Blog
It snowed without me
Greetings from the UK where I have been mostly screeching about the price of everything and wondering why there are so many people everywhere. So, you know, my standard UK experience. It doesn’t even feel that Christmassy here, and that’s my main reason for coming...
Lessons from the garden 2022
I’ve not been very Gardening Bore this year, have I? (On here, at least. I regularly bombard Instagram with pictures of tomatoes and courgettes.) Anyway, for those of you who come here for the garden porn, I apologise. Let’s give you a little fix to tide you over...
Putting on a show
How splendid has this autumn been in Bulgaria? The colour of the leaves has been stunning, and because the days are so warm (verging on hot, really), they’ve stayed glued to the trees for much longer than usual. A few years ago, we had a really hard frost pretty...
How we make cider
I say ‘we’ but this is mostly an annual Rob endeavour. I help out with the picking and chopping of apples, then I entirely check out of the process until it’s time to drink the stuff. Writing this post therefore meant shaking the details out of Rob’s head via a...
You know it’s autumn when…
Yes, yes, the leaves are turning interesting shades of gold and rust. The entire internet (okay, middle-aged women on Instagram, which for me IS the entire internet) has become obsessed with ‘spooky season’. There’s pumpkin shit everywhere. And we all know what...
Sightseeing (somewhere other than Sofia)
We love it when people come to stay because it forces us to behave like tourists and venture out on day trips. Seems like whenever we have the time, energy and money for a fun day out, we default to a day in Sofia. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Sofia. We live in the...
September and that New Year feel
Don’t know about you, but September has always given me New Year vibes. It doesn’t just stem from childhood and starting a new school year, with new teachers, fresh exercise books, new shoes, etc. It’s more than that. It’s in the air. It’s the shortening days and...
The curse of the inflatable pool
I jinxed the summer by buying a big, dumb inflatable pool. That’s what I did. We had all these plans for August. We had our Sinemorets trip with family, then we were looking forward to a week of quiet time just the two of us, then we had more visitors coming from...
Sinemorets (yes, again)
Happy to see I’ve nudged a few people to head to the wonderful Greek island of Samothraki this year. We’ll be going back ourselves at some point. But this year? This year I wanted to hunker down and go back to our old favourite, Sinemorets, on Bulgaria's Black Sea...
In the veg garden
Let’s check in on the veg garden, shall we? Because I realise I’ve hardly mentioned it since April, which is not very Gardening Bore of me at all. It’s been our best year yet for the veg garden. After we expanded it last year to make some extra new beds in front of...
Kitten circus
Step right up, folks, and welcome to the kitten circus. Also known as our garden. Because it’s kitten mayhem around here. I mentioned a while ago that a heavily pregnant cat had turned up in our garden and promptly given birth to three kittens in our summer...
Mushroom season
It’s been a dry month, with hardly any of the afternoon storms that usually punctuate June. Which is great. The garden has enjoyed the abundant heat and sunshine. But it’s not so great for picking mushrooms. Every time we’ve been mushroom hunting this season the...