Grapes

I harvested all of these grapes from the kitchen window area yesterday and today. I've been enjoying them as just a snack for the past several days. Usually I have a mild allergic reaction to these grapes - they make the area around my mouth tingle after eating one or two. The very first year we lived here they didn't bother me, but since then they have. Until this year. Every year I always check it out to see if I can eat them because they are very tasty. Yea! Maybe because it's been so dry and they are a bit smaller than usual? Maybe that has something to do with it? I don't know.
So, I harvested the ones from the kitchen window, a whole bowl full. What to do with them? We eat very, very little jam and jelly - maybe a small jar ever other year?? So, I went looking on the internet to see what else you can do with grapes. I didn't want to try wine - I'm afraid I'd poison myself, and Mel, too. :-) But I found and interesting Italian recipe. I cleaned and washed a little more than a kilogram of grapes, made the dough and then made the dessert. Of course, I had to taste it, too! heh heh It's not bad. The pips, or seeds, are still in the grapes and they crunch rather nicely when chewed. I wasn't sure I'd like it that way, but that's what the recipe called for, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'll post the recipe at the end of this post. After making the dessert, I squished out the innards of the rest of the grapes into a mesh colander. I worked at it until I got most of the pulp and juice separated from the pips. Then I coarsely cut up all the skins, added them to the juice, added some sugar, but not a whole lot, and boiled it. This concoction is now cooling on the stove. I think I'll freeze it and then we can use it later for a thin syrup over ice cream or pancakes or something in the future. Or maybe just add some water and make a compote out of it. Whatever. I'm sure we'll use it somehow. It tastes pretty good. :-) And I still have all of these grapes to harvest and do something with! I'll give away most of them to people in the church. :-)

Tuscan Wine Grape Pie Recipe - Schiacciata con l'Uva
One of the nicest things about autumn in Tuscany is Schiacciata con l'Uva, an astonishingly rich, sinfully juicy wine grape pie whose country roots are clearly revealed by the dough and the crunchiness of the grape seeds. This is a fairly elegant, city version, in which the traditional lard and honey have been replaced by olive oil and sugar.

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:
1 egg
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
3 1/3 cups (400 g) flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
White wine or water sufficient to make a smooth, workable dough (about 1/3 cup)
1 k (2 1/4 pounds) wine grapes (either white or red), stripped from their stems, washed, and drained
** If You Cannot Find Wine Grapes, See Below Note **
1/2 teaspoon anise seeds (optional)
1/4 cup chopped walnut meats (optional)
1/2 teaspoon freshly chopped rosemary leaves (optional)

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F)

Mix the egg, sugar, flour, olive oil, baking powder, and enough wine or water to obtain a fairly soft dough. Knead it till it's smooth, and roll it out to make a sheet large enough to line and cover the pan -- a bit thinner than a quarter of an inch thick (4-5 mm).

Grease a 9x14" cake pan (we use a metal roasting pan) and line the bottom of it with half the dough, making sure that it reaches about an inch up the sides of the pan. Fill the pan with about 3/4 of the drained grapes; gently squeeze some between your hands as you add them, and leave the rest whole.

Use the remaining dough to cover the grapes, sealing them in with care, then spread the rest of the grapes on top of the schiacciata. Dust the schiacciata with sugar and bake it in the oven for about an hour, or until the crust is browned. When it is done it will be about an inch and a half thick; the dough is primarily a container for the grape filling.

You can vary the recipe. Some cooks use considerably more sugar, and others put chopped walnuts within the schiacciata and sprinkle them over it. Still others sprinkle anise seeds or rosemary leaves over the schiacciata; whereas walnuts and rosemary are sometimes used together, anise seeds are used alone.

Schiacciata con l'uva goes wonderfully with a red wine.

Can't find wine grapes?
Concord grapes will work, and have relatively fewer seeds. Or, I think, you could use a mixture of other wild berry fruit, for example currants, blueberries and raspberries, perhaps with a few plumped raisins (zibibbo would be ideal) thrown in. Don't use table grapes, because they are too watery and lacking in both sweetness and concentration.

A Couple Of Observations
Do not expect the grapes to burst as they cook -- they will remain whole, and burst on your tongue when you bite into them.
As I noted in the introduction, wine grapes have seeds, and they add a distinctive crunchiness to the schiacciata. They may also confer slightly greenish vegetal accents (say, if the grapes are Cabernet) that I rather enjoy. The crunchiness is more pronounced if you also add a little anise seed, because they don't soften as they cook.

Bottom Line: Even with the substitution of oil for lard and sugar for honey (nods to city dwellers), this remains true Tuscan peasant food, and as such a bit rustic. But very nice.

