Monday 12th September

Five thirty start and I know not why but I settled in to a few pages of Julius.  The mosque started up at six fifteen heralding in the dawn and what a beautiful morning it is.  I love the red glow of the sun before it softens into it's pink and blue haze and this morning it was a bonus....the moon was going down and managed to catch that as well.  

Washing done at cheap electricity rate and about to be hung out....coffee in the cup and all's good with the world.  What does my day hold?....how should I know....I've not had my second cup yet.  Oh and just for the record...it's the 14th March in Julius' land....

Monday continued

I'm knacked, knacked and thrice knacked.  I planted up the cherry tree garden, dug over the garlic bed, set to and started to dig out the right hand side border behind the cherry tree garden and ended up discovering yet another polythene mine...but this time it was serious stuff.  I'm sure the garden is going to be a foot lower when I've managed to dig it out but I bonfired lots of it but the wind got up.....and I chickened.  The garden is so dry that it would only take a spark.  Didn't hear the mosque tonight so I'm guessing that I was in the shower.  I just couldn't wait for his signal to stop...my body gave up.

So tomorrow I'm digging out the rest....I've cut back the sloe bush behind the wreck and the area is looking quite presentable.  I'm clearing it so that I can get the walkway clear between the wreck and the barn.  If the builders ever return, the first job is roofing the barn so that I can get my winter wood in there.  Hotfoot had about four tons delivered this morning and it makes it even more pressing to get mine underway....I'm thinking I might just have to phone the lads although it's still in the upper 20's and it is hot, hot, hot.....and not likely to get a full day in those temperatures.

Supper tonight....the remains of last nights spaghetti and mushroom thingy thrown into the slow cooker at fourish.  Delicious...sat out until I heard the first mosquito homing in and called it a day....update, emails and Julius calls....LN

Tuesday 13th September

Well it's the Ides of September today and quite appropriate...the Ides of March is now no more and it was a disappointing end....well...you sort of knew what was coming.  A visit to that Samodiva library seems to be on the cards....I understand that there is a good selection about the Burma campaign.  I'm getting hysterically, historically educated but I suppose I could always delve into the Chairman Mao that I haven't finished yet if I don't make Samodiva today, it ensures that the Chinese bot gives me the once over.

So what so far today?  Moved some more polythene, came in for a knife so that I could chop it away from the hedge line without bringing the hedge down and started on the PC.  Wrong....emails, one or two other favourite blogs.....wrote a reply to a contentious posting and then thought...what the hell....so I copied it and pasted it to Word with the intention of posting it when I get really peed off and it will happen.  Most times I'm on friendly blogs...I read postings, I make comments mostly funny but sometimes serious.  So I made one and did I rattle somebody's cage but then it was added to but with humour which seemed to compound the irateness if there is such a word.  Life's too short.  I worry about what I can change but if I can't then I don't worry....simple.

There I was minding my own business, looked up from my PC and bugger me.....one bastard bovine in the garden.  I went out, cow stick in hand but that bastard being couldn't remember where it had got in and of course, most of the garden is stock proof so it just stood there. I threw stones, it turned it's backside towards me, peed and dropped its load.  I chased it up the garden, down the garden to no avail so I heard the cowman's tractor coming along the road, flagged it down and three burly blokes got it over the terrace and on to the main road.  The fence is now fixed...two more planks down the right hand side of the garden and the barbed wire goes on when the sun has gone down....it's too hot to be out there now.  Twenty eight in the shade so I reckon I'll be staying in the shade for the next couple of hours or so.  One of the burly blokes said, 'It's hungry' and I couldn't quite manage in Bulgarian or Turkish, 'I don't give a flying whatsit, the farmer should feed the bastard'.

Catch you later....

Have you ever thought of getting an electric fence?  They're not very expensive and they're a lot less work than all that wood and barbed wire.

Quoted from Neil

Have you ever thought of getting an electric fence?  They're not very expensive and they're a lot less work than all that wood and barbed wire.

