No way to plan

I don't know why the crickets are attracted to our caravan
but we regularly find them in there, like this rather
splendid chap. Do you like the decor by the way?
Gorgeous colour don't you think? No! Not my style either

What an interesting week it's been and finished with quite a flourish in some ways. The weather has made a hash of any plans we have had this week, but I will get onto that and thoughts about the weather later but first I will tell you of another of our interesting encounters. Ian was out on the land, as normal, when a couple drove onto the land, they live in America (now doesn't that sound familiar?) and they or rather the young man's parents own the property adjacent to ours, but the opposite direction to the American family we met the other week. Now the young man's parents still live in Latvia, but they feel it is too far to come out to the property very often, so this young couple are feeling like they would like to come out and do some work on the land, something sustainable, experimenting to see what works. Again this all sounds rather familiar. They drove onto our land to talk to the crazy American couple they had heard so much about. Americans? Who us? Okay we speak English and we have lived in America and most of those associated with the camp just up the road from us are Americans, so we will forgive them for their mistake, funny what neighbours say about us. Ian ended up inviting them around for a meal and so tonight we have been sitting around the table listening to their hopes and dreams and they have been listening to ours. Seems like we may see more of them in the future and certainly we felt like a meeting of minds.

The first garlic I have ever grown successfully
 and harvested. The bulbs were given to us
last year by one of our neighbours and
they seem to have done well.

They aren't the only visitors to the land this week either. Our daughter and her husband of course who went back to the UK to continue on their merry go round of visiting as most expats do when returning back to their mother country and another couple too. She is Latvian whose parents live in our apartment block and he is French and they both work in Luxembourg, and they came out to see our alpacas. It was interesting to hear their story, to hear them yearn to have more of a stake in this land. Is the land calling back some of its younger folks? Those with dreams and hopes and visions? Those with ideas and a peacefulness to live in a rural place? The Latvian government have been talking just lately of attracting back some of their young folks, particularly those with a good education, but they don't seem to be so keen to attract the foreigners. I know they fear dilution of this small nation but few are pure ethnic Latvians anyway, and an infusion of new blood with an enthusiasm for the land and willing to be wedded to the land is more important than just attracting the nationals back. Build a vibrant community who love the land and you have something to attract the others back to.

Oh yes we have bales! Lots and lots and lots of bales. We
probably have around 600 of them, just over 300 are useful
for feed, the rest are compost. At least our neighbour who saw
Ian baling the wet hay was rather relieved to find out that
was all they were destined for, she was rather worried about
us.

I have made some progress on what to do about the PhD, and this next weekend we are off to Tartu as someone has kindly offered us a place to stay for the night and means we get a good start to see Tartu University with our Professor friend who teaches at that university. The offer of a place to stay has come about through a contact from this blog, interesting how the blog has forged some contacts that I never envisaged. It will also be interesting to see where this visit will lead. I wasn't sure if working with an Estonian University on a Latvian issue was the right way to go and so it was interesting that today's encounter involved an Estonian descendent and a Latvian, even if they do live in America, almost like it is a confirmation that maybe this is the way I should go. Sorry if that sounds a bit vague and woolly but it is just my ponderings at the moment.

These bugs seem to adore my echinacea
plants. These are quite frightening to see
when they are flying as they sound like a
bomber plane and are difficult to work out
what they are in flight.

