Feels like spring

As we come to the end of January the weather has changed dramatically and suddenly there is a smell of spring in the air. It's been warm during the days and there are buds appearing on trees, while the "flags" have started to grow again as well down the front garden. It may be this that has caused us to kick into gear and get so much done but I'm not totally sure. Either way we've had a busy few days. I'm going to keep it chronological this time as it'll be quicker I think.

Thursday

Hazy across the valley first thing

There was a frost on the ground early in the morning

The kebab shop in town

Thursday began as usual with a brew and breakfast and then A heading out to go shopping in town while I worked away, and did a washing load which I got hung out before she got back as per usual. It was a frosty start to the day, not something we've seen often recently as there's been snow on the ground, but it cleared pretty quickly. By the time we went down into town to meet SandS for kebab at the little place in the centre it was really warm and we wished we had eaten outside but never mind; the kebab was super as usual. A managed to finally find some egg cups in a little lev shop so now the next time I make soft boiled eggs it'll be much easier to eat them.

A staining the balcony furniture

The two chairs looking lovely

Thelma helping me make the raised bed

The sinks will work OK together

I was stuck at my desk for most of the day but A broke with tradition and rather than rest all day she headed outside into the lovely warm sun with the balcony chairs and the wood stain and set about painting them all over in preparation for the summer. It took her all afternoon to do two chairs but they look brilliant now. I did get away from my desk briefly and took the time to assemble the next frames for the next raised bed; my plan was to get this fitted before the end of the week so we could make use of it. At the end of the work day we both went down into the kitchen to check out the sinks. The issue here was I had decided, rather arbitrarily, that we needed to buy another sink for my washing up area. The more I thought about it the more I felt that the two sinks we already have would actually work together and I wanted to see if this was correct. We offered them up in the space and it turns out that yes, we probably can use them together. I'll have my rinsing sink on the other side to my original plan but I can cope with that.

Salad? In winter?! Why not?

The lovely Pahlenka with everything

Two Shashlaks for main course

Neither of us were feeling the love for cooking that evening and we decided to take ourselves out for dinner to our favourite restaurant. When we got there it was obvious a large function was taking place as the tables in the large eating area were laid out all around the edges of the room. Sure enough later on we heard the singer doing a Turkish rendition of "Happy Birthday". It was a very enjoyable meal and everything we had was superb, including the salad that A was unusually in the mood for. We also both wanted Shashlak so we got different meats and did a bit of a swap. The puppies were very pleased to get their chunks of meat for their dinner when we got home.

Friday

Thick fog just clearing as I get home from town

Looking across our village as it clears

Evidence of A working, but no sign of her

Rambo and Thelma watching for A to return

I headed out before breakfast on Friday into town to do a few chores including banking and finishing the insurance for the trailer. This was a very easy job and I also got some good quality card with which to make a model railway building I had downloaded. It was very foggy when I left and remained so right up until I got back to the village when the sun just started burning through. A had been busy while I was out but was no where to be seen when I got back; it turns out she had been called over to the neighbours by the Little Lady for a coffee; both Rambo and Louise were stood waiting for her, but Thelma was too engrossed in her stick and didn't seem to notice she had gone.

Clean hay throughout the room, and it's all swept nicely too

Kat on the prowl

Beaker watching carefully

Ginger is very big now

Kit glares at A

All of them out and scratching around

When I left that morning A had been heading over to the chicken house to sweep it out and put fresh hay in and all that fun stuff to stop it stinking too badly. She got this done and finished up but forgot to get pictures for you to see what she'd done. When I got back she realised and grabbed my camera and went to get some shots before they wrecked the joint once more. While she was over there she got some brilliant pictures of the flock; what excellent characters these birds have. They are still providing us with regular eggs as well and are noisy as ever when they are hungry, which is almost all the time.

Sat on the porch, after breakfast with the puppies

I was really hungry when I got back so I set to making some scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast for both of us, though it was now closer to lunch. A was still out in the garden digging and she finished just as the eggs went on. It was so lovely that we decided to make use of the (now dry) re-stained balcony chairs and sit on the porch to eat our food. It was a good call and after we finished the puppies (all three of them) were around and we played with them for a bit before getting back to work.

