The kitten I once knitted for mъ mother and Charlotte the funny chicken (the one I kept for myself out of three so far) are wearing martenitsi to honour Grandma Marta (Баба Марта), the Bulgarian floklore impersonation of the month of march. it's my mother who decorated them like that yesterday. :)


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Today was unquestionably a spring day, after yesterday's late-winter kind of wind. Tomorrow is likely to be very windy again. Grandma Marta with her ever-changing moods is being mentioned a lot this year ( Read more... )

My mother attached a martenitsa to her wall calendar. :)


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Does this little video sound strange to you with all those Bulgarian folklore/mythology words in it?

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Here is the Bulgarian version, in case somebody here can understand it:

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Alas, the Golden Apple's website seems to be in Bulgarian only (for now?), so the only thing I can offer in English is their Facebook page.

It's been raining a lot lately, and it hasn't been very warm most of the time, but still some of the fruit trees around are beginning to go into bloom. So I went out on a tiny photographic expedition near our apartment building today - and it was beginning to rain again, so I didn't stay outside much ( Read more... )

osodecanela was gathering pumpkin recipes, so I searched a few recipes in English for the traditional Bulgarian dessert tikvenik (pumpkin banitsa) for him, and I thought it may be a good idea to share them in my own journal too in case anybody else is interested. Alas, we don't have a definite family recipe, and my mother just follows her baking intuition ( Read more... )

The kitty is on the other side of the cafe's window. :)

I know that the first photo is too dark and I couldn't really fix it on Photobucket, but it captured the the kitty  just in the right position. :)


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The only photo (more or less) in focus and two terribly amateurish videos of folk dancing from the celebration of 3 March, the day of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire (in 1878).  It was early this evening - I mean the dancing, obviously. :)

This is the pretty small central square of my home town.

I've posted the same videos on ( Read more... )

One of them is even from myself. LOL

If you don't know what a martenitsa is, look here.


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I finally found the time to process the photos I took in 7-8 days. They are not all in chronological order.

So, we have spring again here, after the unexpected return of winter on 8 March. I hope it lasts this time! :)

Almond trees in full blossom - yes, some people have tied their martenitsi to the fruit trees, as the old custom is.


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