State of the Balcony Report

Winter gray. Lots of dead leaves, dirt and dust and junk that I have no idea where it comes from all the way up here on the third floor. Bird droppings and sunflower seed shells from the bird feeder. This is the state of the balcony on a gray February day. I need to get a broom out there, but I've actually had the balcony door mostly sealed off during these cold days, trying to keep it warmer inside. If it would snow, I'd get out there and just sweep off the dirt and dead leaves along with the snow onto the ground. I never sweep leaves and dirt off, but into a dustpan and then put it in the garbage. If I just swept if off, the neighbor below would have a balcony full of 'my' dirt and leaves. Believe it or not, I do sweep the balcony off at least once a month - this stuff is from the last 4 weeks or so since I've only been out there a couple times. Where does it come from???? The neighbors above us have enclosed balconies, so it doesn't come from them.Here is my planter that held the ginger last summer. Now it has daffodils in it. As you can see, they are already coming up.This is a view from our balcony out into the 'yard.' See all that nice green grass? Yes, it has been cold, but rarely below 32 degrees F. The temp just hangs around the lower 30's up into the mid-40's most days. It is the lack of heat inside that makes it so cold, not a very cold temp outside. I don't know whose clothes those are, but they are going to smell very smokey. The neighbor in one of the private yards across from us just lit a fire to burn a bunch of dead branches and leaves. You can kind of see the smoke in the photo - it makes the cars and that area 'grayer' than it really is. Guess I won't be hanging out the clothes I just finished washing! I'm glad I have an indoor drying rack, although it takes up a lot of room when I set it up.And finally, two photos of most of my indoor plants (I chose not to take a photo of the ones around the fish pond because that's where the clothes rack is at, with clothes on it now :) )

From the Balcony This Morning

We have such a lovely view - NOT. :)

I was reading the news this morning on the internet and Mel said, "Look out the window." So, I stood up and looked out the window. We never know what we are going to see out there by the trash, or in the trash. It has been an interesting view many, many times. It is usually trash, but sometimes there is a person out there who is 'interesting' and other times it is a dog or cat.

Today it was this: Which in a closer view is this: Which even closer is this:

Why do I find this interesting?
I don't know exactly.
But it is different. And it does make me wonder. I wonder who put it out there? Where did they have it in their flat? What was it for? Why did they get rid of it?

If only that girl-thing could talk, I bet she'd have some interesting things to say.

I wonder who will pick it up and take it home - stuff put on the shelf there has usually been set there in case someone wants to 'recycle' it. We have put old shoes and used clothing there. Usually whatever is there gets taken within a few minutes.

As I look out now, Dolly still sits there waiting, but the other stuff is mostly gone. That is due to the woman who cleans up out in front of our building. She was hired to sweep up the leaves, clean up the trash area every day after the truck comes, and just the other day I saw her with pruning pliers of some sort, trimming back branches and shoots that had sprouted around some of the bushes. She keeps our building's 'yard' looking much better than most. I appreciate her a lot. She has a mostly thankless job, sometimes a dangerous job (handling all that garbage without a mask or special gloves). (The dolly is just out of sight in these last two photos. :) :) )

Random Photos

Photos taken December 1 - I still have petunias on the balcony. There are even a couple small blooms, a little worse for the wear because wind and light frosts will do that to you, no matter who or what you are. :) They are still alive today, mostly because the temperatures have been consistently in the 50's and 60's during the day and high 30's and 40's at night and I keep watering them once a week. It's hard to think this is really December. The daffodils I bought and planted are already starting to come up, too.


And here we have a prime example of what is happening in this city. I can count eight (EIGHT, 8) advertisements in this photo, not counting the phone number ad. I know which ones are actually separate ads, although it's hard to see in this photo. Actually, I took the photo just for my sister in Alaska. Yep - the big letters say: "Alyaska". There are actually more ads just out of sight. Pretty soon Kherson will be one big advertisement, without flowers, trees, sky, grass or .... just advertisements. Makes me want to puke. I find them totally disgusting. I find what they stand for equally sad. Sigh.

And just so we don't leave this post feeling downright depressed, here is photo I took tonight. Cheyenne has found Nirvana! A nice warm hidey hole under the Christmas tree and up against the semi-warm radiators. She's happy and content - for a few minutes! And I am having a blast decorating the flat for Christmas already! :) :) I'm not finished by a long shot. I've got my Christmas plates and mugs out, the Christmas tablecloth (not the one in the photo), placemats and napkins out. I've still got a lot more decorating to do. I love this time of year - from October through February, actually, for decorating around the flat. It makes the gray skies outside (see first photo) much more bearable.

Joy! Joy! Joy!

Contrasts

Ok, so I was really grumpy this morning for reasons that will remain unwritten. I looked out the window and saw this, sitting there for the 2nd or 3rd day in a row. Fit my mood exactly somehow. (if you can't tell what it is, click on the photo and make it bigger)

Later today, after rearranging part of the office room so I can eventually rearrange the livingroom for Christmas, I went over to the post office. They were only able to get 85 postcards for me, but I got the full 100 stamps. I'll pick up other postcards or cards as I need them during the Christmas season. Shockeroo - as I walked in to the post office, there was one woman with an older child standing at a table putting a box of stuff together (looked like a bunch of apples and other produce to me) getting it ready to mail, and one woman just finishing at the window! I walked right up to the window. Wow!

I went early just in case I had a long line. It makes me wonder - maybe some of the stuff they have always done at the post office before is now being done some place else? Like paying out the pensions. I still see the newspapers, dish detergent, soap and stuff for sale. The head woman there, Lyuda, has not been in the last 3 times I've been there, so maybe she's gone some place else to do that? Or, possibly the next time I go over there will be a line out the door again. Time will tell.

I finished that errand early, walked over to the main bus stop and waited until just the right trolleybus came along. A newer one, not one of the old clunkers. I could have taken several other trolleys or marshrutkas before that one came along, but since I was almost an hour early for the next thing I needed to do, I thought, "why take just any old transport?" ha!

