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May in Review

June 1, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Fun Stuff, Nature, Naturist, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News, book review by fullmonte | 6 comments

Growing Green

At least the garden was appreciative of all the rain this month & stuff is finally starting to grow.  This month we’ve been picking:

  • Mixed lettuce (Cut & Come Again & Cos) – and the lovely shot below shows off our new vinyl covering for the outside tables

  • Rocket (Salad Rocket, the local Rocket – which has hairier leaves & is a little stronger & the wild rocket with its serrated leaves & great peppery taste)
  • Silverbeet
  • Sorrel
  • Radish
  • Mustard
  • Mixed Oriental spicy leaves
  • Fresh herbs: coriander, chives (garlic & ordinary), parsley (curled & flat-leaved), tarragon, sage, dill & basil

It’s been a busy month in the garden with all the plants finally making their way out of pots & into the ground.  May started off pretty good weather-wise but we had a lot of rain, high winds & bad storms from the middle of the month.  The raised beds were flooded, the flower beds were mini waterfalls and I feared for the health of my young. A few plants rotted and the drop in temperatures & deluges of water certainly stunted the development of many plants but it wasn’t the disaster it could have been.

The onions in this bed are doing great and we’re on target for big beauties this year.  I interspersed them with spinach (which has cropped very poorly) and lettuce (which is doing great) and of course the trusty marigolds edge all the beds in their key role as colourful companion plant.

The poor harvest of pumpkin & marrow last year was a disappointment and this year I hope to grow many more and have a good supply for the autumn months.  The courgettes are growing away fabulously and the pumpkins are just starting to get established.  Cucumbers have been a huge disappointment but I direct sowed a bunch more seed & finally got 3 to germinate.  And the nasturtiums are loving keeping the curcubits & squashes company…

Melons are struggling but if they can hold on until the sun comes out to stay, they should be fine.  And I’m already anticipating the delights of Butternut Squash for the first time.  They are growing away great atop the compost heap!

The tomatoes are romping away, tied to hefty stakes and each with their own cut-off plastic bottle waterer to get the water to their roots.   The fruit is forming and in a week or so I’m confident we’ll be picking the first tomatoes of 2012 from the garden & I can’t wait!  The shop-bought tomatoes are expensive & tasteless in comparison.

I sowed broad beans for the first time and was a little despondent when a Greek lady from the Mediterranean Garden Society commented that they have already harvested theirs and that they would not fare well in the heat.  According to her I should have sowed them in September/ October and harvested them at the beginning of the year.  I’m not sure that they would have survived the cold weather we got this winter, presumably harsher than the even more Southern climate of Greece.  So maybe I need to go for sowing them somewhere between a Greek and UK norm – maybe early Feb?  Anyway, lucky for the beans May has been pretty chilly so it looks like I might have success after all…

The flowers in the garden have been mostly a disappointment.  In the tyre wall, the flowers that nature sowed are bigger & more established by far – comfrey, borage & cosmos in particular – whilst many of my lovingly nurtured seedlings look weak & feeble in comparison.  Stunted by lack of sun, petunias & aster are struggling.  Lobelia is only just starting to push out some intense blue flowers.

The perennial flowers I cultivated have turned out to be a massive disappointment – dominated by ornamental cabbages which have pushed up foul-smelling and quite boring yellow flowers.  It’s mostly a green & yellow look at the moment, as the sunflowers have braved the rain & cold to form their majestic heads.

There’s the odd pansy, viola, nigella & snapdragon trying to provide a diversion.  And the passion flower is flowering now too.  The tobacco plants got really hammered by the weather but it seems a handful may have survived so they should start getting a move on now.  The zinnia & marigold seeds I saved from last years flowers are germinating well so we’ll expect some splashes of pink & orange interest eventually…

On the bright side the Livingstone Daisies are glorious and the violas are flowering delicately.  Snapdragons are just starting to show their pastel shades and geraniums, cosmos & zinnia are finally getting going.  Here’s a shot of the flower bed by the stream-side steps, which is just building up to being the riot of colour my heart desires…

And the sage flowers have been purply gorgeous all month!