This is Bulgaria...and it's much more fun this way....you get to talk to men on tractors that come to help a maiden in distress....well not quite maiden more one that has been bowled over by there compassion...

No real update on today...went out when it was ok to do so...but the urge to eat overcame me and so as a quickie....fried egg and chips....not quite calorific concious,,,,but I reckon I'd worked it off in advance and was in credit...which is more than can be said for the rest of the UK...... I would say I'm in the 'black' but that would be so wrong...

LN..I have my fan mail to answer

Wednesday 14th September

Another hot one....a bit like yesterday I worked out in the garden until I could do no more so moved in and read for a while and planed the wreck...Looking at KD of S website and the  weather forecast for Kardjali, we're in for a few more days of the same.

Got on to the PC, moved into the lounge and thought about getting my head down but there was a man with a chain saw guaranteeing that there was not a chance.  I can't complain...he's the one that is going to get the old wreck roof beams into suitable lengths for burning through the winter so I couldn't very well leg it up the road and tell him to stop cutting hotfoot's wood and that the noise was upsetting me.  I'll get my own back on hotfoot when he does mine....

Headed into Djebel at about half past four just to get a few things namely beer and something for supper besides beer.  Got some paint to put on the lengths of ironwork that I dug out of the shrubbery...they will make good curtain poles when the rust is not showing through....Also bought an ironing board...why you might ask.  It's not that I've gone all smart like but if I am making curtains and there are a lot to do, I can iron the sewing line to make life a little less risky.  Straight seams...there's a first.

Just finishing off supper and decided to walk the garden and there is a ping from my phone.  My errant language teacher is stuck at the next village and is asking if I can go and fetch her....aren't I a softy.  Switched my supper off and headed the eight kilometres round trip.  I told her what a bad girl she was since I haven't seen hide not hair of her since the day she came round to escape the family.  She said that she was on holiday and did I fancy going down to Greece but the last two that I have seen since their return tell the story of multitudes of mosquitoes and they wear the badges of combat and not with pride.  So supper was spicy sausage with chilli, honey, pineapple and tomatoes served with rice.  Bit of good though I say it myself.

Nearly nine o'clock my end.  Can I just say to Danuta that I wish you a lovely time with our American friends.  Just make sure that they don't get too settled...they have lots of other friends to visit... .

LN....and it's goodnight from me...  

Thursday 15th September

What a strange night.  I had one of those dreams that you want to come out of and can't and so vivid in the morning until you forget it and you get snippets raising their ugly heads throughout the day....maybe too much fruit cake...

So up and watched the dawn...it's the most beautiful time of day, tomatoes on toast for breakfast closely followed by peach and ginger jam on another slice of toast.  Got the munchies today but I'm working quite hard in high temperatures so working it off as I go...hopefully.  Not sure I'm working the beer off though but to date no increase in inches but I haven't been on the scales.  In one of the shop yesterday, a lady was trying to set up one of those bio-scales that calculate everything even your date of birth (I jest).   She was having great fun so I left them to it.  It looked really complicated and I didn't want to get involved.  As long as my clothes still fit I'll give the scales a miss.

Working in the garden and a visit from one of my neighbours confirmed who was cutting hotfoot's wood so I've commissioned him to start on mine when he's finished hers.  A man with a chainsaw is more useful than a man with a tractor...   I've cleared my piles....of polythene, old grass and seeds and planted out a couple of honeysuckle but had to dig through very hard soil and fill it with decent stuff.  Just keeping my fingers crossed that they make it.  The rest of the cherry tree garden is looking healthy for a 'newby' and the marigolds that I planted out from one of the terrace pots are settling in.  The idea is that they will self seed for next year... well that's the plan but as a precaution I've taken off the seed heads and labelled them up ready for next year....

I've remade my wall hanging.  I kept looking at it and it wasn't long enough for where I've hung it so now it's about a meter and a half long and about 900 wide....I'll photograph it tomorrow in natural light...much better.

