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…

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn’t always fair;
- And maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death,
-by his parents, Truth and Trust,
-by his wife, Discretion,
-by his daughter, Responsibility,
-and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers;
- I Know My Rights
- I Want It Now
- Someone Else Is To Blame
- I’m A Victim
- Pay me for Doing Nothing

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

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.

Lean pickings from the garden this month:

• Handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
• Rocket
• Fresh hebs (sage, rosemary, parsley – curly & flat leafed)

The broccoli is finally getting going – and the trick is to pick out the main head that forms (this isn’t Calabrese remember, this is Purple Sprouting) and then pick regularly to get fresh, tender stalks, leaves and flower heads.  Watch in wonder as the water turns purple as it boils the veg and the broccoli itself turns green!

However, this is what happened to a lot of the plants… munched by vermin?  Ideas, tips & advice at getting the best from broccoli all welcomed at this point…

It was an exciting month in the nursery.  Lobelia, Viola, Livingstone Daisy, Pansy, Snapdragon & Nasturtiums are all romping away and Sunflowers are sizeable and keen to get planted out.  Only the Impatiens didn’t take – not warm enough for the seeds yet I suspect, so I may try again in March now that the sun is showing it’s strength more often.

The tobacco seeds germinated!  Having resigned myself to not being able to force Steve to end his unhealthy relationship with tobacco, I am now simply focused on saving us money.  If I grow enough plants to feed Steve’s addition for a year I’ll save the household €1,000 – a not insignificant sum in our frugal world. I have found the most wonderful Hub about growing tobacco, authored by a guy who doesn’t even smoke the stuff but plants it amongst his cabbages to deter the cabbage butterfly.  If you’ve got some time to kill you can lose it reading his hub and the 3 year’s worth of comments…

Other successes on the germination front:  oleander & the perennial flower mix!  The tedious bit is now the pricking out & potting on but it is worth investing in these beauties as they are for the long haul, not just for a summer.

I have 9 strong little pepper plantlets.  Basil (Purple & Genovese), Chives & Coriander are all growing away – a few more weeks and I’ll be picking my favourite herbs fresh from their pots.

And fresh seeds in pots at the end of the month: tomatoes, comfrey, more peppers & mint.

Baking & Making

Here’s my new favourite thing to eat for breakfast: Polenta & banana fritters!!!

An abundance of polenta (it’s one of those things that I always make too much of – the instructions are for the whole packet and I always realise too late that this is overkill…) usually gets made into savoury burgers for lunch the next day.  This time I decided to try something different & mashed half a banana into the (now solid) polenta until it was well mixed & soggy enough to form into a couple of fritters.  I lightly coated them with gluten-free flour & fried them in a little oil for 5 minutes each side until golden brown.  A drizzle of Golden Syrup completes the taste sensation…

Reading

Sarah Winman’s intriguingly titled “When God was a Rabbit” had me all excited before I even opened it to begin.  The cover is a real draw, especially when dotted about with reviews containing such bold & appealing words as ‘captivating’ and ‘beguiling’.  (I couldn’t help it though, I fell into every stereotypical trap and couldn’t contain a smirk at Good Housekeeping’s ‘Mesmerizing’, idly wondering what the benchmark of mesmerization (made-up word alert??!) actually IS for Good Housekeeping readers… And now of course I will be inundated by readers be-swearing the virtues of said magazine and will have to admit that, since they are also reading this blog, they do have good taste after all).

It IS a gem of a book and – I rarely, if ever, say this – one I may read again.  My passage through this book was interrupted.  By a journey to the UK.  I lost the flow of the book and had to flick back & forth to pick up relationships and key events, which spoiled the enjoyment somehow.  This is a book to be given one’s full attention.  Read it carefully and savour every word.  There’s an awful lot in it.  I loved the fact that big things happened with small words and vice versa; the undertones, the barely dared to be mentioned stuff – this is all important and yes… beguiling.

The characters in this book are rich and delightful, yet the key ones, Elly & Joe, seemed slightly incomplete.  After shaking off the sense of dissatisfaction, I found that the lack of ’shading in’ was actually a wonderful gift… it left real room for interpretation and somehow the unfinished edges made the characters more real (who is fully rounded and totally boxed off anyway, right???).  The range of this book is astonishing – in how far it takes the reader to extremes (chuckling great gurgles of laughter fade to grief and back again); in the variety of characters formed and cherished here  (all ages & persuasions) and in it’s homage to love in all its forms.  This is Ms Winman’s talent, amongst other things.

Sarah Winman achieves some extraordinary things with this book.  I can’t say more without giving stuff away but if you read it, I hope you share my love of Arthur and chuckle at his involvement with a coconut.

This is a beautiful first novel.  I hear she has written a second and I will surely be hunting it down.

Work

Having dug over the beds, it was time to get cracking on re-laying the pipes for the irrigation system.  Remarkably these pipes (in the ground for 2 years by now) were pretty unscathed.  Just the odd one split by over-enthusiastic forking last Spring.  I expected them to be clogged up with roots and soil but on the whole, no!

Steve did a really good job at burying the pipes deep and securing them on a bed of gravel, then covered with sand.  Rain stopped work half way through the month so there are still 3 beds to go before this task is complete.

There will be no camping without a fully functioning waster water system so there’s much to be done in the next 2 months to get our system ready for the (please God!) deluge of guests and their watery needs!

In complete contrast to working outside in the gardens in the sun, I took off to the UK mid February to dance the Corporate dance again and meet myself anew as a Learning & Development Consultant.  It was a tough assignment (untested material; ’seat-of-the-pants’ re-developments in response to participants’ needs and trainers’ limitations; and a very demanding group of learners…) but I was working with some awesome talent.

The woman who can barely drag her bones out of bed before 8.30am (that would be me then…) and slobs about in torn & worn clothes that a body can cook, garden & walk a dog in comfortably (yup, still me…) was suddenly bouncing out of bed at 6.00am, donning ironed clothes no less (seriously, I don’t normally iron anything!) and looking smart & composed all day (“massive poise” was in fact what my colleague described me as having).  And they were long days, with frantic re-working of the programme going on in the evenings over dinner back at the hotel until 9-10pm.  I’m very proud of what we achieved and relieved at how fast I was able to get back into work mode and how effective I was in the end.  I rocked up feeling slightly insecure about my level of involvement and left feeling I’d made a real difference.

