The winds have started again. The Holy weekend has been extremely windy, the temperatures have dropped from cozy 20°C(68°F) to cold 10°C(33°F), the house heating is back on, and most of the seedlings are back indoors. All we did during the past couple of days was eat and sleep. The Holy weekend in Croatia is usually spent like this anyway, the tradition states that once the bells in the church are tied, all garden and soil work is forbidden. So, basically, people spend their weekend indoors anyway. I’m not a strict tradition follower, and many times I did the garden work during the holy weekend, but this weekend was just too cold and windy to do anything outside.

On Good Friday, I spent the day cleaning and making cakes. The winds have already picked up, so I couldn’t do any real work outside, but the temperatures were still high enough to keep the seedlings outside in the sun. We got some mild showers on Friday, so I didn’t have to water my plants. I planted the peas on Thursday, and the rain was very helpful. The peas have been planted in my new garden bed, next to the garage, where we’ll place a climbing net. Of course, I forgot to tell my hubby to place the boards for the climbing net, so I had to do it on my own, and I lost a bunch of time drilling the bricks and placing the boards. It happened when you take the wrong and dull drill bit.

As I said before, on Good Friday I spent most of the time cooking and preparing for Easter. Traditionally Croats eat fish on Friday, so I made some fish for dinner, followed by stewed chard. We love to eat chard. Usually in Croatia, chard is made by simply throwing it in the hot oil and leaving it to wilt. I used to do it this way, but lately, I like to cook with little or no oil. I make my chard in a wok, with a tiny amount of water, just to help it release its own water. I add some garlic, salt, and black pepper and the chard is done. It tastes as great as a normally made one, except it doesn’t have that oily scent.

On Holy Saturday the winds were already so strong that we were under the yellow wind warming. Here the yellow warning is turned on once the winds reach over 60 km/h, which is still much milder than the coastal Croatia, where there was issued a red warning with winds up to 200 km/h(124mph). We never get such strong winds in northwestern Croatia. Our winds are slower but with continuous force. Once the wind picks up speed the gusts are almost continuous, with little to no breaks between the gusts. I didn’t even try to go outside, I spent my day baking.

Hubby decided the winds were getting too strong and tried to protect the peas and my plant pots with plastic covers. The plastic covers flew away sometime during the night, and I found only half of them. Even though they are orange and should be easy to find, they are nowhere to be found. I’ve searched all around the hill, even in the neighbor’s yards, and didn’t find them anywhere. During the night we heard a strong metal sheet rattling sound, and we can’t find where it is coming from. Somewhere, something has been thorned, but we can’t pinpoint the location. We’re not sure if it is something on our house or the neighbors. It woke me up around 2am, and I didn’t go to sleep after that. I guess we’ll see once the sheet breaks completely and falls down where the actual damage is.

The Saturday wind did some damage to the garden, the lettuce has been frostbitten even though the temperatures were above 10°C(33°F) through the night. The garlic has also been broken in half, but other than that there seems to be no damage. There are lots of broken branches from the woods all around the yard and the road, and the petals from the big wild cherry are everywhere. I even found branches from our neighbor’s pine trees on my balcony. They flew across the duplex house and landed on my balcony, which shows how strong was the night wind. The peas luckily were not damaged. They are probably still short enough to be protected from the wind with the board and pots that are in front of them.

Easter day also started windy, the morning was as strong as the Saturday night. The rattling sound continued, but the sheet still hasn’t fallen off. We can hear it wiggling in the wind, but still can’t find the origin of the sound. Luckily around noon, the winds started to slow down and we could enjoy the rest of the Easter day. All the rattling, blowing, and banging make me very nervous, and I can never relax during these wind episodes. During the evening, the winds stopped almost completely and I even managed to take a walk around the garden to see what I had to do this week. There’s lots of garden work that needs to be done, and the forecast said there will be lots of rain periods during the week, so I need to get to work as quickly as possible.

Also, it will do us good after all the food we gobbled down during the past couple of days. Even though we decided not to make the traditional Easter food that is usually prepared in Croatia, we still ate tons. You want to try everything, eat a bite of this and a bite of that, and end up like a stranded ship on the couch. 

On that thought, Happy Easter to everyone and I hope your Easter was full of joy and happiness which wasn’t interrupted by the wind.