Grace’s tree is now 4 years old and is looking great.  You can see why they call it the ‘Smokebush’…

Baking & Making

There hasn’t been much time for creativity this month as all energy has gone into the many tasks needing to be done on the campsite.  And now I’m cooking every day for us, volunteers, guests, friends & visiting Botanists etc, I’m into that “doing it for a living” mode which takes all the fun out of it for me.  Meals have been wolfed down by everybody so I guess its all good and my famous homemade pizza was a particular success the other night…

Reading

Edmund de Waal’s ‘The Hare with the Amber Eyes’ is a biography and not the genre of book I normally read, but since a dear friend bought it for me I decided to give it a go.

I struggled to start this book but then a combination of things pushed me on.  De Waal traces the story of 100’s of netsuke (Japanese miniature sculptures) that he inherits from his Uncle.  On 2nd May we were joined by Toru, our first ever visitor from Japan & first wwoofer of 2012.  Spending time with Toru made me realise how little I knew about Japanese culture.  This and the surfeit of time on my hands as storms & rains kept me cowering in the caravan, was a good combo for getting me stuck into this great piece of literature.

It was a brilliantly written book – great use of language, with descriptive swirls in all the right places without being gratiously flowery.  Most interesting for me was the focus on times in history I knew little about: the Jewish community in Europe in late 1800’s onward; Austria in the lead up to WWII from the perspective of a Jewish family and their subsequent plight during wartime.  And through it all weaves a fascination with Japanese artefacts.  The way De Waal describes the little ivory carvings made me long to hold one in my hand, to hold & stroke, to feel its lightness & coolness and then finally to study it and wonder at the detail, the precision, the craftsmanship.

And now for something completely different…

After a slow start its finally getting good.  More of that next month…

Work

We moved onto the campsite & into the caravan (oops – forgot to take some pics of the new nest, next month I promise!) on May 1st and the list of things to be done seemed overwhelming.  Thank goodness for Toru who showed up on May 2nd (he was walking up the hill bless him when we intercepted him!) and kick-started our efforts.  We were pretty unsure about Toru’s fit with us before he arrived – the Japanese are not know for embracing nudity, for example – but we warmed to him immediately.  In so many ways he was atypical for his race – for instance he was a wine-lover and he didn’t like having his picture taken!  He’d been away from Japan for 8+years and having lived in France for 3 years, Europe had rubbed off on him a little…  However, he was very conscious of social graces and customs: wary of taking the wrong chair at the table in case we all had our ‘place’ and uncomfortable at eating without us all sitting down together to eat.

He may be diminuitive in stature, but to us he’s the Mighty Toru:

He was strong and capable and just got on with stuff and was a massive help in that first crucial week.  We got the place opened up & cleaned.  The grounds were tidied & strimmed.  Here’s me post-strim with legs spatttered with grass & plant debris.  Turns out there’s some plant out there that’s an irritant as blisters appeared on my legs the day after.  Note to self: don’t strim in shorts or go scrub skin directly afterwards!

Toru & I got the tables & sofas back outside and levelled and then the boys erected the gazebo.  The outside space was starting to take shape…

As we tried to put the campsite back together a few things inevitably fell apart along the way… The kitchen tap started leaking again and despite Steve’s best efforts, a new tap was required.  The pull-string on the generator snapped and Steve had to bodge it with some rope.  But generally the building had weathered the winter well – the limewash was still bright & white, the furniture still intact.

All bar one of the greywater baths were completely dug out.  We emptied all the gravel, cleaned it, sieving to remove the roots and muck.  We replaced the gravel, re-planted a small selection of the plants & topped them off with soil.  I used some of the soil discarded from the baths to re-pot palms, aloe, lemongrass & tamarind, which have all gone up several pot sizes to allow good root growth and are strategically placed along the top of the stone walls to stop people clambering up & down them and further destroying the walls:

We started transforming the basement with Toru’s help.  I was very nervous about the fact that if it rained this summer we had no covered area for our guests – we were lucky that it was a stonking hot summer last year and the rare times we needed to head for cover there was so few of us that crowding in the kitchen was no problem.  Since we didn’t have the funds or the time to start & finish creating the outside eating area that we had been planning, I thought that getting the basement sorted would give us an overflow space for rainy days if necessary.  We took loads of random stuff that was cluttering up the inner space out altogether and neatly stacked everything in a new material pile, discreetly located behind the workshop.  We painted the ceiling in the inner basement and re-limewashed parts of the wall.  The inner basement now stores the tents, the cleaning cupboard & the pile of army sleeping mats and the bottle windows all stack away inside.  The chest of drawers that kept our clothes in 2011BC (Before Caravan!) is now a vegetable store (cold, dark & mouse-proof – it’s great!) and the ‘office’ is there too, so all our paperwork & business-stuff is out of the way of our guests.

