Well my blogging schedule went out the window well and truly, didn’t it? I spend too much time in front of this damn machine and sadly the other things I do are more essential than this blog. But I will try and do better in future; promise. I’ve been on my own most of the summer but with notable visits from friends and guests and a short vacation in July to drive my Peruvian mates around the UK on a short tour. So below are some pictorial highlights. It is now the beginning of October! See you again on November 1st!
I took a trip through Serbia and finally got to see this remarkble spomenik. Yes It not technically part of Barabrith but I am trying to work out some Spomenik tours and showing folk others besidea the ones close to home. These are close to the city of Niś in Serbia.This Spomenik sits atop a hill overlooking Veles not far from Skopje. The building represents a poppy flower bud breaking open, needless to say it’s seen better times but is still impressive. Check the Spomenik Database website for details. Known as the “Macedonian Guernica”.Nancy is the queen of boxes – in this case the grass box that came with my Lidl electric lawnmower. Sleep on you crazy cute cat.I couldn’t mention the Peruvians in my intro without following it up with a picture because this lot are CRAZY for taking photos. Always staged or posing. Here they are trying to straighten up one of the Avebury stones that is leaning a bit.Scarlet has visited a couple of times before. This time she was bit dismayed that I had failed to maintain the pathways.Yours truly on the top of the Petrova Gora monument captured twice by Scarlet using the panorama photo trick!Sid know’s he’s not meant to be in the wooden house bedrooms (in case of visitor’s having cat allergies) and yet here he is proving he can jump up through the open window if he has the mind to.This bush by the gazebo had so many gorgeous big purple flowers this year that it was a mecca for bees and other little flying creatures . But check out the big black beast wallowing in the pollen fest! That’s one creature you do not want to annoy!Phil returned and once again insisted on doing something helpful. Seeing as how I bought the wood to replace the metal stairs side panels about six months before it seemed a no brainer to ask if he’d like to tackle this task. And he did, thanx Phil!Spot the cat makes a welcome return to this blog.I wish I could get both Sid and Nancy to drink from the spring water tap in the garden all the time but only Sid will and only on occasion!The new woodwork on the metal stairs gave me the chance to add a little table for cups of tea and even a bowl of museli. Not a bad view whilst munching on the healthiest breakfast in the Balkans!My favourite German photographer – Jennifer – visited again but brought her son and mate with her this time. We did Petrova Gora and the Partisan hospital – of course – and this casual pic I rather like.For those of you who have visited Petrova Gora this will be readily recognisable, everyone else may be think WTF is that? Spot the tour guide looking through a skylight hole.The hornets and wasps make short work of much of my fruit. They often leave the skin behind, hanging like an empty promise waiting to be squished with surprise when someone tries to pick it.What do you reckon? Have they just copulated? Are they arguing about which direction is best for their next meal? Have they just fallen out discussing trans rights and gender critical feminism? Or perhaps they are fighting invisible foes and are standing back to back gladiator style? Any other daft suggestions, please keep them to yourselves.The hornets chose to nest in the apex above my bedroom door this summer. Not a problem during the day when they tend to keep to themselves but at night when the light comes on they swarm like morons to a Maga rally. Still I only got stung once this year by one that walked over my open toed shoe and stung me on my middle toe ; twas very painful for a few moments!The preying mantises are practically invisible on the lawn or amongst the long grass but as soon as they go climbing up my walls they stand out for the funny looking critters they are!The mosquito nets get an airing.Despite the furry fiends being fitted with bells they are still racking up an impressive kill rate. Here is an Edible Dormouse they left for me to find one morning, thankfully uneaten. Check out the length of his whiskers, I think Sid may have killed him in a fit of jealousy over them!The furry freaks make the most of any rare times I sit down in their company and invade my lap with a determined attitude of “now just you sit there whilst we have a nap and don’t even think about getting up for at least half an hour!”I dug up and replanted 16 little beech trees that were growing on paths in local woods. Hopefiully they will end up forming a line that follows the path down my hill. It’lll be interesting to see how many survive through to next spring.The hornets that were buzzing around my bedroom door for the last few months are now dropping like flies (?!). This one dropped onto my shirt and sat there looking at me as I walked around. When I finally relocated him onto the bench he just sat there staring at me. Autumn makes them dopey then they die!I’ve been tempted by this very ornamental plant for some time and couldn’t resisit splurging out 10e on this fine specimen of Pampas Grass (aka Uruguayan Pampas) at the flea market last week. I do hope it survives the winter and multiplies but we shall see. Nancy checked it out as soon as it was planted and gave it a pass.
And there you go up to date again! The pampas was planted 3 days ago. Thanks for reading.
I spent a bit of time away at the beginning of April, visiting my sister in Rome and catching up with an old mate in Bologna. But we did have some visitors right at the end of the month.