And what of the real work back in Monte – that of marketing our business effectively & running a campsite that people will flock to in their droves…?!  Well, whilst I was in the UK earning cash to keep us afloat until the summer, Steve was getting busy raising our profile.  And these days with his fancy new (well new to him anyway…) phone, he tweets too.  (You can follow us on Twitter: @CampFullMonte).  The good news is that we have a couple of bookings already – deposits taken, tents booked, job done.  The really good news is that people that visited us last year are coming back this year, so the Full Monte Experience must be giving people what they want. However, we needs lots more people, more of the time this year and whilst we know that most of customers book only a few weeks or days in advance and some simply turn up, it would be nice to be sitting on a comforting number of pre-bookings before our season starts…

Volunteers made a huge difference last year, not only in terms of helping get jobs done but also in building community with us.  We’ve revamped the volunteer page of our website, trying to attract long-term, committed talent to join our core team as well as casual helpers and folk who want to work on specific projects for short periods of time.  We’ve got a few interesting potentials lined up to join us as Team Members for July, August & September so now we’re just looking for volunteers in May & June.  If you’re reading this & thinking you’d like to do something different (whilst working on your tan!) contact us…

Play

There was not a lot of time for socialising in the UK but I packed a lot into the little time I did have.  The Vine-Pettitt’s were my lovely hosts the night of my arrival.  The coach didn’t get me to Essex until after 10pm and since there are small children in the house I didn’t expect much more than a cuppa and a quick chat.  However, my brilliant (but unconscious) timing put me there in half term week so no getting up at the crack for school etc.  I arrived to find Mick & Nik chilling with daughter No# 2, Kate, who is still as funny as ever except now she is a fully formed young lady and has pink hair (I still remember her as the angelic flower girl at our wedding so this takes some adjusting to).  Mick had taken the following day off work so he wouldn’t have to get up early either and we set about celebrating with 2 bottles of wine.  These are good people and solid mates, firmly rooted in my past but travelling with me (albeit mostly virtually) into my future.  Too many years had been & gone since we’d swapped stories & shared giggles and it was important to reconnect with them again.  And then there was Hugo & Lily – the smaller members of the mob.  Hugo didn’t really know me at all and Lil barely remembered me so it was great to have time with them in the morning, despite not being able to convert any of them to the Marmite & Jam Combo as the perfect start to the day.

I had a lovely day with my parents, swapping stories, meeting the chickens, eating nice food and doing the ordinary stuff like taking the dog for a walk and watching a favourite quiz programme of their’s before leaving to begin my journey North.

In Coventry I met with Kezzer after 4 long years.  I drank cider in a couple of pubs until I was tipsy and we got a kebab on the way home – chilli sauce heaven.

Onto Liverpool where I met my new best friend, the adorable Molly Sue Searle:

It was great to hug Jess again and spend the day hanging out but sadness continues to reign in the extended family, with Sue’s sister dying of cancer, so inevitably it took the edge of our happiness.  Nick is the doting Daddy and it was wonderful seeing the love he has for both his girls.  Gone are the raving days for now though – the young Mum and working Dad need their sleep so after a delicious moussaka and a nice bottle of wine we all crashed out early.

The next day I had to make my way back to Bucks via the M40.  I’d heard that a bunch of mates were meeting in Oxford for a friend’s birthday so I took a little detour to the Park & Ride on the outskirts of Oxford, hopped on a bus into town and surprised the birthday boy Vince, and his missus Ditsch.  It was a quick drink and a catch up but lovely to see everyone and get actual rather than virtual hugs!

Back at the farm that evening, me & John some quality time together whilst Anita & the kids watched a film next door.  John cooked fish which was delicious and then we gorged ourselves on cheese and other goodies.  We giggled, tried to do The Times cryptic crossword and generally just hung out. He’s a very poorly soul right now, on a strict diet and lots of drugs to try to control his severe IBD, so it felt really important to be there for him – listening, sharing…

My final play day in the UK was a real treat and very unexpected.  Anita decided she needed a day away from work, the farm & everyone on it so spontaneously decided on Friday night that us girls should go to London the following day. We spent the evening googling like crazy: to figure out what time train we should take; what we should see/ do and where we should eat.  Saturday was a glorious day – bright & sunny, to match our mood!  We let the train take the strain into London and headed to Pimlico tube for our first stop: Tate Britain.  Oh how I LOVE the Tate.  Anita had never been and it was a joy to introduce it to her.  The Clore Gallery was a wonder, as ever.  And there was a fantastic exhibition of Modern British Art, with some really stunning pieces.  The Picasso Exhibition was a pay-to-enter and we were on a tight budget and a full itinerary so we gave it a miss.  I can’t describe how precious those few hours were in the beautiful space that is the Tate.  It was wonderful, uplifting and incredibly impressive.  I always feel slightly disorientated after a while , there is SO much to absorb and the change of pace and texture and form that gets one stepping in close to see fine detail and then stepping right back for the visual effect of large scale pieces makes me quite giddy.  It’s all part of the experience though and I leave feeling like I am about to pop.

Stepping out into London’t best Spring sun, I felt like I’d been holding my breath.  I inhaled deeply and took in the beauty around me as we walked along the embankment.   We walked past the Houses of Parliament to Westminster Abbey where we did the full tour (our one extravagance, £16, but it was Anita’s hearts desire and frankly she deserved it).  It was full of tourists, all wandering around (like us) with headsets listening to the audio commentary of which King, Queen or VIP is buried where.  It is basically a big and elaborate mausoleum, with endless tombs and shrines to Royalty and the like. It is an impressive building but I spent the whole time wishing all the other people would bugger off and leave me in peace.  The best part of the visit was right at the end, when Anita and I sat in The Cloisters listening to the choir warm up next door.  I lit a candle for Sue and for Den and hoped the sisters would find peace with each other soon…

Thanks to a tip off from Anita’s brother, Reuben, we headed over to the South Bank for lunch.  The food stalls behind the Royal Festival hall are a riot of colour and assaulting aromas.  After a couple of circuits we decided to try the Malaysian food stall – a hot vegetable curry with rice for under a fiver.  Result!

We wanted to go to David Shrigley’s ‘Brain Activity’ exhibition in the Hayward Gallery next door but even if we wanted to pay a tenner to get in, we still had to wait over an hour before we’d be admitted because the queues were so long!  So we walked to the Tate Modern instead and wish we hadn’t bothered.  The Yayoi Kusama exhibition didn’t really appeal (and was not free!) and the only exhibition we did see of Surrealist Art was very disappointing, and I’m a big fan of Surrealism.  By this time Anita could barely talk because her feet were hurting so bad so we abandoned culture in favour of shopping and headed for the nearest place (Barbican Shopping Centre) to buy Anita some pumps.  Shoe crisis over, we hopped on the tube, hopped off at Oxford Circus and window-shopped and people-watched our way to Covent Garden. It was Saturday late afternoon on a sunny day in London and there was a big 6 Nations Rugby match on too, so everywhere was packed.  Nonetheless we found a decent pub (one of the cheapest in London as it turns out – my frugal radar is so finely tuned these days!!!) where we flopped in a comfy leather armchair amongst the throng of theatre-goers et al and enjoyed our cold draught half pints whilst we waited for Reuben to contact us about meeting up for a meal.

