The Spring flood!

Spring has sprung. The alpacas in the distance (the white
specks on the opposite side) have been let out of their
paddock to feed on green grass. Unfortunately we still have
bare earth from the winter damage too.

Whoosh and now it's spring! Well that's what it feels like. We left Latvia with a half metre of snow, or thereabouts and temperatures of -18C and when we return the snow is gone, although there are the odd spots where snow has been heaped up in shadowy areas and they still linger, but that is all. It was quite disorientating, all the landmarks we were used to over the winter had disappeared, all the high banks at the side of the road had melted away and there was even a blush of green around the fields. We've had lovely weather since we arrived back, but it is still cool due to a cool wind, but it has meant we can get on with some of the many jobs we need to do to be able to feed ourselves and the animals over the next year.

The voles were busy over winter too. Those
channels through our little blackcurrant
bush cuttings are the remnants of the vole
runs. Hopefully our cats have been doing
their job, as I haven't seen many of the little
critters around.

We said we would hit the ground running and we have, fortunately our flood is more the flood of work that needs doing and not the real floods that parts of Latvia have suffered due to the rapid Spring thaw. On the first day after our return we headed out to the land and stayed out there until about 8pm, so we took all our meals with us. I also took my computer, as I still have my statistics to revise for and an assignment to finish. So in between revising, I planted onions and peas, unwrapped the young trees in the orchard from their winter plastic coats, sorted out the herb bed and flattened molehills of which there were many in the orchard plot. That was the first day.

A combination of damage from clearing snow, trying to
drive on muddy roadways and laying the cable at the
end of last year. Hopefully by the time Ian has graded this
lot and a spot of rain on it at the weekend, we will have a
green and pleasant land once again and not a muddy mess

I am so grateful for spending time making the beds from rotted wood chippings two years ago as they are so easy to deal with - no digging over at all, just remove the weeds and rake over a bit. I did add some alpaca manure at the end of last year to the beds as wood chippings alone are not enough to feed the plants, but apart from that I haven't put a lot of work into them. It does mean I managed to sow onions, parsnips, peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach and salad leaves outside with no bother this week. It is a good job that the beds don't need digging over much anyway as my arm still aches, although it is much better than it was. It aches because I am doing more and more with it, and it protests. My guts are still not right either after that course of antibiotics I had a few weeks ago and I had to resort to the medicine cabinet yet again this week (not that you really wanted to know that, but that's my life at the moment).

First area ploughed

Ian's been busy too and he has two areas ploughed with the two wheeled tractor - much better on slightly wet soil than getting the big tractor out. They are ready now, one for buckwheat and one for an oat clover mix. The oats didn't do well in the wet last year and lodged (fell over) and got a disease called rust (because it looks like rust spots on it) but the clover is still there and some will be turned in and some allowed to continue growing. We are going to plough strips into the clover, as we don't need the whole field for peas, beans, squash and marigolds. Just in case you are wondering, the marigolds are for the chickens to give nice golden yolks and can be used in food for us as well. Ian has also borrowed a grader from a friend, to level the damage done by the wild boar in the autumn of last year. Normally he would use a chain harrow on the fields after winter to level small damage and molehills, but the damage this year was too extensive and needs a more robust piece of equipment.

We managed to fit in a quick visit to the local Spring market this week, so we got some lovely local cheese and two sacks of seed potatoes. One lot of our potatoes we don't want to use again for seed due to the possibility of blight, so starting with a fresh batch seemed the best move. The other batch are full of small potatoes that have sprouted and we will chuck them on the ground and cover with straw, if they come they come, if they don't they don't. Well that's the theory anyway.

One of the difficulties we have of living here is not speaking the language, but it is not always a problem and we are not the only ones that struggle. I saw a local I knew and stopped for a chat, he's actually German and doesn't speak much Latvian, so our conversation was conducted in German and English, but somehow we managed to understand each other. Shows how communication can happen despite the barriers. He now knows we were in the UK and Australia visiting grandchildren and I now know he saw our neighbour driving our car around.

The mess we call the greenhouse, before we
took out the caravan and chicken arks. All
the fleece hanging down is because of the
cats, who have treated the fleece as a
challenge, to see how far they can walk
across it before falling through it. That was
up there to give a bit of shade in the summer
and prevent a little heat loss in the winter!

