Reboot Spring please!

The scene this afternoon

Will whoever turned off Spring and re-inserted Winter please stop it! I mean, we have had some lovely Spring like weather and now we are all white again! Heh ho! The joys of living in a northerly latitude. At least I don't feel too bad being stuck inside doing my writing, and yes I finally did get started on the actual writing phase. It was a good job that nobody visited me today, I had bits of paper all over the floor trying to organise my thoughts. It was only after I had printed out all the quotes to help guide my thoughts that I thought of a way that would be less paper intensive. I am sure I will get to test out my theory soon. I have plenty more writing projects to do yet.

Pieces of paper all over the floor
#oldschool

The beach at Tūja

It hasn't all been reading and writing though, I actually got to do some more interviews this last week. I headed off at the crack of dawn to rendezvous with my Masters student and we headed up the coast to a little village called Tūja. It is very popular in summer but rather deserted this time of the year and rather miserable in the rain, but we still managed to find some wonderful folks who agreed to be interviewed and tell us about themselves and the place where they live, even if we did nearly freeze to death in the process. The cup of coffee and biezpiena cake offered by one lady was most welcome. The place certainly has a few different issues to the ones I have come across elsewhere, but that is more due to its location on the coast compared to more inland rural places that I have studied before. At least that proves one of my points that each village will have its own particular issues and so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions beloved by the developers and policy makers.

A beach famous for its large rocks. 

A happy big brother with his lovely little
sister

It wasn't the only excitement this week, we became grandparents for the fourth time to a lovely little girl. She has been given the middle name of Lolly after her recently departed Great-grandmother, which I think is rather lovely and one that she would have appreciated. Our granddaughter's big brother is paying her lots of loving attention and reminds me of when we brought home our second child, his big sister enjoyed her role immensely and loved having a cuddle. We were alerted to our granddaughter's imminent arrival by text at 11:22pm and were awoken by repeated texts at around 5am to say she had arrived- oh the wonders of modern technology. It would have been even better if I had a smart phone, as my son tried to send a photo, but that phone packed up in the summer and I am back to a phone that Ian had in the States; so rather ancient by today's standards and certainly not capable of receiving picture texts.

Love the atmosphere in this shot. Ian can certainly take a
good photo

I am trying to be good and rest my brain properly for a couple of days a week. One of the days off  is on a sunny day of the week and so it varies. This week we took off to the nearest big town, as the car needed to go for its technical. We were hoping that it would fail so that we could bump the test to the following month. It is difficult if anything goes wrong for Ian to work on the car in the cold weather. Instead the car passed, but even better, for some reason we don't quite understand we got an extra few weeks anyway and it won't be due for the next test until April 22nd 2016 (yes we did double check that it wasn't for 2015). It was quite a productive day, as we managed to find a replacement printer at a reasonable price, bought food for the alpacas, got Ian's passport photo done and found some more Sodium Hydroxide for soap making, all that and even managed to stop for some pizza at our favourite Italian pizzeria - the real thing, made by an Italian.

Ian drawing pretty pictures with his plough. We are trying
out another experiment to reduce the water flow down the
hill, which causes flooding in the bottom half and washes
away nutrients and ungerminated seeds if planted at the
wrong time. Ian has roughly followed the contours of the
slopes with plough lines to give the water somewhere to
run into and then seep into the soil. 

The other day off is usually a Sunday when we head up to the other apartment for bath night and to watch a DVD. It also keeps the place heated, so pipes don't freeze. Before I went I made two scarves using a darker base material to felt onto (nuno felting if you want to look it up). It seems to work, sorry no photos yet. I also attempted to decant some liquid soap that I had made into a bottle. I wanted a soap base that I could use for hand soap and ended up with something the consistency of thick snot. I only intended to make about three litres, but by the time I have added enough water to it to make it liquid enough to pour, it is more like 6 litres. Those manufacturers sure know what they are doing when they sell hand soap for such a huge sum of money compared to a bar of soap, when so much of it is water. Only approximately 1 litre is oil with about 125g of Sodium hydroxide to turn it into soap. It should keep us in hand soap for a while anyway. I just need to play around with scent combinations now.