As luck would have it Reuben works just round the corner from the best Indonesian restauarant in London, so that’s where we met up.  It is the most inauspicious-looking joint, not grubby exactly but slightly soiled round the edges and looks very much like a canteen.  Still, the queue out the door was a good sign.  We managed to get a table quite quickly since there was only 3 of us and quickly settled for a variety of dishes to share: a fried mackerel dish with wasabi soy sauce dip; a spicy pork dish and a slightly less spicy beef dish; noodles and rice.  The food came quickly, was freshly cooked, piping hot, big portions and all totally delicious for just over £11 per head, in the heart of London’s West End!  Thank you Reuben!

Despite being stuffed to our gills, we managed to squeeze another drink in with Reuben at a favourite cocktail bar of his round the corner, before heading back to Marylebone to catch the train home.  It was a fabulous, fabulous day.

Nature Watch

This month I’ve seen a male Black Redstart and a Song Thrush.  And when Steve & I were walking Daisy along the beach, we spotted a Black Kingfisher.

On my dog walks, I’ve been enjoying watching Spring take hold – the wild narcissi are nearly over and the violets are out now, with their perfectly purply petals and delicate but intoxicating scent.

The mountains behind us have been white with snow for weeks now, even as we are bathed in sun.  But this dramatic backdrop is changing now as the snow is all but melted and the days and nights have started to really warm up.  Thankfully this month has been soggy at times so the ground got a good soaking too.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

3. 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.
4. 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.

Now lets hope all this preparation pays off!  Happy gardening folks…

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.

Looking back on the year that was, I find myself smiling a lot.  We came a long way in 2011 and made some happy memories.  The arrival of a small puppy rocked our world a little but now, a year old, Miss Marmite is fully part of the gang.

We achieved so much with the helping hands of willing volunteers and friends and transformed the campsite with gravelled paths, bright white paint, shaded gazebos and grounds filled with colour & scent.  Children came & conquered.  Friendships were formed & forged.  Lives were changed a little and sometimes a lot.  Our fledging business got a little more grown up and so did we.

Late last year, we finally got around to poring over the records we’d kept last season and doing the sums.  We had 120 paying visitors on the campsite, an increase of 100% on 2010.  Our guests came from 24 countries and the naturist/ clothed split was roughly 50/50.  We made some money – more than 2010 but not enough to comfortably live on for a whole year.

With no interference from cows & goats, the garden flourished, despite the frazzling heat.  And the scores on the doors were:

• 61 kilos of tomatoes
• 26 kilos of onions
• 12 kilos of courgettes
• 10 kilos of carrots
• 5 kilos each of pumpkin, marrow & beans & salad greens
• 50 chillies
• 5 melons

So, what lies ahead for 2012?

Well, February brings a few days work for me in the UK.  We had vowed not to spend a penny on campsite improvements this coming year, because there wasn’t any to spare, but the income from my consultancy job will enable us to do a few small things.

The priority is to improve the kitchen.  We very much hope to be cooking for larger numbers this year and I will need extra work surfaces and an additional large gas burner to make life easier.  Our improvements will put the shared space out of action as a seating area, so we’re planning to revamp and tart up the basement to have a dry, comfortable area to dash under cover if rains stops play.

We’re going to cover a couple of the raised beds with shade netting this year to improve the chances of success on the veg front.  And we’ll plant the fence beside the workshop to start to grow a natural screen.  And then all our focus will be on rebuilding or topping off stone walls – we need to secure and tidy up our terraces and create new levels so we can start to even up the ground (having one’s chair at a jaunty angle gets a little wearing!).

We’re hoping to have a new home on site this summer, our caravan, which will give us a comfy space to retreat to and release more room for tents.

In the immediate future, we’ll be focusing on training Daisy.  We want guests to love her, not to be scared or annoyed by her.  We’ve got a big task ahead to empty all 5 baths in our greywater system and reconstruct with layers of gravel, decent quality soil and plants and relay the irrigation pipes in the raised beds.  And, as our visitors repeatedly told us last year, we need to make signs, directing people to the campsite once they come off the main road.

People around me are resolving to do things and mostly it’s about stopping doing things.  They’re going to: stop eating chocolate, stop smoking, stop getting blind drunk, whatever.   I’m not one to make resolutions.  And honestly there’s not much I want to resolve to change.  I’ve already given up cigarettes and caffeine.  I eat natural, healthy foods in a healthy way.  I’m no Jennifer Aniston but I’m comfortable in my own skin (well, truthfully I’m not comfortable with the wrinkles but they are beyond a new year’s resolution).

I’m incredibly lucky and I don’t want to push it, however my dream is for more for 2012.  More guests, tents, nationalities, volunteers, kids and dogs; more veg, fruit, flowers, herbs, shrubs & trees; more eco projects attempted; more meals cooked; more beers drunk; more campfires lit; more music; more singing & dancing; more laughs, more games, more hugs.

I dare not predict this.  It’s not a projection.  It’s not a resolution. It’s just a hope.

From the store:

• Kale
• White cabbage
• Rastan
• Blitva

From the garden:

• Green leaves (rocket, nasturtium leaves, parsley, dill, mint & young leaves of pak choi & silverbeet) – just enough for salad.
• Strawberries
• Small handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli

Sowing & Planting

There’s no activity in the garden right now.  We haven’t got the all-year round gardening thang sorted yet.  We will have to dig up the raised beds very soon to uncover, clean & reposition the irrigation pipes so the few remaining plants (brassicas & leeks) will have to be pulled soon.  We can probably plant veg that enjoys the wintry days in the new beds created by our beloved Spanish wwoofers in the summer, in the bo-flo-grove, but the issue with that whole area is irrigation.  It’s a time-consuming mission watering up there & until we get this sorted we won’t invest much green love.

But I do have a plant success story of sorts.  I have been trying to grow passion flowers for our friend Michelle for about 2 years now!  My cuttings keep getting frazzled, eaten or drowned.  Against all advice, I took more cuttings in early Autumn and this month I finally have 2 strong & vigorous passion flower plantlets, just in time to be Christmas gifts.

Baking & Making

With all the preserves cooked & jarred, this month’s work was putting together small Christmas hampers for friends.  Labels were made from old Christmas cards and jars were adorned with recycled wrapping paper.

Reading

The cover of the Flamingo proof of Anthony Doerr’s ‘The Shell Collector’ that I’ve been reading boasts the quote: ‘A show-stopping debut, as close to faultless as any writer could wish for’.  I find it hard to argue with that.

The short story from which this slim, yet weighty collection gets its name is a beautifully crafted tale.  Simply told but with complex layers: the shell collector’s blindness in which he sees more than anyone; those that are sighted cannot see; things (shells, life?) are uncovered & then hidden; found & lost again.  Something about the style is achingly sad.  It left me in awe of the dangers lurking in the sand and the sea and of Doerr’s knowledge.  What came first, I wonder, his passion for shells… or was it the idea that begat the insight?

