Trip to Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky 1.

We left ZV at 8:00 am Sunday morning and drove the 400 km distance leisurely, arriving in PK about 3:00 pm. We stopped in Kremenchuk to visit our friend Volodya, and in another town to go to the fish market. This place had dozens of stalls of various dried, smoked, salted and fresh fish. One table held a catfish the size of a small cow. Tanya said they can be as much as 300 kg.

Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky is a very old city, having celebrated the 1100th anniversary of its founding not long ago. Origionally known as Pereyaslav, the Kmelnitsky was added when Bohdan Kmelnitsky, after beating Poland at Zhovti-Vody in 1648, agreed in 1654 to place the independent Cossack Hetmanate under the protection of the Tsar, rather than get clobbered by the Poles again. The jury is still out.

We really went to visit friends, though there were enough other errands to run to make the trip necessary. Artur and Oksana Gordin and Sasha Gritsyuk have been friends of mine since 1997. Tanya met them in 1999 at the Beef Forage School, where we met also. Tanya had not been back since then but had kept in touch. Oksana is also a garden person. One of her flower gardens is pictured below. We returned home today with the back of the car full of perennials, which Tanya planted immediately that we got home today.

Maxim came over to inspect the new flowers and fell in love with some tiny yellow ones. He went home and asked his Babushka Lucia to ask Tanya if he could have just one of them to plant. Lucia was reluctant where upon little tears rolled down his cheeks. He got his flowers.