We survived another year! Amazingly we had guests come and stay for 4 days this month. Asao and Sumi came all the way from Tokyo to shiver their way to sleep in our rudimentary wooden house. They were stoic beyond any level I have ever witnessed and claimed to have enjoyed themsleves. lets wait and see how many stars they give us on Happy Cow !!
Here sit (left to right) Sanja, yours truly, Asao and Sumi in a Somobor cafe. Our honoured winter guests came all the way from Tokyo and put up with us and the weather for three and a half days straight! (Please ignore the fashion faux pas on Sanja and my part and under no circumstances should you assume that I am wearing a Christmas jumper! Never! That is infact my beloved Denis the Menace jumper and nice and warm it is too!
It got really could towards the end of the month but there were a few bright sunny days too but as yet not enough snow to warrant dragging the sledges out of storage.
I do love some of the sunsets we get here.It is now a regular thing that whenever we go for a walk around the valley and pass by Slatko’s is that his new dog follows us all the way back to the village. When he gets close to all our neighbours barking hounds he stops, says good bye and heads back home – a 10 minute walk. Here Sumi and Asao have finally lost their fear of the big dog and start smiling and even petting him.Asao , gingerly looks out from the top of the Petra Gora monumnet over the clouds of mist below. It felt a bit like being in a steam punk space ship flying above the clouds!The plitvica National Park (75km down the road from us) is wonderfully devoid of tourists in winter time. Sadly when it snows they “close” most of the paths for our “safety”. This runs counter to the usual Balkan attitude of mostly letting us take our own risks rather than mollycoddling us. So we broke the rules and took a closed pathway back around a lakeside proving that even the Japanese can be led astray by renegade rebels of a certain age persuading them “it’ll be ok”! As you can see the snowy path was not exactly impassable let alone risky. The lake was beautiful and the sun shone on us for most of the way. Sadly my organisational skills had failed to check what time the Plitvica restaurant that does vegan burgers closed (3pm!!) and so we didn’t get to try them out, next time.We intended to pop down to Belgrade for a few days, catch a gig, do some DIY and the like. The gods of traffic jams and the idiotic Croatian authorities (cops and border guards) had other ideas! What usually takes approx 5 hours to complete took almost 14 hours. I was behind the wheel all that time. With two BlaBla passengers in the back and an increasingly pissed off Sanja in the front. It was the journey from hell for 2024. This shot taken in a long stationary queue of traffic on the E75 motorway is rather pretty as well as triggering!We had an extra day with Asao and Sumi – they came back for more!!! So we took them to Shambala for food and then off to Somobor to see the castle.Sanja spends sometime deciding whether or not she can be bothered to bring the recliner back inside after a spell on it reading in the winter sun.Our Monkey’s Arse tree (aka Medlar, but that’s not so much fun) seems to be doing nicely even in December!
November brought one decent snowfall, by decent I mean enough snow to make and through snowballs with, not however enough for dangerous sports like skiing or snowboarding!
It also blessed us with some gorgeous sunny days that fought off the single digit temperatures so that I could venture out and do some gardening.
Nancy, the weirdest looking of creatures does enjoy stretching out in the sun and watching me pruning the trees and clearing brambles etc.The furry freaks often follow us down the hill but this time Sid came with us all the way through the woods, up the hill along the track and back down through the woods. He wowled alot but also kept running ahead to lead us in the right direction.Novemeber the 22nd brought a proper snow storm that necessitated some shovelling to get the car out the next morning.This pot has a few weeds in as well as the pheonix olive twig, as I like to call it! The olive tree I planted a couple of years back died, or so I thought, and after leaving it for some time in the ground , just in case!, I dug it up. The base of the stem had a few thin roots so I decided to cut if back and stick it in a pot. To my amazement a few months later it began to sprout leaves and is now awaiting a prime spot for replanting.Sanja takes advantage of the winter sun to put some laundry out on the line.
and that my dears is all you’re getting for November!