I got off at the bus stop in front of the internaught. Or maybe that is spelled internot. It is NOT internEt, but naught or not. That is the orphanage. I was to meet Melinda there at 4 and I arrived about 3:30. She arrived at 4:05 or so. I knew I was going to be early, and I knew there was no place to sit there, but I figured I didn't want to go back home for just 15 minutes (you never know about getting the right transport, so it's best to give yourself plenty of time - that's my thinking on it anyway).

I did not get out my camera because there were so many people walking by, but a very nice homeless dog kept me company the whole time I waited. I really liked that dog. A lot. I almost called Jamie and Julia to see if they would like a dog. I thought about seeing if Mel would let me keep him, but he was just too big for our little flat. He was obviously well cared for not long ago, but now very hungry since I could see most of his ribs. He kept checking everyone out - are you my master? are you my mistress? will you feed me? But he was not annoying, just kind of desperate. Oh, he broke my heart! I prayed for that dog. I prayed that God would give him a good home. And then I thought, maybe that dog was an angel in disguise, sent there just to keep me company, safe and sound while all those guys walked by. It seems that area has a lot of youngish men in it and while they were probably all safe, who knows? Everyone thought he was my dog because he stayed within 5 feet of me almost the whole time, often standing right beside my leg. Oh - I wanted to bring him home! I apologized to him, out loud, verbally. It was hard.

Then a little truck pulled up, drove around me, parked and two guys got out. I wondered at first what in the world they were doing? Right beside me on the intersection of two sidewalks! Then the driver started untying the big long ladder on the back of the truck and the other guy got out some bricks from the back of the truck (the bricks eventually were placed under one leg of the ladder to make it level while the guy climbed it - no OSHA here, no-sir-ee!). Aha! I'd been standing just a couple meters away from one of those big ugly billboards and they were there to replace the ad on it.

I kind of chuckled to myself because I had looked up at that ugly ad several times and thought many thoughts about it. First - it was for the main guy for the Socialist Party here in Ukraine. Second - the colors were garish to me, magenta and turquoise strips (top blue, bottom pink). Third - his name/signature was cut in half so that the top half of each letter was about 5 inches to the right of the bottom half of each letter. Since it was in script, like a copy of his signature, it was unreadable unless you already knew his name (I did). The back side of the billboard was exactly the same, only not offset. So, these guys started redoing the side away from me, the exact same ad, in non-faded paper. Makes me wonder if there really is an election coming up?

Melinda arrived when they were about half done and we walked away.

I have never been to this orphanage before, in all these years. She has invited me, I just never went. But today I did. It was a special day of recognition for those who sponsor the internaught or visit it on a regular basis or bring in stuff for the kids, etc. Due to the major renovations going on right now, the kids did not perform a concert. We just met them in their 'livingroom' and then the adult workers, all women, took us back into their sleeping area. A table had been set up and they had prepared a little food for us. Olives, pineapple chunks, little mandarin oranges, fish liver and cheese on bread, Melinda brought pumpkin bread, and to drink - Champagne, Cognac and fruit juice. Little chocolate rolls and candy were for 'dessert.'

We toasted each other and ate (sorry, I just couldn't eat the fish liver stuff) and Melinda talked with them while I mostly listened. I was SO thankful - I understood most of what was said. Only a couple times did I lose the train of conversation and then Melinda caught me up. Mostly I understood. That was so good for me! Of course, when they talked over each other I lost it, or when the one gal talked really soft and quick I couldn't follow all she said. But, the three staff were talking to Melinda and me - foreigners - so they were careful, and to two other sponsors who also were there.

Here is a photo Melinda took of me with the ladies and the kids:In the back - Olga, me, Marina, Valentina, Tanya, in front on the far right in green, Oksana. Olga, Marina and Oksana are staff there. I won't try to name all the kids because I don't know them all. Most come to Sunday School, but there was at least one new boy and a couple who had just returned from hospitals that I don't know. Vadim (vah-deem)smiles at me.

So, my day started out kind of crappy, but ended up really nice.

Busy Days

May 30, 2006

Life has become very busy this past week. We hired a young man in the church to come and paint the bars on our balcony. I warned him that it would take at least 3 or 4 days to complete (and I was thinking that was not realistic). It’s kind of funny to watch people here react to my ideas of how things will go. He said sure, he’d be willing to paint them and kind of gave me the “3 or 4 days to paint the bars on a balcony? Ha! I’ll do it in way less than that!” look. For some reason – maybe because I’m a woman and I’m not supposed to know these things – I get this response often. Well, Kolya has been here 4 days and he finished painting the “anti-corrosive,” or primer yesterday. He hasn’t worked a full 8 hours each day – it’s too hot and the paint fumes are too much. But he has put in some long hours out there and he seems to be a hard worker. I checked this morning just to see how it all looks (gray). I know from personal experience that the pattern in the bars is complicated enough that it is easy to miss parts – the top of this bar, the side of that one, or the bottom of another. That’s what I get for having such a pretty security cage installed lo these many moons ago, when we first moved in here (can it truly be 7+ years???!!!)

Mel and I are late night people, which means we are also late morning people. We asked Kolya to show up no earlier than 10:00 am (I know that makes it the hottest part of the day to work, but……). He showed up yesterday at 9:30 and I was still asleep, arriving so early because he wanted to show us his photo album (he is a very homesick young man right now). We had been up way past 1:00 am the night before because:

Dave is here again. Dave is a former short term team mate, now back in the States attending seminary. He arrived about a week ago and will be here another several days. He’s staying in our “office” flat on the first floor. And because his ‘bedroom’ is just two floors below us, he is able to stay late – it’s a very short commute home. Ha! Sunday night he and I played two rousing games of cribbage, which I won, and it was great. Not because I won – that was just the icing on the cake for me. No, it was wonderful because I was raised in a family that liked to play games (Candy Land when we were little, Life, Parcheesi, Scrabble, Pinochle, checkers, Chinese checkers, etc.). Mel has never been a game player – he just doesn’t enjoy it at all. So, having Dave here, willing to play with me has been very fun for me. I’ll willingly stay up till all hours of the morning playing cribbage. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not live on the late night, late morning schedule….

