We had a question yesterday in the comments section! So here's your chance once again readers! ask your questions either via email or make a comment on this post and I will answer them later this week, maybe with some on top of a Lada pictures, as I have taken a few lately. Sadly, I never have the camera ready or with me when I see the really good ones. Here's Papa Duck with part of the family, since photos seem to be loading faster today than yesterday (I gave up last night on uploading this one.)
Interesting day today. Garry asked me this morning what happened to the enamel paint we bought in the spring to repaint the doors to the bedrooms and bath; the latex we used originally two years ago claimed to be washable (unlike some in the older remodeled bedrooms; when washing those walls as much paint comes off as dirt) but the smudges don't really wash off the doors so they always look grubby.
I told him that I had painted one door while he was in Canada in May and it smelled so bad the boys begged me to stop, so I never finished. Since it will be getting cool and wet soon, Garry decided today was the day to do it. I washed off the doors so he could paint; and the one I had painted before came out looking pretty good. I was puzzled by a large mark on the bathroom door, a couple feet off the floor. I looked more closely I realized the paint was rubbed right off the door in a two inch wide, four inch long strip on the edge of the door. Garry said "look it's from the boys pushing it shut with their knee!" he proved this by demonstrating. Of course the mark fits his knee perfectly, and who is as tall as him? The door used to fit tight as one time, but closes very easy now, so why would anyone push on it that way? Hopefully the new paint is rub-proof too.
Anyway he got busy painting doors and I opened all the windows and doors so we didn't pass out. The air got better as the paint dried and around 6:30 this evening I shut everything up when the nasty burning smoke smell got worse than the nasty paint smell. The paint is not completely dry now in the middle of the night, if I remember the paint smell lingered for a couple days back in early June. However, it does make the doors look nice and clean, and it should made washing them worthwhile. There's nothing more frustrating than washing something and when you are finished it looks like you never did anything!
Every village in Ukraine (I took this photo when we were going to Crimea) is busy cleaning up the yard and pulling up every spent plant in the garden and burning the piles, so it's all cleaned up for winter. Since it has been so dry, almost everything is out of the gardens. We have carrots and beets still in the ground in ours, but the string beans, peppers and zuchinni are barely hanging on. We should do better next year as the irrigation project behind the gardens will finally get connected to the water line this fall, it's all ready to go but the irrigation authorities have to turn off the water in the big pipe before welding our piece into it. Many of the neighbors have joined up.
Garry took the bike down to the magazine (store) before he started painting to buy a paintbrush (they are cheap and we usually toss them after using with enamel paint) so I had to take my sponge and answer the door when someone knocked. I was very surprized to find an Orthodox priest outide in a fairly fancy-looking vestment. He and I had no luck communicating (my Russian is terrible so I told him to try the summer kitchen where Yana and her mother live) I think he was as surprised to find someone who spoke English as I was to see him when I opened the door; but he met Garry returning to the yard, I could hear them trying to talk outside while I washed off doors.
When Garry came in he said that he thought they wanted to paint the house, he even had a small business card-sized paper from him. However, when Maxim returned from the city with the car (he had gone to buy steel to make a door for the new porch) we found out that you could pay the priest 100 grivna to bless the house and car and maybe the dog too. Garry said "oh- that's why he said umbar tosya (barn also.)"
While Garry was painting John Wiens and his European head guy (John is Canadian and with the Mennonite Brethren mission organization ) stopped in; they thought we were gone, since Max had the car, but I heard them talking as they walked past the open window. Garry carried his paint brush outside to talk for a while (escaping as the fumes were at their height) about a project Garry is working on with them. They are trying to set up a trade school in the village where teens from the orphanages could come learn a trade, some go to university but many are sent out to live in the city at 16, the change from constant supervision to none is not good. They would like to set up a dairy farm as the income-making part of it to support the school and Garry is working with them, however, it is still in the planning, seed money raising stages. They are talking about using the old collective barns for this project with the town mayor and John had noticed that something seems to be going on in one of the three empty barns while looking at it today.
It turned out Yana and her mother Genya were going back and forth to the Thursday market in the village with the scooter stocking up on vegetables for the winter. Here is their bag of cabbages sitting outside the summer kitchen, you can get a bag for a couple dollars now at harvest time. They also got big bags of potatoes, carrots and onions (last year onions were expensive, but there are lots this year.) That way they have all the basic ingredients for borsht all winter. Beets are optional for some kinds of borsht- there are at least four distinct types- and don't call borsht soup! Any other kind of soup is soup and the word in Russian is soup) so now you know two things you can order to eat in a Ukrainian restaurant. Tomatoes are now about a quarter for a pound, they will be cheap until frost.
That way you know you'll eat all winter. Even in the cities most people will get the big bags of vegetables now, as the prices go up in the winter and it is the same cabbages (and onions and carrots) you'll have for sale in the store this winter. That's why I make different kinds of cabbage salads in the winter, as the cabbage is a little bitter compared to fresh. Prices for vegetables are much lower than last year, which makes everyone happy (except maybe the farmers.)
So this afternoon Victor was out for his regular weekly Thursday milk run (mostly his neighbores buy large amounts)and somehow he and Garry went to see the vegetable grower in the village - I think Victor might have been buying some to take home. Anyway when the grower realized who Garry was he insisted he take some bags and so here they are in the back of the car. The carrots are apparently the second quality, he didn't have any firsts left in the field. I guess we are all ready to make a lot of borsht this winter!
I have sore legs today (up to my buttocks actually) after our bowling exercise yesterday. I don't feel a thing wrong while we are bowling, but I must use some different muscles! Garry says his legs are a bit sore, luckily he didn't hurt his back this time. He has trouble finding a ball with big enough holes for his fingers and sometimes it sticks and he twists to save his throw (he wants to get a strike or spare everytime, of course.) That's how he gets ahead most of the time. Anyway we are going to try to go once a week; that should firm up my muscles!
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