It finally switched froom warm to pretty cold in October, no great surprise there I suppose! But it was quite sudden. I was away in Belgrade and Amsterdam quite a bit and so didn’t get around to doing nearly as much gardening or house repairs as I intended. And to make matters worse the Lidl lawnmower ceased to work. It’s gone to Zagreb for repair or replacement, let’s see what happens! But tragically it means my grass is growing long again!
Oh well here we go with the photos, apologies for the lack of catpix!
Aren’t those autumn colours magnificent?The Smoke Tree aka Cotinus Coggygria!!! is smoking! A deep dark purple during the summer it’s developed an autumnal reddish tinge, beetrootifull!The Indian Banana plant is finally looking a bit like it has bananas!This young tree seemd to be on its last legs last year, all the original growth died off but I could see some new shoots coming! And well look at them go! It’s an Japanese Acer of some type, I believe, better get my Plant App on to it before these bits die off!This year our hornets were resident in the holes in the big apple tree situated between the two houses , almost! They have all gone now, it being way too cold for them. But what I’m wondering is what or who went into the tree holes, dug out the remains of their nest and then unceremoniously dumped it on the floor at the base of the tree! Suggestions please.Karlovac old town centre has been undergoing some majour rebuilding, refurbishment and the like for a couple of years now, thanx to the EU. This building which looks like it is literally cracking apart has an impressive steel structure holding it together, I wonder what they’ll do with it?Ths bug’s cacoon might be nature’s way of telling me I’m not using my outdoor brush often enough!It’s almost a picture of purfect harmony. Funny thing is that its normal for Sid to suddenly decide that such intimate proxiity is not to his liking and he’ll lash out at his little brother for no reason. Terrible behaviour I could never imagine ever having done!I grabbed the chance to get out in the October sun and try some wasp (and other bugs) deterrence. There are plenty of gaps in the wooden house oak walls that wasps fly in through. This mixture of PVA (wood glue), water and sawdust once hardened and painted makes an effective filler for such gaps hopefully resulting in the wasps going elsewhere next year!Above is a section of wooden house gaps that I filled with the glue and sawdust combination and then painted over a few years ago, worked a treat.Sid n Nancy both immediately took to sleeping in the old clothes lined plastic food crates I left outside my door for them. Now with the onset of wet and cold weather I upgraded one with a roof. I guess I better do one for Nnancy too!I finally gave in and went to the doctors to see if something could be done about my sniffing and cough. They are separate issues , the sniffing being due to my dust mite allergy, I believe! The cough, I’m not so sure about but its been lingering for far too long now! I came home with a bunch of pills and a nose spray that has proved very effective. However before I could take any medication my dearest insisted on reading the entire leaflets that came with each drug. After much tutting, sucking of teeth and shaking of her head I was given the short (?) version of all the possible sideffects I might look forward to and then told to set my alarm and take them at pecisely the same time each day. Yes Ma’am.Pesky Nancy kept jumping up on me whilst I was cutting up sticks for future fire kindling. This was the rather disconcerting result of my trying to capture the scene on film (?).
The summer finally came to an endin September. It started off hot but ended at a nice and comfortable under 20 degrees!
Here be some photos;
In mid august we went to see a friend performing acrobatics and the like on top of a hill in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere – it was fun!I popped down to Belgrade to bring Sanja back so she could finally stay here for good. Sadly the Croatian border guards were playing up that night and we – along woith many others – spent about 5 hours at the border crossing from Serbia into Croatia. Thankfully Sanja getting in and staying turned out to be no problem!A annual music festival in Zadar is always a good excuse to visit friends on the island of Pasman and clock one of its amazing sunset scenes.One of our oft neglected pot plants decided to surprise us with a sudden spurt of growth and flowers! It has a variety of colourful names but the one I like best is Thor’s beard!After much work with the lawnmower, strimmer and machete most of my tree linking paths have been re-established. Now their maintainence is my challenge.An old friend popped in and spent th best part of the day mowing our lawns – beautifully!On a walk around the valley we met one of our neighbours who insisted we took home part of his mushrooms haul from that day. We had spotted plenty growing in the woods but had no idea which were safe and which were not. We picked one more ouselves and added it to the bag. One the way back through the village another neighbour inspected our haul and was impressed all except for the one we had picked that he threw out and indicated that it would have been a bad idea to eat it! We fell about laughing! Over the next three days the rest of the mushrooms were cut into chunks fried in olive oil with either onion or garlic and went down a treat!The passion fruit plant that I planted a year or two ago by the post box on our front fence has finally flowered and looks magnificent.
