grey water system

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Season’s Greetings!

May 12, 2013 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Fun Stuff, Organic Gardening, Team News by fullmonte | No comments

This season, I’m thinking blog posts will be short & sweet or not at all – since I’m hoping beyond hope that we are too busy with our happy campers for much else…  So I’m here to tell you we’re open for business in 2013 and have already had 2 sets of guests and 2 volunteers.

Our season has begun!

There was a load of stuff that had to be done before we were ready to open and we ran around like maniacs for a while trying to get everything done.  Here’s what we’ve been busy doing…

Maintenance of sewerage system: grey water baths dug out, cleaned out & mended – plug holes re-sealed, new pipe (for distributing the waste water more evenly around the bath to keep the plants moist) purchased & drilled (see photo below) – and each bath filled with fresh gravel & completely re-planted

Gardening: Steve had been nurturing veg & flower plants which had all outgrown their pots and were desperate to romp away in the ground.  Before we planted the tyre wall we first had to paint it:

The new cream colour blends in well with the stone surrounds but more importantly, the tyres don’t get so hot now they are painted a lighter colour. Aster, Sweet Pea, Snapdragon, Livingstone Daisy, Pot Marigolds, French Marigolds and Petunias have all been planted.  Waiting to join the flowery throng in the next few weeks are: Zinnia & Sunflowers (all self seeded and popped up in the compost) and Pansy & Lobelia which were sowed much later, are still growing on.

Flowers-to-be can also be found in the stream-side beds, the area just outside the building around the grease trap, my toilet garden (toilet bowls and sinks as planters in an area of shade below the main building) and, for the first time in hanging baskets.

In the beds we’ve planted out: the squashes & curcubits, tomatoes (5 varieties), capsicums, brassicas and aubergines.  Seeds for beans, peas, carrots & salad greens have all been sown and in some cases thinned and transplanted already…

The herb garden which was created last year but never used was planted with green manure over the winter.  This was dug in and left to rot down in situ and the soil was in pretty good condition.  It’s now been planted/ sowed with: coriander, basil (3 varieties), parsley (2 varieties), dill, marjoram, mint, lemon thyme, chives (2 varieties), tarragon and some edible flowers: Garland Chrysanthemum, wild pansy, borage and nasturtiums.

Cleaning and moving in: Floors, furniture, cupboards, shelves, showers, loos, sinks, tables & chairs were scrubbed clean in a 2-day marathon.  Bedding, tents, books, kitchen equipment, storage containers, towels, throws, games and loads of other stuff had to be carted down all the frigging steps at  our Topla house, loaded into the van and unpacked the other end.  We were pretty sick of walking up & down stairs & lugging stuff about.

Our first guest was supposed to arrive on May 1st.  The same Greek guy in his own tent booked to come last year and didn’t show up.  True to form, there was no sign of him this year either (next year we might just be fully booked when you enquire Mr Ionnis!) but mates Katie, Tim and their (& now our) friends Cath & Andy all the way from NZ turned up to more than compensate.  So did Jamie, our first volunteer.  He arrived late and we were all pretty wasted by the time he actually got to us and he had a great introduction to CFM – invited to share food, beer and a place round the fire, he joined the 6 of us in party mood.

Amazingly he did not surface until nearly 11.00 am the following morning and that was our first clue that he may not exactly be the greatest volunteer ever.  He was a harmless, but in many respects clueless, 21 year old, addicted to sugar and allergic to mornings – he even outdid Steve for the amount of time it took him to be ready to start work each day.  He provided the extra pair of hands needed to erect the gazebos and level the sofas and tables and he did a good job at strimming the grounds:

Our first guests arrived on May 2nd.  They had inquired but not booked, so we weren’t exactly expecting the 2 German bikers who turned up.  Timo & Katja were the perfect first guests – super people who fell in love with Daisy and the campsite and were fantastic company.