Louise being taken for a ride by A

Digging out the trench ready for the raised bed

After a bit of faffing the first level was straight and true

An interested observer

We had plenty to be getting on with. A was back into the garden to do a final weeding and then take the barrow full of plants, grubs and slugs over to the chickens for a treat for them. Louise got in on the action by riding with the plants, though just after this shot she jumped off. I was on with my allotted task for the day which was to dig and situate the raised bed; I really wanted to have them totally done that day. At about 2pm my alarm went and it was time for the daily photograph which I've been getting better at doing on time; there was another type of local down on the path when I headed over there and I just about managed to stop her being scared off by Rambo who HATES cows.

Here I am using the circular saw for the first time

The third chair gets its new stain

Another raised bed is completed

With A's help I lifted each frame onto the previous one and then fixed it in place with braces. The wood I've used this time was the remainder of this batch from last year and was all the bad quality and warped lengths which made it quite a challenge to get straight and true. By sitting on it, shoving it and generally using brute force I got it all lined up good enough. Then it was time for the excitement of using a new tool for the first time; the circular saw. I measured twice and then started cutting. The first attempt wasn't all that great but I learned from the mistakes and by the time I'd cut the third and final sloping piece it was a simple job. A spotted me throughout and lent a helping hand where needed which made me calmer in case of accidents, and made it easier just in general. I was distracting her from finishing off her job of staining all the furniture by asking for this help and because of me she only got one more done on Friday. The raised bed was complete and we shoveled the soil back inside together and that was enough for me; I was not quite finished (we still needed the manure from the village pile) but I was way too tired by this point to push a wheelbarrow through the village four times fully laden.

Using the snips to harvest these dry weeds

A big bucket of weeds to dry

It ain't a bad life

Before we headed in for the night I had one more task on my mind and I dragged A along to help. As part of my model railway reading I have been getting concerned about how much I would be spending buying trees for the layout. There are loads of tips and hints for how to make your own and I noticed, next to the driveway, a load of weeds that look like they could be used to make trees. We went down there with a bucket and filled it completed without really even trying; these are now drying in the gardening room and I'll be having a good at making trees at some point over the summer. Even though it had been such a lovely day it was still quite cool in the evening and so the fire was lit and we had a really relaxing evening. We ate quite early and then watched the second part of The Hobbit before heading to bed (we'd watched the first on Thursday night).

Saturday

How I was bracing the floor....

And how I'm doing it now

Got the first two boards back down

More supplies required

We were both really tired when we went to bed and slept well but I had one of those strange sleeps where you don't actually feel sleepy as you're lying in bed and then when you wake up the next morning you feel exactly the same; strange. I did get the chance to think a bit while I was dropping off and I solved the problem of the joists underneath the flooring in Sassy's room. The boards were not quite as secure as I wanted with the old way of doing it and I decided to change tack and use much more wood than previously planned to make it more stable. I have since worked out that I'm going to use about five times as much timber doing it this way however it isn't that expensive and it'll make the floor last longer. I was straight up and working on this in the morning but A wasn't feeling great; her back had seized up a bit and she was resting it as is only wise. I worked away in Sassy's room with my diminishing supply of screws and wood and eventually ran out of screws so headed down to the shop, with the trailer, to stock up. It was great to be driving it while it is now legal. I bought three more packets of the narrow strips of wood, some paint stripper (explained by saying "So I paint, and then later, I clean" and the lady understood which was nice) and I bought her out of 60mm screws which amused her as well. The wood loaded into the trailer well and I drove back with no problems.

I'd seen the kmet on the way out of the village and talked to him about the fact that our water had once again completely gone off. He was surprised and made noises about calling ViK which then confused me as we've not been on ViK for ages and weren't expecting it to be back on until May or June at the earliest. As soon as I got back home from the shops I went to see how A was feeling (not great; she was back in bed with the heated blanket on) and then headed out to switch over to ViK and see if it worked and wouldn't you know it did. As I was out there I was called for coffee by the kmet to the Little Lady's and so I persuaded A to get up and we went over and drank coffee with some of her guests, sat outside in the sun and it was lovely. We'd left the puppies over on our land but Louise managed to squeeze out of the gate and came over to look for us. It's so nice to be welcomed over there but pretty soon her guests were leaving and so we headed back as well.