Looking out of my car window as I drive off to town Nancy gives me onefof her mournful “where are you going this time”?” looks. Or perhaps it was one of her ‘bring me back treats or be damned’ looks, it’s sometimes difficult to tell with Nance!I haven’t noticed these beauties before but they were one of the first flowers to appear this year. Amusingly called the Garden Star of Belthlehem elsewhere mine are known as the Garden Star of Barabrith but others know them also as Eleven Oclock Lady, Nap at Noon, Grass Lily and even Sleepydick!! Cute eh!After much slog with both strimmer and lawn mower the grass paths of Barabrith have returned!The leaning pear tree blossomed nicely this year.Wow! My wisteria is really going for it!Rachel had done her ankle in so Hop and I did the walk around the valley. Here Hop admires the view of Zlatko’s place in the spring sun.My guests this month were from good ‘ole Blighty. Hop, as he’s known, hosted me in Swindon back in 1989 when the forces of law and misery were trying to jail me on a stitch up. Oh yeah! But that story is for another day. 36 or so years later I get to return the favour to him and his partner. Here they are doing the Partisan hospital in the forest tour.Rachel and Hop play some pool whilst I lurk outside taking illicit photographs through my mucky windows!This beauty is the flower that the guy at the Karlovac fleamarket gave me as a freebie. Acording to my Picture This app its a Bearded Iris or Common Flag!! but whatever its called it’s a striking beauty!Can’t get enough of the wisteria hanging over the wisteria bench!
We spent most of March absent from Barabrith and so there would have been less amateur photography for you to put up with. Except I decided to update you on my burgeoning goblien collection currently on display in the small bedroom of the guest house! Oh yes lucky you!
The newest food outlet in Karlovac is proving popular with the locals. But it’s a sad death fest kebab joint with not a hinto of veggie progress, very Croatia.It’s that time of the year again. Strimming and mowing a-go-go! For the last fortnight I have cut grass somewhere or other on everyday it wasn’t too wet or raining to do so. I guess it’ll be like this for the next few months. Lets see how long the replacement Parkside (Lidl) mower lasts this year!Not stricly a Barabrith event but worth mentioning cos so little of this nature happens around here. The 8th of March Womens March in Zagreb was a joyous event with folks from all sorts of campaigns there and a rather good punky sound track. I bumped into a couple of folk I knew and then bunked off to watch a film at the cinema whilst the punky monkey (Sanja) went to a gig at Medika.A typical piece of gobin or goblien with beaten up old fancy plaster frame painted to look like gold! Goblien is the art of needlework, often following traditional patterns or pictures (you can by kits) from local cultures. They are popular in Croatia and I often stumble across them in the flea market. I sometimes put them up on ebay if you are interested in financing my collection!I like the way these things turn up in all sorts of different frames.This one shows a bit of detail and how much more cleaning I could do of some of the glass covers!I think Leonardo might be a bit miffed by this representation of his Lisa, she’s probably have a moan too.It’s a stunning collection, innit?As you can see goblieni come in all shapes and sizes and with a variety of subject matter and the only unifying theme I can find is best described as “tacky”! Thats why I like them I guess! (Two pictures in this picture are not gobbers but I keep forgetting to remove themfrom the Gobibition!Reflecting Catholic Croatia’s obsession with breeding the flea market goblieni often depict mothers with babies. Here are two examples and I will probably not get anymore!The perfect way to start a day. Breakfast (museli with yoghurt and cornflakes) a cuppa roibosh Earl Grey and the latest Rebus book. And nice temperate weather to sit outide in. Mist rising off the trees is fairly common in the morning.
Thats enough of that, April is already in full swing!
February was cold and dark with a bit of snow and a very sad low.
As sunset comes to an end our house lights shine out into the night.Our woods have loads of these little purple beauties in them, they are called Dutch Crocus according to my Picture This app!
One night on our way back from seeing a film in Karlovac we spotted something lying in the road between our house and our neighbours. Very sadly it was one of our neighbour’s cats, a frequent visitor to Sid and Nancy’s domain and one which they used to fight with but seemed to have got used to and tolerated its visits. Judging by its position and still warm body it had been run over very recently. Our dead end road has very very few vehicles on it at night. We are very sure the culprit is one of the new owners of the last house in the road, we haven’t actually met them yet, but they drive relatively fancy cars by our neighbourhood’s standards and one in particular passes by much faster than we, our neighbours or any of the other animals around here are used to.
