21. We've been busy

We have been here now 3 weeks tomorrow we have been busy everyday and we love it. So far we have no regrets. We have had a fair amount of snow and we have had some gorgeous days, days where its t shirt weather outside brilliant.
What have we been up to. Well I have been in the garden as much as possible tackling the various jungles we have around the place, it will take time to tame it but we will get there bit by bit. What garden waste I can i am burning but a lot of it is still too wet to burn so i am now stockpiling it to dry it out to burn I think i am becoming a bit of a pyromaniac as you can mostly find me at the bottom of the garden poking the fire I have going in half an old oil drum.

We have been in to Ruse to open a bank account for Julie only to find we can't open one without a bulgarian phone number. So we has to obtain a bulgarian phone and another trip to Ruse sorted that out. I have never seen such paperwork than at the bank everything was stamped signed stamped again signed in triplicate then stamped the stamp signed for then countersigned and stamped again for good measure i think you get my drift.

We went to Popovo our nearest town about 10 miles away to try and sort our van insurance out to bulgarian insurance but we couldn't insure it as we don't have our residency cards yet. We have some time left on english insurance and we are hopefully getting our residency cards this coming week then we can sort the insurance. However the next hurdle will to be to get the van onto bulgarian plates but we will sort that as it occurs lets get it insured first.

Our new washing machine is up and running although I need to get a rubber mat to go under it the room its in has shiny tiles on the floor and every time it spins it sets off across the floor like Usain Bolt!!!!.

Usain the washer

Wanda the wheelbarrow has seen some action this week and I have got her wheel dirty ferrying garden stuff and logs around here's an action shot of her in operation obviously not to overloaded as im still running her in

Still running in 

We have been out driving in the snow which was fun at times as we had snow that froze then had more snow so we had snow on top of ice. We drove to Opaka a couple of villages along to get some money from the ATM as we don't have one in our village and it was snowing it was OK going but coming back it was snowing heavy. I think when we get proper snow in just not going out.

A snowy drive back.

On the subject of driving we keep coming across a road sign which is a warning sign for an animal. I now know what it is for but if i ever see one that looks like this I will be doing my own washing machine impression and doing one as fast as Usain Bolt . I put this picture on my Facebook and got some strange answers as to what it is from my UK friends answer is at the bottom of the page just to keep you wondering.

Wild cow rabbit mooseapotomus

We are looking forward to starting the garden and are planning and preparing what to grow.  I think i am going to put some raised beds in the vegetable plot to save digging every year things are already starting to grow and there a spring bulbs already coming up. I have been clearing the area immediately outside our cottage door where we hope to have herbs and flowers and a place to sit out other than our concrete courtyard this area also has grapevine which  will provide some shade if I haven't killed them when i trimmed them not having a clue what im doing.

Clearing up in progress

Friday brought a beautiful sunny day and a temperature of about 12 C as we sat outside having a brew I saw a wasp bloody hell a wasp in January followed by another and another and another.  Shit we must have a wasp nest somewhere after frantically searching the area I couldn't find anywhere where it could be. We found out later they weren't wasps but were honey bees and the temperature had brought them out. I wondered why all these wasps were so interested in my multi coloured striped smalls that were on the washing maiden drying in the sun they must of thought the colours were flowers.

Any way thats all for now we're off out shortly as we have been invited out for Sunday lunch at our neighbours.

Take care and the sign is for Wild Boar !!!!!

Mark and Julie