55.

 

Hello again! Chestit Velikden (or Happy Easter) to everyone for yesterday!

We've had a nice week getting bits and pieces done but generally being quite chilled out. Our camping guests have postponed for a week or so, so we have not had our first guests here yet... but we are ready for them when they come! Not tonnes to write about so hopefully it won't be too long, but we'll see..!

 

Tuesday 26th

 

We woke up to rather a miserable morning so we sat in bed with our cups of tea, reading and deciding what to do with our day. At about 10 it stopped raining hard and just started to drizzle, so we got up and went for a walk to the shop to get bread.

 

Hat, raincoat and wellies are back :(

Beautiful smelling clematis

Jewel bug in a wild rose

By the time we'd taken Lucy for a stroll around the village and got home it had stopped raining, but was still quite overcast and gloomy. Pete had a hankering for some biscuits so decided to spend some time in the kitchen coming up with some delicious creations... home made Hob Nobs and peanut butter cookies, yum.

 

Biccies

Whilst he was doing that I went back up in the walnut orchard to get a few more things ready for our campers. I extended the hose and attached a tap that we'd bought so that the have access to water up there. I also hung our new hammock chair from a tree and hung bunting in the entrance way to make it look pretty. :) Once all that was done it was time to do some more strimming... will it ever end!? Pete was still busy so I got the strimmer out myself and did a few patches under the trees and around the edges that Pete had not got to yet. After a while Pete came up to help and he carried on with the strimmer whilst I cut down about a million little stumps that were poking through the ground. After all that work the place was ready for guests and we thought it looked rather good!

 

Rudimentary water access

 

Place to chill in the orchard

Flags at the entrance :)

Nice camping spot

Once we'd finished up in the orchard it was definitely time for a tea break and to sample the biscuits. The sun was now starting to appear so we had a little look around our veggies and did a bit of weeding. We decided we wanted to plant parsley in it's own little bed so we quickly knocked up another wooden bed like the one we'd planted the basil in. This didn't take long at all and whilst we had the tools out I also made a wooden sign for our campsite. Once the bed was finished we filled it with soil and compost and planted the parsley.

 

Courgettes coming up

2 varieties of spinach doing well

Broccoli has popped up

Turnip and beans are doing well

New parsley bed

Camping sign!

In the evening the sun had come out so we headed up to the top of the orchard to have a beer and enjoy the view.

 

Lovely evening

Wednesday 27th

 

A glorious sunny day today so we took advantage of the weather and decided to lay a render top on our garden wall. We did this together and it took us all day to get it all smooth and lovely.

 

Cement mixer is out again

Laying the render

All done

We finished the wall at about 3.30 so we had a late lunch and then nipped into Chirpan to get a few buildings bits. Once we were home we took Lucy out for a walk, taking our camping signs with us to put in place on the way. Whilst doing this we saw our neighbour, who came over to help us put them in - he was asking about our guests and seems very happy with the campsite plan, which is so great!

 

Pretty mallow flower

Hristo and Pete getting the sign post in

And here it is!

Pete getting the second sign in

Thursday 28th

 

As our guests were possibly arriving tomorrow I thought I'd better do a big clean up of the house, which needed doing anyway! This took me all morning and whilst I did that Pete was outside working hard at digging yet another trench. This trench is only about 4 metres long and is for a water pipe to get to where we want an outside sink. Pete managed to dig about half of it in a morning, which is very good going.

 

Trench digging again

Once I'd finished cleaning and tidying we had a quick lunch and a coffee and then decided to turn our hand back to our garden wall. We planned to build a small fence here to keep the chickens out so we started by screwing the uprights in place. This ended up taking a lot longer than expected because we cut them to the wrong length and had to do them all again - annoying!

Uprights in for fence

Once we'd finally finished the wall we had a quick shower and then it was off to SG for drinks at K & R's house. We walked to the village, which is a gorgeous 45 minute walk over the hills (less lovely in the middle of the night after a few glasses of wine, but hey!) There were a few people over their house and they had a big bonfire going - it was a really great night.

 

Gorgeous walk

Drinks at K & R's

Friday 29th

 

We were feeling slightly worse for wear this morning but we managed to drag ourselves up and out to the market by about half nine. It was quite a quick shop this week as we didn't need too much food and we hadn't organised a list of building stuff we needed so just got what we could think of off the top of our heads. It was quite a cold and overcast day but when we got home we thought we'd get on with finishing our garden fence. We planed and put lengths of wood in place and then made holes and threaded rope through the uprights. We decided to use rope as we like the look and it is very inexpensive, however once we'd finished we were unsure on it as it looks a bit too modern compared to the rest of our house and garden. But never mind, we'll live with it for now!

 

Drilling the holes

 

Fence is finished

 

Just as we were finishing it started to rain so we retreated to the house and chilled out for the rest of the afternoon. Pete had also forgotten to take his hayfever tablets this morning so was feeling a bit crap. It was so cold in the evening that we even put the fire on. The only other thing I did was to de-head the wild chamomile we'd picked so we can dry it out and make tea.