Last night we had guests – Ira and Melinda came for my special “Ukrainian spaghetti.” This spaghetti recipe consists of throwing fried farsh (a ground beef and pork mixture) into a pot with chopped cabbage, grated carrots, grated beets, frozen spinach (can’t buy fresh here), chopped peppers and about a liter of tomato juice, a handful of dried oregano, a bay leaf and some basil – let it simmer until the cabbage is cooked and yum, yum! I don’t know why, but I try making it like that in the States and it’s just not as tasty. I think it has something to do with the tomato juice here, or maybe the farsh…. Whatever. I served spaghetti, made garlic bread and for dessert a homemade potato starch vanilla pudding topped with real maple syrup from Canada, which Denis brought me. Melinda brought my favorite Ukrainian Roshen chocolates and some waffle cookies. It was a feast.

Ira told us a lot about her trip to the States and then showed us photos. Dave came up, made himself some dinner with the left-overs. My computer started acting up – wouldn’t show Ira’s videos. Sigh. I think we need a new fan – it gets really hot and then slows way down. So, Ira and I spent some time trying to fix it, or figure out what was going on. She majored in computer science, so was able to show me some tricks on how to get it to work faster (YEA!). But, we finally gave up, with her instructing us on where to take it to get the fan replaced.

It was good to hear about her trip. I think I still have a lot of questions for her, but those will come in time. I’m thrilled that she was able to go to Texas this time, which is the closest she’s been to “my culture” in the States. Ok, ok – I hear all my Colorado family and friends screaming at me – Texas culture is close to Colorado culture?? AAAAIIIIIIHHHHH – no way!! The only good Texan is one on his way out of Colorado, etc. etc. and so forth and so on. (Sorry Lisa!) (But I love cowboys – yes, I do! No matter what state they come from!).

Ira and Melinda left – Dave stayed, talking to Mel and me for another hour or more – and then he got out his cribbage board, which he had conveniently brought upstairs. Ha ha! This time, he beat me soundly.

Today I have my Russian lesson, and tomorrow Kolya will be back to start putting color on the bars, so I can have my pretty balcony again. Our neighbor upstairs asked him how long it was going to take before he finished painting – I think they are sick of the smell of this paint, as am I. I hope they will be patient just a couple more days – the next step will go a lot faster. But I will be really glad when it’s finished – the need to have them painted like this has been weighing on me for almost three years!

I am very much an introvert and need my time alone each day. Having someone here from the time I wake up until just a couple hours before we go to bed can be very difficult for me after a couple days. Yet - - it has been so good to have Dave here again, to have Ira home, to have Melinda over and to have the bars painted. Plus, the time Mel and I have spent talking to Kolya has been very good – when we can get him to speak in his simple Russian! He’s from western Ukraine and is very nationalist – the first day he told us we need to learn Ukrainian. When I asked him to speak in Russian because we don’t understand Ukrainian, he replied, “But I am a Ukrainian man!” I understand the sentiments – but oh, it is exhausting to try and cipher out the Russian when it’s all mixed up with Ukrainian.

We are expecting another guest today – our Denis. Denis was born and raised here in Kherson but moved to Canada a few years ago. He was Mel’s first Russian tutor. He came back a few days ago to visit his family and has been over to see us a couple times. Sunday night his girlfriend arrived from Canada and he plans to bring her over so we can meet her as well. I’m looking forward to it. Denis is 30 now and we can see such a change in him, a positive change, as he has grown up and matured.

So, our life has been very busy over the past week. Busy in an interesting way. Lots of visitors, lots of people in and out. A lot of work accomplished. Good food eaten. Laughter. Concerns shared. Life shared.

I enjoy these days.

"The Dying Time"

April 6, 2006

There was a funeral in the podyezhd next door this morning. I only noticed it because I stepped out on the balcony to bring in a drying shirt that was flapping against the bars in the strong breeze. I glanced down between the bars of the railing to the left, and there was a small group of people gathered together. A table, covered by a white cloth, was set out on the sidewalk in front of the door to the stair well. On the table were several items of food and a couple flowers. In front of the table, on the sidewalk between our building and the street, an open casket was balanced on two stools. It was just a little too far away for me to be able to see who was in the casket, but it looked like a woman. I have met several people who live in the entrance next door, so it may have been one of my acquaintances. Or, it could have been an old babushka I’ve never seen. As I stood watching for a few minutes, a car drove up and stopped in front of that podyezhd. The passenger door opened and a Ukrainian Orthodox priest got out. He was dressed in black robes and carried an incense holder on a chain and a Bible. He stepped up to the small group of people gathered there and began the funeral service. I turned and came back into the apartment.

Death in Ukraine is very “in your face.” In the States we hide death. Oh, don’t get me wrong! We watch “death” all the time in our movies and television programs, we read about it in books and stories, and we even have songs about people dying. But we hide “real death.” We do our best to ignore the fact that someday we will die – I will die, my husband will die, my children will die and so forth and so on. We use words like “pass away” and “gone to a better place” and even slang terms like “kick the bucket.” But how often do we hear the phrase – “XXX died yesterday.”

