ON THE BENEFITS OF CONTINUOUS RAIN

Well the rain continues, with April showers occuring every day amid periods of heavy rain.
Working outside means dodging the showers and the occasional thunder, and the odd flash of lightning. We have had continuous rain for almost a month now, but we aren't complaining. Not only is it good for the crops that we, and everyone in the village, depend on so much, it also fills our well.
The well is our main source of water (so we use bottled drinking water) and, obviously, it relies upon rain to fill it. Last year we had an extended dry period throughout the summer, when we also had over fifty guests staying, which meant that the well started to get a little low. It never reached crisis point, which shows how good a well it is, as some in the village dried up completely, and those people don't have all of the British style 'mod-cons' that we have, like en-suite bathrooms in every room, a washing machine, or a dishwasher. We were mighty relieved to see rain arrive though last September and fill it again.
The rain we have had so far this year has resulted in the well being more full than we have ever seen it, so no similar worries for this year, and the crops are growing beautifully.
All of our trees are in bud too. New apple, pear and plum trees we planted last year, as well as ornamental cherry and lilac trees are all showing good signs of growth, alongside the older more established apple and plum trees.
Plums are the main ingredient of the local fire-water, called Tuica (pronounced Tsweeka), which explains why so many grow in and around the village, but more on that another time.
For the first time our plum trees are in full blossom, so we may get our own crop this year.
Our beautiful cherry tree is also covered in blossom. It gave us a bumper crop of cherries last year,  sadly though we didn't have the time to take full advantage of it and preserve them, so we lost a lot. Hopefully this year it will be different.
The weather forecast, which is usually correct, says that the sun will arrive with the beginning of May, and summer will trully begin. Winter was relatively easy this year, but we are still looking forward to our hot days and warm nights so that we can be outside and fully appreciate the wonderful place we live in.................Did you realise that a summer in Romania is one of almost continuous sunshine and temperatures into the high 30's during the day?

Preparing for a Feast!

So, we’ve had Ladies Day, but that was 8th March, so why so long before I update the blog? Here we go with the explanation (excuse).
 

Following the 8th March, we have had glorious weather, and as I have said before, this is a particularly busy time of year. First things first, get the earth turned over and get the early crops in. the boys built a lovely fence to keep the doggies out of the vegetables and between us we started to turn over the ground, by hand and with a rotavater. (Which soon turned out to be by hand again when the stupid thing broke!)

Once the earth was prepared, it was time to start preparing the planting rows and of course writing down what went where, not only for the memory jog when they started growing, but also for crop rotation and to avoid disease next year. The of course there was the well earned drink at the local to enjoy.
The next day, first thing in was peas, with garlic in between - which I am pleased to say 4 weeks later have germinated and are growing strong.

Then it was time to turn attention to the mini greenhouse area, and get some heat into the soil, where we have planted; celery, spinach, parsnip, lettuce, carrot and spring onion. Two days later great encouragement when we saw growth, lots of it! A week or so of tending and watering this ‘growth’, we did a little research into seedling identification and discovered that the compost was full of seeds – weed seeds, so on my hands and knees I went a weeding. Great news, beneath that dreaded weed there are beautiful rows of all of the seeds planted, all looking lovely and no worse for wear.

In between times, we have planted red and white onion, cabbage, strawberries, radish, swede, pumpkin, and herbs in the main growing area and all are doing fine.

Indoors, the chilli-pepper, bell-peppers, tomatoes, geranium, margaritte, petunia and stock seeds are growing nicely, the lavender, two out of two hundred have germinated and the dahlia, lily, bougainvillea and hibiscus which are growing from strength to strength, ready to be planted out after this latest cold spell.




In addition to all of this horticultural and agricultural activity, we have also managed to paint the gates and fences, along with many of our neighbours; this is something that is done before Easter or Christmas in Romania as a fresh welcome to the family who visit at these times of the year. We however took a little longer because it has been 10 long years since they were last done, but now they are looking lovely and very English.

Many of you celebrated Easter last week, but here as with many things, it’s different and we are now enjoying our Romanian Orthodox Easter weekend, which means, more preparation!

So we started with dying eggs red……………………….. (to be continued on the next rainy day!)