Eric Clapton on at full whack tonight.  No supper since I had a late lunch of oodles of tuna mayo and I think I'm full of bonfire smoke.  Need another shower and then early night...I have another dawn to catch tomorrow and I'm determined to finish clearing behind the barn...LN....hope it's sweet dreams tonight...

I had to look twice at your post tonight.  You talked about a man with a chainsaw and then 'I've cleared my piles...'  Ouch, that's one way of doing it, I suppose.  

I've been reading your diary for the last few weeks and I have been extremely envious of all the sun you're getting and the things you are able to grow.  I've spent loads of money on seeds, plants and gardening equipment and spent long painful hours digging and sowing and planting, and all I have to show for it is a few spuds and courgettes.  I've had two tomatoes so far and it's the middle of September.  The rest are out there on the vines, bright green and shiny, but they are so starved of sun and warmth that I'm not going to be able to eat them, except in a chutney perhaps.  Every day I promise myself that I will be moving to Bulgaria as soon as I can.  I've got at least another winter here in England to endure first, sadly.

Quoted from Neil

I had to look twice at your post tonight.  You talked about a man with a chainsaw and then 'I've cleared my piles...'  Ouch, that's one way of doing it, I suppose.  

No Neil...cleared them by having a bloody great bonfire.  Man with the chain saw is for the roof timbers that need to be made into sensible burning lengths for winter wood...tractor man was KD of S pal's plans to 'set me up'....

As for the veggies....quince coming to fruition, tomatoes still doing their stuff...peppers not much good but there again I'm not into peppers or courgettes. I'm pleased with my two melons though (steady..they are green and growing in the garden before any comments come winging back at me)....Last year I thought I was growing butter-nut squash but found out that they were ornamental gourds when the cows trampled half of them.  The remaining four are adorning my hall.  This year for me has been digging more of the garden.  I have no intention of having a garden of vegetables...I like my flowers and shrubs too much and since there is only me, not much use in growing for the troops but I do supply my neighbours with cuttings from shrubs that I brought out from England...and I make jam where my neighbours only put the fruit in syrup.  I've just made a tomato and chilli jam, peach and cinnamon and plum and ginger...now my neighbours don't do that....just need the gingham toppings for the lids to finish them off...

Friday 16th September

Yes I did catch the dawn...another superb beautiful day but I did miss a couple of hours of it this afternoon between three and five.  I decided to settle down with a book in the lounge and no, I don't have to finish the sentence do I.

The best laid plans...the intention was to clear the back of the barn which I partly did but my achievement for today was to get all of the old wood that served as a fence, before the barbed wire went up, from the bottom of the garden to the top and break it into suitable lengths for kindling for the winter.  Now you might ask why I am thinking about winter when it's 34 degrees and I'm asking myself the same question but when the men come back I shall be here and there getting supplies and days sort of go....hence the forward planning.  So now I am the proud possessor of a sand delivery bag of kindling, a pile of 'keeping it going if it needs a lift' stuff and the rest will be delivered as soon as I get storage sorted.  Before I get it into the barn there has to be a concrete floor laid and a new roof and the present storage in the wreck isn't large enough since I shall probably order three or four tons.  Last year I got caught out and stitched up on delivery costs not being able to estimate how much I wanted and it was easy for them to say that I'd only ordered one cubic and not one ton and still charge me the same delivery costs....not this year.....one delivery....one delivery cost.

So I've just come in....the bonfire is still burning getting rid of the leaves and twigs that aren't worth storing and I'm desperately in need of a shower smelling almost as bad as the bonfire.  I love them but don't you honk afterwards. Put my outside landing lights on to finish up outside and spotted three very ready plum tomatoes that I'd missed earlier. They're now sitting in the kitchen and I shall definitely be growing them next year.  Masses of fruit and delicious when cooked so I'll  be saving the seeds.

Short and sweet tonight. That shower is calling me and I think it's a little beer to wash away the soot....LN...