A gets started planting out lots of seeds

She's got a good routine going by this point

A few trays of seeds planted

Lettuce and some herbs in another raised bed bay

More seed trays ready and let's hope they grow

The end of the day in Sassy's room

A new fence is being built over there

I went up to Sassy's room to finish off the board I had been working on when I ran out of screws and then went down to do the manure for the raised bed. That was quite an effort, pushing the fully laden wheelbarrow through the mud that is now thick on the side path, but I got it done eventually with much puffing and panting. A was really pleased that she had got up out of bed and decided that, with how warm the sun was, she would be OK to do the chore she had planned for the day which was to plant lots of seeds into seed trays. This was one of the pressures for me to finish the raised bed as rather than build custom seed tray benches for the balcony (as I had suggested) we were going to just put all the trays under glass in our raised beds. She worked through the afternoon and got everything planted that we wanted at this stage. They have all been watered and now we wait and hope. It wasn't just us working away in the village; down in the low field Usmivka and the Little Lady were hard at it putting a new fence up. I was finding that with my new method of flooring I was moving a lot slower than expected and so by the time I called it a day I hadn't finished the floor as planned. This is a shame but as I said the end result will be better. The last board of the day was another happy occasion as I had to trim a 3cm at its widest point triangle off the wall edge for it to sit flush. The new circular saw made this extremely easy to do and I'm chuffed to bits with how well the cut board fits in place.

Beautiful afternoon with the sun on the hills

Good bye sun

It was a lovely evening and sunset but once again we lit the fire and had a super cosy living room. I cooked steak, hand cut deep fried chips and butter fried mushrooms for dinner and they were lovely, though I did over cook my steak very slightly. These were from Lidl and it's so unusual to find even slightly good steaks over here; I think we're going to try and get some more if we can to stock up. We finished off The Hobbit trilogy last night and I only shouted at it a few times which isn't bad. Unfortunately A's back was still pretty sore and so she had to go to the spare room to sleep because she was worried about disturbing me.

Sunday

A few more boards down this morning

She's back to baking again

And so we come to today. I woke up at the usual time and found that A was still asleep so I crept around as quietly as I could to try and avoid waking her. The puppies were not interested in this and kept having to be shushed but I did let her get quite a good lie in before she came through for a brew. I got loads of tidying done before she woke up though I put off sweeping as I didn't want to disturb her. Her back was really bad this morning and she could barely move which was quite a worry so I told her to rest and got on with my jobs. I did the humanure, cleaned out Sassy, swept the corridors and then got on with doing more flooring. A was able to get the hoover around in Room 13 which was a relief as it was quite dirty in there, and then she went to rest in the living room. While she was relaxing by the fire something happened and all of a sudden the really bad tightness in her back cleared and now she is pretty much fine again. How excellent. I can't say the same for my back after all the bending over to screw down the beams and boards but it's not as debilitating as hers was. Right now A is in Room 13 baking a banana cake for us and watching as our curry cooks for Sunday dinner; we were neither in the mood for a full roast today.

So there you have it. We've also spoken to Bekir a couple of times this week as he was lined up to come over tomorrow to check out the problem with the water which is now fixed so I was able to let him off that one. I've told him to ring us as soon as he is ready to start working here again so hopefully we'll hear from him in a month or so and we can get work started on the kitchen. I'm quite unreasonably excited about this.

I'll leave you with one thought; I got the quotes for the see through hatch above the stairs and they have all come back as about the same price as we reckon it'd cost to put a full sized swimming pool in. Decisions decisions....

Such lovely friends

Well it got to late on Wednesday before I remembered I had to do this update so I'm going to type as fast as I can so it doesn't completely dominate the evening. It has been a brilliant first half of the week though so there's a bit to tell you about.

Friends, and what lovely ones

So the main title of this update was an obvious one based on what has happened so far this week. I'll get right down to it.

