Week 52 - ONE YEAR HERE!

We can't believe it has been one year already. I was planning on writing a long post looking back over the year - but I can't really be bothered now! :) We are just so happy here and we are very proud of everything we've done - especially as we had no idea what we were doing before (or now for that matter!) It can be hard work at times but we are building our dream and we wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Our family have been so supportive and helpful, as have all our friends - old and new, including all our lovely Bulgarian neighbours. We're slowly starting to grasp the Bulgarian language and although it still feels like we know nothing, it is amazing how much we have learnt over the last year.

So anyway, enough rambling.. onwards with the usual weekly update - it's been a great week, we've been very busy and the weather has been fab - averaging a minimum of 25 degrees everyday!

Lavender and rape fields

 

Sunday 3rd

 

After a bit of a slow morning we got going and headed into Chirpan to get our summer tyres put on and have the van cleaned as it was filthy. This was all successful and  ended up taking a couple of hours so we were back home by about lunch time.
 

Cows at the tyre place

Dirty van getting the tyres changed

Cleeean!

In the afternoon the sun was shining so Pete got back to work on digging the trench. He managed to get all the way to one end and we even made the hole through the wall to where the water metre is, which is great.

 

Digging into the water metre hut

The hole from the other side

 

Whilst he did that I was up in the kitchen with a huge box of mint that we'd collected from our friends house - it grows like crazy here. We were thinking of making mint sauce but lamb isn't widely available here so we thought it was a bit pointless! Not wanting to waste all the mint we decided to blend it and make mint ice cubes, which will be lovely in summer (with Pimms!?) We don't have any ice trays so I used plastic cups to freeze them in. I also juiced about 20 lemons to make lemon juice to freeze as well (lemons are about a 3rd of the price now than they are in summer.) Once I'd done all that Pete was still digging away, so I used the new sheets of rebar we'd bought to make all the sides for two more gabions.

 

Lemon juice

Loads of mint

Ice cubes freezing

Mint ice cubes - they taste better than they look!

Sides ready to be made into a gabion

When we'd both finished it was still lovely and hot so we decided to have a couple of cocktails in the garden (using mint ice cubes and lemon juice of course!) With the weather being so hot we've got into a routine of watering the veg morning and evening - so there a few photos in this post of our veggies starting to spring up.

 

Cocktail hour!

Enjoying the evening

Strawberries are flowering

Onions are doing well too

Monday 4th

Today we planned to go to our friends house in the next village to do some work in their garden. As we were going that way we decided to load up the van with rubbish from around the garden to take to the dump. The road to the dump is so bad you can only go after a long spell of good weather, so we haven't been able to go all winter and have a lot to get rid of! We filled the van up and headed off to SG. After stopping at the dump, and stopping to say hello to M & D and some other friends, we finally got to work just before midday.

Full of rubble and other rubbish

Scenic dump!

Pete spent all day strimming whilst I got a bonfire going, burning brash and dead leaves. It was a roasting hot day so we could work on our tans! :) We worked all day and then in the evening went over to M & D's for a couple of beers.

Working in the sunshine

Tuesday 5th

It was an early to start today as we were off to SZ to finally get our van registered and get BG plates! At 8am we picked up our Bulgarian friend - we'll call her V - who was going to translate for us and drove to the KAT office, with S & G in tow as they were doing their van too.

Thankfully it was a quiet day (we'd been told you can queue for several hours here) but still there was a lot of form filling in several different offices - we could not have done this without a translator. After all the paperwork and ECO tax was sorted it was time for the MOT. We were slightly worried as we've had a few problems with the van, but there was no need to be at all - he checked our brakes worked and that was about it! After checking the brakes and matching the chassis number to our documents he gave us the okay and off we went. There were a few more forms and then the old plates were replaced with the new ones. Easy! And amazingly it was all done, including S & G's, before midday. Feeling very pleased we headed home.

