We went to Dnipropetrovsk today for no good reason other than it was a warm sunny day and we needed to get out of the house farther than the grocery store. Left at 8:00 am and took Roman with us. Hit the city about 10:00 and stopped at a new mall, just to explore. Lots of expensive plastic happiness.
Tanya bought two light summer dresses and a large book about flowers with garden design and growing tips. I saw some kinds she doesn't have - we'll need a bigger lot soon. Went to Cilentano's for lunch. A franchised Italian Pizza place. Not bad pizza but I would kill for a Houstons or Pizza Hut. Then Tanya went to the flower garden market and bought a bunch more flowers she hadn't seen before. Perennials, of course. We were home by 4:00. The flowers were planted by 7:00.
Once we got 50 km east of here, the combines were starting to roll and on the way home grain trucks slowed traffic. The wheat crop looks very good in spite of the dry spell earlier this year. The corn and sunflowers looked amazing, again considering the dry spell. Several sunflower fields in bloom. Corn 2 meters high (7-8 ft) and some tasseling out already. Some very good crops all in all. Now we need a month of hot weather for harvest.
News is that agricultural land sales will begin January 2012. I will try to get details on that. My understanding is that foreign buyers are excluded, which is not unreasonable in my books.
Great report on what cropped up, around and about. Didn't run against my grain at all.
ReplyDeleteBeen reading two fascinating books on animal behaviour. Then I come here and read about a jackass. love you
ReplyDeleteStill reading....
ReplyDeleteThis is me.
ReplyDeleteGot you, Beau's Mom. I can't shorten that to initials BM because when you are old it means something else.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, a geology professor told me the Ukraine has the best soils in the world. Was he right? He might have said the Ukraine and the Canadian and US Midwest -- it's been a long time for me to recall precisely.
ReplyDeleteUkraine has the largest area of black (Chornozem) soils in the world. As a boy from the dark brown soils of Saskatchewan with 350 to 400 mm of precip per year, this country's productive potential just blows me away.
ReplyDeleteZounds! How did the Ukraine get so lucky? What were the causes? Are they known?
ReplyDeleteLuck is how you define it. Like gold or oil, it rarely does the people much good. Ukraine has virtually indefensible borders and has been over run back and forth for centuries as it has been a rich agricultural prize for whomever. To raid or to keep and control.
ReplyDeleteCauses of black soil are the same as for any soil, I suppose; the underlying deposits tempered over time by climate - temperature and rainfall. That creates the vegetation which decomposes over millennia, mixes with the underlying layers and becomes soil.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt's the oldest story in the book, then. Somebody has something. Somebody else wants it.
Just pray they don't find oil under that nice soil or it's game over.
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