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.