Spring is slowly coming

 Look, on Monday Garry found the crocuses blooming in the old yard! When we checked a few weeks ago (March first) we couldn't even find where they were, so it was a surprise. The ones here, yellow ones, were budding, but not quite blooming Monday, it looks like two are blooming today. It was a cold February and first half of March, the winter wheat turned brown during a cold snap last month, which doesn't happen often, most years it stays green all winter.

He was checking on Victor's bees since he wasn't out this week and it was a warm day. Looks like one hive did really well over the winter, one not so well, and two seem to have not made it through the winter. It was so nice out Garry even planted onion sets and sugar snap peas in the garden. He was a little tired after, but he is feeling better everyday. He couldn't wait for St Patricks day with rain in the forecast for Tuesday. It actually waited to rain until nightime, I woke up at one thirty to the sound of rain on the roof last night.

Monday morning Yana brought Garry a bunch of eggs to add to the incubator, in addition to the ones he'd put in Sunday afternoon from our chickens. There were so many leftover eggs, I packaged the extras in groups of three to a bag to give the students to take home after Monday night dinner. We forgot to hand them out until almost half the kids had left though!

I had planned an easy menu for this week after the busy week we'd had, so it was sausages, mashed potatoes with fried cabbage and onions (colcannon for my Irish menu) and two coleslaws, one with apples and mayo and one with red cabbage, corn, onion and cucumber with an oil and vinegar dressing. Plus some gretshka (buckwheat) for people who wanted to fill their plates, since I dished out the potatoes and sausage (one per adult and a half for the two little boys. Angelina doesn't eat, except sometimes cookies, having kasha at home. She enjoyed crawling on the carpet, no worse for her trip to the hospital last week. Little Matfew discovered the joy of the magnetic puzzle on the fridge this time, usually that's Danil's thing to do.

Still can't convince  some of them not to put enough food for two days on their plate. I used up my supply of styofoam takeout containers again last night. Vika always brings a plastic box from home to take her leftovers in, I think we may buy some, put names on them and if you want a doggie bag, bring your box.  We had a sweet Irish bread with raisens, sliced and buttered for dessert. 

It was a quick dinner, since Victor wasn't there to interpret, and Garry had the dishes washed by 6:30 am we had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I/ spent an hour in the middle of the afternoon helping Garry pregcheck cows (basically writing down what he said, Victor has been helpiing him with that when he's out on Mondays and Tuesdays, but he was not here. I had most of the food done when we went over at 2:30 and cooked sausages, cabbage and grethka when I got home (after throwing my clothes in the washer) so I was ready at five.

Tuesday I spent my spare time working on Alona's curtains for the living room/kitchen area, she showed up Tuesday afternoon and got the three for the front of the house on their rods, hopefully Nikolai got them hung okay. He had asked about them while we were chasing cows Monday afternoon because I had told Alona  they'd be ready Monday on Thursday but I didn't get anything done on them over the weekend. I told him three tomoorow and one the day after. I worked on the last one from five until ten last night, so it's ready to hang when they come over for it. 

She did  this afternoon and said there was a problem with hanging the first ones. I had stuck two shorter rods together which apparently made it too long to get into the wood under the drywall, so Nikolai had put up wood over the window. Garry went over to look and showed him how to shorten the rods so he's redoing them.

 

The woodworking students (mostly Dima, Leila, Nikolai and Vasa) have finished building fence for Danil's play yard  that will be put up between the house and shed next door and have moved onto small chicken coops for Dima and Julia and Nikolai and Alona. I am told they will hold six chickens each, so I hope we hatch hens! The students are eager to start the big construction project, the second heifer barn, possibly in two weeks. It needs to dry out so they can clear the space for it with the neighbor's big payloader. We are in the process of buying (or very long term lease anyway) the town dump (directly behind our barn) along with the land under our barns from the local government, and so the new barn may go there, behind the barnyard. If it keeps raining this week as forecast it could be two weeks, but the students are ready to get bonus pay. Of course, Garry is already thinking that they should be planting corn in two weeks, but we'll see. It's not warm yet.