The day before Toru left was World Naked Gardening Day so it was a great excuse to be out in the garden all day.  Toru planted out the last of the tomatoes, peppers & aubergines.  I sowed loads of seeds, weeded and thinned.  Steve spent the day in the garden too but he was focusing on re-vamping the irrigation system.  We had issues with the system backing up last year and this was in part due to the fact that the hose fitting that came off the last greywater bath and into the beds was too narrow.  Steve hatched a plan to use a thicker bore hose and wider gauge fittings and was chuffed to be able to use taps that had been in his stash of ‘bits’ for years and had travelled from the UK with us:

With Toru gone, Steve & I continued with the basement project concentrating on transforming the outer basement area, limewashing, painting the ceiling and moving furniture.

And here’s what it looks like now:

We got the basement finished in time for the visit from the Mediterranean Garden Society (MSG).  There were 25 of them in the end and they stayed with us for over 4 hours.  Steve gave a talk on how we developed & operate an off-grid campsite.  I was hiding in the kitchen preparing food but as usual the press came & collared me!  I was interviewed and made it onto national TV that weekend though I never even saw the footage!

The MSG visit was a huge success.  They all loved the healthy lunch I had prepared for them and my Green Tomato Chutney was a big hit.  We talked for hours as various people asked us all the usual questions and oohed and aahed over photos of the development of the land over the past 5 years.  They loved stomping around the grounds helping Steve identify lots of the wild flowers and plants and giving their expert opinion on my garden.  The orchids were very obliging – putting on a nice show.  They had apparently never seen the Tongue Orchid in the wild so we & they were delighted that they saw their first at Camp Full Monte.  Sadly we were so busy entertaining them that we didn’t take a single photo.   A big wig botanist wrote nice things in our Guest Book and afterwards they told our friend Hayley that the Camp Full Monte visit was one of the highlights of their trip!

The next project was the kitchen re-furb.  This involved making a new cupboard for the fridges since we now had an additional, bigger fridge donated by Pam & Gerry from their caravan.  So, finally a chance for Steve to use all the power tools he bought in the UK!  Out came the circular saw, the electric screwdriver etc and this is what he created:

This project has moved on considerably but those pictures are for another post…

We even got our guests involved in projects!  Sebastian was a fab German guy who really enjoyed helping out.  Here he is with Steve man-handling a huge log from the van after the boys went raiding the wood in the neighbourhood.  This huge, glorious log used to be part of the dead tree in the turning circle near to the campsite.

Our second volunteer of the season joined us at the end of May.  Here’s Erick sawing up steps to make getting in & out of the caravan easier:

The weather has not been great for business and we were starting to get quite concerned.  Our first guest was due to arrive on May 5th, a Greek guy travelling through.  He just didn’t show up.  The next guests who were booked in with their own tent were due to stay with us a few days, maybe even a week, but left after one soggy night.

Then Sebastian turned up – a heaving, sweaty mess of a man having cycled/ pushed his bike all the way up the hill to the campsite.  He was only going to stay a night but he just couldn’t leave.  The weather wasn’t great the day after he arrived and he was thinking he should move on because it was great cycling weather.  Then the sun came out & he stayed.  Not only that, he persuaded a German girl he’d met in a hostel along the coast to come & join him at the campsite!  So Uli turned up to stay a night… and finally left 4 nights later.  They were lovely folk and were so captivated by the place, despite the weather.  Nigel arrived from the UK at the same time, leaving the heatwave there to come to a positively soggy & chilly Monte and we felt terrible for him.  But he was very happy with his tent, which stayed mostly dry, enjoyed hanging out with Sebastian and Uli and loved Daisy, taking her for a walk every day.  His entry in the Guest Book was really special.

So May wasn’t the total wash out it could have been.  And I scored some proof-reading work too so that was extra cash!

