Phew, Hot Work and Tiring

The last couple of days have been half spent trying to get first of the year's crop of lucerne lifted from the field, it's an awful job lifting and stacking it, dirty, hot and sweaty. Yesterday afternoon we managed almost 3 hours and got a third of the way across our designated patch. Today we went at 8.30am and worked until noon before deciding it was simply too hot to be standing in the middle of an open field in full sun while the temperature climbed to over 30 degrees C.

Tomorrow we'll have to get it finished and transported back home before the predicted storms appear over the weekend, plus another 1000sqm's of lucerne that has been cut this morning will need turned first thing tomorrow and then moved into the barn at tea time. So all in all a busy time, but it needs to be done otherwise we'd have to pay extortionate prices later in the year to buy winter animal feed in. No rest for the wicked as they say, and once it's done there's only 4-8 weeks until the next cut so we'll have to go through it all again!

Meanwhile in the garden my polish clematis has flowered and looks stunning, the beans I planted a week or so ago are coming through nicely and the okra is starting to sprout too. The cabbage seedlings seem to be doubling in size every day but my lettuces are starting to bolt and go to seed - I'd like to save seeds from one of the lollo rosso's so will leave a couple and let nature take it's course. The radishes are almost done now, I've lost the onions amongst the weeds so really need to tidy up that area and all of the squash plants seem to be doing well. The sunflowers are flying through now and getting taller each day, I'm hoping some of the seeds I saved last year are the variety I grew last year that you can see in the photo below.

Well that's it for today, past my bedtime as I need to be up early and off to sort out more lucerne, so I'll be giving the weekly market a miss tomorrow and getting on with things.

My First Award

Michael Rivera, fellow blogger and author of  The Psyche of Mikey has kindly nominated me for my first ever bloggers award.

Along with the award comes a set of rules that I should follow. These are:

• Express gratitude to the blogger who bestowed the award unto you. (check)
• Display the picture on your blog proudly. (check)
• Be nice and provide a link to the person who gave it to you. (check)
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth, or switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.(hmmmm not sure about this one)
• Nominate seven creative writers who might be into doing this.(ok I can probably do that)
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate and let the owners of those blogs know.(no probs)

So here goes, these are my lies or truths, you decide which is which! Admittedly I'm struggling to think of seven so let's see how many I can do.


I have never kissed a person without first at least knowing their name.

I am not addicted to the internet.

I was once a professional dominatrix.

I love flying in an aeroplane.

If I won the lottery I'd give it all away to worthy causes.

I'd never lie for my friends.

I love celery.

So now it's up to you to decide which are the lies and which could be truths. And I would like to nominate these others for the Creative Writer Blogger Award, here's hoping they will see it as the compliment it's meant to be :)

Adam, at No Going Back
Deb, at Carrots and Kids
Melissa, at Adventures in Free-Fall Parenting
Max, at Rural Idiocy?
Jenny, at Inky Paws
Mrs Icarus, at Hardup Hester's Stretching the Penny's Blog

So I've nominated 6 people and done my little bit for fun. Now I'm off to chill out in the garden for a while before the evenings chores need to be done.

Inactivity Makes Me Tired

This morning I was up early, dressed, topped up my caffeine system and got the horses out by 7am. On my final trip to the stable yard to put our donkey out to graze the rain started, and boy did it lash down for a few minutes or so. The kids are off school today as it's a national holiday, details of which can be found HERE

We had a lovely tea last night with fresh, home reared pork, Lollo Rosso lettuce and radishes from the garden formed part of the salad. I'm so looking forward to being able to step outside and pick peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers to say the least and also finding out what some of the mystery squash plants are! Now that the temperatures here have risen again their seems to be a few more poking through the soil (and muck heap).

I'm still finding interesting things in the garden to take photo's of and enjoying my time out with the camera. Hopefully my photography skills (or lack of them) are actually improving. It's something I've never really taken the time to explore until now. In years to come I'll have something to look back on and browse through the winter months. What do you get up to when the weather isn't great?

Summer is Official

Yesterday was the official start to summer here in Bulgaria, the locals will start shedding layers soon and I'll be spending my evenings watering the garden. Last night there was no need to water the garden as we had an almighty storm and loads of rain, but it's made everything seem fresher this morning.

My lovely clematis is about to start flowering and I've been looking forward to seeing the wonderful deep purple blooms for a while. I remember my mum trying to grow clematis in the UK and never having much luck, mine must be a hardier variety as it has managed to survive through our cold winter fantastically and is double the size it was last year.

Our fruit trees seem to be doing quite well so far, with plenty of small apples, pears and plums forming, although the peach trees aren't looking very good. Soon I'll have to stock up on sugar for my yearly jam sessions.

I'm also hoping to try my hand at making some more liqueur's as the sloe gin we made last year was out of this world.....I've found a recipe for walnut liqueur so hopefully will find the time to make some. Well that's my lunch break over so I best go find something to do for the afternoon, we may be having fresh pork for tea, which I'm looking forward to.