When Mel was pastoring the church out at Peyton, in the space of just one year we had several deaths in the community, a community of just 300-400 people. Mel officiated at nine funerals. Two of them were emotionally difficult for us as they were close friends of ours in the community – one death by a terrible truck accident and the other by a mysterious illness that turned out to be cancer of the blood vessels. One funeral was for a suicide and another was a murder victim. One of the saddest was the death of a newborn baby, the second newborn that young family had lost in two years. We listed them all out at the end of the year and realized that none of the deaths had been of ‘natural causes’ or simple old age.

I have only been with one person when they died, and that was my dear friend who died of cancer of the blood vessels. People talk of how ugly death is – and it is ugly. It is not the state we were created for. Our bodies were created to live, and to live fully and eternally. Death is truly our enemy.

Yet in another way, death is wonderful – death for a Believer in Christ. A passing from this sinful world into His presence, leaving the imperfect for the perfect. How thankful I am that in Christ Jesus I have that hope of death not being the end of all there is, but of knowing that it is just the passageway into life eternal.

The funeral is over now. Everyone has gone to the cemetery. After internment, the friends and relatives will probably go some place and eat a meal together.

It is a cold spring day. I was told by one of our young friends that spring is known as “the dying time.” I thought that odd, because I’ve always thought of spring as being the time of new life, new beginnings (baby chicks peeping, daffodils and tulips poking their way up out of the earth to burst into glorious bloom, little lambs frolicking in fresh green fields….). She explained. The winters are so difficult – bone chilling cold with little heat, and often there is hunger such as we in America have never known. Many people have the physical reserves to make it through the darkest part of the year, and then die when spring arrives.

I find that very sad.

A Matter of Garbage

March 28, 2006

There is a man going through the garbage. I can see him, right outside our window and three floors down – I have a perfect view of what he is doing, as if I were a bird on a tree branch watching from above. He is dressed in dirty, old tattered clothes. A navy blue coat, black stocking cap, dark slacks that have seen better days, and obviously old shoes. The garbage truck has already come and gone this morning, but as is usual, there are several grocery sized plastic bags full of garbage lying around on the ground around the dumpster. Some were full and in one piece until this man tore them apart, others already lay twisted and flattened, contents scattered around them. Garbage is scattered around the dumpster in a circle about 20 feet in diameter.

The dumpster for our building looks like this every day. Our building is five stories high and has six entrances. Each entrance opens into a stairway with four apartments on each floor. There are twenty apartments in each stairway, six entrances – I come up with at least 120 apartments in our building. My guess is that there is a minimum of two people living in each apartment and I know that is a low estimate – 240 and more people live in our building. And there are cats and dogs and caged birds and even a couple pet rats and at least one chicken, living in a cage on a balcony. A minimum of two hundred forty people and their pets live in this building and there is one dumpster. One dumpster that is approximately a cubic meter, maybe a bit bigger, and it sits on the ground across the little driveway from our entrance. One lonely little green dumpster. We are fortunate – we have a dumpster.

For the first couple of years we lived here we had to take our garbage out to a dumpster down the street, located in front of a nine-story building. That building has two dumpsters for 9 stories, 6 entrances, approximately 216 apartments, more than 432 people. Two dumpsters for a minimum of 432 people – plus our building as well for many years.

There came a time when people in our building started dumping all of their garbage out in a huge pile beside a cement wall, across the drive way and a little left of our entrance. Huge piles would accumulate until once or twice a week a tractor pulling a big wagon would pull up. Three guys would climb out of the wagon with shovels in hand and commence to shovel all of the garbage up and into the wagon. The tractor and wagon would drive off to the next area and repeat the process. This drove me crazy. I refused to take our garbage out to that pile and continued to take it to the dumpster down the street. Until one day, one of the street cleaners (a woman) stopped me and told me to throw my bag of garbage on the big pile. I reacted in disgust, I admit. “No, it’s not clean!” I said. She realized immediately that I was a foreigner and repeated her instructions again, in very careful Russian so I could understand. I did NOT understand what she was saying. Again I said, “No! It’s dirty, it’s not clean!” She kind of sighed and told me to put the bag in the dumpster. I found out later from a neighbor that the reason we were putting our trash in the big pile was because there were not enough garbage trucks with the right equipment to pick a dumpster up and mechanically pour the garbage into the truck. Men had to come and empty the dumpsters by hand into the trash wagons and it was difficult for them to get the garbage out of the dumpsters quickly. I started throwing my garbage on the big pile and felt guilty every time I did. As an American who believes in keeping our environment clean, throwing bags of trash on the ground is abhorrent to me. Dogs and cats ripped it open and scattered it for many yards all around. How many rats did that garbage attract? Sometimes it would be there for almost a week.

Mel and I left for two weeks vacation and when we returned there was a dumpster for our building! I was very happy. Except the dumpster was located just 10 or 12 yards in front of our entrance, not too far below our window. I wondered how bad the smell would be in the summer. And flies – it was going to attract flies – right under our window. Sigh.

