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April flowers

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!
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March away

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!

 

 

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February fings!

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 keyring
Sid 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.

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January japes!

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 Sanja
After 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!

thanx for reading!

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Vegevisits gave us a plug!

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!

 

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December days are done.

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!

Toodle pip, See you next year!

 

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November was quiet.

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!

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So what happened in October?

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 (?).
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So what happened in September?

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.

and now its October!

 

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May!!! My last post was in May!!?

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!