There is a crack in everything

Of course there is. That’s how the light gets in. Aaahhh, lovely Leonard.

Things are still moving at the snail pace here at Pruga. Of many things that were set to be finished “by the end of the month” – none were.

Still, there is a kind of tendency of progress. Maybe. Indications are as follows.

Some lights have been installed. Normally, Vanja and I can really do that – but there were a few that needed drilling etc really high up, so electrican Edo came by on Monday and installed them. Am pleased.

Lights on the first image are both (independant) Hrelić (Zagreb flea market) finds. They belong together – no?

And the second one I have to thank my friend V who saw them in the window shop displayed as decoration (there were five or six of them piled up), went in, asked the owner guy who sold two of them them to us – she took one for her hallway (looks great), and this one was waiting for over a year to be hung here. Round table with chairs will be below it. These were often used in classrooms in Zagreb so they bring up memories when people of roughly our age or older see them.

These are just decent looking cheap modern ones from DIY store, but work well as they throw light both up and down, so beams look nice at night and also stairs get some light for getting up to the gallery.

Yesterday, locksmith came buy (“yes, it will definitely be by the end of the month” – September that was) and took what I hope are final measurements for the sliding doors. The whole summer people kept asking “you are planning to put doors on the bathrooms, are you?”. Yes, I am. The thing is, as with everything else here, not just any doors.

Finally one sunny afternoon, I took courage (mice? snakes?) and cleared the storage in front of the house where I told the builders to put “everything” that they found in the old houses. I took stock of the doors (there were no mouses or snakes, but there was a lot of ancient dust).  There are seven (I need four), they all look good, some are incredibly heavy, all are either too tall or too short, but I am confident they can and will be adjusted to fit perfectly.

Notice how these guys also added planks to the bottom. We will do something similar.

I also asked the builders at the time to keep any boards that had any paint on them as I saw things made out of them (like table below) and obviously, one day, I will make something as well.

Another really good news is that I found a lovely guy (Tone) who will help me do a few thing around the house.

It is hard to decide what to focus on as there are sooo many things to do, and all seem important. Still, I am kind of focusing on the first impressions that guests may have with one exception. An indulgence for me: raised beds for my vegetable garden.

I have too many books on gardening, not to mention the websites, but I recently came across these Seed to plate guys and like them a lot. I guess the guy in the videos is kinda sexy. (You can tell Vanja is traveling a lot lately.)

Initially, I wanted to make the beds out of planks but as Tone and I attempted to sort out huge pile of old beams destined for many projects – he quickly assembled one bed out of beams and I said – why not! So, saved money on buying planks, beams should last through quite a few seasons before they rot (rotting is a problem with planks) and they look good. Albeit a bit on the rough side.

Ideally they would be about 1.2m x 2.4m and mine will be a bit less than 2.4m as beams are shorter, buy I guess vegetables won’t mind.

So, they just need moving to their final spot (they are really heavy, so Tone will bring tractor over one day to move them to the garden area, as doing one by hand did both our backs in).

We are also clearing some dry walls around. The one above was completely overgrown and I never saw the state of the wall (it is a neighbouring wall and belongs to us – interesting thing – the rule is that the wall that holds the ground belongs to the owners of the higher ground. In the case of this one, it holds our driveway, so it is ours to love and maintain. Unfortunately, properly restoring dry walls is really expensive and we have already done a few – so this one hopefully will last few more years as it has for the last 100 or so.

Even if most of it is not really a wall, but a pile of stones.

Some parts of it are reasonably OK, which reinforces the decision that it is not urgent to fix it.  Tone will build a simple fence alongside it so people don’t fall over and that will be it for now.

It is a kind of spring around us at the moment. As it was so hot and dry this summer, the nature completely retreated into itself and now as few rains have fallen, it all sprung up and is green and very luscious looking. No autumn colours in sight.

I found wild chives, and wild rocket is everywhere.

I’ve been told by neighbours that the mark for the centre of Istria is very close by (I keep saying we are at the heart of Istria) and we are planning to go for a walk to take a look. On a recent coffee in Pazin, we saw it marked at the map so I took a photo

This spring, there were poppies (just like in Tuscany, haha) on the neigbours’s medow, but for some reason not on ours. So, I did some nature manipulation and threw some seeds that I gathered on his meadow onto ours. I wonder if any will come out. Most pods were full of tiny flies that I guess gorged on seeds.

We’ll see in May!

PS iPhone is rubbish at taking pictures when there is no sun (and pretty cool when there is) – those blurry ones from the outside were taken last night before dusk, it seemed to me there was plenty of light still. But hey. I need to start using a proper camera.

PPS Sometimes, writing these, I feel totally silly posting pictures of wild rocket and poppy seeds. As if when I would read similar blogs before, I always wondered if people are faking these things a bit. So they look cooler than they might be. The thing is, this is really my life at the moment. Cool, relaxed life. Including listening to amazing bird song as I write this. I of course occasionally get frustrated because I always feel we (I?) could have done more, finished more, seen more. But that was exactly the same when I lived in the city and worked in the corporate world. And I hope that will subside with time. Better make some more jam then 🙂