One day I heard arguing outside. This is not an uncommon occurrence and I didn’t pay too much attention until suddenly I heard a loud scraping sound. Screeeeeech. Metal against pavement. More angry yelling between two women. Screeeeeech. And even louder yelling. I looked out the kitchen window and there were two old women standing one on either side of the dumpster yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. The old woman on the right began pulling the dumpster backward to the right. The old woman on the left began pulling as hard as she could to the left. I stood and watched out the window for several minutes, but had to turn back to my cooking. I was laughing inside. Suddenly the screeching sound got really loud so I looked outside and both of the women were now on the same side, pulling with all their might. They pulled that dumpster (with no wheels) three entrances down the street, and then happy with their decision, they left. The next morning the dumpster was back in front of our entrance. There it has remained for the past three years.

The man who was going through the garbage is gone now. Instead, there is an older woman, one of our neighbors, going through the garbage. I know what she is looking for – scraps that she can feed her dog and cats. As the day goes on and the dumpster is filled to overflowing again, several more people will stop by and go through it. I have watched many times and know now what they are looking for. Some people will pull out scraps of food like our neighbor does. (I pray it is not for their human consumption, but have put out stale bread in plastic bags to keep it clean just in case.) Some will sort out bottles, others cardboard and like the man a while ago, some will sort out plastic bottles and certain metals.

I have always wondered what they do with it all. Is there a recycle center somewhere in town? If so, I have no idea where it is. However, I have seen a couple places where you can take empty wine and beer bottles and sell them.

Last night while working on a needlepoint and listening to the news on BBC, I was startled to hear the word “Ukraine” used during an advertisement for an award which was given out recently. I immediately started watching and listening closely. It seems that a British entrepreneur recognized a new problem in Ukraine, brought on by the increasing growth in the economy and standard of living here – the problem of mountains of trash, especially plastic trash, and no way to dispose of it easily. This man found a way to combine several kinds of plastic together and produce a substance that can be formed into roofing tiles. Ukraine has developed this to the point where she can now produce enough to begin exporting them to the UK.

Now when I see a person going through the trash, picking out plastic bottles and putting them into large bags to carry away, I will wonder – are those bottles going to end up on the roof of someone’s new house in Great Britain?

To My Father's Glory

March 22, 2006

It is not quite springtime here in Kherson. Almost, but not quite. We had two days of sunshine and I rejoiced. How I love the sunlight!

I started the day out with a load of laundry. One load of laundry can take all day if the water pressure is low. I had started a load the night before but the water went off before it was finished. So, first thing this morning (after making coffee of course!) I started the machine again and it was finished in less than 20 minutes. I emptied it out into my big purple laundry tub and sorted it into clothes to be hung up inside on the drying rack and clothes I hang outside on the balcony. Usually I try to hang out all of Mel’s jeans because they are so long and heavy when wet. I took a couple of items out, pinned them to the wire above my head and then thought to myself, why don’t you trim the grapevine today?

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in Colorado. There are not a lot of vineyards in Colorado. I’m sure people must have grapevines somewhere in Colorado, but to my knowledge, I had never seen one until I went to California the first time. And there – oh my! Thousands upon thousands of grapevines in vineyard after vineyard. Grapes for eating and grapes for wine, grapes for juice and grapes for raisins. I’ve been to California now several times and at different times of the year, so I had mind knowledge that grapevines need to be pruned.

Actually, my first schooling in grapevines came from the Bible. Jesus calls Himself the True Vine in John 15, “I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener.” And as I was growing up, going to Sunday School and church, I learned that grapevines must be pruned to bear fruit.

Our grapevine was planted in front of our building many years ago by the owners of the flat we live in. For several years it grew up along a strong wire that was attached to our balcony. Now it reaches all the way to the floor above us. I had looked the grapevine over a few days ago, while it was still rainy and gray, and had decided that the first nice day we had I needed to get out Mel’s hacksaw and cut away. This was a very brave thing for me to do. I have had many wonderful houseplants over the years and seldom do I spend several hours cutting all their branches and stems off, down to the bare stalk. On the typical houseplant, that would spell its doom and death. But grapevines are different – so I’ve read and so I’ve been told. They need this severe pruning in order to produce fruit. “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

I dug around in the box Mel keeps his tools in and found his little hacksaw. I was somewhat skeptical when I first looked at it. I think it’s a Russian or Ukrainian hacksaw because I never saw one quite that small in the States. The two prongs that hold the blade are only about 5 inches apart. The blade seemed about “normal size” to me, which means that half of it, or maybe a little more, was sticking out the end and was not attached to anything. It just wobbled. How typical, I thought.

I stepped out onto the balcony and looked at the vine. Where do I start? If I just start hacking away, I could accidentally cut off one of the branches I want to keep. I decided that in this case it was better to start at the end and work my way backwards. I looked over at the office window and found the end of a branch I wanted to remove, followed it back to where it joined with one of the larger branches, then followed that larger branch back to the vine. Then, reaching through the bars, one hand on the branch and the other wielding the saw, I found a good place and started sawing.

The saw worked wonderfully! I pulled the cut-off branch back inside the bars and dropped it on the floor. I did not want to drop them to the ground below because so many people walk past all day long. Soon the balcony floor was covered with branches. I got down on my knees and reached out as far as I could below me and started cutting one of the branches there, up against the vine. Our neighbor below us does not like her balcony covered in the summer with grape leaves (and later grapes) and has asked us to please keep the vine up and away from her balcony. As I was sawing away I realized that my reach was not long enough to just use the little part of the hacksaw. So, I started sawing with the wobbly end – and if I sawed slowly it worked! The saw is rather bent and misshapen now on the end, but I think Mel will forgive me.