It must be the weather as I have been pondering a lot just lately. There are times in our lives when things are settled and life is predictable and then there are times when it is not. Sometimes that is just a personal thing but sometimes it is more general, like when an economy is in trouble, then just about everyone suffers, although there are often some winners in that too. Life at the moment is unpredictable for most people, even if personally it is predictable with a steady income and what seems to be a secure job, there is still this sense of something about to happen or the future looks uncertain. This year our life has been unpredictable and it has been hard for planning and that is mainly due to the weather. None of the forecasts has given a reasonably accurate forecast for the following five days. It has been "it will rain" "it won't rain" all summer and the forecasts have changed frequently meaning what first looked like a dry spell suddenly turns out to be showery instead and vice versa. Even the time we got the hay in, was uncertain as to whether we would actually get enough fine days or not, at least in the time it takes us to get the hay cut and baled. Some plants have thrived in the cooler weather, not as bothered by the insects that usually decimate them or just enjoying the cooler wetter weather, some have most certainly not. We will be eating more carrots and onions this year by the look of it and it is a shame we haven't more cabbages as they have done well, but I don't really like storing cabbages, although theoretically it is possible. As it is sauerkraut is looking to be on the cards as we have a few more cabbages than we can eat. We have plenty to eat at the moment but I'm not sure how much we will have to store over the winter. Of course that does not mean we will starve, we have plenty of reserves to see us through. We have managed pretty much on our own veg and some fruit for much of the past few years and so managed to reduced what we buy to a bear minimum, but whether that will change this year or not I don't know, but it is a pity in a year when prices are likely to be high. I'm guessing seeds will also be at a premium next year as some harvests fail.

Three trays of onions here, two white and
one red. And there's more. We like onions
we use them a lot!

That paints a pretty bleak picture and you would be forgiven for thinking I'm depressed or over tired but I'm not. The unpredictability actually encourages me. I can't think of anything worse than for this world to carry on as it is, with the unfairness and injustice. If the "unpredictable" gets the attention of people and gets people thinking differently, then I am all for it. I will happily put up with the temporary inconvenience while a new order is built. At the end of the day I still believe in a God who so loved the world he sent his Son to die for it, to set it right. Okay it is taking a little longer than most folks would like and maybe not happening in the way we would like, but he still loves the world and he will sort it out. He also wants us to get on board and work with him to set the order, maybe then we can start to plan ahead a little more confidently. Meanwhile he calls the dreamers and visionaries home, those who yearn for something purer, less corporate. An interesting week, an interesting week indeed!

And this is a banana shallot. Banana shallots
are small onions really. This one I wouldn't
have been upset to see as a real onion in size
it's huge. I was expecting something a
quarter of the size 

As I said an interesting week but not all good, we have one dead chicken and one sick chicken. Ian brought home the head male from the flock and he is looking decidedly sad. Not moving around and all hunched up. Guess it is off to the vets in the morning to check him over and see if the flock need some sort of worming or antibiotics. Drat! Just when we were feeling that the chickens were doing well.

Still hectic

Winter on its way? Tee hee! I usually tell my dear hubby
off for that sort of comment.

I know what the Matron of husbandry means on her website when she says 

"No time to take a breath because winter is on the way.  I feel it in weeds I pull – they don’t yield like they did a few weeks ago.  I smell it on the air, the first leaves decaying, and the scent of elder flowers always means don’t tarry with those tasks, this is a fleeting time.  Soon the mornings will be brisk and you’ll see your breath.  Hurry Hurry!"

The year has turned here in Latvia in the same way it has in Wisconsin. The summer seems to be all too soon flying away and harvest time has arrived. Summer has struggled here in Latvia, we've had some high temperatures but we have also had too many cool nights. Some plants that normally do well haven't thrived, like the beans that usually are very well behaved and produce prolifically are still struggling to grow, whereas some things that struggle in the heat normally, like brassicas and peas are doing really well and we only just hitting the problems with caterpillars now. The soft fruit is now just about in, the last of the gooseberries are picked and I even got some bonus red ones from a neighbour who had had enough of them and invited me to pick from his bush - my it was a vicious bush and no wonder he had had enough picking them as they fought a good fight to prevent me picking them too with all the thorns. Just got some blackcurrants left to pick and then hack back and it will be finished.

At least we still have blue skies and green grass for now
though.

