A Week is a LOOONG Time in Reno Land....

Wow, is all I can say!

I can't believe how much work we are getting through compared to how little, seemingly, got done when I was going in and out and back and forth all the time the past 2 years with Schengen Visa requirements.

Thankfully that is over now...
The travel was amazing and I never complained as I was in a permanent state of motion, which I loved and still do!
Once I stopped, around 4th Jan this year when I was granted my staying visa for 12 months at a time, I slept for almost 3 months. Thankfully it was winter and everyone was in their state of hibernation over here too.

Now I'm just waking up...really.

It's been a weird experience this winter thing over here.

I don't think I want to go through that again as you waste at least 3 or 4 good months of your life sitting in front of the fire and while that was exciting for the first week, there are far too many more things to do, experience and see yet while I'm still young and fit to do it all.

So I'm planning a 3 month travel bonanza from mid December to mid March each year when everything closes down here. I'll probably pop back in for a day here and there to check on things, but hopefully I will have a full time caretaker by then...

Any takers? Free utilities, wifi, food and accom in exchange for sleeping the lazy winter nights away here and watching TV all day!
(I'll have a TV by then).

I love the snow and one lifelong dream was to wake up to the fallen snow in  my own yard...that was breathtakingly accomplished this year, something that literally took my breath away with its sheer magical majesty. An unforgettable and amazing experience to wake up, unsuspectingly and open up the front door to this amazing sight.

Silently it came in the night, covered all with its white cloak and quietly left before we all awoke.
Just so magical, so pure and pristine, so quiet.
I remember once reading about Prince Charles talking about why he loved skiing...he said
"It's so amazing, you can hear the quietness"
I understand completely, indeed you can and do.

A dream come true...

So now that's done, next winter it's time to chase those ski runs and hit the slopes for a spell in skis and my hot pink ski suit! (I hope it still fits me)...

The quest continues...

QUEST..."a long or arduous search for something"...eg, "the quest for truth has intensified"  synonyms:search, hunt, pursuit; 

Why is it the new adventure I seek so relentlessly? 

I remember one of my mentors once wrote...

"Life should be an exciting adventure, it should never be a bore".

Seems I took this literally!

It is exciting to plan a 3 month stint again, as I do miss being on the go all the time, but doing all the renos here and planning the Guest Lodge has been so exciting too...Choices, choices! So I figure, a bit of both will do the trick...for a while, anyways!

On with the show.

Our bus stop...No, this is not the local school bus Gary Wild ! Another village does have something like that though...

Looking back from the bus stop , the streets are lined this week with white blossoms. The plums I'll eat whilst out jogging in the morning in Summer!

So much beauty surrounds us daily...

Waiting up at the bus stop...something of interest is always available there!

Before we hit the acres and acres of cherry trees, there are miles of linseed fields on the way into town.

A bad shot from the bus...but there are miles of these cherry and fruit trees in bloom. The fields are white for miles!

Outside City Gas showrooms...

Neighbours getting straw for mulching the gardens...

The modern day milk maid...moo-mooo! Door to door delivery of fresh cows milk 3 times a week. Less than 75cents Ausd for a fresh litre of milk...even 10 cents less if you have yr own bottle!

3 guesses what this orange plastic thing will become?  No clues given, but the answer will be revealed next week...To cover the cracks and sliding out of parts of the concrete slab, this patio will all be covered with decking extending onto the garden area where the bricks are. The spa will sit on this part of the deck and the wine vat cum coffee table, will go a few feet away on the rest of the deck nearer the fence.

Was cleaning this little cupboard out to toss it on the wood pile when I had a good look at it...the hinges on the door are broken, the legs/feet have fallen off at the back, knobs are all broken off, the bottom plate is rotted thru, but the frame of it is still quite strong and firm. So I decided even though it's virtually falling to bits in places, it's quite a cute little thing...so I'll fix it all up, treat it with something for the all the woodworms in it (see all the pin holes in the wood?) and paint it up and use it outside somewhere...probably near the spa or in the new tool shed. (The 3 door shed when repaired will be called the Tool Shed!) 

I keep forgetting about fixing the patio. It has to have a foyer type thing built onto it, about 700cm deep and 2 mtrs long...just enough to move around in so the front door can come off and it's airy and lets a lot of light in...Plus you won't then fall directly into the kitchen and onto the oven!
Patio walls get painted last when the house exterior gets painted about September when all the exteriors of all 3 sheds, the house and new big room are completed. 