‘The Hunter’s Wife’ is a powerful tale.  Eerie, strange and dark. I felt chilled and mournful the whole way through it.  ‘So Many Chances’ has a different feel, with it’s focus on young adults and somehow therefore, hope.  And the ending is triumphant, if not exactly happy.  ‘For a Long Time This Was Griselda’s Story’ is brilliant.  Deeply unsatisfying & unsettling – but brilliantly so.  The juxtaposition of the extraordinary & the ordinary is uncomfortably compelling.  I was astonished to find I sympathised with both Griselda and Rosemary and thought they were both so right & wrong at the same time.  ‘July Fourth’ is a breath of light-heartedness, poking fun at Americans.

‘The Caretaker’ is a dark, blood-stained tale that ranges from the horrors of Liberia to America & back.  There’s so much death & suffering & the disturbing images follow me around.  The innocence of youth lights up the end of the story and some simple lines about Joseph & Belle eating a melon together really get to me.

‘A Tangle by the River Rapid’ is a mere splash of a tale but still manages to surprise.  And ‘Mkondo’ ends the collection in a rush of aliveness.  The images he conjures of Ward wooing Naima are enchanting – running for his love!

You think about all this and then you remember that this is the first collection for this young writer.  Jeeps, I can’t barely wait to read him as he grows.  This is astonishing work Anthony Doerr!  Bravo.

“The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” is a tidily put together tale by Kim Edwards.

It was an easy & enjoyable read  but the ‘absolutely mesmerizing premise’ that the cover boasts about is strangely dissastifying.  For me, some of the key events are just not quite believeable.  I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong exactly but something doesn’t add up.  The author wants us to believe that a doctor could act so shockingly and that a nurse would be so brave & so reckless, before we’ve really come to know these characters and can see such potential and people in the book change greatly as it develops that it feels surreal.  Despite this, there are some well written passages in the book: Norah dealing with the loss of her daughter; Paul as a troubled teenager; the stories that David’s photos told.

Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” is a completely different basket of fruit.  It’s describes as “a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession” and a love story too, which captures the themes brilliantly.  It is funny and sad and something about Ms Winterson’s style (no nonsense & delivered straight, in a world of nonsense & crookedness) is deeply affecting.  The few lines that she writes about the key character’s real mum turning up made me want to howl with pain.  This book was written over 30 years ago and I can only imagine what a stir it created way back then – lesbians and blasphemers!  Whatever next!  Fantastic, raptuous read – apart from the odd side tale that interweaves occasionally and which I sometimes struggled to ‘grok’.

What’s the vibe?

Warm. All the hard work earlier this year (insulating the entire house & roof and installing a wood-fired chimney) has paid off.  Topla 3 is finally living up to it’s name: it’s warm & stays warm.  This is in no small part due to the immense amount of sun we’ve had for December.  The glass has been heating up the whole house beautifully as temperatures inside the house rise to 24 degrees C at times…

But chilled too. December had a nice relaxed pace to it and we successfully juggled being sociable with hibernating as a family.  We hung out with a lot of good people and had some extraordinarily good times.  Sometimes it feels like we’re dashing about trying to fit everyone in, but this month’s interactions were pretty laid back, as people and scenes flowed in & around our cosy world.  We floated about in a haze of woolly jumpers and thick socks, being snuggly.  And as the month wore on the winter bingeing ramped up with goodies & treats galore.  We ate, drank & smoked too much but revelled in the freedom we had from reality in the name of the festive season.

And very loved. Events this month have reminded us of how lucky we are.  The Christmas cards, the presents, the generosity of friends new & old, the cuddles, the kind words, the chink of a champagne glass as we toast to happiness – these are a few of the many ways we know we are cherished.  It’s heartwarming & humbling.

It has to be said that for most of December we’ve been in denial of the ‘real’ world, happy to pull the wool over our own eyes and bury our heads in Christmas pud.  It’s been a proper holiday in that sense – no responsibilities other than keeping us all warm, fed & watered.  It’s the time of year when we traditionally stress about making it through the next few months until the pennies start to flow again but we put all that worrying on hold for a bit so as not to sour the dregs of 2011.  Hopes have been raised & dashed about getting well-paid work in the UK so I’m saying no more about it until the fat lady’s stopped singing but in the meantime, cash has been trickling in from Father Christmas and other unlikely sources.  And the arrival of a very promising enquiry in our inbox just after Christmas for a 10-day tent hire helped us hope that all will be well.

Listening to

‘Blowback’ by Tricky – a chocolately vibe.  ‘Odessy’ by Fischerspooner – very lightly trancey. ‘Global Culture’ by Aphid Moon – feet-tapping stuff that made me crave for rave.

Marie & Jan, an inspirational German couple we met this month, gave us a homemade CD of Quadro Neuvo’s “Tango Bitter Sweet” – it’s heady stuff, very mesmerising…

Fun Stuff

It’s been a bumper month for fun times with fun folk.  Early in December, girlies congregated for a pottery afternoon in Dobrota, where we played with clay under the chatter and laughs.  And afterwards, four of us (in the “No Kids, Only Dogs” Club) enjoyed a night of bubbles & giggles.

Mel & Blanty visited for some home-cooked veggie food and an evening full of music & story-telling as we got to know these new friends better.

Carrie’s popped over for some pre-Christmas busy-ness on her amazing project.  Her house is looking awesome and we got loads of stuff done and managed to squeeze in a great evening at Fi & Dave’s where Matt joined us for an epic Tac-Tic session.  The booze and munchies flowed and much merriment was made.

Matt was home alone in Monte due to Amy & the girls being in the UK preparing for the birth of their 3rd child, so we enjoyed some drunken Bridge sessions and a wicked Thai Curry.

Danny’s party has become a December tradition and this year I was one of the last to bed and the drunkest… AGAIN.  Hover over the photos for more…

A week later after recovering from hangovers, packing Matt & Nik off to the UK, winterising the campsite (water & solar PV turned off), getting a turkey from the local butcher sorted at the last minute, picking up Christmas parcels from the post office and packing up ours & Daisy’s stuff and all the Xmas extras, we moved into 123 Dobrota on the outskirts of Kotor to keep Maxi company.  Daisy was delighted to have a new pal and, bar the odd snap at her silliness, Max was very obliging.

We & the turkey joined Jen, Nathan, Katie & Tim at Michelle & David’s house in Muo on Christmas Eve to prepare for the following day’s feast.  The only bird we could get at short notice was 11 kilos (plenty for the mere 6 meat eaters amongst us!) and Nathan went to work on it, stuffing and seasoning, whilst veg were peeled and chopped.  We sensibly left early to avoid an impromptu session and banging hangovers on the big day and Steve & I rushed back to our Christmas jigsaw:

Christmas Day dawned damply so the planned dog walk (an attempt to get all 5 of our canine companions to get along and run off some steam so we could get drunk with impunity) was cancelled.  That left several hours to wake up gently, make Skype calls to loved ones, do the 11 o’clock toast (with Vintage Port – what else!) and open the few pressies and cards that had made it to Monte.  We headed over to Muo for 2pm and got on the bubbly.  Here’s  Jen, me & Katie with our unspeakably generous and gorgeous hostess in her outrageous Christmas costume before the food & drink orgy:

We sat down to dinner at about 4pm and OMG, was it worth waiting for!  The turkey was cooked to perfection and was absolutely bursting with flavour.  Here’s a picture to get you salivating:

After dinner it was time for Secret Santa and pressie swaps. We were spoilt rotten by good friends.   Even the dogs were spoilt with treats from Mother & Father Christmas (Michelle & David), especially Mollie who got a brand new outfit for Xmas!

