First of May

Garry was up early helping get the planter ready to start planting sunflowers this morning. I was up at seven am to finish making salads. At ten o'clock Garry and Andrei (the vet students, he's out in the village for the weekend) were trying to find all the parts to the croquet game, they could only find one wicket. I told Garry I needed bread for the picnic, and since the Mercedes battery was dead, Andrey walked down to the store. I told Garry I had only 60 hot dogs ready to cook that I had bought Friday so he told him to buy 10 more kilos. He came back with assorted hot dogs so I had to peel about 80 more out of their wrappers, after I sliced up five loaves of bread.

Hopefully the store has some left to sell to people, because ten pounds would have been plenty. I have about 50 leftover uncooked ones in the fridge. Garry and Andrey went to the shop and made more wickets out of wire.

 Most of the students had arrived by eleven and started playing soccer and/or volleyball in a circle. The volley ball got a little dangerous with little dead branches falling off the walnut trees overhead when the ball went way up through them.

Nickolai got the fire started in the fire-pit, and by noon we had hot dogs ready and I brought out the salads and the fixings with Garry's help.

I misplaced the camera so no photos of heaping full plates, but there were lots of them before I found it on one of my many trips inside for more salads (I had refills for oliviah (Ukrainian potato salad with chopped cooked carrots, eggs, baloney, pickles, eggs and canned peas and one of the pasta salads) and to refill the hot dog cooker to set on the fire, so I was able to take more photos!

Dima's plate is getting empty, this had to be seconds

Luda walked down with her girls and her dog

More on the grill

Last call for hot dogs!
 I filled up plastic boxes of food- salads and hot dogs for the guys in the field too. Garry took some out to them and was helping with something and later we realized (as the picnic was finishing up around 1:30 - afternoon milking time) that Max and Anton had not gotten any so one of the boys walked some food over to where they were at the garage. Some of their hot dogs were uncooked, but don't worry Ukrainians eat them that way. I had to go inside at the end of the picnic and get one for Karina, who told me she could not eat a hot one.

Dessert was going to be smores, but we'll save that for next time, I had cut up oranges and apples and there are so many apples left I am going to make something this afternoon from them. Oranges are always a hit with the students.


It was quite warm out, I'd say it's hot if you are working, or even sitting in the sun. I think I'll wait until evening to go finish planting our garden. I still need to fill up the dishwasher, since we used the plastic plates I use for pizza nights, I only had to rescue one from the garbage bag. One of the twins helped cleanup and gave the leftover water to Bear. There was no leftover ice tea or Kool-Aid, but some of that went to the field. Well, off to make apple crisp, I guess.