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July in Review

August 4, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Naturist, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News, book review by fullmonte | No comments

July has been a cracking month and we’ve been busy as bees hence the late posting…  I’ll hardly do justice to the whos & whats of this sizzling month but it’s better than nowt….

Growing Green

As if it wasn’t hot enough this month, we’ve had a bumper crop of chillies and most meals contain these spicy beauties:

  • We’re still picking rocket but just the wild stuff – the salad rocket has mostly flowered itself off the menu
  • We’ve picked a little silverbeet & pak choi but the plants are few & scorched.  Here’s some we picked early in the month:

  • We picked the last of the lettuce for a while – I’m trying to germinate more but think we might have to wait until the late August/ September sowing
  • Fresh herbs: chives (garlic & ordinary), parsley, tarragon, rosemary, fennel sage & basil.
  • Tomatoes have been great this month – we pick daily & have tomatoes with everything… chopped up with garlic & herbs on toasted bread as homemade bruschetta for lunch; with basil & seasoning or onion & cucmbers as a salad dish; or skinned & ’sauced’.   And I’m delighted to report that a couple of Green Grape Tomato plants were amongst those self sowers that I allowed to pop up from compost & flourish – I have saved seed so I will be able to deliberately grow them next year….  But as was the case last year, just as we start to enjoy them, so do the Edible Doormice!  See the photo below of the end of July’s harvest and note the nibbled fruit!

  • Peppers are coming thick & fast now & a decent size
  • We’ve picked a couple of pumpkins so far & more to come
  • Marrow & courgette are still growing away though not as prolifically as last month
  • Onions – kilos of them!

  • Aubergines, Stripey & Black Beauty, have popped up in many meals this month.  The shot below shows off my nice new scales (a birthday present to myself)

We have one beautiful Butternut Squash ripening nicely.  The plants on the compost heap suffered miserably (too dry) so we’ve moved them into the main garden.  I think one plant has died altogether but the other 3 are pushing our new growth.

Runner beans are flowering but not setting fruit.  We suspect its just too hot and look forward to the cooler months in the autumn when the beans may actually form & swell.

The orchard was looking a bit bare – sunflowers are over now – but the zinnia are flowering brightly now & the tobacco plants are finally getting going.  Confrey is romping away too & the 2nd bucket of Comfrey Stew is on the bubble!

The tyre wall and stream-side flower beds are looking great – drifts of colour, buzzing with bees and awash with butterflies…  And here’s a new garden area I made by planting up random bidets and sinks we had dotted around the place:

Baking & Making

Getting creative with a posh compost pot (so guests know what’s in & what’s not)…

I put together a folder for volunteers to help them get up to speed with how we do things around here and finally got around to putting the photo album together of the early days & the build of the campsite…

Reading

Still reading “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles”.  It’s a strange book – compelling in parts and at times almost too odd to follow but I am nearly finished and am intrigued to see where this tale will end and wonder if & how all the frayed threads will come together…

Work

The list of jobs done this month is so long it’s hard to recall!  This is mainly due to having so many willing hands this month.  Todd & Cat from the US joined us early in July and Yvette from Dublin arrived towards the end of the month.  Kate, from Canada, was with us for a week at the end of July.  Here’s a rough run down of stuff that Team Full Monte achieved:

  • Compost chambers and compost tea tank scraped of all peeling limewash & re-painted

  • Strimming & tidying of grounds
  • Rock collection
  • Stone walling
  • Bead curtain re-strung
  • Toilet door frames sanded & re-painted
  • 1000 litre water tank patched up with epoxy & put into position at the end of the orchard, near to the veg garden to be the compost tea dilution tank

  • Big metal gate fixed so it runs smoothly now & can be opened & closed (even by a girl)
  • Stream-side gate hinge re-welded
  • All metal worked on & welded by Todd was then painted with primer & finished with metal paint by Cat
  • Plugs put in place for charging devices on our 12v system (battery is kept chraged by our PV panel) and a nice shelf erected
  • Signs made (but sadly one of them has already been ‘removed’)

Guest-wise, July has been a phenomenal month.  People have been amazing; guests are staying longer and a couple have popped back so regularly this summer we’re thinking of awarding them ‘Bare Miles’.  We’ve had folk from the UK, from Holland, from Slovenia, Hungary, France, Australia, America, Italy, Canada, Portugal, Sweden & Poland and lots of Germans!  Just as we were thinking that we needed to find a way to attract the German market, the buggers started arriving in droves!

