14th October 2013

I woke early to a dreary, murky morning. Rain had crept in during the night, leaving our once-neat pile of dry, cut logs outside the wood store looking soggy and despondent. So much for the Bulgarian weather forecast; they clearly speak with a forked tongue. We’d planned a mountain outing, but with visibility barely beyond the garden wall, we called it off. Naturally, in classic fashion, it didn’t rain a drop all day. The sun, however, sulked behind its blanket until the cliffs finally peeked out sheepishly across the valley in the late afternoon.

Banjo was robbed of his long morning walk since the grass was soaked, and I feared he might drown beneath the sheer weight of accumulated droplets as he charged through the meadow. He was not impressed. To soften the blow, I resorted to chucking his frisbee and mooing cow toy around the garden. Banjo never tires of the game; my enthusiasm, alas, expires rather more swiftly.

First task of the day: haul the damp logs undercover before they suffer another drenching. Job done, we turned to Genya’s ill-fated sapling, planted with hope earlier in the year but now dead as a doornail. Onto the woodpile it went. Another tree required relocation, though I harboured grave doubts about extracting it with sufficient roots intact. Wisely, I adopted the supervisory role, pulling up a chair to observe David’s labours. At my suggestion, he employed a long metal pole for leverage until it emerged somewhat bent, and I helpfully pointed out that the tree probably had a tap root. I explained what a tap root was over coffee, while David nursed the mangled pole. After reflection, we abandoned relocation in favour of radical pruning: fifteen minutes later, the many-stemmed plant had been reduced to a single rather sorry stem. Still, I assured David, it now had “potential.”

We then tackled two twisted willows, “dwarf” varieties that had cheerfully grown to over five metres. Bulgarian garden centres, it seems, define “dwarf” rather liberally. Relocation was out of the question, so the smaller one was marked for the chop. Ten minutes with the chainsaw and voilà: more firewood. The apple trees received a gentler snip with secateurs, and the lavender bushes a trim. All told, a productive day, if not quite the alpine adventure we’d set our hearts on.

Lunch was an affair to remember: cheesy sausage rolls, garlic bread, and those notoriously vicious spicy wedges we’d once vowed never to touch again. They attacked with the same brutality as before. Even our post-lunch coffee carried a sinister hint of chilli, leaving lips tingling and eyes watering. I mused that wedges of such incendiary heat would never sell in Britain, madness in potato form. David, however, declared they’d be a smash hit if branded “Ridiculously Spicy Wedges.” I had to admit, he may have a point; I’d probably buy them too.

The afternoon’s exertions saw us levelling the border by the wall and placing plotchas, enormous Bulgarian roof stones, between plants to discourage the weeds (a plan we both knew was doomed). Milen appeared briefly but, true to form, vanished again the moment he spotted real work in progress.

After an entire day without a single sunbeam, we packed up by late afternoon. Perhaps due to wedge-related trauma, neither of us had much appetite. Eventually, I mustered a packet of Bulgarian soup, which was mercifully bland. To round off the evening, I indulged in four episodes of Spartacus before a spirited Facebook chat with Sarah and Charlotte about Downton Abbey, and then, at last, to bed.