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…






















































































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