Its been a very busy year! After last summer we decided that building a swimming pool would actually be a good idea, but of course one thing leads to another and we realised there had to be some changes made to the garden to accommodate this.
Also, the grass had suffered last year, due to the heat but also the amount of wear and tear, on newly sown grass was a problem. So it was back to the drawing board.
To begin with we chose the swimming pool we wanted and then proceeded to look into everything that comes with a swimming pool, not only the technicalities of installing it but also the upkeep, the daily running of a pool and the surrounding area.
Johan is not here all the time but for big projects like this he needs to be available, and also physically present to coordinate everything.
Winter in North Macedonia is very cold, the temperature goes down to -200C and there is snow usually from December until late February early March, so obviously during that time its not possible to work in the garden.
But we got there!
It took a lot of energy to get it all up and working and we still have some problems with the chlorine levels. The water here is very hard with an incredibly high level of sulphates, this causes a big problem with lime scaling of water pipes and its proving a challenge to get the swimming pool to a level where the water stays clean.
The other problem that we have with the pool is that it seems that we are not the only ones who enjoy a cool swim… Frogs keep jumping into the pool! Last week, we had finally got everything working and we had some friends over, their kids were playing in the pool when they suddenly started shouting that a frog had jumped in! We continually fish them out but as yet they haven’t got the message.
The paving stones had to be grouted, and we have found some grouting in The Netherlands which by means of scattering over the tiles, making it wet and sweeping it into the tiles the grouting was done in one easy go. Well easy but still pretty hard work with soaring temperatures and a large area of tiles to work on. The great thing was the grouting had to be wet at all times and usually you would not want to be wet as well but in this case it was an enormous blessing! We worked out a strategy where Johan hosed and I swept, it started off a bit like wallpapering with your partner, we decided long ago paying someone to wallpaper was actually cheaper than a divorce, but this had to be done and we persevered until we got into a flow.
And later, as we enjoyed a cold glass of wine and some fresh olives we applauded ourselves on a job well done!
We are absolutely loving the pool! We have been very lucky to be able to meet up, amongst others with friends who live in South Africa and were visiting here and finally all the hard work makes sense!
In the coming weeks our daughters are all visiting, very exciting and so great that we can share this with everyone!
We have had quite a few storms the last few days and because the cover for the swimming pool has yet to be delivered a lot of debris gets blown into the pool, including frogs who love it and spiders who obviously don’t as they can’t swim and of course this has to be swept and hoovered up.
We are still trying things out and we did have a ‘robot’ hoover but it didn’t live up to expectations so now we sweep and hoover by hand.
If you are into mindfulness I suggest you find a swimming pool to sweep, its amazingly mindful, the water gently swishing along with the broom, the motion of the dust and sand gliding along the bottom of the pool is mesmerising.
It also takes quite a lot of muscle power to move, the very long broom through the water, so not only relaxing but also getting a workout to boot!
Wanderings in North Macedonia 