Play

Annie came to stay in the second week in May & we had a fabulous time with her, relaxing in the sun.

She’s great fun, full of stories and easy company.  She makes herself at home & mucks in with the cleaning too.  She’s happy entertaining herself so we can potter about & get things done without feeling guilty.  She taught me to play Jack Changer – an addictive card game and we had many fun nights together.  The days were mostly sunny but the weather did start to deteriorate towards the end of her visit.  Once the rain came, the temperatures really dropped & the evenings were really chilly.  Luckily I found her a hat big enough to contain all her hair!

The other highlight of the social calendar was a party for Mary, a great Irish lass we know here.  It was supposed to be a Girls Camp Out and a great excuse to finally get a few key girlies to the campsite who’ve never visited before.  We were all so looking forward to it but the forecast leading up to the big day was awful.  In order to accomodate all the girlies we had to put up a bunch of tents.  We put half of them up & postponed the rest until the morning of the Camp Out.  We woke up to find the campsite in the clouds.  I dithered about in the morning, loathe to cancel the camp out but dreading everyone being there in the driving rain…  I finally took the decision to move the party to our house in town instead and what a good call that turned out to be!  As we were eating, drinking, dancing & being merry, a storm raged outside!

Here’s the birthday girl with various pressies (a cake cover & silicone glove – she’s a cake-baker extraordinaire!) adorning her person!

It was a fabulous night with gorgeous food, cake, Zumba dancing and general silliness:

Mary & Annie had never met before but I knew the Irish lasses would get on great.  Here they are Irish jigging in between giggles:

Nature Watch

This May has felt so different from last year in so many ways.  The biggest difference is the vastly reduced numbers of Gypsy Moth caterpillars.  There are a still a few trees that have been stripped of leaves and definitely the oaks on the top woodland that we don’t manage so closely have suffered more than those on the mian campsite but the numbers of caterpillars around is vastly reduced.  And the awful sound of a million caterpillars isn’t haunting us this year.  We can only guess that this is due to a last winter being much colder.  There are less crickets and spiders too.  This time last year we were being hassled by the droppings of huge spiders way up the walls of the kitchen but no such drama now.

The usual suspects have all been seen: tortoises, toads, a variety of lizards (including the legless one that everyone thinks is a snake) and there are loads of birds about, especially Great Tits.

But the biggest impact on our lives this month has been the weather – wetter & colder than any May we have experienced since coming here.  The phrase “Whose idea was it to run a blummin campsite?!”  has been much used this month as we apologise to guests for the sogginess as they shiver in their ‘holiday’ clothes…  It has set us back on work projects.  The kitchen floor seems perpetually muddy…

Tell you what – the caravan certainly came at the right time!!!  Thank goodness for our warm, cosy haven that has lights & a loo and a stove for making tea and where we can hide from the world.  Daisy loves it too.  No more barking through the night keeping everyone awake.  She sleeps in her bed over the other side of the van from us and doesn’t make a sound.

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April in Review

May 1, 2011 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Environmentally Friendly, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening by fullmonte | 3 comments

What’s fresh?

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

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Poriluk (spring onions)
  • Spinach

From the garden:

  • Rocket – 2 varieties
  • Radish
  • Lettuce
  • Herbs – chives, basil, coriander, parsley and from nature’s garden wild thyme & oregano

And some April 1sts:

  • 1st flowering of newly planted apple tree
  • 1st salad picked from the organic garden

Nature’s floral display this month was stunning.  The juxtaposition of the fresh lime green of new leafy growth and the vivid pinks & purples of Spring blossom was breathtaking and the short-lived but stunning wisteria flowers adorned many trellises in Herceg Novi.

