May.

Hello, I am back! And boy do I have some catching up to do!!! Thank you to the people who messaged making sure I was okay. :-) We've just been busy with the garden and guests! 

I actually have decided I will only do monthly posts from now on, with more of an overview of what we've been doing. As we are not doing huge amounts of work at the moment our days are not filled with exciting jobs to write about - so a daily post it not really necessary. (I'll see how it goes though, they might be way too long.)

Very early lavender, mid May

So I'll start with May for now...

I was away for a little over two weeks with my mum. We went to India and trekked to the source of the Ganges, in the Himalayas. It was fantastic!

Incredible mountains

Me at Gomukh

Before I left Pete and I stayed for a night in Sofia and went out for a few drinks. The next day I went on my merry way and Pete went to meet his mum and step-dad in the airport. They stayed for about a week and unfortunately the weather was a bit grim and it rained almost everyday. :-( Pete is a great host though and I'm sure everyone was fed and watered very well! Talking of watered... the rain has at least been fantastic for the garden and our veggies are doing great. Pete and his family did get time to do a bit of gardening, including planting out all the tomatoes, squashes and courgettes we'd planted from seed.

Getting our ale fix in Sofia

Pete's mum helping in the garden

More advice from our neighbour, Baba V

Plenty of fresh salad being eaten

On the first Sunday of the month it was the second monthly car-boot sale in Sredno Gradishte. We wanted to keep the bacon van rolling at this event, so we'd got everything organised beforehand and Pete's mum kindly went to give Pete a hand selling the rolls. From what I've heard it was another success and we sold out of sandwiches again!    

Pete and his mum at the monthly boot sale

Once his family had gone Pete had about 10 days to himself. He was meant to be having a holiday too but he did do quite a few jobs around the place... including mowing the campsite and our friends' gardens, finishing the campsite gate, fitting wires for the wisteria to climb up, strimming the garden etc. He also went down to the village football pitch and mowed it. This was a fantastic thing to do as it is left all summer to get overgrown and none of the kids can use it. We have already seen the pitch in use several times since mowing it, so feel very happy that we are helping the community. :-) The weather also perked up and he was able to do some relaxing in the sunshine.

Gate to campsite looking fab

Sunbathing doggy

I got back home on the 22nd and it was good to be back and see Pete and the animals. I was shocked at how big everything in the garden had gotten in only 2 weeks. Our strimmer (that we paid 150 lev to get fixed) had broken again (grrrr) so some areas of the garden were up to my eye balls! Luckily Pete had managed to get the main areas done before the strimmer broke. 

Gifts from India!

Home again

The veg were also huge and already some of the salad was starting to bolt and the first load of radishes were woody... one man cannot eat all this food alone! On the plus side we've already been harvesting courgettes and even have some green tomatoes and peppers showing! All the flowers I'd planted were also doing fab... everything was (and is) thriving. Happy days. :-D On my first day back we spent the whole day weeding the veg beds and almost every day since there has been work to do on the veggies - more weeding, tying up all the crawlers (which are growing inches a day!), picking out the tomatoes etc. It's a full time job this veg growing malarky!

Here are several photos of the garden on the day I arrived home...

Lots of salad we need to eat

Second batch of spinach coming as well as beans and Jerusalem artichokes

Courgettes planted with corn in our '2 sisters bed'

Beets and radish

Lots of leafy greens

Ps

Courgettes already

Green tomatoes 

The vines are beginning

Pretty flowers

Sage in flower

Tiny carrots

Over the next week I got a really bad cold and had to have a couple of days sleeping it off. We had a list of things to do before our friend arrived on the 1st of June, but because of me getting ill we didn't manage to get everything done. We carried on pottering about in the veggies and I mowed the campsite (again!) We also made a new big table for the garden (mostly using the bits from the old table) and put wires across our trellis to support the vines, which are also growing bigger by the minute. (Underneath these vines we planned to lay a stone patio - we already had most of the stone, which we had got for free from the local dump, but were waiting to lay it until we had the help of our friend.)

Re-sizing the old table top

A new, and very sturdy, base for the table

Another day was spent doing gardening at our friends house before they arrive here for a summer holiday. We also had a day out in SZ to do a big shop before our guest arrived and to take the strimmer back to the services. The guy in the shop tried to blame us for the problem (although we know it was not our fault) but luckily we persuaded him to look at it again for free. This is good, except that he has had the stimmer now for over a month. Anyone that lives here, in Bulgaria, will know that this is a bad time of year to be without strimmer!

On the 24th it was my birthday so we had an easy going day and a few drinks in the evening, which was lovely. Because I got ill we didn't do much else to celebrate until the following week, when we went out for dinner at the local hotel.  

Oh, we also had our first camping guests who were a lovely couple from America who seemed to thoroughly enjoy staying at our site. The weather was perfect for their stay and we even gave them some fresh spinach and chard from the garden. :-)

And that's all for May... not long this month and not too many photos. June is looking full-on as we have several friends visiting, which we are massively excited for! Summer has officially arrived here at Kukuvitsa Camping!! Until next month xx