March Winds

Today would have been a perfect day for flying a kite, if I had such a thing.  March winds are howling.  It is +12 and warmer in the sun.  The sky is clear and blue as the top half of our flag.

There is still a few spots of snow on the north sides of things but most of it is now gone.  The creek/river by our place is spread out into the hayland but not like it could have been if we had a fast melt.

Sunday, Tanya pruned the grapevines while I held/moved the big ladder for her.  Masha who had been here for the night, helped clean up the vines after. I got a picture of Tanya dressed for pruning in her teenage jeans with the store-bought raggy holes and patches and wearing her "Goodbye forever, young girl" black felt zipper boots with white fluffy band around the top.  A contradiction in fashion statements.  She said if I put it on the internet she would compost my corpse to grow flowers. I will put it on her computer as wallpaper.

Tanya is itching to get into her flower beds and has started working on anything she can reach from the sidewalk. There are hundreds of shoots coming up in tulip beds, crocus beds, hyacinth beds and daffodil beds.  I have no idea how many bulbs she planted last fall and neither does she.  Lots.

Yesterday we went into town and bought 33 twelve inch square patio blocks, three square meters worth, for under a dollar a block.  These are going into the flower beds in strategic locations so she can work in muddier conditions than last year.

Today she transplanted into individual little pots, 30+ geraniums from seed she saved last fall.  Said it was easier to start new ones than try to keep last years plants alive over winter.  We also picked up her seed order from InterFlora at the post office.

The dogs have stayed in their yard like good boys though they are dying to get loose.  Their yard hasn't been cleaned for months thanks to nice fresh snow falls that saved me the trouble at the time.  Today I went out to clean it and it looked like I had kept cows in there over winter or maybe elephants, instead of Fox Terriers. Fibre soaks up a lot of moisture and the cheap ($30 per 20 kg bag) dog food I buy them has a lot of fibre. Shoveled and swept everything into piles.  Maybe I can hire a corral cleaning contractor to spread them in the fields.

Kuchma has been banned from the house because he stinks up the place something fierce with Tomcat smell. But we made up a soft bed for him mostly in the sun and he can invite the neighbour cat over for meals once in a while.  He sure is lonely for human companionship though.  When we go outside he is meowing and rubbing all over wanting to be petted.  But just don't pick him up.

Andrei hit a huge badger on his way home from Krivii Rih two nights ago and wiped out the front of his Lexus.  Bumper, grill, headlight on one side.  So he borrowed our car.  It needed washing anyway.

Steps have been taken?  No, placed.

Spring

Six days of sunshine.  Five days of temps above freezing.  Most of the snow is gone.  The potholes in the roads are back.  The house is full of seedlings.  It must be spring.

I let the dogs out for a run.  they tracked mud all over the front step.  When we got home from our walk there was a bucket of water waiting for me and an old towel to wash the step.  I guess they will be on-leash now until fall again.  If they damage her flowers ...  And once the gardens start to go in, the neighbours don't appreciate those clowns stirring things up. 

Tanya started tomatoes from seed in our south window about a month ago.  Yesterday she transplanted them to give them more space and the passageway is full of pots and boxes.  The germination was pretty good as she got about 200 plants.  Don't worry.  She will still buy more seedlings from our neighbour who has a nursery.  No such thing as too many tomato plants.  For some reason they don't yield per plant like I would expect.

February made up for it but we had a mild fall and winter.  We had bulbs start to grow in January, with enough snow to protect them from February we hope.  It was so warm a bunch of petunias started to grow from seed out in the garden so Tanya dug them up and stuck them in pots for the winter.  We kept them in the passageway which is cool enough they didn't grow much all winter.  She brought them in a few weeks ago and they took off.  She will be transplanting them soon too as they need more space and it is still a few weeks before they go outside.

Volunteer Petunias

Spring and Such

Here is the picture of our crocus patch.  Our meaning Tanya's. 
Saturday we hired Natasha and husband Valerie to rake the vegetable garden area so it won't dry out and turn to concrete.  Tanya is itching to start planting things.

The mutts are doing quite well, behaving sort of civilly after their last bouts of brotherly love.  Bobik has a few scars too but they are scattered rather than concentrated.  They are an even match.  And both are long on attitude. 

Face of a Fighter

He started it, I didn't (much).

Back Home Again

Three day beef school at Agro-Soyuz finished.  Everyone tired and happy.  Tanya says I am getting old as 11 years ago when I first taught a beef school in Ukraine, I could talk all day and not get tired.  It was a great class.  Lots of questions and arguments.  I learned lots too which is the best part of teaching an adult group.

Tanya and I are glad to be home with no projects in immediate future.  The last couple of weeeks have been pretty hectic.  I had 16 presentations on PPT that needed to be translated.  The translation team was tied up until a couple weeks ago so they were very rushed and late getting stuff back to me to make pretty and add pictures (slow email dictates no pictures etc in files sent for translation).  I was up late getting the PPTs ready, including nights during the school.


