Masha the Dog Walker

Maybe I can get Tanya to take some pictures tomorrow.  My hands have been full of dog leash the last couple of days.  Masha has helped me walk the two dogs on their leashes. She takes Volk and I take Bobik who is a bit hard to handle at the beginning of the walk.

Yesterday we let them off the leashes once we got well clear of yards and gardens.  I had a bag full of sliced up wieners to entice them back when it was time to put the leashes on for the walk home.  Bobik can be bought, came on call and stood to be snapped into his leash.  Volk would have none of it. So Masha walked Bobik home and Volk came home an  hour later.

Today we left them on the leash for the whole walk and Masha did just fine with Volk.  She chased him out of the brush and unwrapped him from around posts and towed him out of the ditch when he wanted to detour.  Maxim and Ivan came with us and the three kids ran while I walked.  Two years ago, Masha was 5 and couldn't keep up.  Now I can't keep up.

Bobik was quite happy to have Volk go ahead.  Volk would mark territory and then Bobik would come along and mark over top of it.

We took them down to the river to swim after the walk and the dogs sure enjoyed the cool off. The water is nice and deep after the rains, actually overflowing the bridge a bit.

Ky teaches the dogs to sit

When the girls were here, Ky decided to teach the dogs to sit.  They learned quickly, though Volk would sit, then immediately flop over to get his tummy rubbed.  When I go to put their leashes on now, I say "Sit" and it is Volk who sits patiently while I snap on the leash.  Bobik is too wound up to sit.  He needs more lessons I guess, Ky.

The Nature of God

Tomes have been written on the nature of God by highly learned men, which I have no intention of reading unless they turn out to be part of my purgatory.  It is Snowbrush wrestling with the contradictions of theism and atheism that has got me thinking about my own attempts to come to grips with things over the past 30 odd years.  In a number of his blogs, he has forced me to think through my own beliefs and I owe hm for that.  Him and all his readers who comment.  Now he is threatening to leave that topic so I better get busy and write.  I jotted a few things down in previous blogs WHO and WHO & HOW. And please keep in mind, this is the very finite trying to explain the infinite.

The gist of the argument is that if God is so good and loves his people so much how come he allows so much suferring in this world? I quote from Snowbrush's blog:
(1) If God is omniscient, he knows exactly where, when, and how much every creature suffers. (2) If God is omnibenevolent, he doesn’t want any creature to suffer. (3) If God is omnipotent, he has the power to eliminate suffering without eliminating any benefit that suffering might bring. 

Now the nature of God has always been described as omnipotent (all powerful) omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (big enough to fill the universe and small enough to fill my heart, as the song says).  I never anywhere heard of omnibenevolent but stand to be corrected (R-B?).

Yes, God knows exactly what is happening and what will happen to all His Creation and I expect it gives Him a great deal of pain to see His creatures suffer and yes, he could change all that "in the twinkling of an eye".  However, He is not going to do that.

We are taught that God has a plan for the redemption of His creation from its current sorry state of affairs.  And given that the earth is 3 to 4 billion years old and the universe much older than that, it is fair to say His planning horizons are not the 5 years in my business planning, nor the 50 years that the Japanese allegedly use, nor the 500 years the Chinese allegedly use in their political maneuverings.

As I understand it, God wants a people who will know Him for WHO He is and love and worship him OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL.  Doing everything for us is not going to help us grow up, nor is magically making us love Him going to be very satisfactory (A very crude comparison - and I know, I know, I 'm going to Hell - is using a date-rape drug vs old fashioned seduction).

So He leaves us to our own devices and so far we have pretty much mucked it up and it hasn't even begun to get really bad yet.  When you compound man's inhumanity to man with nature's inhumanity to man over a few millennia, you arrive at today. Bleah! But humans are not yet convinced they can't fix things themselves (liberals) or they have the upper hand in the game and don't want it fixed (conservatives).  At some point those who are left will come to their senses, realize that they need a power beyond themselves (how is it worded in AA?) and turn to God.

That is the tricky part as there is no end to the folks who assail us daily with the idea that THEY alone have the answers, that God has given them alone the wisdom to understand the Bible as the road map to Salvation and that the rest of us, in order to be saved should shut up and do what they say, unquestioningly. Sorting our way through that minefield is no easy task and no one is going to do it for us.

Please pass the hat.

Another dog finds a new home

When the girls were here, they went walking with me and the dogs in the evenings.  One evening, Bron was with me and we came across a little part Doberman puppy.  It was maybe two or three months old and either abandoned by its mother or its owner.  At any rate it was lonesome and very hungry and it "followed us home" with encouragement from Bron.  Bobik and Volk seemed to accept him but I knew better than to put him in with them when we got home.

The pup ate a good helping of cat food and drank some milk before we announced to Tanya that we had three dogs again.  But I had a plan.  Our neighbours, Lucia and Zhenia's dog is very old and has trouble moving around much any more.  They need a young dog.  Also Maxim was there visiting his Babushka AND Zhenia was away at a health spa on the Black Sea.  (Insert evil chuckle here).

Picture courtesy Ky

I bought 15 kg of good quality puppy food and a collar and leash as a thank you for taking the pup.  Zhenia is now home and to the best of my knowledge the pup is still there and doing well.