The previous weeks we have been a bit anti-social and not seen many folks as we cut, turned and baled the hay. This week we have had visitors galore. People even turned up on our land to see us or return things and they weren't just coming to see the alpacas. I did forget to mention one incident the week before when we went to the hotel to eat. We called around at our neighbours for something, can't remember what now and they told us about their eventful day when four people turned up who lived in America but owned the land adjacent to our ski hill. They had had a great day showing them around and talking to them. Later on we saw four people who fitted the description our neighbours gave and so we introduced ourselves, since they are effectively our neighbours too. It was interesting talking to them and I even got onto my pet subject the wild boar and the problems and was able to confirm the picture they had of some digging was indeed wild boar damage. I also explained how it needed dealing with otherwise the problem will just increase and enlightened them in the rather complex issue of hunting here in Latvia. A bit later on in the week while we were baling they even stopped by to see us out on the land and ask our opinion on some machinery for land management. Not that we are experts on that for sure.

And flowers

This week, like I said folks were turning up left right and centre. Our Swedish friend turned up for some small bales of hay since they had run out on their farm, they will be taking half or thereabouts of our ski hill hay anyway, once we have counted them all and worked out how much we need. He was so pleased to be able to stack the bales in the back of his truck so easily because they are the small size rolls rather than the humungous size they usually do around here. To date we have 156 stacked and that is only about half of them, we also have another 52 purely for composting and Ian baled up 20 from round the alpaca area that he cut this last week in order to try and reduce the horse flies that were plaguing the poor animals. Problem is we might be running out of string. Other folks turned up to help us stack the hay, or to drop their son off to help us while they were painting at the orphanage - not his forte so we understand. Someone also turned up to drop our trailer off that they had borrowed. Of course we have also had the visitors to come and see the alpacas. It is not normal for us to have many visits while we are out on the land and we are lucky if people call in more than once in three months, so it has been quite a welcome change really.

Hoppy and her mates. Not quite the city centre but then
we didn't take any photos there

We also took a trip into Riga to see some old friends from the UK and spent a good day talking over cups of tea and lunch. It was interesting the first question, one of our rather perceptive friends asked which was "What have you sacrificed to be here?" It is a question we have talked about ourselves as we have much to do at this time of the year and if we hadn't got the hay in then we would have had to have canceled, rather than risk our animals going hungry over winter. The day had been forecast to be fine and so we effectively lost a days work to be there and we also were disappointed not to be able to show them what we are doing. We are keen for folks to visit us in our natural habitat so to speak, as it is then we can really show them where our heart is, it doesn't have quite the same ring about it when we chat about these things sat in the middle of the city centre and we can't verify what we do just by talking about it. We could paint a very rosy picture of what we do and it could be a total fabrication, unless you come and see for yourself. Anyway that does not mean we didn't enjoy the day and they very kindly treated us to all those cups of tea and lunch in return for us coming to see them. We also did enjoy talking about where they are at in their faith walk and where we are at too. It is interesting to see where people are journeying too and how God is taking people in some surprising directions.

Who are you looking at?

Talking of directions it was good to talk to one of our friends who had come to see us, or was it the alpacas? Hmmm! Actually it is someone we see about two or three times a year normally, either at their summer house or our house and we always go out to the land to have a look around anyway. He is a professor at Tartu University in Estonia and so it was interesting to find out a little more about the process of doing a PhD and the work involved and in consequence I shall go up to Tartu later on this month to have a look around and talk to some of the people who I might be able to work with. Meanwhile of course I shall also look at other places to see where that leads too.

It's a hard life isn't it? Catching a snooze in the caravan.
You'd never catch us doing such a thing now would you?
Errmmm well perhaps you would from time to time.