There are still several branches that are too high for me to reach. Mel will have to cut them off when he returns from Spain. And maybe we will buy a ladder – then I can finish painting the bars all the way to the bottom of the balcony above us as well. But for now, the parts that I can reach are “clean.”

Soon new growth will break through the branches that I left, sending out long, green, supple shoots that will reach for the sky. Long tendrils, thin but very strong, will appear at intervals along the new growth, wrapping themselves around anything within their reach – bars, other branches, the clothesline, (and me – if I stood out there long enough) – holding the branch in place, giving it security to continue it’s mission. And before we know it, we will see tiny green grapes begin to grow on those new branches. “Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

Now I have a balcony floor covered in grapevine branches. I’m not sure what to do with them. I don’t think I should put them in the garbage – the garbage container is always full and overflowing on to the ground around and grapevine branches would just contribute to the problem. I may take them out and toss them up against a wall where other people have burned things before. I don’t want to burn them myself, but I’m sure someone will do it. “Apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to by my disciples.” (Emphasis mine. From the New International Version of the Holy Bible, John 15:1-8)

Photos: Early summer on the vine and Almost ready for harvest

Clouds

painting by Tim Cox
www.timcox.com/

March 1, 2006

Gray clouds hang dark and heavy over the city. At daybreak today the streets were filled with large filthy puddles that cars splashed through noisily and people walked around or jumped over. Water dripped off grapevine branches on the balcony and drops hung precariously from several of the security bars before suddenly falling to the ground two floors below. It is March 1 in Kherson. We have seen the sun once in the past seven days, and with it a glimpse of blue sky before the clouds closed over once more.

About an hour after my 2.5 mile walk this afternoon, I took a 10 minute rest in the bedroom. Cheyenne came in, jumped up on top of my side and curled up in the hollow between my ribs and hip. As I lay there, eyes closed, I could hear the sound of splashing water as the cars rushed by out on Rosa Luxemburg Street. Almost immediately that sound brought to my memory a day in Woodland Park many years ago.

We lived on the corner of West Street and Highway 24, right in the heart of the little town center. That corner is now a business building and parking lot, but at the time we lived there a small gas station and the little summer cottage we rented were still in existence. Several times that summer we had a good rain shower and afterward I could hear the sound of the cars driving by on wet pavement as they rushed through town. I was much younger then, in my late 20’s, with three pre-school children at home all day, cooped up in the house due to the weather.

How well I remember looking out the front window on those rainy days. Woodland Park is situated in a Y-shaped valley near the top of Ute Pass. Directly to the east is a beautiful view of Rampart Range. I remember two things quite distinctly about that summer – the incredibly beautiful sight of the gray clouds drifting low and covering the top of the Range like wisps of whipped cream piled high, and the sound of thunder reverberating back and forth across the valley. Even today it brings happy shivers when I think about it.

There is nothing quite like a summer rain shower high in the Rockies of Colorado. Each geographical area has its own smell in wet weather or dry. I have special memories of the smell of rain on the hot prairie sand and grass out east of Colorado Springs, special memories of the smell of rain on the muskeg and tundra in Alaska. And yes, even special memories with the smell of rain here in Kherson. But none of those memories can compare to the memory of the smell of rain high in a mountain valley in the Colorado Rockies.

A summer rainstorm is usually a summer thunderstorm. Brilliantly white against a deep cornflower blue sky, the clouds billow high above the mountain peaks, roiling and growing ever higher and wider as warm air from the valley floors rises to meet the cold air above the highest peaks. The reflected sunlight from the brilliant white clouds is almost blinding, yet streaked against the flat bottoms is the first hint of gray and shadow.

One late summer Sunday afternoon in the early 1990’s we visited friends up at Sangre de Cristo Seminary, southwest of Westcliffe. As we walked out their front door the first thing we saw to the east were the biggest thunderhead clouds I have ever seen, forming over the hot prairies west of Pueblo, fifty miles to the east of us. The clouds rose thousands of feet into the air, huge columns of white, billowing and growing with incredible speed, reaching higher and wider at every moment. We drove back to our home in Westcliffe, watching the clouds the whole time. After eating a quick meal, we drove over to the cemetery west of town and parked in the open area where the view to the east was clear of buildings or lights. Several other people had arrived before us, and more arrived over the next two or three hours.

As the sun set in the west, turning the clouds from white to gold, to orange, and finally gray, we began seeing lightening flashing within the clouds. Huge bolts in pink and lavender were lighting up the clouds from within, while long, narrow bolts of yellow and white were shooting out of the tops of the clouds toward space. Directly above us and to the west the sky was completely clear with thousands of stars pinpricking the night sky with twinkling light. Absolute silence surrounded us, broken only by the occasional murmur of quiet voices or the sound of a car engine on the highway a mile away. As the clouds drifted to the east they continued to grow larger, not smaller, for almost two hours before finally drifting completely out of view behind the Wet Mountains. I knew that the beauty we were watching, the majestic power of God revealed in this small way in nature, was only part of the story. Surrounded by absolute silence, our eyes beheld incredible beauty. But underneath those clouds crashing fury reigned. We learned later that several small tornados touched down and hail caused several thousands of dollars worth of damage. Heavy rains also caused local flooding and lightening hit several buildings.