The post holiday blues, caught me out though and I was feeling a little overwhelmed on our return. The statistics still looms large and I have still to fix a date to take the exam. I have got as far as fixing the week, but not the actual day. The gardening jobs are also stacking up, and we needed to move the caravan and chickens out of the greenhouse, so that is available for planting up with tomato plants which are busy taking over our living room. It took a walk and a song to get me set right again, or at least the title of a song. Adele's song "I set fire to the rain" seemed to shake the lethargy. It is such a ridiculous concept really, but I have felt in someways that we've done that before, done things against the odds and things have turned out okay. If we've done it before, then we can do it again. We feel God has given us this path to walk and if he has, then he doesn't do that without providing the skills and the wherewithal to do it. And if we stray from the path? Well I also trust God to let us know.

Ian backing up to the greenhouse

Caravan on its way out after nearly 7 months of being cooped
up inside

Summer position

Sometimes we expect life to be conducted at 100mph and sometimes it just feels like that is what it is doing, whether we like it or not. But life isn't like that all the time, or it shouldn't be. Life is full of ebbs and flows, season of activity and seasons of dormancy where nothing seems to be actively growing, something that Mark Pixley in his blog talks about. Living life at full pelt will lead to burnout and that is something I'm very conscious of, I've seen it happen far too many times for my liking. Some people can hack it, but from my observations they can only do that by screening out other things and in so doing don't absorb the stress. I wonder if they miss out on other things though, well that's not for me to know. I think one of the antidotes to living life at full pelt is to have a garden, especially a vegetable garden. It is in the garden that you can begin to appreciate the ebb and flow of the seasons. It is in tending the garden that you can see the point of removing some of the good things in life to let other things grow and develop better and at the end of the year, when the frosts come, there is not much to do apart from tidy up and dream of next years crops and pour over seed magazines, the ebbing of the year. I'm not the only one who thinks it is good to reconnect with a garden, as Nancy Sleeth says

"Oh, if every church and school had a garden, how different this world might be! Caring for a garden provides something that cannot be purchased at the grocery store: the satisfaction of eating food planted, tended, and harvested with our own hands. A garden cultivates gratitude, reminding us that every ounce of food that passes our lips ultimately comes from God. And as any experienced gardener will attest, a garden keeps us humble — constantly aware that the enemy, entropy, is very much alive."

Seems like as good a reason as any!

The sun has got his hat on - I wish!

At least we have seen plenty of rainbows.
I love rainbows

Well it's wet! The wetter than normal summer has morphed into an even wetter autumn. It is still incredibly mild for this time of the year and so things are still growing, that is if they don't succumb to rot or split like the cabbages due to too much moisture. My Borlotti beans blew down in the wind too, but fortunately there was a good crop of beans about ready for harvesting anyway and so it just meant having to pick them there and then rather than waiting a few days, also found a few more of Thelma squash growing amongst the beans. There have been a few crops that we are really pleased we tried this year, Thelma squash being one of them, they taste a bit like sweet potato with a similar texture and have produced enough small sized squashes that are about the right size for the two of us. We will still grow the bigger squash next year but mainly so that we can feed the animals with them. Another good cropper is Sangria chillis, there is no heat in them whatsoever, but in a year when the normal peppers have struggled to produce any peppers, these little conical shaped chillis have been producing their little heart out. In fact the plant that I took home and removed all the peppers from so I could grow a pepper for seed isolated from the rest of the plants is once again covered in flowers. It is advisable to do this so you don't get a hot pepper crossing with a mild one and vice versa. These little chillis also add interest to salads and stews with the mix of purple and red peppers (I will have to try and remember to get a photograph next week). The other success has been Amaranth and I produced a rather nice tasty bread today using 2 cups of white flour, 1 cup of ground Amaranth seeds and 1 cup of ground split yellow peas, some sesame seeds and home-grown poppy seeds. With a long proving time it also rose well.