Just to round off the visits and visiting we paid an impromptu visit to some friends whose house we frequently pass and feel rather guilty for not having the chance to call in earlier. We ended up with a little cheese and bread supper and could have joined in with the champagne as they were celebrating their wedding anniversary, but Ian was driving and I don't really drink much alcohol anyway. There was also an interesting programme on the telly about Latvia in the 60s seen through the eyes of home movies and she translated it for us and we chatted about the comparisons during the advert breaks. It reminded us of the 50s in the UK, with the style of clothes and so we decided that it was at this point the Soviet Union was 10 years behind and were gradually slipping further and further behind from that point. Today we also took a trip to a town/village to deliver a sofa and chair using our horse box. An American family are visiting the area and had made friends with some folks who go to a church they were put in contact with and found out that the lady needed somewhere better to sleep on. The family were given some money by someone in their church back in America meaning they could afford to buy her something and so we volunteered to take it. Not a big deal really but meant we got to meet some new folks, which we are just about nearly always up for.

I don't sleep all the time

Despite all the visits Ian has at least cut all the areas that he can cut with the big cutter, all that needs cutting now is the parts that need the two wheel tractor or strimmer. Not sure when they will get baled though as the weather is looking a bit iffy this next week, but since it is mainly for compost that is no big deal and certainly better than our friend was explaining is happening in the UK where even silage is difficult to get as there isn't enough dry weather to even wilt the grass so they can bag it up. The weather is bad when even silage is impossible. Hay needs the minimum of three days and so that can be hard sometimes, but silage!!! Oh boy! That's bad.

Okay to me it looks like an upside down pig,
how about you?

It might seem hectic at the moment with late days and not eating until 8 or 9 pm and next week we have our daughter and her husband visiting, so the visiting side of things continues, but we only have a few more months before we are properly winding down for the winter, where there will be time to ponder and time to do the jobs that we just don't have time for in the summer. A time of the year when the hardest part of preparing a meal is not to go out and get it from the garden but to open the freezer, or the store cupboard for a jar and taste the season just gone. Winter is a time to breathe. Let's just hope by the time it comes around we have the blue skies and some snow - not too much but enough to make the day seem bright.

Naff week

Our Christiania bike finally made it out of the
basement to our land. I was using it the other
day to cart water and compost to the orchard
allotment.

If I had written this blog yesterday then it would have been a different tale, one of woe and misery because that is how we felt. I was so ticked off yesterday that I said to God that I really needed some encouragement to keep going and sure enough he sent blessings our way. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. The weather was perfect for working outside, not too hot and not too cool, on the way out to the land the clouds were so unusual; to me they looked like the tops of mountains and I just imagined it was like having the mountains that surround Jerusalem surrounding our piece of land. I also received two emails that were encouraging, which helped to buoy up my mood. The problems of the previous week are still there but I have more courage to keep going at them. I was clearing turf today to clear the way for a path that will keep the weeds down better and as I was chopping away at the turf bit by bit I felt God say that is what we were doing, clearing the way but it is tough at times and it is slow work but if we keep going we'll get there. That's good enough for me!

You can see the wing feathers are appearing. This is their
favourite pose - all huddled around the feed pot. I never
realised they could grow so fast, no wonder these could be
ready for the pot in as little as 8 weeks. 

Our final tally with the chicks was four, which is not exactly brilliant. One died at the pipping stage, which is a real shame as we heard it cheep and we saw it pecking it's way through but it just didn't make it. A little bit of me wonders if we could have saved it. Part of the problem was probably how we handled the incubation stage, so I have learnt from the internet. I don't like learning things the hard way when it comes to animals, but it would be worse if we didn't learn. I learnt that when it says that chicks can remain in the incubator for 48 hours without a problem, then it really means that do not, unless in extreme circumstances open the incubator until all the eggs have hatched, so they can bond together and possibly even help each other out. It also means that the environment doesn't fluctuate so much. Having said that it looks disconcerting to have a little chick floundering around in the incubator, bashing into all the other eggs and possibly banging into the section that keeps the incubator humid for hatching, it looked like it would hurt itself or the others in the process.

Our asparagus has survived the winter.
Unfortunately we have to wait until next year
before we try a spear or two and it won't be until
the following year when we get a proper harvest.

