One of the problems about naming a sheep after England’s greatest centre forward is the expectation that it will have a bit of backbone. This morning I spent about half an hour making a shelter for me to do the bricklaying and another one to keep Alan cool in the melting mid day sun. A short while later a gust of wind blew down her (yes Alan is a she) tarpaulin and she completely freaked. I thought about the characteristics that I had automatically attributed to her just by virtue of the name …… she needs a bit of confidence building! Actually I didn’t realise how ego centric sheep can be – I thought they just happily ate grass all day but no – Alan is very attention seeking and very noisy. She wants to be beside me all the time but if I let her off the rope she immediately eats all the things that she’s not supposed to and tramples over the vegetables. She was just making a big noise there and when I went to check, she had spitefully (and cleverly) tipped her water over and was refusing to stand in the shade! How do I end up with animals like this? Jess kind of likes it here except for the heat but follows me around all the time. Tino, who does have some characteristics of his namesake but is a bit of a woos, runs in mad circles around the field and loves me because I feed him. To be fair, Alan isn’t afraid of the dogs and headbutted Jess the day she arrived. If I was a proper techie (and had the time)I could set up a blog called the Antics of Alan and everyone could share with me the frustrations everytime he tangles his leg around the rope. It also really hurts when he stands on my foot.
Apart from the animals, I’m alone here just now. Ed and Jess, the last volunteers left last weekend but they’ll be back – they liked Voditsa so much they’re buying a house here! Jo and Jacquie are also looking for somewhere in the village – its not an ex-pat invasion because they all intend to live here and invest time and energy into the village. Ed and Jess are keen to keep animals – maybe Alan could go for a holiday down the road sometimes and they’re all into organic and ethical farming – its quite exciting now to think about the possibilities as we work cooperatively.
Ed and I are going to explore the liqueur business – I cant wait for these trees to all start bearing fruit so I can get started.
Trees – there is so much fruit this year, I’m going to be really busy using it all! Last year there were only a few apples on one tree, now there are hundreds on about 6 trees. I now seem to have 4 different kinds of plums and the peach trees seem to be producing the same 5 million that they did last year. There are also loads of quinces and the funny red berry called Drianka which tastes awful but has liqueur potential.
The grass seed that I sowed in Mid April has finally germinated –after not a drop of rain for 8 weeks, it then rained for 5 days almost non stop. One day was just amazing with thunder and lightening all day and a downpour to rival the monsoon. It was also rain that came straight down – wind and rain together seems to be a particularly British thing and it was warm so we just sat on the porch all day and watched it.
Back to the word “bricklaying� – plan B in relation to the toilets and showers is based on the phrase “how hard can it be?� Jo, Jess and Ed did the hard stuff at the beginning – moving up from the foundations to the some eventual straight lines. It looked really hard so I kept out of it and planted vegetables but now its up to me! All I have to do is keep it straight and plumb – I don’t really know how to use a plumb line and I don’t have a spirit level but it all looks quite straight and it seems to be sticking together. Any brickies or builders reading this will be having a fit but it doesn’t seem that hard although I do have a use a lot of hand cream and its really bad for my nails! I’m also quite slow at it – Winston Churchill used to do bricklaying for a hobby – maybe I’ll get into it – there’s a long way to go so I’m going to get plenty of practice.
We have the most lovely sign for outside the gate – Jacquie is now the star pupil in her mosaic class and I cant wait to get it on the wall.