Boy! am I failing at keeping this up to date? Well where to begin? It’s now nearing the end of August , Barabrith has been sweltering in the summer heat, but our kiwis , cats and sunflowers have all survived. We’ve had some great guests stay and some of our trees are thriving despite the heat. So I’ll post up a bunch of photos -with plenty of cat pix – and make my usual sad excuses for being so tardy and hopefully you’ll forgive me.
Let’s kick off this cat-ch up with our star characters Sid n Nancy. Here Sid keeps a nonchalant eye on Nancy as she peers hopefully into the long grass hoping to spot some game!After a long day tackling the woes of the world Sid takes a break and after a hearty meal I oblige him with a warm stomach to stretch across. For enthusiasts of all things 1970’s please note the ITT portable radio in the background. This was my 14th year birthday gift to me from my folks and became a crucial part of my teenage development as I listened to John Peel shows late into the night, it still works! Yes, they don’t make them like they used to! and by that I mean the radio as well as moi!My beautiful multiple stemmed maple leaf tree looking grand in the May sun.Nancy, a lover of all boxes, found herself a new favourite, the onion box. No matter how many onions are within she’ll get comfy amongst them and sleep like a baby.One of the Chestnut trees we grew from seed or should that be nut? Now majestic amidst the spring grass.And here’s one of our cherry trees.Nancy could give master classes in the art of flopping down anywhere and making it look so comfortable. Yes I am envious, my tired old corpse no longer tolerates such wanton behaviour, a mattress is essential for good rest.Such simple beauty. Somewhere on the estate in May.Scarlet (an old friend) who popped over in late May insisted on trying out the art of scything. But after Nancy said she just “couldn’t watch”, Health and Safety officers stepped in and stopped the inevitable chopped toes from happening.There I was taking an innocent selfie of the bright blue sky and fluffy clouds when Scarlet decided to steal the show, it’s called photo bombing I believe.Sid was rather dismissive of Scarlets yoga exercises. He reckoned her stretching was very amateur but declined to show us how its done properly for the camera.Karlovac now has a wonderful new cinema, not great programming but I bouht a loyalty card anyway and now have a good excuse to go watch Holywood trash as well as the rare gem ( like Poor Things) but the real joy of this cinema for me is the lack of an audience! I often find myself comfortably alone near the screen and only a few others well out of earshot at the back of the auditorium, perfect! And yes, its another selfie excuse, just look at all that hair!I grew and ate a few of my own tomatos, onions and even a few potatos this year. Sadly almost all the potato plants were destroyed by the stinky martin bugs.One of the joys about going out for the day is coming back home! I’m sure that’s a feel good poster or fridge magnet slogan somehwere, but for me it’s true thanx to the way Sid – and occasionally Nancy too – will come and greet me as I exit the car or after I have closed the gate. They’ll even do this when its raining! True love!The first batch of ladybird Barabrith cakes courtesy of Sanja’s kitchen clearout. Damn big ladybirds, I wonder if they are infact meant to be some other bug?!Friends stopped by in June and spent way longer than was expected out in the garden doing stuff I have failed to keep up with, many thanx to them. This is an attempt to reclaim my veg garden from the weeds, sadly I think I need an extra 3 hours per day at a temperature well below 25 degrees and out of the sun for me to manage this long term.So there I was working in the wood shed when I noticed this cutie on a log by my side!! It’s a Rosalia longicorn (Rosalia alpina) or Alpine longhorn beetle and it instantly qualified as worthy of sending a photo to my bug friend in Germany. Imagine my surprise when I get an almost instant reply to say that she ‘bug friend’ is booked in at the tatoo parlour to get this very bug inked on her calf the next day! Synchronicity – or something like that – a go go!Another sunny day in June at Barabrith.These beauties by the gazebo are gorgeous but days later they are gone, so I decided to preserve their memory.Any excuse to get in a photo!Sanja captured this one of me watering the flowerpots on the window sill whilst Nancy sleeps in her onion box on the otherside of the window. For the historians amongst you, spot the genuine 1980’s NMCDF t-shirt from Alternative Tentacles as worn by