Sowing & Planting

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

Apart from sowing a few more flowers and herbs and some more peppers & chillies, because the germination rate on the first batch was poor, this month’s been mostly about potting on or planting out.  I’ve managed to ignore my own advice already – so much for a neat gardening folder with monthly tasks (!),  I keep forgetting to consult it and have planted my aubergines and cucumbers out too early.  They’ll survive but they’ll be stunted.  Beans & sweetcorn I sowed direct into the beds this year after my first 2 attempts to germinate seeds in pots failed.  It’s  a relief to see these guys appear:

The second of the sisters, peas, are now flowering and we await the emergence of the third, the mighty corn.  In other beds, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins and (to a lesser extent) cucumber are romping away together.  Brassica seedlings are emerging.  Tomatoes & aubergines will soon be joined by peppers & chillies and are interplanted with marigold, borage & parsley.  Thanks to El via this amazing blog I now have carrot seedlings.  I was admiring the lush fronds of her carrot tops in this post & asked her how she did it.  She told me that carrots like to be in the cold & damp a while to germinate so to try soaking cardboard, weighed down with stones, and get them started under that.  It worked a treat!  Onions, leeks, spinach & beets are keeping the carrots company and in the last bed lettuce is growing away with rocket, radish, onions, leeks, sorrel & spinach.

The 15 or so sweet peas seedlings were planted as centre-pieces in 2 of my new flower beds.  Yes, I’m trying again with flowers…  This year I’ve made small beds within the orchard area, dug out all the soil and replaced it with compost & leaf mould and am watering it daily.

I reused scrap metal mesh to make a sturdy tower for the ornamental peas to scramble up and the 2 sunflowers were planted up against this frame too, to support them as they reach for the sun.  Nicotiana were the centrepieces in the rest of the flower beds and alyssum, lavateria, californian poppy, nigella & nasturtium were sown direct around the feature plants.

Comfrey has been planted out in the grey-water baths & the flower garden.  I’ve sown borage in amongst the tomatoes.  And dill, curly-leaf parsley, tarragon and purple basil are new additions to our herb family.

Baking & Making

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

Absolutely no time for creativity this month – too busy working & having fun – and the only notable culinary success was an Indian meal a few of us pulled together for a friend’s birthday at short notice.  Therese did one of her delicious Thai curries, Hayley did poppadoms and rice and I did dips (chilli jam, kiwi chutney, creamy chilli dip & raita), a delicious dahl (if I do say so myself), onion bhaji and Aloo something-or-other, my signature potatoe dish.

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)


“The Closed Circle ” was an open book to me.  I found myself predicting what was coming next – it was just too obvious.  And the series of snippets of people’s lives just didn’t coelesce into an enjoyable book for me.  It didn’t hang together into an overall story and for me the sum of the parts wasn’t greater than the whole.


It’s a sign of how busy I’ve been this month that I haven’t even started another book.

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

It’s been a month of doing not thinking, which has been very healthy for me.  Hours toiling in the sun, making great progress on the campsite (post to follow soon, I promise) has left me feeling positive and fulfilled.  I’m so proud of what we’re doing and it’s hard not to be in love with life when the great Mother’s garden is so beautiful, the birds are singing and my skin (over toned muscles!) is turning brown.

Quality time with my Dad made me feel lucky and deeply happy & sad at the same time.  It was great to have him around but time is marching on for us.

We took time to seriously enjoy ourselves this month and have had some magical moments.  It’s been a reminder of how blessed we are: great friends, great space & time…

Bookings are continuing to come in, slowly but surely.  We won’t make a fortune this summer but I’m confident we’ll survive with some pennies in our pockets and that’s a good vibe.

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Aurally challenged.  Still.

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

It was great having Dad around & watching him enjoy contributing to our project.  He grouted one of the toilets:

And cleaned and repainted the BBQ:

We had a day trip to the capital, Podgorica, and paid a visit to the local monastery in Savina:

Dad was delighted by the puppy and it was during his stay that we finally settled on her name: Daisy Marmite.  She turned up at the same time as the daisies on the campsite; she’s Marmite coloured & Steve LOVES her…  It’s a name she’s really growing into and she’s been a lot of fun this month.

A couple of nights before Dad had to leave, we went out to Konoba Izvor for a meal and I invited a few friends to join us and meet my Dad.  Maja, Keith, Matt, Amy, Therese, Hayley, & Simonida joined me, Steve, Dad & Nik and we had a lovely evening together.

Amy’s birthday was a good excuse for an evening out.  It just so happened that a great Jazz band from New York was playing a free gig on the night of her birthday in the new Marina development in Tivat.  Fiona & Dave very kindly offered to pick us all up in the rib and we whizzed over the water in minutes.  Once tied up in the Marina, Fiona popped some bubbles to celebrate Amy’s birthday.  Then we headed into town to grab a pizza before enjoying the foot-tapping delights of the Eli Yamin Jazz Quartet.