Birds - February 2005

February 26, 2005

It snowed off and on all day yesterday - huge fat flakes. But you'd hardly know it this morning. Most of it melted before the day was done. I enjoyed so very much watching the birds at my little feeder on the balcony. ("Balcony" sounds so much greater than the tiny little outdoor cage we actually have....) There were more birds than usual due to the snow covering their natural feeding areas most of the day. I've again put out yellow millet mixed with raw black sunflower seeds in the shell. I can buy both either at the street markets or at Oskar - they are food products for human consumption.

The sparrows seem to prefer the millet which kind of surprises me. But we have some birds that look a lot like chickadees, gray backs, black caps, white throats, but they have greenish yellow breasts. They act like chickadees, though - won't eat the millet but pick up one sunflower seed at a time and always fly off into the trees to either eat or store them. Yesterday I realized that while the sparrows were gone one little guy was patiently tossing millet out with his beak onto the floor of the balcony and even off onto the sidewalk 2 floors below, searching for sunflower seeds. The mourning doves love it when they do that because mourning doves are ground feeders and won't come up to my third floor bird feeder. I know a lot of it is wasted that way because people walk on it and squish it into powder before the mourning doves have eaten it all. I have 3 or 4 cups of sunflower seeds in a bag in the container I use to store their food, so I quickly pulled it out and put a handful on a plate and set it in the corner on top of the railing, wedged underneath the security bars. Within a couple minutes they were back - at the feeder. I watched and sure enough, it wasn't half a minute later and the little guy tossing millet out again spied the black sunflower seeds on the plate below. No more tossing millet for them!

I love to hear the sparrows chatter at each other - they sound so cheerful. I find that funny, actually, because when they are chattering away at each other it's almost always because they are arguing over who gets to eat. "Get out of my way!" "It's MY turn, you've been there forever!" "Hey! Let my wife have some of that millet, you pig!" "I'm bigger than you, I'm more important than you, I deserve to eat NOW and as much as I like!" So, they fight and squabble and fly into each other to get each other to move, and chirp at each other from nearby grapevine branches or even while sitting on the closer cross-bars. And I sit here at the computer, listening to them outside the office window, and casually think to myself as I'm busy writing or working on something - "what cheerful little guys they are! I wish I were as free as a bird..."

This morning I woke up again before it was light. Mel was sleeping very restlessly and I kept turning over, disturbing him, so I decided to get up. But while I was in the process of deciding to get up I could see movement outside our bedroom window against the dark gray sky. Without my contacts in all I can see are the fuzzy outlines of the bigger tree branches and movement when the crows fly. Nothing is in focus and I can see no smaller items at all. But I knew what was going on because I've watched it before. Every morning the crows gather together for a morning fly-about. Sometimes there will be a hundred or even more. In Kiev I saw a huge flock, must have been 500 or more, flying in circles above the courtyard of Predslava one morning. They swooped and glided and swirled ever higher up as they caught the updraft from the heat escaping the surrounding buildings. Eventually they were all high enough to disappear into little specks on their way to various parts of the city. I wonder where they all come from each morning? Where do they spend the night? And loud! Oh my, are crows loud. Crows here are bigger than American crows by quite a bit, but they are smaller than a raven (they are called ravens, tho - but compared to ravens in Alaska, these guys are pretty puny).

Well, yesterday morning and this morning I was awake and up to watch the morning fly-about here on our street. I like to think of the crows as the mafia of birds - they dress all in black, they have huge weapons (their beaks), they intimidate all the smaller birds, they are involved in waste management :):), they gather for important meetings and rituals every day, and they rule the skies. Yesterday straight off our balcony and maybe 10 feet higher I noticed a pair of mourning doves sitting on a branch, about 10 inches apart. A crow flew in and settled on another branch a yard or so away, at the same level. And a second crow arrived and settled down on a nearby branch of another tree. Within seconds the two mourning doves had skooched closer and huddled together. I wondered if it was for protection, or if they would have done that whether the crows were there or not. I always see these two mourning doves together and I thought to myself, he's protecting her as best as he can from the bad guys. Alas, I was busy and didn't see the end of the confrontation. But to my knowledge the mourning doves will be cooing outside later today and the crows never seem to disappear.

All of this reminds me in many ways of human relationships and society in general. I'm very anthropomorphic.

Ravens in North America are so beautiful, so big, so strong, so intelligent - no wonder they are favored by the American Natives in the States and Canada for totems and in their folk stories. While we were at Canyonlands National Park in January, I fed some whole grain bread to a couple of ravens in the parking lot of a trail head (shame on me! Don't feed the wildlife!). When it came time, one of the ravens tried to prevent us from leaving by actually dive bombing the car twice as we pulled out onto the road!

Thinking of ravens in Alaska being so much bigger than the crows/ravens here in Ukraine (and maybe all of Europe?) - I wonder why the North American seagulls on the Pacific Coast are so much bigger than the seagulls along the southern Atlantic coast - and why all of them are so much bigger than the seagulls here in Ukraine? And now, thinking of seagulls - did you know the Russian word for seagull is tchaika? Which when turned into a family name becomes Tchaikovsky. So the great Russian composer was Peter Illyich Seagull. (I wonder if that's where the idea for the name Jonathan Livingston Seagull came from???) And progressing on to name meanings - Wayne Gretsky is of Ukrainian descent and Gretsky is the Russian word for walnut. So the great hockey player is actually Wayne Walnut. Somehow Wayne Gretsky just sounds a little more intimidating on the ice than Wayne Walnut, don't you think??

All for this morning. I think you've probably had enough!