Frog spawn

There has been a short film by a 12 year old American girl of Latvian descent doing the rounds just lately on facebook. I watched the film, which is about the Baltic Way and wept. There are evocative scenes of so many people standing hand in hand against Soviet oppression, with nothing but a sense of determination on their faces and dreams in their hearts. I didn't weep for the image I saw of those people, I wept for the broken dreams. I wept because some on the video who spoke about that time with such emotion, used their freedom to leave. I don't blame them, I really don't, it is just that freedom has been so hard. I see those who stayed here who work and work and work to do the best they can to keep this country alive, buried under a layer of exhaustion. I see those who found the adjustment hard and are slowly drinking themselves to death. I see those who are trying to work out their painful past and not quite figuring out how they fit in today. I see those who had dreams in their hearts which turned to sawdust in the reality of a cold market place and wondering what they have to do to earn a living? I see neighbours not trusting each other and seeing a building fall apart because no one wants to take on the responsibility of doing something when all they get is aggravation for their troubles.

A sign of Spring, can you see it? Okay I know, I
have to learn to zoom in with my iPad, but I was
in a rush and it was cold when we opened the
window to take this shot. The stork arrived back
this morning, just in time for the snow. 

But I also see a beautiful country with signs of spring after a long winter, even despite today's snow. I see a people who long to see a better world and trying to figure out how that happens. I see the potential for those dreams to reawaken and grow like a pruned bush in warmth of the early spring sun. I have hope in a group of people that can appreciate a herb tea, picked by their own hands at the height of summer because they know which herbs are good to pick and which are good for health. I have hope in a group of people who know how to raise a garden of vegetables and think it is the most natural thing in the world to do. I have hope in those who struggle on despite the setbacks to reach for that dream of something better that cannot be bought with money. Putin maybe causing us worries from time to time and the American army might be over here to "reassure us" whatever that might mean, but I still have hope for the future.

Up and down

This is my land. Well not exactly land I own, but it is my

home and these are the homes of some of my

neighbours. The scene is beginning to reappear as the

trees shed their summer apparel.

There are always points in your life when you get heartily sick of circumstances and fed up and this year has been quite tough for us. Trying to get my head around the paper I need to get finished along with being fed up of neighbourly disputes, was not a good combination. There was a point when I was beginning to feel like "What is the point, they are an miserable, argumentative bunch anyway, blah, blah, blah". Not helpful and not entirely true either. I started listening to "This is your land" from the City of Gold:Visions of Heaven album, quite an old album now, but one I have found encouraging along my journey. I couldn't find the lyrics anywhere apart from on the YouTube video and so I have written them out for you,

Golden leaves

Didn't anyone ever tell you

Didn't anyone ever say 

Did you capture a vision of glory 

As she held out her hand today 

It's reaching to the broken ones 

Right down to where you stand

Didn't anyone ever tell you:

This is your land 

Didn't anyone ever tell you

It doesn't matter the last will be first

For the sad, and the meek and the righteous

And all those who will hunger and thirst

So let the poor in spirit know

These dreams are not of sand

Didn't anyone ever tell you

This is your land 

You'll be give the robes of princes

You'll be  flying on golden wings,

You will live in pavilions of splendour

Be surrounded by beautiful things,

So hold onto these promises,

And keep them in your hand,

Didn't anyone ever tell you,

This is your land,  

This is your land, 

This is your land, 

This is your land

We do live in a beautiful land and I believe in heaven coming to earth, after all that is what we pray in the Lord's prayer, so I need to hold onto the promises that God has put on my heart and keep moving forward. This is my land, this is a place I am connected to for as long as God intends me to be here and I don't see us moving any time soon, if ever. 

This is the forecast for Wednesday onwards. Yes it's in

Danish, because it is more reliable than the Latvian site,

but as you can see we are bouncing on into winter now.

So what has been happening in this beautiful land? Flooding and frosts. Oh yes! Winter is on its way and just to reinforce it to us, the swans who are usually the last to fly away, flew off southwards this week. East of us in Latgale they have already had a sprinkling of snow. As you can see from the forecast, it is due to get cold this next week. That doesn't mean that winter is here to stay yet, that usually involves a bit of a battle between autumn and winter before that score is settled of course. The wet weather and the expected imminent arrival  of cold weather meant Ian has been keeping the alpacas in more. The last thing we want is a saturated alpaca and freezing conditions, especially our little one. Unlike sheep they don't have lanolin to shed the water.

Sorry not the most focussed of shots, but what is clear is the

most important part. There is smoke (or steam depending)

out of the chimney just behind the school buildings.

As you can see from the photo our heating has been turned on. It was turned on at around 6pm at night, just as our evening meal was ready and I had already put our fire on. That meant running around to bleed radiators, rather than sitting down to eat. At first the radiators were cold, but gradually they warmed up and then they got hot. If there is one thing we really are tired of is the dispute over the heating. It has either been too cold, or too hot, or too expensive. Just when something appears to get sorted another problem arises and so this issue has been ongoing with a pretty appalling service and increasing costs for the last five or six years. It was so hot we weren't sleeping properly and so I mentioned it to the new house manager. I was relieved to hear that they were installing yet another new system to resolve it and was even pleasantly surprised that when we got back on Sunday after a lunch out, the system was up and working and the radiators gently warm and the temperature in the home comfortable.