Compared to last July we must be 100 – 200% up on numbers.  Incredible!  No time to catch our breath though – people just keep on coming…

Play

Jen turned 40 at the end of June but a select few joined her for a special birthday meal at a lovely restaurant in Rose a week later.   Here’s the lovely lass herself…

And here we all are in the beautiful setting, enjoying good food & wine…

Steve & I got the best ride home – a speed along the Bay in our friend Alan’s new toy…

I celebrated my birthday with a morning on the beach and then a chilled afternoon on the campsite with lovely guests, Ian, who made lemonade (which went down great with Vodka!) and Alix, who made me a cake.  Cat baked cookies and Steve cooked a great BBQ.  Friday night we left the campsite in Todd & Cat’s capable hands and escaped.  We had a chilled evening on our own at the house and the next day kayaked out to join our friends Fi & Dave who were getting ready to sail off for a couple of months and were moored off near Herceg Novi.  We were privileged to join them on their first sail for 3 years as they put the Altair through its paces.  It was a very special, very memorable day.   Then we raced back to the house, got changed & sped off round the bay to Tivat for a nice meal with mates.  This is what 42 looks like…

I had thought not many people would be able to join us but we were quite a crowd – over 25 of us in the end!  Great fun & we got to stay with our mate David in his lovely Muo house for the night.  The bonus was waking up in a house with a pool and shaking off the fogginess with a refreshing swim!

Nature Watch

Though July has been mostly scorching hot, we did get a bit of rain too. which was very welcome!  A few cloudy days and a chance to cool down again gave us some respite in the middle of the month.

The campsite has been alive with insects but not so many birds this year.  Fly catchers are scarce – but the plus side of that is that there are much fewer flies!

The green lizards are still about though:

And the Stag Beetles have freaked a few volunteers out this month!

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June in Review

July 1, 2012 in Camping News, Campsite Improvements, Den, Environmentally Friendly, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Naturist, Organic Gardening, Team News, book review by fullmonte | 2 comments

Growing Green

All that rain from last month seems such a long time ago now.  It’s been a stonking hot June & necessitated the mental watering regime again already.  But the results are fab (mostly).  This month we’ve been picking:

  • Mixed lettuce (Cut & Come Again, Iceberg & Cos).  They’ve cropped so well compared to last year but I fear we are running out of time now – seems its already too hot for the seeds to germinate…

  • Rocket (Salad, local Rocket & wild)
  • Silverbeet
  • Sorrel
  • Fresh herbs: coriander, chives (garlic & ordinary), parsley (curled & flat-leaved), tarragon, sage, dill, fennel & basil (purple & Genovese)
  • Marrows (the one below is ready for stuffing & seeds are scooped out & saved…)

  • Courgettes – some beauties already, this one’s nearly a kilo in weight

  • Broad beans – against all odds…  Take that you nay-sayers!  Please note the adorable new shoes in the shot below courtesy of dear friend Ditsch.

  • Peas – probably the best crop we’ve ever had ironically, because this year I just shoved the last of the seeds in the soil to get them gone, irritated that they usually crop poorly…  Note the beautiful shiny new aluminium worktop surface!

  • Peppers – well just the one so far actually.  The plants are laden with fruit already and it looks set to be a good year for them although no sign of them reaching epic, Fiona-like proportions so I shall no doubt still have pepper envy at the end of the season.  Still, since we didn’t pick these green crisp beauties until much later last year & had a mere handful of them,  I am very happy with progress so far.

  • Chillies – loads of them!  And a perfect temperature.

  • Tomatoes!  Yes, finally are tomatoes are ripening.  We’ve only picked a small handful so far but we look forward to July being full of them.
  • And talking of sweet red things… Yes it’s strawberry time again.  Sadly the crop has been very poor & although the plants look happier in their new position, it doesn’t look like they are getting quite enough sun now!  Time for a soft fruit re-think.