Goodbye English plates

We're now properly Bulgarian!

Back at home we were chilling out and having some Lunch when Hristo dropped round saying our new doors were ready. We drove up to his house (not far away but the doors were bloody heavy) and drove the doors back to our house - they look great. Feeling excited to finally be able to get on with the porch again Pete decided to finish off the rest of the block work - now we have all the proper measurements!

New (old) doors!

Pete finishing the block work

And it's done.



Whilst he did that I used some of his pug to finish off the bricks on the stone wall and fill in all the small gaps that were left on it. I also put together the gabions I'd prepared yesterday. At the end of the day I decided to bring all our seedlings outside as the weather is just so hot and it's colder in the house than out - we definitely need a greenhouse and/or cold frame for next year.

Finishing the last of the brick work

Making more gabions

Seedlings are outside in the warmth!

After a long and productive day we enjoyed a couple of beers out in the sunshine and then I made a traditional Bulgarian baked chicken and rice dish which was absolutely delicious, if I do say so myself!

My flower bed is blooming

Wednesday 6th

So today we had grand plans to get as much done on the porch as possible, starting with getting the doors in place - which we thought would only take us an hour or two. Oh how wrong we were! Some how it took us all day to get the doors properly put in, but we did it. First of all the gap between the block work was bigger than the door frame, which we knew but we didn't have the right thickness of wood to fill it, so we had to quickly drive to the wood yard to get what we needed. Once we were back we had to fix that wood into the concrete and then screw the doors into that. Obviously we needed to raise the doors up and make them level - which was easier said than done as the floor is completely wonky. Also the doors are just ridiculously heavy! Anyway, they look great and are all foamed in and, for now, we have two sets of front doors.

Wood up to fill in the gap

Me holding the heavy door in place

Pete foaming all the smaller gaps

Et voila! Our house looks so random at the moment - it will all come together soon, I hope!!

Two sets of door

We were feeling a bit knackered after that as it was such a hot day and we are not yet used to it, but we decided to crack on just a little bit longer. The next job is to get the lintels across, but because of the height of the doors we needed to raise our block work wall by 5cm. We thought of different ways to do this and then decided on just laying a dry mix of concrete whilst holding up a wooden frame. It doesn't look amazingly neat, but it is only to rest the lintels on and it is secure, so that's what counts.

 

In the evening Pete made a snack of crispy pigs ears and homemade tartar sauce, which were surprisingly tasty and we had another evening enjoying the sun. It is so nice to have the longer days!

Thursday 7th

We needed to do a little more work at our friends house in SG so we headed there first thing, as well as stopping off at the dump with another load of rubbish. Back in our own village we mowed the lawn at the house down the road and did a bit more weeding there too. This ended up taking all morning so when we got home we had a bit of lunch and chilled in the sun for a bit.

In the afternoon Pete got back to the porch - he cut out all the old re bar and got the big jigger jigger out to get rid of some more concrete from the balcony. After this was done we frustratingly had to put another stop to work the porch until next week - argh! This is because there are big storms heading our way this weekend and we can't lay any concrete, or take the old front door out, if it's going to rain. So we're waiting again.

Jigger jiggering

The old re bar has now gone

Whilst Pete was doing that I got all the wood we'd bought to use for lintels on the porch and I planed and varnished them all. Once I'd done that I moved into the veg garden - our radishes had got so big that they needed thinning out. Instead of throwing the thinnings away I decided to plant a new row of radishes so they weren't wasted (sadly about half of the thinnings have since died, but at least we saved a few!)

Planing the lintels

Lintels all varnished

Lots of lovely radishes!

After Pete had finished work on the porch he came out into the garden and fixed up the herb bed that he made the other day by drilling drainage holes in the bottom and lining it with plastic, so that is now ready for planting. In the evening I went to the garden down the road and to water the lawn for half an hour or so and when I came back Pete had cooked a yummy dinner and we decided to do a little fire outside as it was such a lovely, warm night. We couldn't believe that we could sit out all evening with just shorts on!