moi!Cardboard box and dopey feline in perfect harmony.We had a family visit from a brother and sister with their partners. Julie and her partner (front row) run a vegan guest house in Portugal (damn! can’t find the name of it! Will add this later). The other two had come all the way from Australia to share a holiday in the Balkans and travelled a long way across Croatia to come and stay at Barabrith so many thanks to them all!There’s a little castle, remains of, by the river Korana at a settlement called Barilovic. We stopped in there with Phil our most hard working guest when we gave him a few yours off and went swimming in the river Mreznica.Phil the lumberjack of all trades in action getting wood for the Kiwi frame extension. Treehuggers, don’t fuss we have loads of these trees and if we “managed” our woods properly we’d be taking out many of them anyway!Sanja has the imporatnt role of encoraging our guests to take it easy and join her on a recliner * in the shade of the kiwi plants. * or wherever!Sanja nervously spots the camera, Nancy stares at ghosts and Sid sleeps, an evening in July.Freinds from Prague flew through on their Balkan break and were treated to a late nite dinner in the gazebo with the experimental use of an electric lamp for the first time. Looks like pie and spuds again!Sanja sometimes complains I only use weird looking shots of her. But what choice do I have? She does love watermelon and I love her.It looks like we now know which critter has been running around above our ceiling at night probably ruining our insulation. Meet an European edible dormouse! They can climb up vertical walls, and sleep all the way through winter. They are considered by some in the Balkans to be a delicacy – roasted!! This one looked very lost for a day or two hanging onto various bits of the outside of the house and then disapeared presumably back into the roof.Our yoga mats ready to host the next torture session.Sid has a varied yoga routine that has many positions that put us to shame. This one involves using a wall to dig your claws into whilst pretending to be half asleep. Nancy can’t be arsed!I love these silhouette shots against such glorious sunsets as we are often blessed with.Who you looking at? Why shouldn’t I squat this box? It was sitting here empty! So what if my leg is sticking up at a weirdly odd angle? I’m Nancy and I’m weird, get used to it normo!Sid is a top predator in his domain and often brings us “presents”. These two were ceremoniously shovelled on to the snow shovel and buried in the long grass. At least he doesn’t seem so keen on “playing” with them as he used to. Some ‘vegan refuge’ I hear the mice squeak!Our first guest to book through the Veggievisits website was the wonderful Jennifer. She claimed she wanted to be left alone to work but after a little suggestion she came out to see the local sights and was suitably impressed (see her Happycow review!). This is Petra Gora on a bright sunny July day.Jennifer is an observant woman. She spotted this bug shell on a tree at the Partisan Hospital that we both walked past obliviously!Overgrown would be the simplest and most accurate way to describe the “garden” by July. It took me a long time to locate the stockade surrounding indian Banana tree. When I finally found it I was pleased to find the banan doing relatively well, it’s the one with the big leaves in the middle. By now – mid August – they pathways have been recut and the tree is visible once more.Here is the plate of birthday cakes that Sanja made for my 58th, very good they were too.In early August we took a walk with Jennifer down the freshly re-cut pathway through the long grass that goes from the house to the red gate at the bottom of our hill.It’s been coming for sometime, but the heat became too much for me and my long hair and so Sanja jumped at the chance to butcher my silver locks. This is all I have left.The Barabrith taxi service has a new driver. Sanja recently passed her driving test and is loving the feel of whizzing along the roads and being behind the steering wheel at last!We had a short break on the coast near Pula, here we are early one morning enjoying the sea and rocks all by ousleves. Two hours later – at about 9am – we began to be joined by the hordes.Our furry friends get a mix of dry cat foods from a big container and on this day Nancy thought all her birthdays had come at once!No caption needed! But tis a good excuse for a selfie innit?We have kiwis growing on the kiwi wines! but what will they taste like?Capturing the last rays of the golden hour for outdoor portraits. Doesn’t improve anything much for us but I tried!