Next up was Danny’s birthday and Fiona & Dave kindly offered up use of their friend’s luxurious house, in a stunning setting looking out over Zanjic across to the island of Mamula.  A bunch of us turned up & partied with Danny for 2 amazing days.  Here’s the birthday girl opening her pressies:

We spent the days doing this:

And in the evenings, after delicious barbecued meat & yummy salads and plenty more bottles of bubbly, the wigs & masks came out & the sillyness ramped up!

Lounging around on huge bean bags by the pool, eating delicious food, drinking bubbles in the sun, laughing until our faces hurt, I wondered what exactly I had done to deserve all this!  It was an amazing couple of days, making new friends, enjoying the company of old ones and thanking our lucky stars.  Daisy Marmite had a wonderful time.  It was her first long (over an hour) trip out in the van and she was fine on the journey.  Once at the villa in Zanjic, she was be-friended by Robin’s ‘puppies’ (more like dogs now, being 9 months old & HUGE) that have become part of Fi & Dave’s extended dog family.  The ginger & white gang (Boydy, Hang, Missy & Shortie) were surprisingly tolerant of the small silly puppy and Hang, in particular, played with her & protected her.  Daisy went happily mad – gambolling about furiously and even enjoying the odd dip in the pool.  It was good for her to socialise with other dogs, get the odd nip when she got out of hand and learn how to play nicely!  I think they might have also taught her to bark though, because she seemed to find her yappy little voice after that… Oh joy. Not.

When we finally left Zanjic on Saturday morning, a little jaded and definitely feeling like we’d been ‘indulging’ for 2 days, we got a call from our local friends to say they were coming to the campsite.  We were used to making tentative plans with these guys and stuff not actually happening so when we got a call from them the day before to say the gang was in town (Alena & Tomo back from Belgrade with Banja etc) & wanted to come over, we didn’t take it seriously.  But Alena really wanted to get a hit of nature in the Boka after big city Belgrade and hassled the guys to get their act together & get over to the campsite.  It was a wonderful, impromptu ‘Big Saturday’ (that’s what they call the day inbetween Good Friday and Easter Sunday: “Veliki Subota”).  We were drinking loza in the sun with these lovely people by noon.

Despite getting on the alcohol so early, we managed to salvage something of the day to get some jobs done.  Tomo was a star & helped Steve re-construct another compost toilet chamber:

Later with Aleksa and Nik’s help, they knocked up cement and got the floor in the last toilet chamber sorted.  Meanwhile I led the work on the tyre wall and got the guys levelling tyres & shovelling soil:

Meanwhile, Alena scoured the grounds for wild asparagus (not asparagus as we know it but tasty when chopped up and served with egg, garlic & onion) and cooked it up for us and Jelena & Ankica played some Swingball.

Mid afternoon Nikola took control at the bbq, cooking up the mounds of meat, whilst Jelena created a tasty salad by shredding cabbage & garden greens & tossing them in a delicious dressing.  Aleksa cooked up some fish to add to the feast:

Then it was time to play:

Or crash out on the sofa:

Bebu (Aleksa’s dog, pictured here) gave more opportunities for Daisy Marmite to learn how to be with other dogs.  She got a few nips & was growled at a lot but they figured it out and co-existed peacefully in the end.  And you can imagine what fun Daisy had chasing the big metal balls…

Easter was a complete non-event in the end.  I had great plans for intricate treasure hunts and competitions but there were too many people away or busy so no teams were entered.  Since  Easter Sunday directly followed Danny birthday binge & Big Saturday fun, we didn’t have the energy or compulsion to do all the Easter things we’d originally considered.

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

This month’s story is an old one.  Our mate Amy S was back for a flying visit with her 2 lovely children & we were chuckling about the time when Jasper was a baby and a Doctor friend of Amy’s insisted on looking after him for an afternoon, freeing Amy up to do stuff.  When Amy returned to her friend’s house to pick Jasper up, she was ushered into a bedroom where her baby son was nestled between Grandma & Grandpa tucked up in bed.  Can you imagine the uproar in the UK of a friend (a Doctor no less!) handing your son over to her parents (who?) to mind… in their bed! (Where? What?!)