Grandma's Flower Garden

Tanya would have loved my maternal grandmother.  This little white haired Ontario born woman with roots in Yorkshire was to me what every grandmother should be.  Grandma loved flowers, too. Her flower gardens, on the farm at Kelfield until 1955 and then in Biggar until her death some 50 years ago, were the most beautiful I had ever seen. 

This picture my sister recently sent me was taken at the farm so most likely is very late 1940's or early 1950's.  She also had a big vegetable garden but flowers were her passion.  Mostly annuals as I recall.

 My grandfather was a hardworking no-nonsense Dutchman (who came to Canada via Iowa which is how he ended up with Scandinavian spelled surname).  He didn't believe in frivolous time wasting things, so my grandma and the three girls used to read standing up with brooms in their hands so they could look busy if grandpa came into the house.  But grandpa knew what was important to grandma and through the 1930's and any year it was dry, he hauled water from the dam for her flowers in barrels on the stoneboat behind horses or tractor.

Grandma's love of flowers carried over to her three daughters.  My mom didn't have the time or energy to grow as many as grandma but she had lots of colour in her garden.  We used to tease her that she never planned a flower garden, she just let everything go to seed and in  spring, cultivated between the rows and what ever grew was her flowers for the year.  Her two sisters also had lovely flower gardens.

Too many summers weeding vegetables kind of put me off gardening of any kind, so I am thankful for Tanya.

Tanya's Flower Garden Update

We came home after 8 days away to learn we'd had three days of good rain and to find the gardens had grown substantially.  Tanya spent two days cleaning up the flowers and then started on the vegetable garden.  She is getting a pail of cucs every day now and has no idea what to do with them.  Lena will make more into pickles but even she has a limit.  Andrei's Tanya doesn't want any as she would just have to move them when they go to their new apartment.

Our little freezer that we paid $500 for three years ago is almost full and we have corn and beets yet to harvest.  We can now buy one twice as big for the same price in a local store, so the idea of freezing foods to preserve them rather than canning everything is slowly catching on.

Tanya has lilies blooming from early spring to late fall

 

This is "Masha's flower garden"

Nothing says Ukraine like Hollyhocks

Two year old Climatus in our front flower garden

A Man Outstanding in his Field

Kostia put the girls on the plane at 11:00 on July 2 and at 1:00 picked my colleague and friend Al Scholz off the plane and put him on a train to our place at 5:45 for a three day visit.  Al is on his way home to Saskatoon from Kazakhstan for the summer and will go back late August.  He is working on a minimum tillage research project on a 250,000 ha corporate farm of which 5,000 ha is dedicated to research.  They have had no rain since winter and wheat crops are going backwards very fast.

It has been a great two days so far talking farming with Al.  He is an agronomist and consultant and has 8 years farming experience on his own to back up his technical expertise.  Al says that yields in Kazakhstan are half of Saskatchewan though growing conditions are similar and the big issue is management, not lack of technology.  Fields are too big and managers are not hands on.  No one has an overall picture of what is going on, including top management.

We took the dogs for a walk this morning and stopped to check out a local wheat field. Combines are rolling again today though we wonder if the grain is dry enough.

Homeward Bound

Bron and Ky are on their way home or at least we know they were in the airport in Boryspol  by 9:30 this morning.  Their train was over 30 minutes late but Kostia got them to the airport in record time.  Hillary Clinton is in Kyiv today so traffic will be fouled up all day but they must not have had too many roads blocked off yet.  Technically the plane leaves for NY at a little after 11:00 this morning, so even with only 90 minutes they will be OK. . . I hope.

Bronwyn was antsy to get home.  She missed her husband, of course, but she is also her mother's daughter and if the Regina skyline is below the horizon, she is too far from home.  But she says she will come back again.  Ky could have stayed all summer but has some serious dissertation stuff to have complete by early September.  Tanya was all for her to pack her next summer's work and live here for the summer next year, communicating by internet.

Just before getting on the train.

 We put the girls on the train to Kyiv in Simferopol yesterday at 4:15 and were home by 11:45.  If you add the 2 1/2 hours from Alupta to Simferopol, it took 10 hours to drive the 600 km each way.  Bad roads in places (mostly near home), heavy traffic, many villages with 60 km speed limits and many many trucks loaded to the gunwales and traveling as slow as 50 on the good stretches.

Our trip home was not without incident.  After sitting for a week, the battery was dead.  The hotel owner jury-rigged a set of jumper cables from electric cable and had us going in no time.  The girls gave me what for for not having a set of jumper cables.  What kind of Saskatchewan farm boy was I?  THEY each have a set in THEIR cars.  And coming in the week earlier, we got a batch of bad gas and the engine light was on when we arrived indicating fouled plugs.  On the way out I kept the engine revs up and by the time we got to Simferopol, the carbon was burned off.
 
I forgot to get more cash in Simferopol so we headed out with 70 hrivnas and not enough gas to get home.  Not smart.  Bank machines are where you find them and using credit cards at filling stations is problematic.  Tanya finally spotted a bankomat by a highway restaurant in a little village and we filled up in Krivii Rih, just 65 km from home.  We might have made it, coasting on fumes but . . .

I hope the girls' trip home is without incident.

We had a great time and it was so good to see them.  They can write about their adventures as it is their story to tell.