The pumpkins are growing away well and tiny squashes are forming on the Butternut plant. This was shot a couple of weeks ago now – the fruit is already turning a gorgeous yellow…

And the aubergine plants are well ahead this season, with Stripey Eggplants forming already:

Disappointments so far: carrots & spinach.  Carrots should have gone in the ground in February like last year but me being in the UK in Feb set things back.  I had carefully sowed thinly so I could succession sow in all the rows but first the rain washed the seeds away and then the sun was suddenly too hot already.  I’m gutted because I had sown some Atomic Red and Purple Haze carrots this year & frankly it’s not looking good for them.  We’re going to try experimenting with shading one half of the carrot bed to see if it makes an appreciable difference.

Not sure why the spinach failed again – I think it just got too hot too fast & the plants bolted.  Poor germination may be due to old seeds.  I’m going to purchase some fresh seeds from here and try to get a crop going in September.

With regards to flowers – well, what a difference a month makes!

The streamside beds and the tyre wall are awash with colour – blues of the cornflowers, borage & lobelia; pinks of the petunias, snapdragons & cosmos; oranges of the marigolds & zinnia and red geraniums…

The Bo-Flo-Grove remains a massive disappointment – and more importantly a waste of water.  I am refusing to give up on the few remaining tobacco plants and the odd zinnia & marigold but it will not be a stunning display by any means.  Next year the area will be given over to shrubs & comfrey plants & will only be watered twice a week.  We’ll give some thought as to how to retain moisture up there – the ground is ridiculously well-drained & impossibly stony.

Baking & Making

The loquat tree at our house in Topla was laden with fruit this month.  Once picked I needed to process them fast so I found a chutney recipe that used most of the fruit and made a salsa with the rest.

The chutney has fast become a favourite – deliciously sweet & gingery with a spicy kick.

I finally started sprouting seeds this month too.  I’ve successfully sprouted alfafa & mung beans  – in a jar, nothing fancy, rinse them out twice a day – and today I started chick peas off too.

And I’ve been making ‘comfrey stew’!  I need to feed my peppers & tomatoes & squashes but only 100% organic will do, so I’ve harvested a load of comfrey leaves and shoved them in a bucket with some water:

No, it doesn’t smell as bad as it looks – it’s MUCH worse than that!  But in a couple of weeks it will be organic yumminess for our plants.

Reading

Douglas Kennedy’s ‘The Big Picture’ was an enjoyable read, if far-fetched & mostly unbelieveable.  It’s hard to talk about the book without giving too much away but suffice to say that the reader is asked to accept too many contradictions…  The man who purportedly loved his family so much he put up with outrageous behaviour from his wife to keep the peace, does stuff which estranged him from his family forever; the guy who was so meticulous about stuff makes a sloppy error that means everything comes undone…

It wasn’t the world’s best written book it didn’t have a gripping plot or characters that make a lasting impression but it kept me entertained for a few nights…

I am now reading Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ which was given to me by Marie & Jan the  German cyclists we befriended.  It’s for me to keep safe until they come to pick up their stuff again in the autumn but they insisted I read it in the meantime.

It’s a strange book & I’m not sure I’ve got into the rhythm of it yet.  More of that next month…

Work

June has been a game of two halves…

The month started with some busyness &, remarkably, some guests returning from last year!  It was great to see Roy again and we welcomed Jim back too, this time with his girlfriend Annie – our first Swedish guest.  Jon & Kirstie were a super couple from the UK who arrived at the beginning of June – and Steve was delighted to learn they had found us through Flickr (so all the effort he puts into updating his photo stream is finally vindicated – just got to get a guest or 2 via this blog now & all my efforts here will be worthwhile too!).  Then there was the wonderfully quirky German guy, Jorg, who fell for Daisy in a big way.

Kirsten was hiking in the nearby mountains & stayed for a few nights.  Shane (Australian) & Dave (Canadian) turned up around the same time and inspired by Kirsten did some hiking too – 1 night turned into 3 or 4.