And the evening gently disintergrated from there…  There were many highlights in this amazing day:

Not least Nathan agreeing to wear the other Santa costume Michelle had bought:

And boys vs girls heated game of Articulate!:

A really rousing rendition of Twelve Days of Christmas, much to the bemusement of Tati, who had joined us when we were all too drunk & hyper to make much sense.  No-one took pictures because we were all too focused on getting the words and the actions right.

And some seriously competitive Table Football games:

There are so many stories untold in photos never shot, whilst we busied ourselves with bubbles & chocolate: of wigs & dogs, dancing & singing, hugs & nonsense.  It was a lovely, lovely day right up until it ended sometime in the wee hours of Boxing Day.

As well as bags of presents, leftover turkey and chocolate, I left Muo with a snotty cold.  It was a good excuse (as if I needed one) to snuggle up warm in Dobrota and do as little as possible.  We watched films, stuffed ourselves with Xmas treats like Stollen and Mince Pies (thank goodness for the “feed a cold” adage) and finished the jigsaw, with one piece missing (we’re still not sure if Daisy ate it!):

Tim Time

Can’t think of a single story to share with you & as I’m keen to get this posted (already 10 days into 2012!), I’m moving on…

One Green Thing

Recycling paper bags that the local supermarkets put our dried nuts & fruit in, as chip degreasers.  Put chips in bag, sprinkle with salt, shake.  Sorted.

Weather Report

Overall December has been warm & dry.  But there have been a fair few days of crazy weather and as the month has worn on, the days have become chillier, the nights positively Bbbbrrrr and the chance of wind & rain increasingly high.  There were a couple of mentally windy days & nights with gusts of up to 70 mph, which blew the big metal gate to our parking area at Topla way back (and this is a gate that takes 2 hands to manoeuvre and slides back on runners) and blew the windows open in the house.  It’s days like that we think “Thank God we don’t live on a boat” & rush off to check in with the Monty B crew.

But, I have no doubt that our December was sunnier and full of more stunning days than the ones we left behind in the UK and we still get a kick out of that and remember how lucky we are.

From the store:

• Lettuce
• Beetroot
• Rastan
• Blitva
• Aubergine
• Tikvice
• Spuds

From the garden:

The first thing to say is that we returned to a garden that was still intact.  No cows had invaded and no goats had raped & pillaged.  The heavily donated to, friends-soaked fence really was working.

• Green leaves (rocket, nasturtium leaves, parsley, dill, mint & young leaves of pak choi & silverbeet) – less, but still enough for salad.
• Tomatoes – we picked them all this month, kilos of them, ready or not
• Chillies
• Runner beans – the last of the crop, such as it was & many had been on the plant too long so were very stringy
• Melon

This was our garden harvest on November 7th:

And a first for 2011… purple sprouting broccoli.  Only a handful so far, but enough for a decent accompaniment to a meal.

And remarkably… strawberries!  The warm autumn weather here has been akin to early English summer and produced the sweetest berries of the season.  A handful only.  But delicious.

In the bo-flo-grove, the tyre wall and main gardens, everything was flowering it’s head off when returned from our time away.  I guess a little rain helped and the temperatures are just perfect – warm enough to encourage the petals to open to the sun, but not so hot to frazzle everything …

The alyssum, which had been unremarkable all summer, truly blossomed in the perfect conditions and guess what popped up in amongst the pale purple…?  Biddens!  The elusive flowers that mum-in-law had sent us seeds of, assuring they would grow whatever the weather finally made a showing.  So, here’s a picture for you, Pam:

Sowing & Planting

The only sowing I’ve been doing is helping Mother Nature along by dispersing the dried seed heads of cosmos, alyssum, zinnia & marigolds, hoping for ‘free’ flowers next Spring.

Baking & Making

With a proliferation of tomatoes, green tomatoes, chillies & herbs, November has been a bumper month for cooking up a storm.

Chilli jam is a favourite spread of loved ones around here so, as I’m thinking ahead to Christmas pressies and trying to use up lots of cherry tomatoes and chillies, this was a no brainer.  It looks amazing bubbling in the pan:

Autumn & winter sarnies for the boys wouldn’t be the same without some Green Tomato Chutney.  This year, with so many tomatoes to use up, I did 2 big batches – 1 the traditional recipe, sweet & fruity and the other batch I chucked a load of Indian spices in to see if I could create something similar to my kiwi chutney with the green toms.  It kinda worked, although I personally think the end result was a touch too bitter, but no-one else is complaining.

I skinned several kilos of ripe tomatoes and cooked them up with fresh herbs, onion & garlic and put the whole lot through the blender to make some seriously delicious real tomato sauce – good for a base for just about anything: curries, pizza, casserole…

And because I waddled back from the UK trip feeling bloated and over-done, I had a mammoth soup making session and lived off homemade soup for a week.  My green bean soup (inspired by mum-in-law, although I didn’t get her recipe so I just made it up) was a triumph but a faff as I had to strain the blended mix because the beans were too stringy.  So the end result is thinner than I would like (I’m a chunky soup chick really) but super tasty and the best colour green.  I must remember to take a photo when I get my next pot out of the freezer!

Beetroot was in season when we got back – cheap & plentiful and I remembered a friend raving about a soup she’d made with beetroot, onions & lemongrass.  Since I have a couple of lemongrass plants that need regular cutting so the stems don’t get too woody, I harvested a load and whipped up some soup, adding chilli for that extra zing!  It was delicious & looks divine - especially with a swirl of yoghurt:

Indian cooking is great for using up fresh tomatoes & chillies so I decided to cook a meal for special friends.  When there’s 6 of us, it’s worth making a day of it and whipping up a few different dishes and lots of my fave recipes require chopped tomato, not mention the Indian salsa to accompany the homemade Pooris.  It was a delicious feast, if I do say so myself…

And finally, I harvested all the basil and made a jar of fresh pesto sauce.

Reading

After a few nights struggling with Hermann Hesse’s ‘The Bead Game’, I’ve abandoned it as an intellectual challenge too far at the moment.  It had too tough a style for a bedtime read, so it’s been shelved for now.

In a bout of reading that seem to be inspired by how vibrant the book covers were (!), I embarked on the lovely experience of discovering the hypnotic prose of Banana Yoshitmoto:

I’ve passed this gem to a mate already or else I’d be furiously typing up a handful of favourite excerpts.  Her writing is simple, beautifully expressive & evocative yet strangely diminuitive,  as if mirroring the very people of Japan.   Subtle, understated but with deep moments, Ms Yoshimoto’s words weave an unusual magic around the usual suspects: love & death.  Kitchen is a slim volume of 2 novellas.  The book takes it’s title from the first and  Moonlight Shadow is the second story.  The characters are not especially well developed, yet I fet an intimacy with them quite quickly.  Thoroughly enjoyable & one to recommend.