Spring has finally come.  Winter coats in closet, flower garden cleaned today.  Pictures of crocus's will be posted tomorrow.  Hyacinths are up and will bloom shortly.  Creek (river) is flooding.  Ducks and song birds are back.

Now I am going to bed.  I will read a week's backlog of blogs tomorrow.

Our Animal Kingdom

Kuchma Kot came home after four day, thin, filthy and bedraggled.  We were starting to worry that something he disagreed with had eaten him.  Most likely he was investigating someplace he should not have and accidentally got locked in.  At any rate we were glad to see him and rewarded him by giving him a bath.

Tanya wanted to bind his feet but since this was the first time I bathed a cat, I said no, i would just hold him.  Someone (Dana? Demeur?) posted about bathing a cat by stuffing it in the toilet, sitting on the lid and flushing a couple times, then getting out of the way while opening the lid. Should have done that.  Kuchma dug his claws into my arm and hung on for dear life while Tanya shampooed and rinsed him.  The tub ran black with mud. My arm ran red with blood.  Fair is fair I guess.

My two dogs are at it again.  About two weeks ago, they were out running around and suddenly went for each others throats.  Tanya and I separated them with some difficulty.  They were in deep snow.  Red blood looks really neat against pure white snow. We locked Bobik in their yard, leaving Volk out for the night.  Next day, I put Volk back in their yard, thinking they would have cooled off.  Nope.  I was by myself this time and really had trouble getting them apart.

I threw Bobik out and left Volk in the yard.  Next day, Bobik wanted back in so I opened the gate and in he went, no trouble. They got on fine.  I learned something but what?

A big German Shepherd cross female spent the night in the yard next door.  With Lucia's old dog.  How he got out, I have no idea.  Anyhow, he tried valiantly but could not mount a decent offense as they say in the game.  I have a great deal of empathy for him.  My two dogs howled, barked and whined all night, like roughnecks at a strip-joint, upset at being locked out of the action.

Next day, I let them out of their yard again and they didn't come home for two days.  When they came home they brought their consort with them.  A different female German Shepherd this time.  Smaller, fine featured, very intelligent but badly abused.  She had been hanging around before.  Abandoned by her owner (another sad story) in late December*, she was looking for food and of course we fed her on occasion.  I let her in the yard with Bobik and Volk for the night so she could eat and so my dogs would be quiet.

They were quiet all right.  Next morning the yard was tramped flat and they were tired and bloody.  It must have been quite a night as they have not so much as run since.  Very subdued pair of very chewed up dogs.  The vet comes tomorrow to patch them up and take the female off our hands.  We don't need another dog and we won't let her starve.


* that likely made her a Christmas consort . . . but I digress . . .

Signs of Spring

My mother's patron saint may have been Ogden Nash but my father was not above quoting a little doggerel from time to time.
"Tis spring; The bird is on the wing. How absurd, I've always heard the wing was on the bird".


It is daylight by 6:00 am now and not dark until 6:00.  I love it, not being fond of dark, damp dreary weather.  Temps holding around 0C all week but supposed to warm up a bit. Snow is going slowly.


The Christmas catalog may come on the hottest day of summer but the first garden catalog comes on the coldest day of winter.  Tanya has her first seed order from InterFlora already and one more to come, plus two more orders from two on-line companies she found.  Last Sunday she planted her first seeds in little boxes and yesterday we bought more potting soil and she planted a bunch more.  Our window sills are filling up.

Maxim was over today to see what she had ordered and to discuss the planting and nurturing of the seedlings. They were on the computer for an hour looking at on-line catalogs and seriously discussing what flowers would work here and which ones wouldn't.

Kuchma Kot came home this morning limping on his right front leg.  No signs of a serious fight but ...  Inhaled a cup of milk and dish of KitEKat, grabbed a catnap and headed outside again.  It is spring.

Cuckoos, bees and blossoms

It must be deep spring. The frogs are singing in the marsh. This morning a bumblebee outside our window buzzed like an AgriKing crop spraying aircraft with a full load and our beloved demented cuckoo is back.

The warm weather brought all the trees into blossom that survived the frost. The city is in full bloom. Late was good this year. Our very dead looking apricot is bursting into leaf. No flowers this year so no fruit but it will be around another year. The chestnut trees are all leafed out and their white candle-cones flowers will be blooming in a week or so.

Our front yard yellow-cherry is covered with white blooms. At night the light from our outside security lamps shines up through the tree, making it look like it is covered with huge soft cottony balls of snow. I tried taking a photo but my camera only goes down to F 2.7, unless I can find another secret button.

Now if we just get a two day gentle soaker of rain, we'll be all set for summer.