I also learnt that our broiler chickens are probably Cornish crosses, a hybrid that grows very rapidly and apt to keel over from a heart attack due to obesity. Judging by the ways these little ones grow and eat their food I can see that is no exaggeration, they are monsters already and to think they are only a week old. And eat! They are guzzling machines. I had hoped to breed from them, but I'm not sure if we will manage. I know they won't breed true but maybe we can cross them with something that will grow slower, but nearly as big and be less likely to have the flaws of the monster breed. They are still cute though. We have our incubator up and running with another 24 eggs but this time they are layers and we will see how much of a success we have with these. We will candle them (shine a bright light through the eggs) on Thursday to see how many are viable, hopefully in some ways not all of them as 24 chicks in the incubator would seem rather a lot.

Ian has been doing some more ploughing, this time with
the two wheeled tractor. Takes longer but doesn't use so
much fuel and gentler on the land.

I also found out this week that doing a PhD is expensive £3828 a year for the next three years, a big step up from my £1300 (or thereabouts) for the Masters year. I feel God set me on this path and so there has to be a way, but at the moment I can't see it. Spending that much money would dip massively into savings which is what we live off. If we use the savings for me to pursue the PhD then savings aren't going to last long enough. Hmmm! Back to the drawing board I think.

We may have possibly lost our orchard, but
this was the view on my coffee break one
cool day working in the greenhouse. Life
is still good!

We have also possibly lost our orchard, or the majority of trees from apples to pears to plums. One apple tree and one plum tree are the only ones that show any life on them at present, all the rest are dormant or dead. Ian jokingly said that he was cutting the grass in the graveyard today and we ought to have some tombstones cut for it. All around is showing signs of life and so it seems strange that we are seeing nothing on our apple trees, although I think that it does look like some trees may have canker which can kill young trees. I know it has been a tough couple of years for them since we put them in as the first year was very hot and humid, with rain every week and a half and last year we had a full month without rain and had to resort to watering them. We've also had some tough winters with record lows this year and so maybe they were just too stressed to survive. We don't know but if there are no signs of life after two weeks we will have to take them up and burn them.

The first of what might be a series of stone
pictures for a fellow blogger Diane, from
Digging in the Driftless. We were talking
about stone walls and how they are made.
So here is a Latvian example.

We made it onto Latvian TV again this week, well our car did as we drove past the cameraman who was taking a shot of our apartment buildings. We did wonder at the time what he was doing. The reason for the cameraman was to get a report on the fact that our local water company, who also happens to be our local heating company, have allowed a pipe to leak raw sewage into the pond next to the apartment block for the last two years, despite being alerted to the fact. They did fix the leak - the morning of the report though! How convenient! I must admit though, I wish we had known that whilst watering our veg, good job we water sparingly and only when we have a drought and to water seeds in.

I love patterns and this is the reflection of a
net curtain we have hanging over the
doorway of our caravan to keep out insects.
I can't show you the swirling effect as it blew
about in the wind but it is quite mesmerising

Talking of our heating company, that also contributed to the naff week. We have been letting the processes work their slow way through before settling up our bill for the first four months of the year, as we object to paying for heat that was inadequate, but the company have sent us a letter to say they are going to call in a debt company if we do not pay by the end of the month. They also wrote another letter that said, because people have complained about the quality of the heat they are not going to turn the heat on in autumn. The phrase that springs to mind is "if you don't play by my rules, you can't play with my ball." They have stated that according to the contract they can do this, but according to the contract they should supply us with heat that gives us 18C +/- 2C, which shouldn't be too difficult as we have double glazed windows and new radiators, but they didn't all the time. Well we have to work on a letter in reply to that! Hmmph! Not a happy bunny was I!

Still a lot of seedlings to pot on or out. Growing season is
definitely under way.