Erick & Steve cracked on with getting stuff done whilst my time was pretty much taken up with watering the gardens (the compost tea tanks sure fills up quick with 10+ people on site!), cooking & cleaning.

I promised pics of the caravan – so here they are.  You can see the steps that Erick sawed up & dug in.  It actually looks a little different now.  The weather has been unsufferably hot the past few weeks so we have erected a sail over the front of the van, to create some shade for the early morning, and have velcroed mozzie nets over a few windows so we can keep the windows open all day & night.

And inside our cosy home…

The new fridge cupboard got finished:

And the kitchen got a re-vamp.  The shelf for the cups & glasses was moved into the new tea/ coffee making space – a dedicated ring is available for the kettle at all times without disturbing my cooking and all the drink making stuff is in one place.  A new shelf has been erected in its place and now all my herbs & spices are up out of the way, leaving the worksurface free from stuff & with maximum space available for food prep.  Erick & Steve beat aluminium sheeting into submission and covered the top of the kitchen cupboards to give me a shiny new surface that is easy to clean & durable.  Gone are the tiles that used to go manky when water got underneath them – goodbye potentially germ-harbouring material, hello hygiene!

Erick mowed the main campsite & did some strimming up on the top plot too, which was restored somewhat with the lads re-erecting the toilet & the shower.

Steve turned electrician again and completed our most exciting, money-saving project of the season yet – the 12v lighting system!  Having picked Sebastian’s brains whilst he was with us last month, Steve decided to put into play the solar panel & LED strip lights he’d purchsed from our mate John when back in the UK getting the caravan.  We’ve now got the solar panel charging a battery all day and then we use this battery at night to illuminate the building.  It’s fabulous and has considerably reduced our use of the  generator, which is saving us precious pennies.  We don’t even have to start the genny to charge laptops or mobile phones any more because these can be charged via the invertor connected to the battery for our solar powered fans.  We are generating way more power than we need to run the fans so the excess is being stored in a battery and being used via an inverter.  Genius!

Then there was nothing else for it but to make a start on the dreaded stone wall project.  Rocks were collected and assembled but it startd to really heat up and working with huge rocks became problematic other than for a few hours in the morning & at the end of the day, so the project stalled for a while.

Erick left and so did all the guests, just in time for us to host our big Family Camp Out for all our friends with kids.   25 adults, 18 kids, 12 tents, 1 camper van & some dogs made it a day to remember!  Despite all our (well, Steve’s) reservations it was a storming success – the kids had an absolute ball, the parents all got to chill with good food & alcohol with the kids asleep nearby and, importantly for us, folk got to experience camping Full Monte-style.  People were bowled over with their tents and comfy beds and frankly it was good for business!

It took us a day to dismantle all the tents and get the site back to normal but it was worth it – possibly even to be repeated at the end of the season!

Our next wwoofer, Tom, turned up just after the family madness (good timing dude!).  He was a laid back character from Oz but but by the time he got to us he’d pretty much had enough of travelling.  He was pretty jaded and also he didn’t get the experience that he wanted from us because it was only us 3 there – no other guests or volunteers – so he only stayed a few days but long enough to do a fantastic strimming job & to help Steve move the stone wall project on a bit further.

And so the second half of June has been dead quiet.  No guests, no volunteers, few enquiries & fewer bookings.  Instead of stressing (really, what can we do that we’re not already doing except chill & keep the faith?) we embraced the time & have had ourselves a lovely little holiday…

Oh, but we did manage to put up the second gazebo & finish sanding the table that Tom had all but done and restore it with some oil:

Yesterday we had a lovely Slovenian couple turn up unexpectedly.  They had been in Dubrovnik the day before & randomly met a Dutch guy who had stayed with us for a couple of nights 2 years ago.  He recommended that they visit us, so they did! What an incredible coincidence!

So, it seems our luck is turning again.  The enquiries are starting to come in thick & fast again and we have a few already converted to bookings.  Jim & Annie return tomorrow for their 3rd visit of the year and things are looking up on the volunteer front with a stack of people wanting to join us in July, August & September.  Maybe those stone walls will get re-built after all…?

