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.
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| A dream come true... |
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.
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...
So much is happening just now as the season kicks into gear.
Jobs completed this week...
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
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.
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| Our bus stop...No, this is not the local school bus Gary Wild ! Another village does have something like that though... |
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| 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! |
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| So much beauty surrounds us daily... |
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| Waiting up at the bus stop...something of interest is always available there! |
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| Before we hit the acres and acres of cherry trees, there are miles of linseed fields on the way into town. |
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| A bad shot from the bus...but there are miles of these cherry and fruit trees in bloom. The fields are white for miles! |
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| Outside City Gas showrooms... |
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| Neighbours getting straw for mulching the gardens... |
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| 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! |
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| 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. |
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| 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!) |
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...
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| A better shot of the mole's amazing digging claws. |
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| Cutie pie back to check out the work progress... |
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| 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! |
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| 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... |
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| It's going to look strange with an extra few metres added to the fence line... |
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| 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... |
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| Cementing the oval garden mower strip begins...There are purple Irises and gladiola behind them in this garden so far. |
Jobs completed this week...
- Mower strip around the oval garden completed
- Reinforcing added around the well
- Fence removed to make way for new extension/addition
- Inside little wood shed given a quick render of cement to tidy it up,
- Moved all the wood into the woodshed
- Started the edging for the big deck,
- Started a brick mower strip around the big deck rock edging, instead of cement, as the cement really looks out of character
- Back fence mesh is at last completed all the way along and closed off!
- Cementing under the entire back fence is finally completed...that is such a relief!
- Cement block template formwork for pathway made
- First test slab for garden path poured
- The mounds of soil, manure and mud bricks in the end paddock were leveled out
- 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!
- 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
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