And last but not least naffness of the week. The alpaca saga, and saga it is indeed. It's sorted, it's not sorted, it's sorted, it's not sorted - it is driving us batty. Now someone has decided that we need to vaccinate the animals before they can come into the country, but we think this is different if we were getting them from Germany or Denmark, so we now have to argue the case and this is just making delay after delay. The problem with a vaccination is that they have to wait 42 days to see if it has taken, but that then leads to transport issues. The other issue we thought was sorted is the transport, due to the fact the seller is away when the transporter was available for all but one day. We also found out that the van to transport the animals doesn't actually belong to the guy we thought it did, but to a friend and it may or may not be available. Sorry if all that sounds complicated but it is! It doesn't have to be, this is the EU with common rules for all and there is not the need for all this complication, it would also be nice if we knew all facts up front, rather than bit by bit, but that's how it goes!

Ian has been doing a lot of sorting out of
wood piles this week. This piece would look
great polished up but I think it will just end
up on the fire. We also need heat in winter.

Like I said at the beginning, the problems remain but at least we have the courage to face them again. We just felt really tired yesterday and sick of the issues. So thanks to those who took the time to encourage us, it was greatly appreciated.

bumps, bangs and crashes

Tuesday saw us in Riga for me to take my exam. It went okay, I think I passed but how well? Not a clue! Still the revising is over with which I am soooo grateful for. We took our house manager into Riga as well as she needed to get a re-circulation pump that could be fitted to the apartment block heating. This means we can have heat but more efficiently circulated round rather than sending hot water back up to the boiler house on the hill, hopefully that will bring our heating bills back down to more sensible levels. The blessing of taking our house manager in was that by the following evening we had our heating on, oh bliss! You have no idea how blessed you are to have the sort of heating where you can decide when to turn it on and off, the damp and the cold autumn months are miserable without heat as it is tackling mould or in our case making sure we don't have too many heating elements turned on when we go to switch the kettle on for a cup of tea otherwise our electric trips.

Been a bit of an explosive week but fortunately on a non-fatal level. Ian went down into our basement one morning and was confronted by a sweet sickly aroma, one of our pumpkins had exploded and was busy dripping off the shelf onto his toolboxes below, not a pretty sight! The sweet sickly smell still pervades the basement but so far we have had no further explosions, just need to get rid of the sticky residue everywhere though. Didn't know that pumpkins could explode, just expected them to moulder in the corner.

Our long running polytunnel saga continues this week, we now have a row of boxes levelled off ready for concrete for the timber base to rest on but the other side is still not finished and the weather has not been kind either. We did have a delivery of sand in anticipation of being able to mix concrete, which as normal turned into a drama, this time it is was the turn of the trailer on the tractor to get stuck in the field. It was hoped that the sand could be put near the polytunnel construction site but no, it will have to be wheelbarrowed in place. The trailer had to be dug out to free it as it was in mud up to the axles. Ian thinks it is because there appears to be another spring turning the field to a bog but it is on the top of the hill, very odd!

