Fall is in the air.... and smoke too

It's almost the end of October and fall is definitely in the air. I am on the couch crocheting and  Box the cat is crunching on a mouse she caught.... do you suppose I can get Garry to clean up the mouse guts on the rug when he come back inside? Fall means the little critters start scrambling around in the walls, I hear them when I wake up in the nights and she gets most of the ones that try to move around outside of the walls.

Looking outside this morning, I wonder is it foggy mist or smoky mist? This time of year in Ukraine it is normally a combination. The weather tends toward moist, not pouring rain, more like drizzle and fog and cool days. Garry is hoping to get a combine to get his corn combined this week, things are drying from the big rain a few days ago, and he heard that there is a combine working in the village. Yesterday, they did run low on grain to feed the cows, and instead of buying some they went out to the cornfield and picked a bags full of ears to see if the mill could grind them as advertised. They put them in one and a time, and with a lot of noise it did grind it up cob and all, so it will work for the moment. I told them they could do the whole field that way, but they just laughed! (it is 25 acres I think.)

Smoke to the right of the barn last week

The babushka next door watching her garden fire

Garry seems to have caught my cold, so I guess I can stop blaming the smoke in the air for my sore throat, stuffy sinuses and headache today, but it doesn't help me feel better. Everyone in the village is cleaning up their gardens and yards, which means big piles of leaves and weeds burning every evening. Driving home Wednesday night we went through a couple villages and some parts of the highway where the smoke was billowing across the road.

Maxim Rudei ( our original Max) has been busy working with the neighbor Serozhosia - the one with the big payloader tractor- cleaning up manure piles for people and spreading the manure on their gardens or whatever. They worked last week in some other villages, this week they are working for people in our village. Wednesday afternoon they were next door spreading Misha's pig manure.

Polo wasn't the only one who walked on the new cement

Checking the new cement with our company

Wednesday was a busy day, Garry and the two Maxims poured a new cement pad in front of the barn that morning, they plan to do another one soon so they can get the tractor from the silage pile to the barn for feeding without going through a mud bog when it's raining. They were finished by lunchtime, although I was not happy when Garry brought Polo indoors because he was walking in the cement as I was washing the kitchen floor. I was getting ready for the company  Victor was bringing out for lunchtime.

Then Garry came in and wanted me to grab the cash to pay for the load of cement (remember almost everything here is cash on delivery or sooner) and Box, who had been outside, ran in thorough the bit of cement he had put by the porch door to level the step, making little cement paw marks across the wet kitchen floor!

Last Friday night

I was amazed that the floor was dry in time to finish making dinner before Victor's van arrived, but we had a lovely afternoon talking before heading to Dnepropejisk for Garry's group meeting there. He is doing book clubs reading How to Win Friends and Influence People as a follow-up to the Summer English Institute we taught at in July. We go there every other week, and the group in Dnepropetrovsk meets every Friday night.



PS. Thanks Garry for doing mouse cleanup!