The day after they left, a Dutch couple arrived in their Landrover Defender with integral tent that had to be pitched in the only space for such vehicles, next to the workshop.  Not a pretty spot but they were glad of a place to make a base for the night as they travelled through Montenegro.  I wanted to take a picture of their South African designed tent, which enfolded from the top of the Landy but they were just too quick at de-camping…

And look who else has been visiting:

A Giant Peacock Moth!  This gives you a great idea of scale, as it’s perched on a full sized colander.  And right next to it, in complete contrast was this tiny moth – delicate and almost shell-like…

Jamie left us after a week and our next volunteer arrived.  Richard couldn’t be more different – he’s in his 60’s but fit and strong and very talented.  He’s a passionate naturist and spends as much time naked as possible.  He rises early and works late and doesn’t even eat us out of house & home.  So far he & Steve have: erected a new bookshelf in the basement & patched up the areas where water was seeping in (so hopefully we won’t lose any more books through water damage next year); dug out and concreted around a new drainage channel in front of the workshop; dismantled the boundary fence near the workshop (that was falling down due to weak posts and poor construction the first time around) and cemented in 4 new posts and as I left today he was drawing detailed plans of the new porch he’s going to build!  Thank goodness for his skill and experience – we are very lucky to be working with him.

It hasn’t been ALL work though – as well as the very pleasant diversion provided by mates on May 1st, we’ve also had an evening with Blazo, Dado and Vedran with much booze and food and laughter.  Maja, Keith, Charlie and Richard came armed with goodies for an evening picnic and we had a super time – it was wonderful seeing Maja visibly relax as she sipped her chilled Rose and wallowed in the loveliness of the evening.  And yesterday Fi & Dave came to visit after some 2 years absence and they brought Fi’s Mum to see the campsite for the first time.  Evelyn was totally enamoured by the place and as a naturist herself in years gone by she vowed to come back and camp another time.

Right, time to pack up and run back to site to make pizza for the hungry boys…  A month in review to follow at end of May, if you’re lucky.

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August in Review

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

Growing Green

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baking & Making

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

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

Feelings & Musings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Work

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

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

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

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

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

Play

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

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

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

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

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

Nature Watch

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

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

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

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DIY Waste Water System Revamp

June 11, 2012 in Campsite Improvements, Environmentally Friendly, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News by fullmonte | No comments

One of the things I wanted this blog to do was to be a resource for others out there attempting their own off-grid builds.  I know I’ve been pretty slack at getting the eco-posts in…  If I make a ‘Month in Review’ post in time I’m doing well!  But I resolve to try.  And here’s me making a start…

One of the aspects of the design of our off-grid campsite that we struggled/ still struggle with, is the waste water system.  The internet is an amazing resource but detailed posts/ info on how to design & implement a grey water waste water system seem few & far between.  I’m posting this in the hope that it helps someone somewhere in the big wide world & if you need extra info, please mail me!

The thing about designing and implementing a waste water system ourselves is… there’s no-one but us to look to when things go wrong.  As far as we know ours is a unique, bespoke system and there’s certainly nothing like it in Montenegro.

The system got a fair pounding last summer and coped pretty well with the increasing number of successive showers.  But we still had to do some remedial work along the way and there’s room for improvement in the infrastructure.

One  of the problems is the system’s limited ability to cope with deluges.  We identified the source of the problem: the join between the pipe that outflows from the last bath and the hosepipe to the irrigation pipes in the first raised bed.  The flow of water was channelled into a very narrow gauge pipe at this point and couldn’t run away into the garden fast enough.  The photo below shows the yellow hosepipe that we were using to irrigate the beds originally.  It’s beauty was it’s flexibility – we clipped & unclipped the lengths of pipes to force the water further down the line of beds as required.  It was light & easy to use but water just could not flow through those joins fast enough and the pipe itself was narrow (compare it to the heftier black pipe on the right).

The temptation at this point just to run a hose into our half metre deep drainage ditch and keep on running was great.  But no can do.  For 2 reasons:

1) We really NEED to irrigate our raised beds – those veggies need the life-blood of water to sustain them & if we weren’t feeding them from below as well as watering them from above then watering the buggers would take a whole lot more water than we can afford to give them.