Was out jogging this morning and saw a gang of painters up the road, so got them to come around and have a basic look at the task ahead and booked them in to give me a quote in August to paint the entire place after all the exteriors will be nearing completion around end August..

That will indeed be an exciting time for sure.

Also ran into the guy who was going to fix up the fancy work on the front of the house too, but in a meeting this afternoon we arranged with a translator, he said as he works 580 miles away all week now until the end of the working season and gets back on Saturday, virtually in time to turn around to go back on Sunday, he can't do it.

So that's a blow as his work is impeccable and Zoltan can't do that type of fancy detailed work. So it looks like a bit of smoke and mirrors will be needed to repair the illusions of patterns out there now.

I'll just get Zoltan to render it the same as the rest of the place and I'll potter around myself on the fiddly bits and pretend I'm icing a cake...I actually won first prize in 2 local shows for my cake decorating back in the olden days. This time I'll be squeezing cement through a cake decorating tube and see how I go!
Now that is something you will not want to miss!
Hahaha...

Dog has been busy again this week and caught 2 more moles...

A better shot of the mole's amazing digging claws.

Cutie pie back to check out the work progress...

I set up all the form work around the oval garden and it's ready now for cementing. You can see the OCD type personality exposed very well here...hahaha...The guys just had a few rocks and odd bits of wood to set the distances. But, NO...that was not good enough for me, so I pulled it all apart, sawed up little bits of wood and and re-did it all properly!

Then out came the fence so we can cement a reinforcing area around the top of the well bricks, as over time the moles have dug it all up and the first metre of the inside brick well lining is in jeopardy of collapsing. We aim to put in new fence posts and extend the fence to the end of the original house here too...

It's going to look strange with an extra few metres added to the fence line...

We tried to make it round but the form work wouldn't bend that small a circle, so we went with square! I found an old huge wine vat metal enclosing circle of steel, but it was about a foot in diameter too small. It would have been perfect though...

Cementing the oval garden mower strip begins...There are purple Irises and gladiola behind them in this garden so far. 

So much is happening just now as the season kicks into gear.
Jobs completed this week...

1. Mower strip around the oval garden completed
2. Reinforcing added around the well
3. Fence removed to make way for new extension/addition
4. Inside little wood shed given a quick render of cement to tidy it up,
5. Moved all the wood into the woodshed
6. Started the edging for the big deck,
7. Started a brick mower strip around the big deck rock edging, instead of cement, as the cement really looks out of character
8. Back fence mesh is at last completed all the way along and closed off! 
9. Cementing under the entire back fence is finally completed...that is such a relief!
10. Cement block template formwork for pathway made 
11. First test slab for garden path poured
12. The mounds of soil, manure and mud bricks in the end paddock were leveled out 
13. Most of the broken tiles, bits of wood, broken concrete and old brick pieces from when we dozed the collapsed middle shed into the end paddock last year, were collected in a marathon work day...with Istvan or I not going home until it was all done! 
14. Half of the fruit trees were chipped around to make mowing easier...the rest will be done this week...some people paint the bottom foot of the tree stems white to stop some bugs...I may do that too?

Have a Spanish/Croatian volunteer family booked in here for a month starting end April, so my trip to Belgrade dentist will now be between end May and start of June...or maybe this week if I can find out how long my dentist needs me.

The family is a mum, dad and 6 year old girl. They both cook and the lady fixes computers!
So, they'll have my nice new bedroom as I shift back to the lounge area until we fix up the end bedroom for them all as soon as the 3 Door shed is completed.

All the tools, cement mixer etc etc are stored in the end room until then.
Work on that starts after all the little jobs get finished next week....yay, yahy, yaahhyy!!!

So until we start the last 2 big jobs and first one is done, it's an unholy mess everywhere at the moment. Once the 3D shed is completed, roof back on, insides roughly re-rendered, floor cemented, window and a real locking door are installed, the end bedroom remains a store room cum workshop.

I'll get the man to help me restore/renovate and paint all the furniture here, fix up the remaining wine vats and the lady to cook and clean up, weed the gardens and so on and the little girl can do jobs too, taking out garbage, feeding the dog and setting the table etc... I can't stand kids that do nothing and are waited on hand and foot and don't contribute to the family tasks that need doing.
My opinion is this is the building block of responsibility to learn how to contribute to the world, not to learn that the world owes them a living! I think it teaches them how to interact and participate.

I'll still keep my mowing man once a week, as he has those gorgeous kids you see here and I want to help him a bit while work is scarce for him for a few months yet....