The queue in KAT for registering vehicles

On Monday I received the phone call from KAT to say "when you are ready, come down to do your trailer" and so on Tuesday I went, slightly nervous at going on my own, to attempt to complete this process. I had a bit of a nightmare when I first got to the carpark as there was no space at all and I even almost got stuck because of an idiotically parked (UK number plated) car and so I drove off to try and insure Julian. That also didn't work as I was informed he was already insured. I almost went home in a huff but decided to give parking on the street near KAT a try and so I headed back over there. I parked fine and walked in to the main inspection area to try and find Ivan, the big boss who had rung me back. As I made my way towards the office I noticed, standing talking to a crowd of people, our friend Venko the musical policeman. He greeted me as I approached and, to cut a long story slightly shorter, ended up helping me from that point until I drove off with the new number plate on the trailer. This should have been a slightly shorter process than it ended up being but we missed the boss going on his lunch and so had to wait for him to come back. Venko, undeterred, took me home to his house where his wife cooked us lunch and he showed me his guitars and other things. It was a lovely thing and so welcome, considering how nervous I was, and also reinforced the friendship which is so important to us here. Now I hope to see him again soon and have made sure he knows we'll be inviting him over for dinner when he is free next.

The Little Lady about to roll out super thin pastry

Eating the end result, and they were marvelous

The second part of this is about our lovely neighbours. When I got back from KAT yesterday I went out to take the daily photograph (I've still not missed a day, though I've got close a couple of times, including today) and was greeted by the Little Lady with some post for me. She also talked about coffee so, after A finished her file that she was on with, we went over. It slowly dawned on us that I had misunderstood her and she hadn't been inviting us for coffee at all, as they were having their rest period. No matter, they served us a cup each and we had a nice sit there. I asked what she had meant and picked up that she wanted us to come over at about 7pm so we got ourselves ready and presented ourselves again at that time. I'm now pretty sure that I once again misunderstood her however, true to form, they welcomed us and the Little Lady busied herself making some banitchkas which she fried on the stove and served, piping hot and delicious, to us to be washed down with home made ayran. They didn't eat with us so after we finished, and waited a little while, we headed off again. It's so hard with the language sometimes to really grasp what you're being told however the welcome they give, even when we descend unexpectedly, is wonderful.

We are very lucky to have friends like Venko, Lyubo and our neighbours, local and so helpful and generous.

Building stuff

The mornings are growing noticeably brighter, earlier, and this is focusing our minds (well, certainly mine but then I'm the worrier) on the rapidly approaching building season. I've been in touch with the building firm who did the balcony, and who are going to be doing the basketball court and various other things and so that is in hand (I'm actually currently owing them an email back which I need to get done) but we've been doing things ourselves as well to get ready.

A making sure her wine rack will fit

What she did; isn't it awesome!

On Monday A had a very quiet work day and so she spent a fair while playing around with online kitchen design tools to get some ideas for layout. One of the main drivers of this is our thinking about the flooring; we had originally discussed having real slate down and we haven't been able to find any in Bulgaria. While we may be able to get it in the UK and shipped out we need to get this organised sooner rather than later if we're going to. After this process we think we've decided against it and will just use slate-looking tiles instead. It's been a really useful process to go through and we both love the design she came up with. Now I need to work out what sinks I'm having in my washing up zone; again I was thinking I'd need a new Belfast sink but I'm going to try and get away without it by making use of stuff we already have here.

Lots of dust in this scrape

One hoovered out showing how deep she got

All the rubble I removed from the room

Other than this I have continued making progress in Sassy's old room, which will be the temporary (we think) home for my modelling activities. That is model railway and airplanes, not me having photographs taken. As you know I have begun test-laying the suspended floor, and filling the Sassy holes, and on Monday lunchtime I went in with the hoover and finished cleaning out the room, hoovering most of the loose flooring away in two Henry loads of dust. It was very bad in there and in places she had got right through the loose flooring down to the reinforcement layer. What a rabbit.

A making use of the new mixer paddle motor

All the holes (I think) are now filled

With this cleaning done I distracted A to come and do a mix for me as this is one of her jobs. The new paddle mixer I had bought last week went into action for the first time (after the disappointment of finding that the SDS hadn't been fixed I went and bought a specific tool for this) and it proved itself by being much more stable while rotating and mixing the teracol into a super smooth consistency that was perfect for me. There was so much to do that it ended up being two large buckets of the stuff, and two bags of powder, to complete the job and it has been fenced off (to prevent puppy-paw-prints) and left since then to dry. It's nearly dry now so my plan to do the floor on Saturday looks good. The other night I got into bed feeling really tied and then my brain switched on and one of the things I solved was the problem with supporting the chipboard floor successfully. I'll be giving my ideas a try on the currently laid floor before Saturday, to check out if it'll work.