And one from artfully crafted book of short stories, to another…  Currently reading Anthony Doerr’s ‘The Shell Collector’, so full review next month.

What’s the vibe?

Up & down, both emotionally & physically…

It was great to be amongst much-missed loved ones on our UK trip.  The fact that I can’t call it a trip ‘home’ tells me I’m not ready or able to think about it that way.  Despite that, it was a wrench to leave & it felt like I left half my heart behind.  It was also hard to leave the possibilities behind – a return to Monte meant a return to scraping a living for sure.  It’s undeniably tough in the UK right now but I reckon I could land a job using my noddle for more money in a week than we’d spend in Monte in a month, so it’s tempting…  And then there’s the lure of curiosity (“what could I make happen if I really tried?) and wanting to reassure myself that my talent is latent, not elapsed.  Fingers crossed that some of the “maybes” become “dead certs” as far as consulting opportunities go next year.

Emotional & physical vibes have been especially intertwined this month.  A fortnight of eating & drinking our way around England & Wales saw us rolling home as proper Billy Bloaters!  I’d put on approx half a stone a week and felt like crap after forbidden food overload (bread, cakes, biscuits not to mention the alcohol).  We weighed our bags for the airport on Anita’s scales and they were bob on 23 kgs.  When we got to departures and they weighed a kilo over and had to have a special orange luggage label with the label ‘Heavy’, I freaked.  “You don’t understand” I pleaded with the nice woman at Bags Drop Off, “This means I’m a kilo heavier than I thought too!”  So it was time for drastic action back in Monte.  I’ve been detoxing from caffeine, refined sugar, wheat and alcohol for most of November and feeling pretty rough.  It’s hard to feel positive when struggling with headaches, constipation & fatigue (all normal when changing ways of eating).

I’m through the worst of it now and am back to normal weight and enjoying Daisy walks in the late autumn sun, but my heart is still a little heavy.  I’m missing special events like the birth of Jess & Nick’s daughter,  the adorable Molly Sue:

And whilst I don’t miss the commercialism and excess of the festive season in the UK, it is a time when family & friends are missed even more.  Over here, the reality of tough months ahead financially hits home and reminds us how fragile our life & luck is.  And after the intensity of the summer with few moments to call my own and the constant conveyor belt of tasks (clean, water garden, cook…) it felt strange to stand still.  The recent weeks of travelling here & abroad have almost over-stimulated my senses: the sight of jaw-droppingly impressive mountain-scapes; the sound of laughter & many mouths moving to catch up on the years; the smell of chip fat, burnt sugar & exploded fireworks on November 5th and the touch of a loved one… And now the next few months stretch ahead, mostly empty & featureless. Very luxurious, all that time to wallow in, but a little unnerving.

On the up side, it feels good to be back in the land of simple, frugal living and away from the excesses of the disposable, convenience-led society.  I was shocked at the money spent on stuff that could be made, grown, borrowed, got through free-cycle etc.  I was expecting a UK gripped by the bloodless fingers of austerity.  Instead we found that people were paying more for things that were quick, easy & green.  All credit for many UK’ers for hanging onto their eco values but they are paying through the nose for organic, natural products.  Internet shopping makes the process quicker & easier, but not cheaper so there’s more money gone.  People are managing to put healthy food into their bodies but not much else.  And its a mission.  Finding real bacon in the UK wasn’t easy – I’m talking about something that doesn’t have added sugar, preservatives or other crap and hasn’t been pumped with water.  Spoilt Pig is a good brand but it can’t be purchased everywhere.

What a relief to be eating real food, seasonal & mostly locally grown, where real bacon (well, ok, pancetta) is readily available and before we buy things we ask: do we really need this?; can it be made or mended not bought?; can I borrow one from a friend?; can I exchange a jar of homemade chutney to get it?  I know we can find other ways because we are the lucky ones, we have time.  This precious commodity is what everyone’s running out of across the Channel.  So I start to feel really good about the months ahead, however frugally we have to live to survive them.  They are a gift and I will savour them & not squander them.

And whilst I’m on the up vibe, I remember there are good people around us and plenty of distractions if we need them.  We’re motivating ourselves to chase pieces of work all over the place and marketing our campsite in Montenegro with gusto, looking for different ways to make 2012 as successful as possible.

Listening to

A fellow blogger’s iPod obessions...

Fun Stuff

1st November found us in Wales as our UK tour continued…

We had a lovely time with Steve’s parents and the rain held off for us to enjoy their garden and the incredible wildlife within it:

As usual Pam had been baking for our homecoming & spoilt us rotten with delicious food.  We had a yummy roast dinner (with Welsh lamb, of course) and enjoyed a relaxed evening swapping news.   The next day we travelled on to Steve’s sister’s place.  After nearly 2 years, it was a happy & welcome reunion.  Steve’s neice Ruby is now scarily grown up and communication with her is mostly through a laptop

Dawn was looking happy & healthy, with a proudly-pimped caravan and life full of fun.  She cooked us a dee-lish chicken curry (which still feels weird, after all those years of vegetarianism):

And we enjoyed a chilled evening together and a brisk walk the next day, where we met the amazing artist behind this website (please, please, let me be able to afford just one pair of these beauties in my lifetime) & found some nice mushrooms.

From West Wales, we travelled across country (taking the scenic route to enjoy the English countryside at it’s very autumnal best) to Herts, our old stomping ground, for a happy reunion with dear friends Matt & Charlotte & their lovely family.  As usual Matthew cooked us a wonderful meal (a Heston Blumenthal-style steak) and we washed it down with good wine.

The next day we travelled east to my sister Chris’ house in Essex for a small family gathering.  Chris & my bro-in-law Dave, had been through a rough old time since last we met so it was great to see them looking healthy and to give them big, big hugs.  Mum & Dad arrived soon after we did and we enjoyed a lovely day together – a big lunch cooked by my lovely sis, lots of nattering…

My eldest sister Sue & her hubby Frank turned up in the evening bearing cake and we had a jolly old time, swapping stories & sharing photos.

Mission accomplished, with family & as many friends as we could squeeze in this trip visited & hugged, we headed back to Bucks to catch up with the Mill House Farm gang.  For the first time in 5 years, we were in the UK for Fireworks Night so we all headed off to the Aylesbury Rugby Club display.  This is a great picture of the boys waiting for the sky-painting to begin…

To be honest, Steve was a little under-whelmed with the display – but he’s got high standards, this trained Firer of mine.  I loved the bangs and whizzes and pops & crackles and any colour in the sky is fun for me.  Plus I enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere of being in a crowd of English folk, with a Bonfire, Fun Fair and classic English Chip Vans churning out grease & hot tea:

Let’s hear it for immersing your head in pink sugary stickiness & trying to win a goldfish:

It was a nice little jaunt into the “English at Leisure” but the novelty soon wears off and it was nice to go back to base for a proper cup of tea.