Peppers all harvested before the frosts too. They have been

under fleece for a few weeks now and been doing okay, but

we need to move the greenhouse into winter mode and not

risk these going mouldy. They were all cut up and frozen

that night too

As I said we went out to lunch on the Sunday. It was quite a nice day to go for lunch somewhere, not because the weather was good, but precisely because it wasn't. It wasn't nice driving on the rain sodden dirt roads, but it is much nicer being inside chatting over lunch and drinking lots of tea, than it is feeling that something needs doing either inside because of the rain or dodging the rain trying to work outside. At least it was a chance to thrash out some ideas about how to tackle the paper I am still trying to write. I also spent another day up at my friend's house making soap with goats milk. It is a project we have been going to do for absolutely ages. It was a long winded affair, but plenty of time again to sit around chatting and drinking yet more tea while we waited for various substances to cool down. It was surprisingly easy and now I have several bars of the stuff. It doesn't lather up like shop bought soap, but it doesn't irritate my skin either, especially my scalp, as I used it as a shampoo bar. An interesting activity anyway and much needed light relief for all of us I think.

All the ponds are full to overflowing. There is even a little

flooding behind the large pond as the overflow pipe can't

take enough water away.

In between the rain, which has flooded properties, broken bridges and eroded roads further downstream, we have also had some hefty frosts. The day before one of them was forecast, saw me out in the garden digging up carrots. It was a gloriously sunny autumnal day and quite warm, so a rather nice break from writing. The result was two crates and one bag full of carrots, in three stints over the day and I even carried the crates down to the basement of our apartment block. Who needs a workout? I was rather pleased that I didn't even really ache the next day, or at least not much. The summer activities has obviously given me quite a bit of strength. The following day I went out to the land with Ian and since the ground was hard, surprisingly so with all the rain, we took the opportunity to get the chicken arks into the greenhouse along with the caravan. Another sign of the changing seasons. 

I suggested a while ago that we could do with some shelves

at the bottom of our caravan as the arrangement of the table

just meant that everything got piled up at that end. Ian had

a brain wave as he looked at how to tackle the problem and

found by turning the table round we had much more space.

My many ponderings often revolve around economics and economic models. I know riveting you might think, but if there is going to be a change in our societies we have to detox ourselves from the toxic effects of the capitalist society. No I'm not about to expound on communist philosophies, that doesn't work either. The question that revolves around my brain is what kind of economy is God interested in? How do we value what should be valued and stop putting a £/$ or € sign against everything to try and determine its value. I know that sometimes if you charge a small amount of money then people may take more care over what they do or how they respect the event or item, but if you try and give something away they may take that as a cue that it is of no value.

Ian has also installed a plug socket into the toilet, so he can

put the fan heater in there. It will be a blessing in those

rather chilly days.

This hasn't always been the case and is still not true in some cultures. In some cultures a gift is important, not because of its monetary value but because of the significance of the gift. So if I lend or give someone an item, how do I communicate that the item is important and should be cared for, not because of the item's worth but because I have done this as a gift? We somehow have to build trust and respect that doesn't revolve around money in order to free ourselves from dealing in issues from a monetary mindset. Oh the thoughts that revolve around my head. Feel free to add your own and for anyone who has ever lived in what some would call a hippy commune then tell us why that community is either flourishing or died a death, we need to learn from such examples, examples of people daring to challenge the norms of how society functions.

What everyone has in their living room,

don't they? These are sunflower seeds

drying. Unfortunately they were getting

damp and mouldy in the greenhouse

and barn and so needed dealing with

before we lost them

This last week saw the Saiema (Latvian Government) adopt a new law that means that when someone loses a house through a bank loan they can hand back the keys and the bank cannot chase them forever and a day. As far as I understand they have a similar policy in America, but it is not so popular in Europe. Some people argue that it leads to irresponsible borrowing. I find it interesting though that banks don't like American type policies when it doesn't suit them. I also do not see why people who were lent the money irresponsibly in the first place, should be hounded by banks. Their lending practices have been pretty appalling and shameful for banks especially from the Nordic countries. I am not sure justice and fairness play much part in their thinking to be honest. There are now different ways of raising funds that means people do not have to rely on banks as much as they did and so it will be interesting to see where all that goes.