That’s it for now, I’m gonna try real hard to post each month from now on, promise!
The British do like to go on about the weather but the erratic weather the Croats are experiencing is making such conversations very common here too!. Recently it went from 5 degrees one day to 30 the next! Today it has switched from rain, to sun and then apparently both with plenty of wind all day long! The grass is happy, growing like a teenager on steroids.
Below are some photos from Barabrith recently. We’ve had a few visits recently and bookings are beginning to come in!
Seems my dodgy old back is not capapble of swinging my strimmer into battle against the rampant grass at the moment. So I invested the not so hefty sum of 50odd euros in a Lidl electric lawn mower. Its not meant for lawns !?! like mine but so far we’re doing a great job together. But boy do I feel old!Not sure what this is (I will activate my Picture This app soon, promise!) but it was a gift from a friendly plant seller at the local flea market. Josip is his name!If ever a cat needed a box to feel content with his life then that cat was Nancy! Here she demonstrates the art of tipping over the paper recycling bin in order to climb into it and rummage around in the rubbish till she’s content and able to gaze out at the world from a perfect posistion of satisfied security! Nevermind the mess!Hard to believe that such innocent looking beasts as these two could cause anything any harm as it may be the truth is that if you have an allergy to cats please be aware that these two roam around the kitchen dining room and the gazebo but are now allowed in the guest bedrooms. Sorry Dirk!This is where I used to live. Almost at the top! in Hackney, London.This colouful beauty is doing nicely and seems to have been ignored by the deer so far. Fingers crossed! I wonder what it is?The wisteria covering the bench has flowered for the first time and now is so dense that it works as a proper giver of shade too! Cool!My lastest arboretal addition is an Olive tree. Hopefully this one will survive a bit longer than the last one!Macabre it may be but for those of you who havent seen a mole up close here is the first of three that our fiendish felines have frightened to death inthe last fortnight!Sid has started to ask to drink from the basin whilst Nancy still only wants water from the shower! Not sure though what he was thinking he was doing here, a bath maybe? Ours is not to reason why but merely to serve.Nancy surveys her domain with all the dignity that a mad cat with funny rear legs can do.The new mower is doing an amazing job of helping me re-cut my paths. Pity I keep running out of cable.The black bush (I will activate that app soon I promise!) is doing well even on the crap bit of garden when the soild is stoney and shallow.So there i was trying to finish off planting my spuds and toms when I got an inspection from Sid and Nancy. Thankfully they were preoccupied with murdering another mole and left me to it pretty quick!A happy guest relaxes on a recliner (name and address withheld for fear of reprisals!)It was warm and sunny so we went for a walk. At the top of the valley it started to rain. After 5 munites of hiding unsucessfully under trees we opted to brave the walk home in the rain.As we reached the sanctuary of Barabrith the rain decided to cease, of course! But we still looked like a drenched version of a dodgy Metal/HC crossover trio. Not hard to spot the drummer is it? Don’t mess with this lot is my advice, they look like desperado escapees from an underwater leper colony! Though I’m not sure the drummer is actually human, reminds me of a killler cyborg from Bladerunner.
So yesterday I declared the winter over and spring is here! And what do the powers the be do? Sent an overnight thunderstorm followed by snow to remind me how inconsequentiial my opinions are! oh yeah!
Amusing to think that yesterday I was relocating fruit tress down the slope and worryimg about how much I should water them!The overnight snow is melting quick as the trees drip water on to it and the sun does it’s job.
and here’s one I made earlier….