The next day we flew Monte-bound for a happy reunion with Daisy Marmite, who despite having been well looked after by Amy, Nik and Carrie, was awfully glad to see us.  But she didn’t get our undivided attention for long… A happy reunion with our first wwoofers & now friends, Nina & Stefan, turned into them worriedly making a quick exit back to the UK because of family illness.  So Mollie & Louis, who they had been dog-sitting for mutual mates, Katie & Tim, were left in our care for 10 days…  It was a crowded time at Topla with 3 dogs & 3 adults competing for space.  To make matters worse Louis & Mollie were minus their bed as it got left behind in the chaos of the moment, so squatted in Daisy’s instead.  Ms Marmite’s nose was distinctly put out but she got her own back by harassing them, constantly pawing & yowling at them to play.

It was mostly easy having them around since we were at the campsite most days, working away and the dogs had each other to keep entertained.  Dog walks were definitely more fun.  Here they all are, posing with Steve on the newly tiled & grouted steps to the basement (Beautiful job, Mr B-J!  This adds to theimportant finishing touches to the best campsite in Montenegro):

Other highlights of this happily socially over-loaded month:

• A Indian feast at our place, to celebrate Steve & I being together for 21 years and Matt being on the planet another year.  I got into one of my (in)famous cocktail shaking sesh’s and created a Pink Tickler – a luridly coloured beastie which tasted like Benylin.  Got us all well & truly hammered though & we laughed our lungs out.
• An evening of fun with local friends, beginning with a Tac-Tic session at our place with Blazo and ending in Pozoriste, surrounded by good friends & bar full of shots
• A morning’s sail on Cagaj, with Tony, Laura, Amber & Schooner – tacking up and down the channel in the sun and fairly whizzing along when we occasionally got the wind.  It was relaxed and enjoyable, not to mention a great learning experience.

• An afternoon of interesting (for Montenegro) cuisine with friends at the country’s First Philippino Luncheon. We ate raw shredded peppers, mango & papaya wrapped in lettuce leaves and dipped in a spiced-up soy sauce and squid cooked in coconut cream amongst other delights & it was still warm enough (at the end of November) to sit outside…

Tim Time

Only in Montenegro can you be driving along the min road and do a double take as you pass a Lada Niva strewn with 3 or 4 freshly killed wild boar, blood streaking down its paintwork…

One Green Thing

One green word & many green things:  patience is a green virtue that inspired leaf mould collecting (an hour of tedious raking & shovelling at the church above the village below the campsite); pesto sauce (carefully removing all the half decent leaves from the straggling Basil plants); and compost (diligently chopping up all the  flower & veg plants as I pulled them from the garden to ensure they rot down faster to bring well-rotted compost on sooner).

Weather Report

November has been unbelievably warm & dry.  It still feels like late September, with temperatures into the mid 20’s.  I have actually sunbathed on our top terrace for a few hours here & there.  Gorgeous weather for pottering around outside and for walking the dog & admiring the hillsides aflame with autumnal colour.  But the ground is parched.

We had a little rain at the end of the month but we need so much more  – we need those streams & springs to run & gush again

What’s fresh?

From the store:

• Peppers – the long, think pale green ones popular locally
• Rastan – strong, dark greens
• Apples

From the garden:

• Lots of green leaves – rocket is flourishing again after a little rain
• Chillies
• Peppers
• Carrots
• Tomatoes – the kilos keep coming
• Runner Beans
• Cabbage

Another melon ripened and was devoured – delicious with the local proscuitto.

Sowing & Planting

We’re into harvesting & clearing now ready for the winter wind-down.

Baking & Making

Having picked kilos of wild rosehips during our road trip to Northern Montenegro (more of that later), Steve prepared his delicious Rosehip & Apple Jelly again.  I know, the health & safety implications of his nose being that close to the knife are numerous & scary, but here’s the picture anyway…

The rosehips cooking in a pot looked remarkably like the tomato sauce I made with the glut of fruit from the garden.  It would be a sour hour to mix those 2 up!

Reading

Amanda Smyth’s “Black Rock” was compelling and readable and particularly impressive for a first novel.  Her stroke of genius was putting the story in Celia’s hands – her narration is simply put but engaging and all the more dramatic somehow for the understated style of a young Trinadadian woman who simply has life to bear.  The richness of the culture she grows up in is cleverly soaked into everything so that it’s only towards the end of the book that you realise how much you’ve learned that was previously unknown.

The straight-forward telling of a story belies a heart-tugging tale.  Something about the ordinariness of it, the fact that you believe it could so easily be true, is what’s most impactful.  It made me wince and sigh and feel sad.  Hardly surprising, when I tell you the culprit is love: the central theme of love in its many forms – familial love, unrequited love, inappropriate love, misplaced love and love that didn’t quite hit the mark and then, frustratingly, never had a chance to…  There’s a good twist at the end and the right balance of baddies getting their just desserts and goodies suffering needlessly.  Bravo Ms Smyth!

John Irving’s “The Fourth Hand” was nowhere near as satisfying.  Irving is a fave author of book-worm buddy Fi, so she is bound to share her passion.  I thought I fell for him when I saw the film “The World According to Garp” as a young woman.  For some reason this film had a profound effect on me – it’s one of the films I remember clearly from my youth (and we’re talking 20+ years ago goddamit!) and was impressed by how different it was to any other movies I’d seen.  Since I usually read a book first and then am disappointed by the film, I grew up believing that if the film was that good, the book must be phenomenal and Irving must be a First-Class writer.

To be honest, I stumbled at the very first sentence in “The Fourth Hand”.  I’ve given the book back to Fi now so I can’t share it but for an opening line of a novel I thought it was very difficult to read.  It just didn’t flow right and I re-read it about 3-4 times.  Somehow this really spoilt what came after for me – silly maybe, but true nonetheless.  The concept of the book is quite quirky and I like the way he’s thinking but the delivery of the idea just didn’t knock my socks off – it might have tugged at them a bit in places.  It’s a measure of how fast I’ve let this one go, that I can’t recall the names of any of the key characters.  Sorry – what a limited review!

The other book lent to me by Fi this month, Yvvette Edward’s “A Cupboard Full Of Coats” was an easy read and enjoyable.  It keeps you guessing by introducing the dramatic highlights and then taking the tale right back to the beginning.  It’s not an especially complex or sophisticated tale but a satisfying read nonetheless – I think the cover rather over-eggs the pudding and we could have done without that.  The pleasure in this book is not so much in the story (which frankly isn’t as suspense-full or dramatic as cover notes would lead us to believe) as in the characters.  Lemon is my favourite dude – the passages in the book that describe him cooking and him & Jinx eating are my favourite.  Palpably delicious.