 

Chilling by the fire

Chamomile tea

 

Saturday 30th

 

So having been very disorganised yesterday we had to make yet another trip into Chirpan this morning to buy more building stuff - mainly we wanted gravel so we could start work on our fence for the campsite. Frustratingly the big wood yard, where they sell the gravel, was already closed for Easter so it was a bit of a useless journey. Although we did buy some dark varnish for our fence, which we hoped would make it blend into the garden a bit. Once we were home I got on with painting the fence whilst Pete carried on with digging the trench for the water pipe. We're now happy with the fence - the varnish has made all the difference. :)

 

Much better now

Trench is dug

Pete finished the trench and we decided to try and get over the old stone sink we want to use. Pete managed to roll it over a few times but it was insanely heavy and I couldn't help lift it at all, so we'll have to wait until we have a strong man round to help us! We also had a look if we could re-use the tap from the old outdoor sink, but it was so old and rusted that it just would budge, which is a shame. We then lay the water pipe, insulation and plastic and filled the trench back up with earth.

 

The old sink we can't move

And the old tap we can't use

 

Trench is gone again

In the evening we took Lucy out for a walk and then had dinner out in the garden before heading inside and watching a film.

 

 



Sunday 1st May

 

Today was Easter here in Bulgaria - and a beautiful, hot day it was! We woke up late due to being rudely awoken twice in the night by Bilko bringing in mice and chasing them around our bed. Once we were up and had had a cuppa we went up to the kitchen to dye some eggs. This is a Bulgarian tradition and apparently they fight with the eggs (like conkers style) and the person who has the surviving egg will have heath and good fortune for the year. We weren't expecting to see anyone today but just incase someone popped round I thought we'd better dye some eggs, plus it's just nice to have pretty coloured eggs in the fridge!

Different coloured dyes (the dye was bought from Lidl - sold especially for egg dyeing)

Pretty eggs!

We decided to take it easy today, it was a national holiday after all! We did a bit of weeding in the veg garden and then Pete set to work boiling huge pots of water and sterilising a big plastic tub, ready to make elderflower wine. Whilst he did that thinned out and planted some more veggies. I also harvested our second load of radishes - white ones this time. Sadly some of our bean planted have failed and had to be removed, so I replanted some more beans and hopefully they will be successful.  

 

Big radishes

Boiling and sterilising

Once I'd finished in the garden I went up to the orchard to start work on clearing the area for the swimming pool, which we hope to put up again soonish. Before starting that I went to have a look at the small compost bin we had made and used last year when we were in the tent and the chicken coop was still up here. We had only stopped using it in December, so the top layers still needed to rot down, but I was very pleased to find a good amount of amazing looking compost - excellent! I was not so pleased to find a load of massive grubs (larvae of the June Bug, we think..) that I made Pete come and pick out to give to the chickens. Eurgh.

 

We've made compost :)

Horrible things!

After the grub ordeal Pete went back to sterilising his tub and I made a start on moving the old straw bales from around the swimming pool area. We'd used them last year as seats around a fire pit, but we'd left them out all winter and they were now rotting and had grass growing through them. I collected them up and put them in a pile - they will be added to our big compost bins when we get around to building them.

 

Moving old straw

By the time I'd finished this Pete had sterilised his pot and filled it with water and a lot of sugar, so we went out to collect elderflowers from around the village. We were only out for about half an hour and we got nearly 200 heads - and still there are plenty more that haven't bloomed yet, so we might be making some more next week!

 

Picking elderflowers

Back home we had to wait an hour or so for the hot water in the tub to cool before adding the elderflowers. So in the mean time we went up to the swimming pool spot and Pete strimmed it whilst I collected stone from around the field and made the path look pretty. We decided to keep the long grass around the pool in an attempt to try and hide the blue plastic mass the pool is when it's up. We are still unsure of when to put the pool up as it needs a lot of maintenance, but it would be nice to have for when our guests come.

 

The pool platform is completely overgrown

This is the old fire pit and pool area before

And now it looks lovely

Once we'd finished that it was time to add the elderflowers, lemon and yeast (actual wine yeast this time!) to the sugar water and take it upstairs to ferment. Once his was all done it was time to call it a day and we spent the afternoon sipping shandies in the sunshine. In the evening we decided to have a BBQ to celebrate Easter, and although we sadly didn't have any lamb (the traditional Bulgarian Easter meal) we made up for it by cooking sardines over the fire - the second time we've eaten fish since we've lived here! We ate the sardines with a salad, that was entirely grown in our garden, and a potato salad. Yum yum. After dinner we skyped Petes mum and then sat out for a couple of hours playing cards by the fire - a great day!

 

Picking the flowers to go into the tub

And it's ready to ferment

Relaxing time for Lucy as well!

Amazing dinner

Eating by the fire

Sunset below the haze

Monday 2nd

 

A bit of a grey morning - the weather is quite unpredictable at the moment - so we ummed and arred about what to do today, as most of the jobs on the list involve being outside. In the end we decided to just risk it not raining and went for doing a second coat of render on the porch. We did this together - Pete got the render on and I followed him around and smoothed it all out. It took us all day and we did a pretty good job, even if I do say so myself - I got it quite smooth and made all the corners rounded.

 

Pete at work

Finished side

Finished front

This evening we've been inside as it's been a chilly evening and I think it has even started raining a little bit now (hopefully not ruining our rendering.) I've written the blog whilst Pete's made dinner and played guitar.

 

Thanks for reading everyone! :) xx