This was taken a fornight ago, on an evening bathed in glorious pink sunlight.
So yes we live in chaotic climate times. What happened to the Croatian winter of snow and ice? It’s hardly worth changing our tyres anymore!
And yes we fear a sudden late cold spell as happened llast year that kills off the blossom buds but despit that I’m gonna call it “spring time” cos that what it looks like today!
Sunny , breezy and with lush grass growing like it’d never heard of the vengeance of a lawnmower and with flowers and trees bursting into life… tis spring indeed!
Plum blossom is out and beautiful to behold but only so far on some of the trees!This red n green beauty is growing back nicely despite the unauthorised pruning done by the local deer population on its young branches.The bees are back! Well a few seem to have started buzzing around, this one though seemed to be on a hiatus from flying and unnerved by my close proximity!I can’t remember what this bush is but it’s certainly always has the brightest and earliest flowers of the year.
There was a few days with enough snow for good snowball fight but sadly no one to through them at! Clearing paths through the snow was enough however to do my back in.
The big apple tree looks truly majestic , doesn’t it?Moving some boxes around with the snowbarrow!This is the view from the wooden steps to my room looking west over the tops of my little trees and down the valley.The washing line is out of action.What a goof! But hey it’s not often your washing line is 10cm thick!These dangly yellow seeds are one of the few bits of colour out in the garde at the moment.The woods have gone grey!I was told to wait til January to prune the kiwi vine, so here it is in all its winter glory.Here are the fearsome felines lined up on my legs, close to the stove, as I plough through Rankin.
Today required some bureaucratic b.s. to be done so I knew I had to go into town and decided to make it worthwhile. Paperwork done I walked across Karlovac to the Nikola Tesla Experience Centre and paid my 8e to have a mosey around this brand new museum.
The Nik Tesla Experience sounds like a Hawkwind offshoot band but is in fact situated on one of the road heading out of Karlovac towards Barabrith, It’s one the newest ‘things to do’ in Karlovac thanks to EU funding and it’s pretty swanky with all mod museum cons.Inside the Tesla experience you can give yourself a minor electric shock courtesy of a giant Tesla figure’s finger! The museum is very much based on short films about bits of his life, focusing unsurprisingly quite a bit on his Karlovac days as a student. But truth be told the Tesla experience is nicely done and well worth a visit even at 8e for adults.You can tell this is not in a UK town because no-one has tried to roll Nikola’s balls away as yet. I like these ” the EU paid for this” signs dotted all over Croatia reminds me of why I jumped from the sinking UK ship and if anything can keep the nationalists at bay over here it might be pure self interest.The Nicolai Tesla car park opposite his “experience” was funded by the EU and has some pretty fancy Tesla inspired installations in it !
Tesla done I wandered back into town in the bright warming sunlight. What happened to winter? On the way into the old town I passed this staute and decided to check it out properly.
I was kind of hopinng this statue was another antifa spomenik from the Tito days. This would explain the lack of a plaque or information board but it turns out to be a local painter from the early 1800’s who commited suicide by jumping in the river Korana. His paintings are ok, loads are a boring catholic pieces but you can see for yourself at
Since a couple of my summer guests went to Bistro Špajza I’ve been meaning to check it out and today seemed a perfect day to do so. I was not disappointed, chiefly because I wasn’t expecting much but to be fair the burger and chips did the trick fine. The staff spoke ok English and said that they could make up other vegan options if asked. Ooops I’m slipping into my Happy Cow reviewer mode…..
This was described on the meniu as a soya sandwich with salad and fries! But the folk at Bistro Špajza seem to know what vegan means becuase they took the cheese out of the burger! Vegan cheese not yet may have not quite reached Karlovac conciousness – or should that be conscience – as yet! Still for a hungry bugger like me this lot went down a treat.
Then back to the car and a bit of shopping, our locals Lidl’s are still without the vegan cheese or mayo they used to do and half the things advertised online as part of Veganuary appear not to have made it to Karlovac, oh well. At least the tofu is on offer again!
