palm fence where the strawberries now live, nestled in some richer soil (the clay clag around their roots revealed when I dug them up made me wince) and in a place where they will be shaded by trees and tall flowers.  The full on sun seemed too much for them last summer.  The making of these beds required many bucketfuls of soil dug from up top and barrowed down.

More of this soil, mixed with compost & leaf mould has been used to improve the tyre wall and the bo-flo-grove growing areas.  The sage, lavender and mint rescued from the tyre wall have been planted either in pots or around the grease trap.  The latter area, directly outside the shared building will be my kitchen garden this year -  a profusion of herbs I hope!

Other jobs at the camp have been tidying and patching up the site after the wild January winds snapped wire fastenings on the palm fence, stripped a few palms off the mesh and popped a couple of caps off the stench pipes from the compost toilets.  Seriously, how did the wind get under these plastic caps and force them off, cracking one of the caps in the process?  Crazy weather!  Replacing the caps required Stevo to climb the roof and inch his way up to the apex.  It was nerve wracking for us both.

And other things Steve’s been working on: a new property website and a proposal for a planting job.

I have scored a few days work running workshops in mid/ late February so I have some grown up research and thinking to do as I mentally prepare myself to don my professional persona again.

Play

We danced our way into 2012 in Muo, amongst friends.  There was good grub, mnogo (much) bubbly, fireworks from a distance, dancing, wigs, dogs galore and cross-dressing delights!

January 1st  the view from the house looked like this:

A couple of weeks later, we were invited to share Fiona’s birthday celebrations with her and it was a wonderful evening.  We drank bubbly until we bubbled; had a food fight with raspberry pavlova, sang “Twelve Days of Christmas” (with full & enthusiastic actions!) and danced like total maniacs.

We had our first picnic on the campsite mid January when Marie & Jan, came to visit with a backpack full of goodies.  Note the sunglasses on my head in the pic below… that’s how sunny it’s been!

Nature Watch

This month we’ve seen a nice selection of birds: a Blackcap; a Kingfisher; a Firecrest; a Corn Bunting (probably); along with the usual big fat Blackbirds, Robins & Redstarts.  Quite a bit of vermin too: a Black Squirrel, mice and Mr Ratty.


And a big, black, shaggy coated, wild boar.  Sadly he wasn’t in his natural habitat roaming free, foraging & snuffling (ok, I’m romanticising now) but tied to the roof of a car with an orange in his mouth.  Hunted dead.  Bastards.

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