And here we are again. Pruga, Lovrinići, Istria, Croatia! Our first guests just left so I sit down to review last two weeks since we moved. Our wisteria finally decided it can flower – from one branch only for now, but apparently this is a good sign.

After driving through the mountains still covered in (fresh!) snow,

surviving three hours of constant, saddest meowing you can imagine, we got here. You can see a glimpse of terror in those eyes.

Cute drawing courtesy of our multi-talented friend C, who, being a cat owner, sympathises.

What ensues as soon as we get here is cleaning frenzy. Not being here for six months means everything is overgrown outside and inside the spiders took over.

If you never tried a miniwash – do. If I knew it was that much fun and that addictive (the question is – where to stop?), I would have bought it years ago. I think I will do garden paths next 😉 Isn’t the new beach (well, decking) really cool?

In one of our storage spaces, we had lots of old doors, shutters, pieces of wood, things I kept “for future projects”. I decided it is time to get rid of loads. And, what do you know, among old wood, a little owl found a perfect spot for a nest. I have not seen it, Vanja said it looked exactly like this. So, we stopped the cleaning, and left it, I hope it is still there and the chick (there was only an egg for now) and her will be fine. After a few moments of my frantic “it cannot drag dead mice into my storage space”, I came to my senses and realised that because she was there, there were no traces of last year’s dormice overwintering there. So all is good with owls and mice.

Perhaps you noticed our new beach above (!). It has only been used few times as the weather has not been too kind so far. And as well as the beach, there is a new rock that took some heavy machinery to put in place.

And here it is in place.

Another project – repairing the old fence that is now new.

I made seven days worth of very small cakes. When we have only two guests (like loveliest honeymoon (!!!) couple), making full cakes for two people would be a bit much, so I have these tiny cake and loaf tins and make half-recipes. Which sometimes means making half egg cake.

There was coffee in the sun.

And there will be lots of strawberries this year. Sun, could you please come out for more than a few hours a day.

And there will be elderflower juice. Again, sun is needed to scent it.

And there are flowers growing out of the wall in Sveti Lovreč.

So here it is to a long and hot summer.

This is how we roll until it arrives.