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| Now this is a nice place to have your first cuppa of the day |
Yesterday. The alarm went off and we got up and got ourselves moving as usual. A once again taking the girls out for their morning doings while I stuttered into life and made a brew. A decided to take these onto the balcony which was a great idea and we had a really nice time sat there while we sipped and enjoyed the scenery and the sound of all the birds.
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| Can you spot the woodpecker |
There really are a lot of birds around here at the moment and one I was watching in the pear tree was this woodpecker. I only had my short lens so the picture isn't that clear but it stayed there for quite a long time. We also had jays and swallows (of course) and finches and a huge stork which floated over as well. So much life around here.
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| Lovely pancake for breakfast |
We were greeted just before I cooked breakfast by the Little Lady who brought over some pancakes for our breakfast. We had one each and then I was still hungry so, expecting to be out with Julian at KAT for a fair while, I made more breakfast for myself in the form of a duck egg and bacon butty. Just before A headed to collect the men we had a call from Bekir and he had some work to do at home so we won't be getting them back until Monday as Friday (today as I type this) is Byram to celebrate the end of Ramadan so it is a national holiday.
I was meeting Lyubo at KAT for 9.30 to get the number plate and registration done for Julian finally. For those of you not up on this situation the DVLA accepted an invalid format of chassis number on the V5 and so when I went to register him last year they were unable to do it, despite the clear explanation that the 0 had been input as a D or something like that. Anyway, Lyubo has not let this go and has been talking to the boss man at our local KAT to get them to accept it. They have been making positive noises so off we went. I arrived dead on time and about minute after Lyubo came jogging over having walked the two miles from his office to meet me! What a man! To cut a long story short, however, we did not have a successful visit. The boss man was not there as he and my paperwork were in Sofia. At first I was told to go back at 2pm today but then the man who has been dealing with my case (and who remembered me from last August!) ran over the road from the offices to the carpark to say "no, come on Tuesday at 8.30" so that'll be me on my own trying to get this sorted out. I may need more credit on my phone.
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| Industrious wasps |
I drove back home not too disheartened as they were all very positive and it did seem they are ready to give me the registration. Julian is now sat on the land waiting his next trip. A couple of things of note; I got very scared as I drove into town before the meeting as there was a police checkponit and the policeman stepped out as I approached. Fortunately he stopped the truck in front of me. Secondly as I parked him I noticed the wasps building a nest in one of his inlets; that will need to be sorted out but I have still not got round to it. A job for in a few minutes or tomorrow, maybe.
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| Blooming marvelous |
And that was pretty much it for me for the day. I spent the rest of it on paid work and was pleased actually to get on with that as I could take today off completely. A headed into town after I got back to go food shopping, light shopping (for the vestibule) and pick up some more circuit breakers for me. She was gone a fair while and when she got back was pretty tired so the planned trip to try and get more sawdust from the carpenter got put off. The previously mentioned event with the watering round occurred which was a downer but I did get some pictures of some of the flowers which are appearing now.
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| Trailer moved to the dust bowl |
Oh one other thing that we did manage to get done was to drag the trailer from last year out of the undergrowth and get it onto the dust bowl where the spoil pile used to be. We also had managed to get a washing machine run done on the limited water supply and this was hung out and dried in about two minutes flat. The temperature was showing as about 36 degrees while we were out moving the trailer. Pretty warm!
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| Sun behind a cloud, very briefly |
The evening was a quiet one and the sunset was pretty impressive as the sun descended behind the tiny cloud that seems to be there every evening at the moment. I missed the finish of the sunset as we were out putting the chickens in their house. I had forgotten a torch so it was hard to tell where they all were however eventually I found Ginger/Baker roosted outside so I picked them up with no chase and put them inside.
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| Gorgeous start to the day |
It was really warm last night. 28 degrees on the thermometer when we checked at about 10pm, and we plugged the fan in and switched it on full. This remained on all night, though I did turn it down when I went to the toilet in the night, and A finally turned it off as the sun was coming up. There was a big party in the local town last night that we could hear until we put the fan on so it served a double purpose. It was a glorious morning that greeted us when we finally got up and A went to let the chicks out while I went on the balcony to get pictures of the morning.
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| All of the birds, out for breakfast |
The girls were all stood waiting to be let out and jumped straight out of the door, the hens to get to pecking and the ducks to have a swim. I did hand the camera down to A to get a closer picture of them both in the water but as she approached they hopped out. Camera shy little things.
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| Dual language labels for the cables in the roof |
What I achieved this morning can be summed up in one word; electrickery. First of all I switched all the power off and disconnected two of the five UK sockets that are in Room 13. These will be transferred into the guest suits next week. Next I set to planning my consumer unit for upstairs and realised pretty quickly that it was actually much too small. This changed my plans from wiring things in to just planning and preparation as we decided to not go shopping today, including to the carpenters, because of the national holiday. I have now got all my layout of the consumer unit sorted and I made labels to put on all the cables in the roof.