Our local hotel put on a Nordic walking event this weekend (no that is a picture of Riga not our local hotel) and thankfully the rain held off. We registered, picked up some walking sticks and joined in the warm up exercises, watching carefully because we hadn't a clue what they were talking about, did manage to pick up the Latvian word for up and down. We set off en masse around the village with the now customary cars blocking the road while everyone walked up the middle of the main road (they have no quibbles about holding up traffic for the sake of an event, not like in England where it has to be a major major event to block a road off). There were perhaps around a hundred people which is a good number for a dull October weekend in a village. We headed to a nearby museum, Braki, for a cultural event which turned out to be firstly the two most hilarious women, dressed up like the Latvian equivalent of old washer-women, encouraging everyone to warm down properly, no idea again what they were saying but they were hysterical anyway. At one point they got the men to come to the front and made them do a ridiculous dance around their walking sticks which they also got Ian joining in as well, Ian did comment though "sometimes it is best not to know what's said" ( I really must get a phone with a camera). We were then serenaded by a group of singers in traditional costumes and singing traditional songs, well we assume they were traditional songs as everyone else was joining in with the singing. It was rounded off in true Latvian style with a bowl of porridge. In this case it wasn't strictly porridge it was more what I would call a barley and yellow pea broth but often Latvians do give out a milk based porridge after an event, it was very welcome nonetheless to help us in the walk back. On arrival back at the hotel we were greeted with a wonderful alcholic hot blackcurrant drink, no idea what kind of alcohol but it was really nice. The one thing about the Latvians out in the country is they are a generous people and although we were sat on a table with some folks who couldn't speak English they shared sweets and tried to make us feel welcome and another table shared apples with us, it felt like a real community event. They had a very loooong prize giving with names drawn out from those who were registered on the event and Ian won a Latvian book on sauna attendants, no idea what else is in the book as that was the only bit written in English, it was funny though when they tried calling out his name, they kind of stumbled over it. We stayed for the cake but not for more music we were Latvianed out by then, falling asleep and we still had to walk home and no reflective strips which are a requirement by law as soon as it gets dark. Not a bad day all in all and cost a grand total of 2 lats each (£2.60, $4.20)

Over the weekend we visited an English professor who has a holiday home in Latvia. I came across him in my research for articles on Latvia as he had written an article on what the Latvians feel about the countryside. I thought it was odd to have an English name alongside Latvian names so checked him out, found an email address and contacted him. It was a really interesting time where we found out that you don't have to register with a University to get a PhD but you can put together a group of papers you have published and present that as your thesis, well that is the shortened version. Shows what contacts you can make with a bit of nerve, he could have just ignored my email. I must mention though that I did distinguish myself on the walk around his house, it was wet and I stepped on a rather slippery piece of wood, well you can guess the rest but Ian did manage to restrain himself and not award me points for technical merit for my rather spectacular contact with the thankfully spongy ground. No sympathy there then!

Last but not least of our busy week I looked on my Latvian RSS feed this morning and read that a meteorite had crash into a field in the North of Latvia. It was really weird as the news appeared on some Russian sites first and there was a very clear picture of people stood around a crater but with old-fashioned cars in the background, it didn't look right, there are still some old Lada cars around, but Latvians have generally got newer cars. Gradually the news started filtering through mainstream sites and some pictures from the morning-after started appearing and they sure didn't look like the original photo posted so I am assuming it was just a stock photo dug up from somewhere. It is odd watching a story unfold, wondering if it is really right. It did indeed turn out to be a hoax so I wasn't totally surprised. Must be the months for hoaxes though, just wonder if it is the thought of heading into winter that leads to these? Fort Collins where we used to live was in the news recently as well for a massive hoax, where parents reported that they thought there son was in a weather balloon when in fact they knew he was hiding in their garage. Strange world we live in at times!

Well kind of finishing off I have to say I am really pleased to be starting to be proved wrong, there are folks who are demonstrating that they are either kind-hearted or at least have a degree of compassion in them here in Europe; firstly there are the rich Germans who believe they should be taxed more for the next couple of years so that the money can be fed into the state to fund economic and social programmes to aid recovery, they feel it is more efficient that way than giving to charity. Secondly there is a report out that says that people in the EU still believe that giving aid is a good idea despite the recession and lastly the Green party are speaking out and saying that the social reforms of previous years must not be undone with the current state of the economy. Positive messages, that people are not just looking out for themselves but thinking of others and I find that encouraging, I pray it continues.

To definitely finish off I just want to mention that it was announced this week that teachers here in Latvia would get an increase in salary next year of 30% which sound absolutely humungous until you realise that teachers this year had a massive cut and now only earn 250 LVLs (£322, $525) on average a month and if you remember from last week the minimum subsistence level is about 165 LVLs, doesn't leave much in the pocket and that is for teachers.

(Photos of Riga -not recent, and one pumpkin)