Friday 6th July 2018

The first blog entry on a brand new site! It's taking me a lot longer than I thought to get this up and running, mainly because I keep making another coffee and slipping off into the garden to see if a seedling has grown another millimetre, or if another frogling has emerged from the pond. Very excitingly my okra plants are starting to produce flowers.

It's the first time I've managed to get the plants to even grow properly, having failed miserably twice before, though they do seem to be a fraction of the height of the ones I remember seeing in Baba Ivanka's garden in previous years. Maybe mine will produce succulent mini okras. Speaking of baba...

Yesterday evening at around 6ish I suddenly heard her calling me from out in the street. Foolishly I went out to see what she wanted. She was sitting on the steps outside my front gate, and began by lamenting the fact that there's no one in the village anymore; all the houses are empty. Not quite true, it's just that a lot of them are second homes and so the owners only appear now and then, but I think baba was just feeling a bit lonely as I think her best friend from down the street is having a some building work done, so maybe hasn't popped round for a bit.

Nearly two hours later (and feeling starving hungry) I made moves to head back indoors and, as always, she decided to take a short cut through my garden to the back gate in order to give my novice gardener skills the quick once over.

My tomatoes got the thumbs up, as there are quite a few big trusses on the verge of ripening, though I was chided for only having one beef tomato plant. She also spent a good ten minutes telling me how I could use plastic to turn my tomato frame into a big greenhouse so I could grow things all through winter.

As happens every single year she asked me what my parsnips were and then denied that's what they were. I have no idea why she does this (she has similarly denied that my spinach is what it is) maybe I should make little video clips when I sow the seeds and film the labels on the packets for her.

My beans were a success, though she's not happy that I eat them as pods rather than waiting for them to go to seed and just eat the beans themselves, and I was told that my sweetcorn has been planted too densly. Admittedly I put two seeds in each hole in case one didn't germinate or got nibbled, but every single one has produced a plant. Meh, more corn cobs for me.

My greatest failing was the big yellow daisy flowers I have growing at the bottom of the garden. Why did you plant those, they don't smell nice at all? She asked. I didn't tell her it was because they make a nice dense screen to prevent her seeing me every time I set foot in the garden. Aren't I a meanie.

Something else I'm trying to avoid when I got out is Charlotte. There are usually one or two of these magnificent beasts in the garden each year - last year I had one right across the window by the sink in the shed - and I don't mind them as they tend to sit quietly, feeding on whatever they catch before disappearing off somewhere at the end of summer presumably to lay eggs. This one, however, has made her web between the porch and the olive tree, making it quite close to my face every time I walk past.

Frighteningly I actually totally forgot she was there one evening whilst a magnificent lightning storm raged, and stuck my head right through the web trying to peek up at the sky. Thankfully she didn't come and savage me though I bet she had a hard night's work repairing the damage!

The flowers in my side garden are all doing well, especially the zinneas at the moment which are a brilliant display of colour. So, what with the frequent rainfall and warm temperatures, I thought I'd have a go at sowing some grass seed to make the lawn. In theory the layer of thick weed membrane and several trailer loads of horse manure will mean I have a nice lush lawn which is soft to walk on and has no danger of an unexpected chunk of glass suddenly popping up into my foot. (You'd be stunned at how much buried glass there is in Bulgaria, and no matter how often you pick it up, new pieces still regularly emerge).

The metal grids are to try and stop the dogs from digging it all up when they go mad play fighting at night. As you can see, Bella is looking a bit disgruntled by this.

And finally, despite the torential downpours, I've managed to clear the weeds from the gutters outside the house and to shift some of the tons of soil and sand which seem to wash down from elsewhere in the village. I literally moved six wheelbarrow loads just from the gutter opposite my house and have stashed it all down near the garage. I used quite a bit last year to mix with the manure in the carrot bed and they all grew well this year.

The little green clumps on the grass verge are some of the flowers I've planted over there - red hot pokers, morning glory, mirabilis, cosmo, marigolds and day lilies so far. My ultimate aim is to have it so full of mega-hardy perennials that I'll never need to cut the grass over there again.