Spring Custom

Each year, in early March comes Martinitza, the welcoming of ‘Mother March’, a heralding of spring custom.

We don’t get to see that but we do see the results. People wear woollen white and red intertwined ‘strings’ around their wrists until they see the first storks, at which time the bracelets are untied and placed onto the tree branches.

As we arrived at the airport this year we were told “The storks are here!”

Storks are very impressive when flying. They glide in like great silent missiles and one wonders how they will land on comparatively small nests. But they do. Take off is probably more impressive

Here are our local storks. Only a pair at present but we will see young later. Last year it was four. The nest gets a bit crowded but there is never any discord.

But speaking of discord, below, but within the same nest, as lodgers, the storks have sparrows which make an awful noise continuously with their supposed arguments. It is a surprise that the storks tolerate the intrusion.

Our House II

Our house is a single level building with a garage built below. The roadside view shows the height of the rooms of the main part. A closer view of our house shows the complete depth as well as the vehicle gate which is too cumbersome to use generally. Also shown are next door’s out-houses or barns etc.

In Bulgaria these always seem to be built exactly on the border of the property and no allowance made for the overhanging roof.

The wires crossing the picture are for the telephone. We don’t have one connected and rely on mobiles. (Cell) The ones crossing the RH corner are the electricity supply and we do have that at least most of the time but it is subject to outages.

The undulating nature of the land hereabouts can be seen by the drop from the house to the gate along the boundery fence/wall and further on down to the bottom of the house wall. It is probably two metres within a run of six metres, just here.

Inside, near the gate are fig bushes, not yet in bud, also, nearer the house there are grape vines. A lovely black and a so-so white. We also have a line of wine grapes running across the garden.

Our House

Here is the scene as you approach our house from the village. It is to the left of the picture, all white with a red roof.

All the windows and doors are on the other two walls, not seen from this angle.

The shadow in the foreground is from an empty house immediately next door.

To the right is the house of our neighbour Ivan (retired) who lives with his son Christo, the waterman. It is he who reads the house meters, repairs stopcocks and the water meters that regularly break in the wintertime.

In the distance can be seen the storks’ nest on top of an electrical supply pole, just showing against the blue above the green hillside. Storks’ nests are a common feature of the area. We see a least half a dozen on our walks around the village and after the new generation is born we often see lots of storks on the open pastureland feeding on frogs.

There is a joke about whom the storks frighten, young women and frogs. Bulgarian humour is very basic and simple.

The road is a sandy dirt with lots of pieces of granite.

This sandy stuff seems to be the essence of granite that didn’t get the pressure to make it proper rock. It is difficult to dig and in some places is only a foot below the soil’s surface of the garden. It does make a free draining soil, sometimes too free.

The Village

Our village is called Granitovo after the Granite that is quarried there.

At one time it was a busy village centered around the granite industry. Cutting and polishing machines are still to be found but nobody works them and like most of Bulgaria it has suffered from the Russian occupation to the extent that there are few indigenous people in the village.

I am told that it was and is considered ‘border’ country and people were not encouraged to be here.

There is now, however, a growing population of Brits. It is not my intention of discussing them, only the Bulgarians.

The Area

At the beginning of April we come to Bulgaria for our summer holiday. Bulgaria is a small country off the Black Sea. It has a population of about the size of London mostly living in the towns. We don’t live in a town; we live in a village in the southern part of the country, close to the Greek and Turkish borders.

The land here is mostly rolling hills giving lots of pretty views.

Plenty of pastureland and lots of woods many of which are being reduced by lack of planning. Or so it appears.

The countryside is often spoiled by that modern curse the plastic bag and bottle. There are no plans here to stop using them and we are seen as peculiar when we don’t want every little thing put in a plastic bag.

A little to the north of us are the Thracian Plains.

For English readers the land is flat like Norfolk.

For Americans, I am guessing but maybe like the Prairies although only half way to the horizon. After that it is hills again.