We water from a hose which is syphoning water directly from the pools in the stream that bounds our land.  These pools dry up in the summer so we can only run the hose for a while before we drain the system completely & lose the syphon (& believe me, that’s a pain in the bum).  Also, on a very practical level we just can’t afford the time it would take to keep the beds well irrigated.  Since we can only water when the sun is off the garden this means getting up early or watering in the late afternoon – just as prep for the evening meal begins!

2) At this stage the grey water has passed through a grease trap and 5 baths which operate as mini reed beds.  The solids have been separated (grease trap) and the reeds, rushes, sunchokes & umbrella plants whose roots are growing away in the grey water baths have taken up some of the water and some of the phosphates (but by no means all) and since the drainage ditch runs directly to the stream, we would be potentially upsetting the natural eco system by running such heavily ‘polluted’ water there.

OK, so we have to deal with it…  Thank goodness for Steve who can come up with some great solutions when he ponders & scratches his head enough!  The obvious solution was: thicker gauge hose & joins but how to do this without a) crazy expense and b) an unweildy system, too heavy to use?

Here’s the solution: considerably thicker pipe and a series of taps which do not narrow the flow of water at their joins.  The real beauty of this tap is that it’s one that’s been lurking in a box of bits in the workshop for at least 6 years.  We’re re-using scrap from another life and saving pennies too!

Right, so – one problem solved but this is not the only work to be done on the system…

The grey water baths are such a fertile environment – all those phosphates, a constant flow of water for thirsty plants – that the root systems of the flora become over-developed in a season.  The baths have to be completed deconstructed at the beginning of the season and planted anew.

For the last 2 years we’ve muddled away at this and made a few mistakes along the way.

Firstly, we have only emptied out each bath as & when they start to back up.  This means that at any one time there are some baths with well developed root systems which absorb a great deal of the water moving through (so the grey water moves through quite slowly), whereas in other baths (recently emptied – roots mostly removed to unclog the bath & force the planst to put down new roots), the grey water is fairly rushing through as the root systems are too new.  This uneven-ness in the system’s ability to ‘process’ the water can lead to deluges of water not being dealt with well.

Secondly, we have not been fastidious enough when re-constructing the baths.  We may have left too many roots surviving (so the roots find their way into the connecting pipes of the system and prevent water flowing).  Or have taken too many roots out (so that the water moves through too quickly).  Or have introduced gravel that is coated with clay or used soil with a high clay content and such clay is hard for the water to percolate & permeate through.

So, this year we were thorough:

All but one of the baths have been emptied & re-filled pretty much at the same time.  We have completely removed all the plants, all the soil and all the gravel.  We sieved the gravel & separated the soil from the gravel.  See below for the 2 distinct piles:

And then we re-seived the soil to remove all the roots and any large stones:

A lot of the gravel was washed by the rain which was a real bonus as it washed off a lot of the clay.  We bagged up the soil from the baths to use elsewhere in the garden where the presence of clay wouldn’t matter, and we used fresh (clay-free) soil to top off the baths.

We have re-planted the baths with enough flora to keep the system working and make it look interesting but hopefully not so much that it clogs up fast.  It’s not an exact science & we learn from our mistakes every year.  We still haven’t emptied out the very first bath – the one that the grease trap leads into directly.  Our plan was to do ALL of them at the same time but this is work that cannot be done with guests on site (grey water stinks!) and we ran out of time.  But actually it seems to be working fine.  The first bath only contains sedges & sunchokes and no reeds.  It’s the reeds that are particularly invasive and whose roots can clog the pipes to dangerous levels. By leaving a well-developed, but reasonably shallow root system in the first bath, the water is being filtered without the baths being clogged and the bath still looks good, which is important for this first bath set amongst the herbs in the most prominent position.

Updates on the success (or otherwise) of 2012’s revamp will follow in due course!

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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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