Play

We took advantage of having someone around & left Erick in charge of the campsite a couple of times.  We escaped to party on Zanjice beach with Fi & Dave & some classic car enthusiasts who’d been travelling across Europe in their various gorgeous old cars (one of which was their mate Colin – a lovely guy we’d met when he visted the campsite a couple of years ago with Dave).  They’d ‘hired’ a bunch of beautiful young things (most of them loonies too!) to help them kick up a storm at the end of their epic trip and a proper DJ.  The theme was Underwater Kingdom & it was a riot!

Before all the guests buggered off, it was great to sit around the dinner table in the evenings with a bunch of folk from all around the world all swapping stories of travels & life & enjoying good food together.  And despite this being ‘our job’ we really did have a lot of fun.

There was lots of game playing going on too.  Roy had got hooked on Tac Tic when he visited last summer so was keen to play again.  Jon & Roy teamed up against me & Kirstie and then there was another couple hooked!  I introduced Dave & Shane to Quattro which they loved and played for hours and a few nights with a bunch of us round the table, we played Dice.

The best thing about the quiet period we’ve just had is that it coincided with our local friends being around.  Blazo came back from his latest stint on the ships and came to visit with the Denovici crew.  We shared the night of the Summer Solstice with them and gorged ourselves on fish, beautifully cooked by Nikola.

Then they came back a few days later to celebrate Blazo’s birthday.  We had amazing food – stacks of meat & yet again Nikola on the BBQ – great Rakija, lots of laughs & even some music-making… Nikola & Sasa took turns on Steve’s battered guitar & out came bongos & shakers & lots of singing with gusto into the early hours.  A fabulous, fabulous night.

And Daisy had fun too:

As luck would have it, our mates Katie & Tim were also having a quiet week in their yacht chartering business so they invited us to come & sail the Monty B from Bijela to Sveti Marko and overnight with them.  We locked everything up, left Daisy in charge and escaped to the water for 24 wonderful hours.  We had our first swim in the Bay this year, off the back of their beautiful sailing ketch on 28th June – shockingly late in the season to get in the water but hey ho…

We ate delicious food together, drank chilled wine in the sunshine & made merry.  It was the perfect day – not too hot that it was uncomfortable to lay out in & the evening was cool enough for us to get a decent night’s sleep.  All in all a wonderful treat…

And here’s us proving that 13 years of marriage is a good thing… (Happy Anniversary to us a few days before this!)

Nature Watch

June couldn’t have been more different than May weather-wise.  Not a drop of rain and stonking hot temperatures that take some adjusting to even for us.  We are filling the water tank to the brim whilst we can but in a week or so the pool we take from will be dried up and we will be monitoring our water use obsessively again.

The air has been filled with butterflies – Swallowtails, Scarce Sawllowtails, Mourning Cloaks, various fritillaries and a few we’ve yet to identify, notably this little monster:

It may be pretty but these critters were EVERYWHERE a week or so ago – bordering on plague proportions, flying out of the compost toilets every time we lifted the lid, generally a nusiance.  Does anyone have any idea what this is and how we would control invasions from them??

Here’s another butterfly yet to be named, much more benign…

And now its the crickets that are driving us mad.  There are tons of them in the building and I wouldn’t mind them being around except for the fact that they poo everywhere!  Sinks & surfaces have to be cleaned everyday and it’s getting really tedious.  Plus we’ve found them inside the bread bag having a chew, so the gloves are off and we’re letting Daisy do her worst!  Chasing these weird creatures as they jump about insanely keeps her entertianed for hours although they do end up with rather less legs than they started with by the time she’s done with them…

The edible doormice are back & taunting us with their scampering about in the roof space.  But at least we don’t hear them squeaking at nights anymore – YET!

This has been Mulberry Month, with the many trees in the neighbourhood laden with fruit.  Daisy and I trample over them every day as we go for our evening walk, through the clouds of buzzing bees that feed on the nectar and resolve to figure out how to get into these trees to pick the fruit, some sunny day.

