Weekend wrap-up

The weather is a definite topic of conversation in the village. We had another touch of frost on Thursday morning, it's been the coldest spring since we came here in 2009. We only lost a couple of tomato plants this time. The promised rain over the weekend did not amount to much precipitation, either.

I am still waiting on my beans to emerge in the garden, I found the first one poking through this morning. However, we had our first harvest of a handful of spinach today, and ate fresh spinach salad at lunchtime.

It is dry for this early in the spring, right now it looks like we are hooking up to the big irrigation pipe to set up irrigation for the corn field (tomorrow, so I'll try to get photos), but if it doesn't rain we'll save the small plastic lines for next year. Although Garry has declared if it does rain a significant amount they will cultivate the field up and replant it, they have leftover bags of corn seed anyway. Some of the later planted sunflower fields have not emerged or only some plants are up, too, it's just too dry.

Of course the day it did rain was Friday, the day they were going to bale up some hay. We went out to the field to get some photos but the baler needed a few repairs before they could start, and we had to leave for Garry's English class in Dnepro. Shortly after getting on the highway it started to rain, the guys only got two loads done before the rain came.


However, the bales they made will keep them from having to go out to the field to greenchop the alfalfa to feed the cows everyday, so it will save them a couple hours. They are still waiting to bale the rest, the baler is getting more repairs. One guy is busy spraying the early cornfields for weeds this week, because we only got a little rain on Friday and some drizzle Monday.

They were really nice looking green bales

 We drove into Dnepro Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week, and we have amazing news, because they are chipping off the asphalt at both ends of the Dnepropetroesk region of the H-08, so we think they are going to repave the whole thing. We have never seen this happen, except in the cities, so we'll keep you updated, since we figure it may take all summer. Garry tells me they had repaved a small section near Dnepro  when he drove the students to evening school yesterday.

He tells me that they have put the traffic all on one side of the highway at this end and are paving at this end today. Today he took one of the boys, Vasili along to the city because he had a toothache, they ended up getting back later than normal and Vasili got a temp root canal and some painkillers before they came back. There are a few more weeks of class, they go Monday and Tuesday afternoons, Vika tells me they have to take three exams next month, history (I think), Ukrainian language and mathematics.

The canola has been blooming for a couple weeks now, the ones that bloomed early are looking less yellow now, the others are still really yellow. In Ukraine canola is planted in the early fall and overwinters so it blooms in May. There are a few fields we pass as we drive into Dnepro.

Sunday we went to church in Dnepro, its nice to see everyone once a month. Afterwards we went over to visit with Lena's English school. I had noticed on facebook memories that it had been five years since we had made paper rockets with them. The younger kids really enjoyed it, some of the older ones had done it when they were little. One rocket was shot off, chased down and relaunched eight times.

Garry's brother John brought the equipment then from Michigan and it's always fun to shoot them off. Since we didn't have a bicycle pump like before we used the tire pump that plugs in the cigarette lighter, so we had to do it next to the van.

The chestnut trees are still blooming, there are so many of the them lining the streets in Dnepro. Some years it is so hot that they bloom for about a week, this year they have been blooming for three weeks because it is so cool.