Herb bed nearly done

Fire!

Friday 8th

Market day again! Nothing to report from that, except we ended up buying a few tomato and pepper plants so that we can have our own veggies earlier than waiting for our seedlings to grow.

View of Spasovo on our way to Chirpan

It had been a bit of a grey morning and we even had a spot of rain whilst at the market, but it was forecast to clear up later in the day. Once we were home from the market we decided to have an afternoon off any big jobs and just did a few bits and bobs around the house and garden, including planting our new tomato and pepper plants out. I also planted a couple of marigolds along side the tomatoes as they help to keep pests off the vegetables. We also made some cloches as our neighbours have told us most veg still need to be covered at night.

We also rigged up a tarp over the front door so that our new doors don't get soaked if it rains. This has made it quite irritating to get in and out of the house!

Tomatoes with sticks

Protected from the rain

At about 4.30 we got cleaned up and headed down the bar to meet S & G. Our local bar doesn't actually open until the evening but S & G had bought their van, which is converted into a camper, and we sat outside it and they made burgers - it was great! We did get a few strange looks from the locals but it was a really fun evening. :)

Saturday 9th

Lilac and wild flowers in the bathroom

It was yet another day doing some work in the garden down the road, we had a bigger job to do and it ended up taking us several hours, it was almost 2 o'clock by the time we'd got home. Whilst we were down there the shop lady gave us a huge bunch of oregano - with the roots - for us to plant in our garden.

We were expecting it to rain this afternoon so we didn't plan to do much. Pete spent some time playing his guitar whilst I planted a few more seedlings upstairs. I asked Pete to fill the herb bed with soil and compost so I could plant out all our basil seedlings, so hopefully we will have plenty of basil soon. I am also attempting to grow lavender from cuttings, but we will see how successful that is. We have several packets of mint seeds that we've bought, but since realising that mint is so prolific here and that there aren't many ways to preserve it (we've already got plenty of dried mint!) we decided we didn't want to waste space in our veg patch growing it. So instead I decided to scratch out a small patch in our seating area and sprinkle all the mint seeds there. I also sprinkled lemon balm seeds and planted some of the extra oregano - my idea is that they will all spread and we can sit in a lovely aromatic garden!

Oregano planted

Loads of basil planted out into the herb bed

More veggies and flowers to come, plus growing lavender from cuttings

 

Mint patch - protected with old bricks for now

The rain actually never came, but we did hear huge rumblings of thunder for about an hour so it must have skirted us. It turned into another warm evening and we sat out under the stars again until quite late.

Sunday 10th

Today the rain did finally arrive. In the morning it was okay, Pete actually went outside to do some more digging in the trench whilst I did a massive clean up and tidy in the house. But by about 1 o'clock it was really starting to rain and there wasn't much else we could do. So as not to waste the day we decided to drive into SZ as we needed a few bits from the supermarket. This all went well, we even stopped off at the big garden centre and bought raspberry, gooseberry and redcurrant bushes - so that's exciting! We also managed to find wine yeast so we might get another batch of nettle beer going soon (or we'll wait now for the elderflowers so we can make champagne!)

It wasn't actually raining in SZ but we could see the clouds rolling over and it started pouring down on our way home. Back home the sun was shining and we had a big rainbow over our village, but since then it has rained continuously. Oh well, it's good for the veg and it's not meant to last long, we're meant to be back to warm sunny days again by Tuesday.

The rain is coming in SZ!

Rainbow over our village

I'll leave you today with some photos of our vegetables. You're probably not too interested in looking at seedlings, but we are finding it very exciting!! Thanks for reading everyone xx

We have about 15 lettuces (red and yellow) coming up

The beans and peas are shooting up fast

Spinach is also doing well

Cherry and apple blossom is now out and looking pretty