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

I‘m running out of green things to do with no money.  Rain collection is our current longed-after green thing… Watch this space for breakthroughs in creativity & funds on this one!

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

The sun continued to shine.  Watering plants, flowers & grass was a daily task this month, trailing lengths of hose around the campsite trying to quench the thirst of our young.  We’ve been working loads at the campsite & finally decided it was time to move up there to maximise our efforts – being on site, with limited internet & no TV, we get so much more done.

May 1st is a big holiday here where the tradition is to go up into the hills, build a fire & camp.  Perfect!  We decide to invite friends to camp out with us and moved on site on Friday to start the task of cleaning the building, tidying the grounds and getting everything set up for easy living.  Yesterday the rain came.  It bucketed it down all evening and we were literally in the clouds, unable to see the trees beyond the boundary of the camp.  We spent a chilly, soggy night & today cancelled the camp out & headed back to Topla.  It’s been raining for 24 hours at this point and set to stay wet for the next 5 days.  Daisy Marmite is not amused.

So, the campsite opening was a damp squib (thank god the first guest of the season – due to arrive on May 1st – had cancelled) but the earth is drinking deep and that’s a great thing.  I am looking forward to seeing the transformation in growth after this deluge.  Even before the rain, the campsite looked like this:


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Growing a new career

May 6, 2010 in Den, Organic Gardening by fullmonte | 2 comments

These days I consider myself a gardener.  It amuses me, as it was not too many moons ago that I mocked Steve for his obsession with Alan Titchmarsh and Gardener’s World…

The transition from reluctant helper in the garden to green-fingered goddess (wry smile!) has been a gradual process born out of a life change that offered us with more growing space than we ever thought possible.  I’m not a likely suspect for a gardener.  I’m not known for my patience (an understatement, another wry smile!) and whilst I can be very detail conscious when I have to be, my default setting is, ‘relaxed’ bordering on slapdash.

These days, however, I will spend hours patiently, diligently sowing seeds, potting on, watering, thinning out.  I could literally while away an entire day mooching around our beloved raised beds, pulling weeds and watching the green things grow.  When returning to the house after days away at the land, I dash upstairs to the nursery that our top terrace has become, to view the progress of my ‘babies’ and tend to their needs.

And don’t even get me started on my flower beds… I have invested so much in digging, weeding, sowing, planting, erecting trellis, watering, feeding.  I’m so earnest about it, it’s funny!  My vision for a garden full of colour and scent is often in my mind as I drop off to sleep.  My disappointment if nothing flourishes, or the flowers get eaten will be palpable.

The lovely thing about gardening is that it reminds me about life… the cycles of birth & death; the rhythm of nature as she reproduces herself; the hopes & joys & disappointments of new growth and old age are so present.  We garden organically – so no pesticides or artificial stimulants.  I am so intent on protecting my plants from ‘nasties’ and if they can flourish on natural food and water and sun, then so can we!  It’s survival of the fittest around here and long may we live without chemicals!

Some seeds are so robust – I have chucked things in pots with little hope that they will flourish and against all odds they have sprouted and grown.  My 3 beautiful tamarind plants are a case in point.  The picture below show the first one and the 2 other seeds about to open – they’re growing up fast and today they made it into their own big pots.

And here’s this amazing plant at night, with its leaves all closed up:

Other plants that all the books tell you are easy to germinate and rampant growers sometimes just don’t make it… That’s life!

Nature mirrors our struggles with relationships too.  Some things that compliment each other in the end result, grow well together: tomatoes are helped by basil, oregano & parsley – all of which taste delicious together.  Yet dill, which so enhances carrots (especially with a generous knob of butter!) is not a good companion plant for that root veg.

I bear the physical changes of my new career: my back used to complain about the hours spent sat at a desk, in endless meetings or dealing with interminable emails; these days it has become strong from carrying heavy bags of compost, digging & raking – my muscles still ache after a hard day’s graft but long gone are the expensive chiropractic sessions that kept me from being immobile with pain.  And now when I rue the state of my hands (rough, soil-ingrained monstrosities!) I chuckle at the thought of what went before. I choose callouses over painted nails now, any day of the week!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

My veg plants romped away well on our sunny terrace…

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

So far we’ve planted out:

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

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

Andwe have  sowed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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