What on earth am I up to now? February has a project!Our brave winter guests from Tokyo had threatened to send us something but I wasn’t expecting a whole box of treats! Mochi, sweet red bean paste, Vegan pot noodles Japanese style and friends for the furries.Nancy instantly took a liking to her Tokyo keyringSid and his new little friend hit it off right from the start!Sanja joined the project and opted to handpaint the USPORI text rather than cut a stencil for it.What did this do you think?And why would a tree have this twisted pattern?Sanja carefully removes the pussy cat stencil from the first sign.Nancy is currently spending about 40-50% of her life in this banana box with one of my jackets folded up under her.Et Voila! DIY Road Signage is alive and well, unlike the poor cat that inspired us. This is the critical sign, situated so all can see it as they come up the hill and round the corner just before Barabrith and about 25m before the spot we found the dead cat. Uspori is the Serbo-Croatian for ‘slow down’.The SLOW CATS sign from the dead end (wrong phrase Jon!) of our road. That’s our barn on the left ahead.Is it a mini snow circle? Is it the trail of a drunk slug that then disappeared? No prizes for the first to guess what it is besides a sense of self satisfaction and my admiration! Don’tcha just luv these games?Coming back home after a bit of snow I was glad to see the slow cats signs still visible.What more could a cat want, sunshine, a box and some strokes! Oh yeah and slow moving cars!
This blog post is dedicated to the white and grey cat from across the road.
January was as expected cold, Sanja retreated to the cat house (!) which with its big stove, doule glazing and small size is by for the warmest room in our house. The cats unanimously approve of this situation.
There were however a few bright sunny days when the sun warmed up the walls and Nancy could be seen sitting in the sun or even stretching out and rolling around as if summer was here! We managed a couple of walks in the woods. One of which ended in my risking life and limb to save Sid.
And I finally completed a long held ambition for the kitchen!
Sid and SanjaAfter much delay, approx 4 years!, one of my long time plans finally began to be put into action this month with the cutting up of the shelving rescued from Sanji’s flat in Belgrade. Re-use and recycle!uh oh,time to get the snow shovel out and hope my back doesn’t give in!Nancy is a box fetishist and proud of it!The vine was pruned and all the brambles and creeepers that were entangled in it destroyed, much to Sid’s approval.Yes, at last the second set of mug shelves in our kitchen/pool room was under construction!Some people use filters to enhance their photographs but if you catch the sun and the sky at the right time , there is no need.Whenever the snow comes down and its a misty night I look towards our gate and the lampost battling againt the dark and I think Gateorcist! Does anyone else see it?Sid is prone to allegations of being a bit on the over curvy side, well on his way to being a fat cat some might say! But here he gracefully reveals how his form is purrfectly matched to sleep on a round table.Not often one sees a double rainbow!How about that?!! Not justa double rainbow but a full arch too! Spot the hole in the ground on the left where I started digging for the pot of gold before noticing that the damn thing had moved again!!Construction complete, just the paint and the filling to do!This tree, the Black Locust or False Acacia!, knows how to protect itself from deer etc. Not only is it covered in these vicious spikes it is also highly toxic to eat!On one of our walks da catz followed us as far as the woods and then left us to continue. We did a circular tour of the valley but instead of following the road we followed the stream, good fun for a short walk which in other seasons would be much more difficult due to the undergrowth. However on return we discovered that Sid had run up a tree for some stupid reason and was obviously stuck. His front paws on one side of a v shape split of branches and his back legs on the other. Guess which overweight and unfit old man had to climb the tree and lift the STOOPID creature on to his shoulders and then climb back down again? Yep you guessed it, Moi! The look in Sids eyes though when I arrived at his perch and he stopped wowling and started purring made it all worth while!One banana box of mugs cleared, only four more to go!Spotted a few fungi on various bits of rotting would on one of our rambles but this lot were particularly photogenic.The boys have begun to hunt together, which is bad news for their potential victims! We like the idea that if the stick together when confronted by other cats or possibly aggressive creatures but thats probably a bit optomistic of us given Nancy’s tendency to run at the slightest scare!One morning last week I was up at 7.30 and out cutting brambles away from some young trees they were smothering. I then burnt the brambles and marvelled on how much one can do early in the morning with no-one to interrupt you!Nancy and Sid pretending in typical cat fashion that they have nothing to do with each other but sharing, the parasol bench, their new favourite lookout spot for hunting field mice all the same!!My new mug shelves are complete and full, sadly there is another box of mugs yet to open, it’s been 6 years now! The adjacent bookshelves are yet to be filled. I guess the only thing to do is to build some more mugs shelves in the last empty corner of the room! Hopefully a bit quicker than it took me to do these ones!
As yet I have limited our social media to the veggie bubble of Happy Cow and Vegevisits. Primarily because I detest most of the major online platform like Facebook and their respctive owners. I did recently open a Bluesky page for Barabrith which might be your best bet for furry feline fotos in the future!
However Vegevisits surprised me with a serious plug in their latest monthly newsletter and maybe we’ll now become soooo busy we won’t need to do anymore online advertising, with or without the cats! If you’ve not heard of Vegevisits I suggest you check them out. Their mission statement is to … ” make traveling easier for vegans and vegetarians, and connect like-minded people from around the world.” That’s pretty damn cool wouldn’t you say?
The top half of the Vegevisits mailout image.and the rest!
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.