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| Loosing the roots on the lavender plant |
A had her plans as well and got stuck into them straight away before the real heat could hit. First of all she was repotting the lavender that was on the balcony to match what Bekir had done. Hopefully this will let it flourish as we both love the smell, and it does keep mosquitoes away in the bedroom when it is dried and hung up.
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| Giving the plants a good hoeing |
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| Crops getting there |
The next thing she did was get into the garden to do some weeding. She took her present with her and I was able to catch her just as she finished so she posed for a photograph for the blog; outstanding. The plants are really starting to come along well now, and this without any additives just weeding and watering and good sunlight every day.
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| Kids coming over for their sweeties |
I was spending more time up in the roof space where I worked up quite a sweat fixing the cable tidies along the route that I want the power to take for the guest suite. It was not as hot up there as I had feared it would get however it was quite hot enough and I was soaked through by the time I stopped. Around mid morning Rambo started barking and the first of our sweetie visitors had arrived. They didn't stay long but respectfully took a sweet each from the selection I had reminded A to get in town earlier.
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| Lovely old globes cleaned and good as new |
We have decided to keep the old light fittings in the guest rooms and so today A took them out to the water barrel and scrubbed them clean then left them out to dry. They are now inside again and looking lovely. We are probably going to also keep these lights along the corridors and so we'll be saving every fitting we possibly can. I love the idea of these elements from the old building hanging around into the new use.
Neither of us was very hungry by lunch time and anyway we were invited to the Little Lady's for coffee which was really nice; an old local who had moved to Cyprus was back on his holidays and spoke a bit of English so we conversed for a while. The kmet was also there with his daughter and wife and it was quite a crowd. As we left we were once again gifted with a pile of produce including more cucumbers. We went back home and I did a little more in the roof, this time running the power across to where it needs to drop for the boiler. I held off on doing any more as I don't know where Bekir and Sally are planning to feed the power through but at least the concept of my tidy cables is there.
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| Piles of cut grass drying in the sun |
Then came the main job of the day which was A with her strimmer doing the first bit of clearing the long grass which I should have done with the scythe but I've put off doing it for fear of the sharpening process. It took a bit to get it set up right as we changed from the string to the blade but eventually it was running smoothly and she got loads done. Once I had done my sparkying I went down to help and got the rake and collected it all up into piles. I WILL get the scythe sharpened, maybe on Monday I can ask Bekir for a hand. I want to clear the rest of the front really before the parents arrive.
We were both totally exhausted after this effort and went to rest (I had a cheese and tomato salad - for that read I ate a tomato and had a few slices of cheese) and eventually ended up in bed sleeping. It was about 4pm when we woke and I decided to make a start on running the lights for the roof space. I put the switch up first but this was such an awkward thing to do as you didn't have a screw to connect the wires you had to force them through a gap and when I did it wrong the whole thing exploded into parts that were then a real pain to reassemble that when I had done the switch I stopped. Tomorrow we will go get a bigger consumer unit and I'll get the lights connected and working before Monday. Yeah!
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| Baker not looking very well at all |
After this there is a bit of a sad story. We went to feed and water the birds and I went ahead to empty the pond (which was green and scummy) and I saw the Baker was sat in the doorway not moving much. I emptied my watering can into the now clean tray and went to get more and A went in and found that Baker was in a bad way, seemed to have lost an eye, and really wasn't looking great. I picked her up with no trouble and we carried her over to the neighbours where Usmivka and the Special One looked at her, cleaned her eye with water they sprayed using their mouths, and shrugged their shoulders.
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| Antibiotics in the water, hopefully she'll recover |
We decided to separate Baker and so we put her into one of the little rooms down the flat roof. Then I went onto twitter and after some advice worked out it was probably Coryza. This is basically a common cold type thing but when it affects birds it is pretty serious. I do not know if she has lost her eye, or if it has just been pushed round by the swelling. We do have antibiotics so we are treating the whole flock but little Baker is going to be kept separate for a while.
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| Superb dinner which cheered us both up |
Dinner today was steak with wedges and the green beans that the Little Lady gave us the other day, cooked up in butter and garlic. It was super tasty and frankly this was needed; we're both feeling so grubby with not being able to wash properly and doing that grass earlier covered us in dust and bits of plant matter. The water has been on and off all day and the washing machine, which we have tried to run, has just about limped through three loads (the final one may be finishing as I type this and will be hung out to dry over night as it is forecast to be about 28 degrees at midnight tonight.
I'm going to stop this now, go and have a wash in the drum, and hopefully sleep well with the fan blowing again all night. Here's to the water board sorting their problems out and getting us water back and fast!
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