We've another raised bed to put in and today I went to measure it up to start cutting but found that the remaining lengths are just not long enough to create one exactly the same dimensions as before. I'm in the process now of working out whether I can use the same size windows (of which I have many) or if I'll need to use smaller ones for this next one. Either way they'll only be slightly smaller so I'll probably begin digging out the trench for it as my lunch time task tomorrow.

More sky

As per usual there has been a wonderful show put on for us by nature so far this week. I'll go through this chronologically as it makes best sense.

The sun rises behind the ridge and past clouds

A clear moon shot, but you can't really see the clouds glowing

The clouds glowing, but you can't see the moon details

Monday was a really excellent day for my sky photographs. In the morning I was summoned to grab my camera in a hurry as A opened the curtains and saw the sunrise. I snapped a very quick picture from Room 13's window and then legged it onto the balcony in time to capture the blazing sun behind clouds. Stunning. That night the moon rise was just as majestic though far harder to photograph. You'll have to mentally combine the two photographs to get an idea of what we saw. I need to learn how to capture the moon glow on the clouds around a super-bright full moon that just overloads longer exposures. I played with many settings and these are the best two I got to show it off as we saw it.

Tuesday morning dusting on the balcony

Tuesday was taken up with KAT and the neighbours, as already described. It was forecast for about 2cm of snow over night and into the morning but when we woke up it was to just a light dusting and that was about all we got. While I was in town it snowed quite a lot but didn't settle and the slightly sketchy hill descent I survived (with the braked trailer making it even more interesting pushing me down the hill) was completely clear when I came back, The snow didn't even really last the day and was completely now there is almost no snow left anywhere.

Wednesday morning sun appears

No sign of the hotel my parents stayed in

Stunning colour to the mist

The clouds slowly clearing, mid morning

Sunset panorama from the roof terrace

This morning was a frosty start which is something we've not seen for a while due to snow cover. The sunrise was again a beautiful thing to behold and that favourite effect of mine, the glow on the mist, was much in evidence. The cover went a bit higher than it normally does, though it didn't climb to our altitude, and so the hotel my parents stayed in was hidden, and all but the very top of the radio tower up the valley was also behind clouds. A stunning start. It did cloud over after this, however, and so was a bit chilly (the puppies spent almost the whole morning huddled by the fire) but then it cleared and became a really stunning day. The sunset, captured just as it was starting to fade, was also a beautiful one and I'm glad I made the effort to run up to the roof terrace to capture it.

Animals

Again, as usual, the animals have provided us with much joy in the last few days. Today we managed to get back out onto the top bank (thanks to A making the decision and enforcing it) and threw the toys for Rambo and the girls for quite a long time, which we all really enjoyed.

Waiting for their bread

It isn't all play time, though. Every day we feed bread and other kitchen scraps to the chickens and ducks to supplement their corn and grain main feed. The puppies expect to get theirs at the same time and know, at roughly that time of day when either of us goes and stands at the work surface, that they will almost certainly get some bread. They do wait very patiently but sometimes get a little excited. Rambo also gets a chunk though of course he has to wait til we get outside. The birds are the most excited about all of this and cluster by the gate as soon as they hear any movement, whatever time of day, hoping it is feeding time.

A tiny "wind" or "cock" egg one of our chickens produced

Talking of the birds they have continued to give us excellent produce in terms of eggs all through this winter. We've seen many comments on groups on facebook talking about how people's birds have stopped producing so I think we're just lucky. A came in yesterday with something unusual, however, in the form of a "wind egg"; a much smaller egg that looks the same but is less than half the normal size. You can read all about them here and it is a very interesting read so I'd recommend it highly.

Louise barking at the cow outside the fence

The girls have both spent large amounts of time outside playing during this week, so long as the sun has been out, and they have been really good. They do have a bad habit sometimes of running around barking at nothing, though we do think they are looking for each other when they do this, but other than that they just play or explore or lay in the sun or dig and do so without bothering us. Today there was a lot of barking from the top bank and when we looked we saw that Louise was stood barking at a cow. At first they were literally nose to nose through the fence but had moved by the time I got the camera. Brilliant.

And so there it is; completed and without taking up the whole evening as well. Other than what I've talked about I've spent a lot of time reading my railroad magazine and thinking about the layout I am going to be starting soon. My plans are really coming together and I think will work very well. More on that when I actually start to make it.