Then another volunteer couple are coming for a month in early June to do all the promo things for the Lodge. A volunteer for a week is pretty useless in a way, 2 weeks is fairly OK, but longer is best as it takes a while to get used to how they understand what you mean when saying for example..."Mow the lawn"

To some it means, cut a path thru the grass so you can get out the gate, to others it means, cut to the edges, but leave the grass grow along the fences and around the trees, others can't understand that us Westerners need it to be done at least each week and more for the next 3 months and so on!

Young Tibi from a few villages away was excellent last year. He was fastidious...I should hire him as manager next year, actually! He is coming back for a visit next week, so that will be nice.

Fun days ahead.
See you next week with lots of completed job pics for you!
Bye
M
xxxx

Doing...Doing...Done!

Yasahhhy...
The back fence finally has concrete under it to anchor it from dogs and chooks getting under it and into neighbour's yards and vice versa. Only have to put up the grass/reeds privacy screens now, but that can wait until August/September yet..

Three roof gutter drains are all in, connected, run to the well and the lumen is patent (nursing term for...the water goes thru OK) The 4th gutter drain has a big drain to the end of the side yard with a dry rubble pit yet to dig, so that is being done on the weekend.

Bedroom one window is in, cement cleaned off it and have painted the surrounds. Have to paint the timber windows themselves when all the rest of the timbers get painted...after all the cutting out of windows happens.

Am thinking of adding yet another window to the current lounge room too...which may become a 4 bed dorm/family bed room...not sure yet. It would work a whole lot better than a lounge and dining room for sure, as it's the wrong shape for how I'd really like to decorate it!

The big deck...stage one is completed with its garden areas, with the rocks around it. It's gone as far as it can be at the moment due to the Summer Kitchen being worked on in late May.
Am going for a dentist visit for a crown on my tooth and a break in Belgrade about mid May, will see  Jelana, other friends and looking for hand made lace tablecloths and other lovely linen. Then the Summer kitchen work begins. Excited about that one for sure.

The little shed is finally being rendered roughly inside also on the weekend or there abouts and I'll put all the wood in there and finally be able to get the layout and stage 2 of the big deck started by Monday/Tuesday.

Concrete mower strip area has been dug and prepped for around the oval garden.

Pumpkin, rock-melon and watermelon patch down on the second block, is finally being cleaned up, rocks and rubble removed and old mud bricks flattened so it can be mowed between mounds now while the plants are growing. We had all the mud bricks and rubble spread there last year to fill up some lower areas and it was full of concrete rubble, bits of wood and thousands of bits of broken tiles. Every time we mow now, we gather another barrow load of rubble and take it to the big deck area to be covered over.

The front garden path is yet to be completed...waiting to find 6 matching concrete slabs...if we can't find them, Zoltan will just have to make individual slabs to lay to match the finished look. Am making a rather dramatic entrance there and will semi enclose it with 2 foot high pillars those urn pot plants on them

3 new little gates are being made on Wednesday to replace the sagging house garden gates at present, with a new one for the water metre area..

House garden fence moved to include the end of the well area

Inside the House yard, the path and garden edging in the extended yard is being completed to match existing set up. Another little job for me on the weekend too.

12 inch Concrete surround around the well, to prevent it caving in is being formed up now and the rest of this small area will probably be garden...flowers and tomatoes.

Concrete strip along sunny front of house...for water drainage down to garden areas is also being formed up, so when the mixer is going, there will be concrete pours all around the place! Most houses have a 12 inch concrete strip around the entire house here.

New fence posts being put in and 3 new gates hung and swung OK...even with proper locks!

Fence inside front gate to be cut out and 3rd gate put in for the water metre man to access rather than going into the house garden area, traipsing along the patio, past the spa area etc.

Lower part of the house at rear is having  its cement render completed finally!

Also a concrete mower strip is being formed around the big deck, then I'll place the rubble rocks nicely in place.

It will be so good to have all these finishing off jobs all done and the place outside sort of tidy...for the 4th time since I've been here.
Tidiness comes in stages as work gets done.
The first tidy was to get the 6 foot high grass slashed so I could be seen in the paddock!
The next tidy up was when the house and attic were cleaned out and everything dumped into the nice cleaned up grassy yard.
The next one was when we dozed the collapsed middle shed down to the bottom paddock...

and now this one...which is going to last only a month or so...
...until the guys pull down the 3 door shed...sighhhh, then it starts all over again.