I personally felt that the character of Jinx’s son and the relationship between mother & child was under-developed and the relationship of Jinx to her bezzie mate a bit of distraction but I’m probably just being picky.  Another first novel and another impressive debut.

Herman Hesse’s “The Bead Game” has been sat on the shelf for many months, beckoning me with it’s brightly coloured cover and the promise of a masterpiece.  I decided it was too big to take travelling with me so it was started & left behind.  To be continued…?

What’s the vibe?

Post-season madness, in a good way.

This was not a time for sitting still & being quiet.  We had a bout of pre-hibernation mania and the diversity of experiences (people, places, activities & even weather) we enjoyed made us fairly glow with alive-ness.  From spending intense time alone as a couple, to re-connecting with dear friends locally (once we felt able to cope with being sociable again!), to taking off up North in a borrowed Landrover Defender and driving & walking through jaw-droppingly gorgeous scenery, to snuggling up in a toasty warm mountain home, to embracing England in the autumn and especially our loved ones within it – from snow to sunshine to crispy leaves – we revelled in it all.

Shrugging off the mantle of campsite host was a wonderful feeling – free to be fully immersed in the roles of wife, lover, friend, daughter, sister – & even professional consultant for a day.

Listening to

Lots of fun stuff whilst in the mountains with Katie & Tim, including retro (Duran Duran-ish, even!) and some wicked Roma music that I must seek out.  At Mill House Farm in Stoke Mandeville we listened to John’s playlist on Spotify – a nice jazzy, world music vibe but occasionally bordering on the dirgey when too many Muse tracks turned up.

Fun Stuff

Apart from experiencing pepper-envy (check out the gorgeous red, shiny capsicums Fiona grew that Dave expertly bbq-ed…) it was wonderful to spend an evening with kindred spirits & good buddies Fiona & Dave.

Carrie took us there & enjoyed the evening with us.  Here she is giggling her head off with Fi:

And Dave took us back in the rib the next day (after the Prosecco haze had worn off) but let Steve drive:

From the short-sleeves and the sunbeams in the shot above you can clearly see how gorgeous the early October days were here in the Boka.  In complete contrast, here is the scene when we ventured North to the National Parks of Biogradska Gora and Durmitor, just in time for a freakishly early cold snap:

Plans of camping disappeared into the snow & fog.  We re-dubbed the adventure a ‘Road Trip’ and after one night sleeping in the back of Carrie’s Defender (possibly the worst night’s sleep ever!) we headed for the warmth & comfort of a mountain chalet owned by friends Michelle & David, where Katie & Tim were hanging out.  Daisy was delighted to have Mollie & Louis to hang out with and we all 7  had some great walks together around Zabljak:

The Landrover was the perfect vehicle for the weather & the terrain – thanks be to Carrie for letting us use it.

We had some great evenings around the fire, eating yummy food, drinking nice wine and playing games.  We are excited to have 2 new potential Bridge parters in the Boka after teaching Katie & Tim to play.

After 3 days in Zabljak with the Monty B crew, it was time to move on.  They were very generous in sharing the space that they had bagsied for a nice week away on their own & we were in danger of over-staying our welcome.  The day for our onward journey was bright & clear.  Overnight the snow had disappeared.  The mountains, towering unseen in the white/ grey haze of cloud, mist & snow for the past few days, were back in full view… and glorious.  The route we took home was stunning:

On our return to the Boka, we were relieved to find temperatures still in the 20’s and enjoyed a last few sunny days pottering around on the campsite and preparing to leave for the UK.

The story of our UK trip straddles October & November so there’s more to come next month but the fun stuff at the end of this month included:

A welcome return to Mill House Farm where the hugs & the hearth are always warm; where the love & care of dear friends cheers us big-time; where the dogs are cute but crazy; where the eggs are fresh (and yours could be too if you live in Aylesbury, High Wycombe or Milton Keynes – check out this website NOW!) and where the cheese & wine are always plentiful.  We overdosed on fun & high spirits (namely Port, Tequila & Viljamovka) in our epic Blue Margherita & Scrabble evening:

When we weren’t drinking & eating, nursing hangovers or getting consumed by the launch of the new Rent-a Hen website, we were cleaning & mending our caravan.  Hover over the photos for the story behind each one:

After a week of relaxing on the farm it was time to get on the move.  I had great fun playing ‘grown ups’ with Carrie for a day. I observed a workshop she was running with a view to helping her team facilitate a bunch of them next year.  It was refreshing to get on the Consultant game again.

We had scored a car for a week thanks to our buddy Matt, aka Heap Big Financial Chief at a taxi firm, who swung it for us to use one of the ex-cabs about to be de-comissioned.  We simply couldn’t have caught up with everyone we did without it.  It was a great result.

Steve came to pick me up from ‘work’ & on Friday night we ended up in Northampton sharing a lovely evening with dear friends Mick & Jan.  And as a Barry Bonus, their youngest daughter Helen was up from London for the night, so we caught up with her too.  Good food, good wine, outstanding Port but most of all great company.  And next day Maura & Adrian popped in to say hi too:

From Northampton we drove North West and made it to Liverpool & Jess & Nick’s new home without much drama.  This was an emotional homecoming.  The last time we’d all seen each other was at Sue’s funeral over 3½ years ago.  So much had happened since as we all tried to rebuild our lives without that special person – not least this:

It was freaky, but fantastic to see the pregnant Jess and we are so delighted for them both.  It was wonderful to stay in their beautiful house, which they have clearly worked so hard at turning into a home.  Of course there were reminders of Sue everywhere – the leather chairs, the wall hangings, the shells in the bathroom and some tasteful bits of furniture.  But Jess & Nick had made their own special memories since and there were plenty of pictures of their travels.  Finally, we got to hear the whole tale of their amazing round the world trip.  We made them start at the beginning & end at the end and show us all the photos & videos too.  It was awesome!  Jess & I had our usual fun dyeing my hair funny colours.  Here’s Nick wearing the streaking cap:

I feel like there is a big session waiting to happen where Jess & I get trollied and go emotional & messy together – but this wasn’t the time, espcially with her precious bundle to nurture & protect.  We all did very well at staying cool & I only burst into tears at the very end as we wrenched ourselves away…

Tim Time

Nothing moves as slowly as a border policeman here, especially when you’re in a hurry to catch a plane.

One Green Thing

Eating what’s in Nature’s larder… Our meals have revolved around our garden produce – going seasonal & reducing waste.

Weather Report

For most of October it stayed warm, dry & sunny in our part of the Boka.  Temperatures were still in the mid 20’s for most of the time, although apparently whislt we were away in the mountains, folks in Herceg Novi experienced a drop in temperature too, but it didn’t last.  And it still didn’t rain.

Until the last couple of days before we left for the UK when it rained & stormed like hell.

It was a weird experience to leave Monte in terrible weather and arrive in the UK to warm, autumnal weather – the skies clear & bright blue.