And this is a rather cool glow worm that we’re seeing a lot around the campsite…

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June in Review

July 20, 2011 in Camping News, Den, Environmentally Friendly, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Team News by fullmonte | 6 comments

More than halfway through July, another year older and finally a month in review…  I’m living in a blur of people coming & going, mosquito bites, stifling heat and general craziness so forgive this post for being late & sloppy…

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:

  • Raspberries
  • Strawberries
  • Cherries

From the garden:

  • Lots of green leaves – pak choi, swiss chard, silverbeet, beet root leaves, wild rocket
  • Sorrel
  • Garlic
  • Radish
  • Lettuce
  • Courgettes
  • Runner beans
  • Marrow

  • Herbs – chives, basil, coriander, parsley, dill, mint & tarragon

Rocket, radish, spinach, most of the lettuce and the peas all came & went quickly in June as the temperature soared and things wilted & bolted.  As usual we went from glut to gloom – when I realised I needed to succession sow more & more frequently, the germination rate in the heat was poor.  Damn all my plan & my notes!  I am getting better but still not getting it quite right!

And in the bo-flow-grove, the petunias, sweet peas, alyssum, nasturtium, borage, comfrey & nicotiana got going with colours & smells to cheer the senses and the tyre wall became the wall of wonder we only dared hope about with the cosmos, marigolds, pansies & geraniums pushing bright petals out loud & proud amidst the herbs, tomatoes & strawberries…

Sowing & Planting

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

Sowed beetroot, silverbeet, chard, spinach, lettuce & more herbs but the main action was transplanting – moving things to cooler spots or giving space to overcrowded beds by moving them to new areas created by Lluis & Sara, our Spanish wwoofers:

Baking & Making

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

Sara & Lluis guided me round the wild food on offer in nature’s garden and made labels (from recycled milk cartons) to mark the edible & medicial herbs.  Before they left we had a wild food evening.  The 3 of us went foraging and returned with goosegrass, plantain, coltsfoot, violet leaves, wild mallow flowers, wild rocket, wild garlic & wild herbs.  We made a salad from greens in the garden, the violet leaves, wild rocket & wild mallow flowers; a quiche from boiled plantain & herbs (tried the goosegrass but still too tough – apparently soup is the thing!); coltsfoot fritters and Spanish omelettes.

The Catalunyan couple showed me how to make an ointment from St John’s Wort (who knew I had it growing in my garden!).  Here’s the plant, neatly labelled & staked by Lluis:

And here’s the potion in the making:

I continued to outdo myself with my vegetarian delights but failed to capture any of the masterpieces on camera.  Suffice to say Nina (veggie wwoofer) has prounced me ‘Best Cook in the World’ and I’m seriously thinking about vegetarianism as a marketing angle since vegetarians that visit seem blown away by eating good food in this land of meat & fatty pastries!

Hattie & I in a tag-team effort restored the precious Guest Book that was losing it’s cover and various other little creative projects took place like painting jars etc.  Here’s a shot of the camp gang in mending & making mode:

You may notice in the picture above, Sara holding a clay pot and that brings us onto the really massive creative project of the month for which I can take no glory but have to tell the tale anyway…

Hattie, the extraordinary wwoofer, includes a flair for ceramics in her many talents.  She dug up our clay, washed it and worked it and then proclaimed it good enough to fire.  Really???  OMG.  Right, well – a kiln then, anybody…?  Oh that would be a job for Dave, her man & kiln-meister extraordinaire.  Hattie designed a beautiful thing and Dave made it happen from random stuff around the campsite – old barrels, pipes, bricks, tiles…

Then there was pottery class:

From which these beauties emerged:

Then came an evening of intense heat & anticipation, getting the kiln going & keeping it stoked and sitting around it for 6 hours, wincing at every ‘pop’ that might indicate a casualty…

We had to wait for a day for the kiln to cool down and the heat to diffuse slowly.  The opening of the kiln was a tense moment:

To all of our surprise & delight, the grey clay shapes had metamorphosised into terracotta coloured beauties:

It was the most amazing experience & we feel immensely privileged that Hattie & Dave had shared their experitise & passion with us.  All a bit gobsmacking really…

As if Dave hadn’t done enough (!) he then proceeded to be my friend for life by first making me a spice rack out of bits of scrap wood:

and then making an extension to the work surface so that it fitted right into the corner and had shelves for storing water.  Perfect!

