Since I last posted... rain, rockets, and bus tours

I love you too, Polo, down!

Polo has a habit of jumping on me when I walk outside- to show how happy he is to see me, but it's not so good when it is muddy out!

Grape vines are growing and the roses are blooming....

 Friday morning it was wet and raining, in fact we got the first good soaking since last fall, making Garry and his cornfields very happy. It is still muddy today, as you will see when we had a tour bus of Mennonite heritage people stop in late this afternoon.

Friday afternoon we went into Dnepro, Garry and John got  to shoot off rockets with another English class, ironically on Rabotcha street, near the rocket factory. Light rain was falling, but most of them got off, one blew up on it's second launch, about 10 feet in the air. Good thing they are made of paper and tape and powered by compressed air!

Before the class we went downtown, hoping to go bowling, but our favorite bowling alley has closed it's doors, and we don't know if it will re-open! The mall was packed with parents, kids and teenagers since it was the last day of school and they were celebrating. Many of the grads were dressed up, the boys in suits and the girls in dresses, including one group that seemed to be going for the Japanese school girl fashion, with white lace kneesocks, short shirts, blouses and hair in two ponytails with the big puffy hair things the little girls wear! I wish I had brought the camera....






Today Garry, his brother John (who will be leaving Sunday afternoon on the train to Kiev, he flies home to Michigan on Monday) With the assistance of Andrei and Maxim, worked on getting the first section of fence up, and you can see it looks nice. One person in the village stopped by to ask how much it cost. There was a steady procession of people in to buy brewers grain this morning, we still sell more than we feed our own cows by far. As you can see the rain brought some cooler weather, I think it was a nice change for John, he has been here three weeks and it was plus 30 C (80-90F) most of the time!

digging fence post holes

Brrewers grain customers are coming in by motorcycles

with side cars and trailers

The village herd was grazing across the pond near the collective barns this morning
 (the one they are remodelling is the far one)

almost across the front 

John touching up the paint

after lunch they put some cement in the post holes-
that's Maxim in shorts and a coat

I think Andrei likes kittens as much as Jonah

Yana doing the afternoon milking

Of course the normal everyday things were getting done too, as you can see in this photo. Check out the next two photos to see how much the weather has changed this week....they were taken on Wednesday. Andrei is using the shovel I brought back in my suitcase from New Jersey...

 Later in the afternoon, the tour bus stopped at the end of the drive, they got a little behind schedule because  all the farmers were busy checking out the barn and some of the ladies were using our nice bathroom (always a bonus while travelling in Ukraine) in fact the bus nearly left with the last three still in the house!

our pretty new fence!