yesterday

Here's Garry trying to fix the heat yesterday, sometimes he stands on the stool on top of a chair to get higher up. Maybe Thursday we will have the problem fixed.








In yesterday's blog post I mentioned all the activity under the shed yesterday since it was raining (by the way cool and drizzly prevailed today over partly cloudy.) So here they are, I think someone's trailer got working lights installed. Not sure why Andrei was not in school. That's him under the chopper hood in the photo. Garry told him in America they arrest kids who don't go to school. Max said he only went half the time his last year and he still got his certificate.




So in the afternoon we drove out of the village around two, and passed these guys while dodging puddles- everyone is wearing winter coats already. Garry told me he wanted to drive me to a little valley where he went to bred a cow last Friday evening.







As you can see the trees were all decked out for fall, even in the rain. I had told Garry a couple weeks ago I missed seeing red and orange trees, since everything here seems to turn yellow. Garry says the burnt off grass between the road and trees was not there a couple days ago. But Ukrainians love to burn things, including the grass, to clean up.






We even saw the village herd out grazing in the valley, Garry could not believe it had so many cows in it, because there are only a few houses here, compared to Nikolipolia.






We had driven from the highway though the village of Federicka to get to the valley, and on the way back we stopped by the graveyard. There is a monument on the edge of the Ukrainian cemetery, commemorating the massacre of Mennonites that took place in this villge in 1819, I believe. The stone is in Russian and German.


















The old Mennonite-built grain storage is still in use in the village. Garry said that was where he got his cornseed in June.









As we drove out through the village there were some really big puddles, just like this road out to the valley, shich could use a tree trim. We passed a bright orange classic Lada with the hood up just past one (did you know that on an old Lada the hood opens up next to the window and is up at the front of the car?)apparently too much water. They got it going pretty quickly because it was almost to the highway when we got there after stopping at the cemetery.