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)


I finally finished reading “Afffinity” and was glad I persisted.  It is, as the cover proclaims: “Spooky, sexy, stylish”.  It was darkly compelling in the end, with wonderful twists that almost leaves one gasping.  A slow burn, but it builds to a superb read and is well worth the wait.

Next up was a book donated by our guest (for the second year running!), Bob.

I raced through this quirky, well-written book, enjoying the education about moths along the way.  It was simply written but the complex layers of darkness were quickly evident – I felt immediately that this was a book to leave a mark.  Poppy Adams was compared to Mark Haddon and I concur on the similarities – an almost naive writing style that belies hugely complex & sophisticated matter.  Thank you Bob!

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

If I don’t watch out, this section will just end up being a gush of superlatives every month…

I’m struggling to describe the vibe as it’s all a little overwhelming.  Dreams are coming true in ways we only ever dared imagine.

The Camp Full Monte community seems to be established now.  Helpers come & give so much of themselves in return for living in this amazing space we’ve created; guests come, some come back already & many don’t want to leave; friends come & barely believe their eyes – wow, they say, look at what you’ve done!  The immediate community has absorbed us too – we’ve become a feature of the local village – an eko kamp to be proud of (and to snigger a little about no doubt!) and the elders come to visit, eye the garden & even concede the odd: “Svaka cast” and “Ljepo”.  All this makes me feel proud & rather funny inside – quite HOW did we get here?  It seems just a few short years we were grappling with a wilderness and task too big to contemplate.

It also feels exhausting at times – the endless chores of cooking, washing up, cleaning, tending the garden – and there are mornings when I wake and immediately feel the heat pressing in on me and the mozzie bites itching, that I vaguely wish for other things.  My back gave out for a few weeks – I was stupidly carrying one water bottle too many and pushed the limits of my body too far – and it was a good reminder of how important it is to keep strong & healthy here.  It’s tough work & physically demanding.  But, then, we’ve never been so fit!

Having an almost constant flow of people around us in June was fun but it’s emotionally draining.  Forming friendships is an investment – all that getting to know people’s stories and telling our same old tales of “why Montenengro, why this…” – but almost harder is the letting go.  I cried when Sara & Lluis left us.  I was no more sad to see Hattie, Dave, Nina & Stefan go but I’m confident I’ll see those guys again.  With Lluis & Sara gone, there was a hole & it hurt.

In amongst the happy chaos that is people living together & getting to know each other, I begin to crave space & peace.  I have to remember where to find me and how to be part of a married couple in all the madness too.  That’s the trick with the community experience – learning how to create a welcoming, shared space without being so wrapped in it that you can’t disentangle the individual you.

But in the scheme of things these are not tough troubles to have and we are more blessed than (probably) we deserve!  Keep those good vibes coming, dear Universe!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

No time for making headway into the ‘unplayed, unrated’ black hole in our music collection…  No chance.

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

The highlight of the month had to be the arrival of the 6 Amigos.

Three very old friends of Steve’s and their partners & friends.  Steve has been longing for them, and Mick & Jan especially, to come & visit.  He was dying for them to fall in love with Monte and our life and finally understand why we’re here.  They did.

It was a very special time  – only slightly marred by “Elton John Ankle” (see pic above!) – an insect bite that Jan got on her ankle at an Elton John concert the night before they travelled out & which became infected and nasty during the first few days of the visit & led to her having to have the wound administered directly with antibiotics, dressed by a nurse and Jan chanting “absolutley NO getting it wet…” forlornly as others jumped in the sea around her.  We were SO excited to see them all and the first night was ablur of eating, drinking, dancing, singing and generally catching up.  They arrived on our wedding anniversary, bearing gifts of Champagne & Port.  It was a little messy, but jolly good fun:

Steve and I both got a day away from the campsite and each other to be with the guys.  Steve took Mick & Jan around the Bay on a proud little tour and wowed them with all the best views and nicest places to have a coffee and I had the next day off lounging by a beach bar, reading a book and pretending to be on holiday!