But I'm getting them trained now to cart the stuff away as they make the mess and not leave piles of junk everywhere.
It must be a Hungarian tradition to leave tools dirty and piles of left overs and rubbish from their work, all over the place....sort of like Italian ladies giving birth...the louder they scream, the more cudos they receive!

It's my 2nd year anniversary here tomorrow, 15th April, so I should have thought to grab a bottle of bubbly...
Oh well, will do that later on I guess.

Red tulips over the road at the neighbour's place. Beautiful.

Drains going in...This part of the fence will be cut out and a post and new gate put in so the water metre man can have acess to the metre under that square concrete slab on the top right. It is a metal box, 2 metres deep with the metre at the bottom...so the water does not freeze!

Off to the well it all goes...Gosh...all that dirt over my nice new path...

Now it's out with the little bricks and in with a tap waste that connects to the waste water pipes...

OK...we have a connection!

...and after a hard day in the brown dirt...I get to sleep in my white bed! Hahaha...

Next day after the drains were dug, laid, the guys started the concrete under the back fence.

Forming it all up for the pour. The wire netting is embedded into the concrete a few inches...

So while the guys did the fence concrete at the back of the house, I shoveled the dirt back into the trenches at the front...The patch at the gate is going to have some 2 ft high columns, but we have to get the new gate and post in first, then I'll just pave it with old bricks for the time being. Then later on when my Peter comes over, we'll move the big front gates across a foot and fix the front fence concrete as it's broken. The gate is too hard to get in when one has a back pack on, so it must be moved away from the fence a foot or so..

You can see the need for a new gate here! The old looking, newish path will be extended to the drainpipe here where the board is, the well will have a foot wide concrete edging put around it, then I'll edge it all with brick ends to match the rest. The fence will be extended around the well and the new gate will be right here where the long board is. 3 new posts must go in now for the gate and extended fence...Sighhh, one thing fixed leads to 4 more things to fix!

Looking over, we see our storks have arrived back again...They were the last in the village to get here.

My neighbour's motorised billy cart!

Beautiful blossoms next door...

Under the tree...peek-a-boo!

Blossoms everywhere...

Strange sunsets this week...

The little shed almost completed and ready for a coat of paint! My poor old deck got all messed up as I had to empty out all the wood I'd piled up inside the shed...forgetting the guys would need to work from the inside of the shed to put the roof on.     You can see how quickly the bushes grew...2 weeks ago those bushes were bare! The grass is growing so fast too...it needs mowing every 3 days at the moment. Crazy...

Getting ready to sort out the rocks into their final places here so Zoltan can cement the mower strips around for this area too.

My apple tree down the end of the 2nd block...

Beautiful apple blossom...

Dog caught a few moles this week...I have never seen one before...I thought they'd be heaps bigger from the blessed mess they make when they dig those mounds of dirt everywhere...

She was so funny...rolling around, tossing the mole around, up in the air, catching it again, having so much fun! It's hanging out her mouth here...

Will try and get better pics next time...

Check out the claws!

Outside my gate...

Aren't they beautiful?

Lovely...

I must get some of these.They are beautiful and last a while too...

Perfect...

.

This angle suits them better...

They are really, really a lovely red, but they all came out orangey...Amazing.

Next on the agenda, the 3 door shed. I moved all those bricks the other day to tidy up the place a bit. Istvan built me a new clothes line with 4 posts. You can see it right where the new big room is going, between the end of the house and the 3 door shed. It will join onto and be connected to both buildings when completed in September. Will be so glad to finally get rid of all those piles of bricks, roofing tiles under the lino (are from the shed that collapsed that was between the 2 buildings), sand and gravel! It will look so much better at the end of May with that 3 door shed rebuilt. The summer kitchen doesn't look too bad from a distance, especially now with all the bushes growing around to hide the broken end!

Have been sanding back one of the antique dressers as it doesn't look like the restoration guy is coming now as he's gone to work in Germany...so that's another lot of work I didn't factor in that I'd have to do...but if I do one a week, they'll eventually get done.

Also started working on making the stools for the patio deck here to-day as I was cleaning up the yard and found the old fuel drums. I had a brainwave as I was sawing away on one of the drums with the hacksaw, having no idea how to do what I was wanting to do...but a funny thing happened on the way...

Will take a pic for you for next week...

OK...am off now, have a bunch of trees and shrubs to transplant/plant out, so will head off.
Catch you next week with heaps more little jobs done hopefully...
Bye...
M
xxx