It was so great to have them here and so sad to see them go.

I’m skipping to the highlights again as time is running out for getting this post up…

  • Full Moon Party & Total Lunar Eclipse – an incredible night that incorporated a German family turning up randomly and camping on the upper land, a bee sting, a massive thunderstorm, the building and most of us in it getting soaked and no chance of even seeing the sky never mind the moon for clouds, dog fights, an abrupt passing of the storm, a classic moon eclipse, much howling (by canines & others), insanely loud music, manic dancing, partying until 5.30am at which point Hattie fell off a wall whilst cleaning her teeth (don’t ask!) and having got up unscathed we decided it was definitely time for bed!
  • Another visit to the great Italian restaurant that Herceg Novi now boasts – this time with the 6 Amigos
  • Playing TacTic with Kalevi & Andrea – couchsurfers from the US and Costa Rica respectively
  • Puzzling cryptic crosswords with Peter – a lovely guy who joined us for about 10 days to pick our eco brains & fuss over Daisy

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Post again.  It’s official – a postman comes all the way up to the campsite to deliver a letter to us, turns round and goes back down the hill.  And in the meantime post that has been sent weeks ago to our house in Topla is NOT arriving.  The weak link in the chain has to be the Postie.  Looks like we inadvertently stumbled across Mr Efficient all the way up in Malta…

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

Tyre wall, recycling materials to make a kiln, making labels out of foil-lined milk cartons, making my own healing ointment from Nature’s herbs… Take your pick.

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

Apart from a downpour timed to coincide with the Full Moon and our party, and perhaps one other slight shower it has been DRY.

And HOT.  By the end of the month it was pushing 40 degrees.

The garden is starting to struggle and requires constant watering.  It now takes about 3 hours to do a decent watering job and keep the flowers, trees, veg & herbs topped up with liquids.  You can probably add another hour if emptying the Compost Tea tank too.  It’s a mission.

But the heat looks set in now until sometime in August or maybe even September so nothing for it but to get on with it and be thankful for the bounty the sun brings (early ripening tomatoes & chillies, etc).

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Painting by Numbers…

July 6, 2011 in Random by fullmonte | 2 comments

It’s 10.30 am on another gorgeous day in Paradise.

As I type this 2 of our guests are still sleeping in their tent and 2 have left us for the day to explore the area.

The sun is burning my foot  – the only bit of my body it can reach as I’m propped up at the bar in the basement’s shaded cool…

I can’t post pictures of the past weeks as in the time it’ll take to upload via our crappy dongle, the laptop battery will have run out so here’s a snapshot of what the season’s been like so far… (for “season” read from Mid May to current date)

  • Total number of visitors to the campsite so far - 65

  • Numbers of those contributing to our survival – 38

  • Out of the 48 days of the season so far, 32 have seen us hosting guests, 25 of those days we’ve had volunteers on site and only 7 of those days has the campsite been completely empty…

  • Most people here on one night (for Nik’s kinda surprise birthday party) – 28

  • Number of different nationalities of visitors so far – 10

  • Number of visitors under 4 years old – 8

  • People who enquired but didn’t turn up – 5

  • Numbers who didn’t book but just turned up – 5


  • Numbers of Gypsy Moth caterpillars again this year – depressingly 1,000’s & many trees stripped of their leaves

  • Numbers of actual Gypsy Moths – errrr, not so many… lots of caterpillar destruction went on this year we have to confess!

  • Numbers of crickets so far this year – errrr, not so many… Daisy has developed a taste for them I’m afraid to say!


  • Numbers of new creatures identified that fly, jump, hop, crawl, run and slither – we’ve lost count, probably 30-40+

  • Numbers of Full Monte clay objects successfully fired in the bespoke, handmade kiln – 20

  • Numbers of different food items eaten from the campsite & organic garden – 43 (18 herbs, 4 edible flowers, 5 wild foodstuffs & 16 home-grown fruit & veg)

  • Flowers… blooming 100’s!!!

June in Review is already hideously late and may not make it to the blog much before mid July!  It might just be worth reading when it finally does get posted…

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