Still pretty stormy looking

One of the comments on the blog last week was from my good friend Mavis, who came to visit us last year. She commented that she knows I enjoy the special moments when God speaks to me through the ordinary day-to-day things and she is so right. I love it! I know some folks have discovered gold and diamonds in special meetings, but I see diamonds glittering all winter, from the ice crystals that fall in the morning winter sunshine to the diamond encrusted fields of snow and I feel so incredibly rich. If you have eyes to see, then the world is filled with awe and wonder. Her comment also reminded me of our trip back from the bakery when we caught in a shower of rain; the sun was shining too and I knew there had to be a rainbow somewhere and sure enough it was high up in front of us and the bow seemed to finish over the local council offices. There needs to be a transformation of that place, a place where people have become hardened to the poverty outside, where little kingdoms of power are maintained and old ways perpertrated. Nothing very, very bad that I know of, but could be so much better, kinder and more considerate, more forward thinking, instead of resigned to "that's the way it is here in Latvia." The rainbow, spoke to me of the possibility of change coming to that place, something I have been praying for for months now. Now that excites me!

Ian has been feeling like Dr.Frankenstein
creating monsters, Here is his monster table.
I think it might be robust enough for him

Following on from the comment I made about thinking deeply last week there was an article by Anna Coote, who is head of Social Policy at the New Economics Forum which suggested that people should "slow down and think carefully about what really matters in our lives - and change our daily habits accordingly. Sound advice I think. If we don't give ourselves time to think, how can we ensure that what we do is inline with what we really care about? Or think is important? If we don't give ourselves time then we blindly stumble along from one thing to another not really checking to see which direction we are heading in. I'm looking forward to the winter, as I've said before it is thinking time. All gardening jobs are at an end and there is time to breathe. 

His monster sink in the barn. Never throw
anything away in our household. This sink
came out of the caravan. and the wood is all
wood leftover from other projects. Waste not
want not!

I managed to replace my hand blender, it is not as powerful as the last one but better than a bust one, it was also fairly easily obtained. I wanted one that had a detachable handle, I also wanted one with a pot that you could whizz up small items like herbs or breadcrumbs. Now that was two additional requirement and that is what I found. Success!  Now that might not seem like a big deal to you if you live in a city, or live in a different country to Latvia, but here it is. Finding something that fits the requirements can sometimes be a frustrating job, where compromise is the order of the day. You can get most things in Riga these days if you know where to look, but out in the smaller towns it is a bit hit and miss, it might be there and then again it might not be. We learnt in Denmark that if we saw something we thought we might need, we bought it, because when you did need it it wouldn't be in the shops. It is just because Denmark and Latvia both have small numbers of people : about 5.5m in Denmark and around 2m in Latvia. This does not represent a huge market and Latvians have less buying power than the Danish, so you can imagine the effects on the product availability. Thank goodness for the internet for some things.

That grey pipe in the picture is part of Ian's
drain repair to fix the broken pipe at the base
of one of the barn foundations. He had to dig
down a long way to sort that out and has been
an ongoing project all year.

Another challenge we face is not knowing the language yet (I know, I know, it is about time we did). This means tagging along with folks if they are going somewhere that we need to go. This week one of our friends was going with her daughter to the eye hospital for a regular check up and so we got her to book us in too, as it is a long time since we have been to have our eyes checked. It was good news all round, our friend's daughter no longer needs glasses to correct her vision, our friend doesn't need glasses either and Ian and I don't need to change ours. Sorted - till the next time! One funny incident happened in the café where we went for a cup of tea, while some drops were taking effect on Ian's eyes. There was a lady at the counter who had previously tried to talk to Ian outside the eye clinic while I and the translator were inside, she leaned across the counter and loudly whispered in a conspiratorial tone that we spoke English, just so the lady at the counter would know!!! Or words to that effect anyway. Ian seems to think she might work at the hospital since a few folks stopped and chatted with her, but it was funny that she thought she felt the need to warn the lady behind the counter, after all, we might not know much Latvian but we can order a cup of tea and decline any sugar without too much difficulty.

Man does not live by bread alone, but
a good cup of tea to hand is also very
helpful

Ian is in his element with his new cycle computer. He loves to make charts and along our last 30 years that we have known each other - yes we passed that milestone this week along with our 28th Wedding Anniversary- he has made charts of things like our daily electric usage, and his daily blood pressure. Well the cycle computer takes this to a new level, there are even more parameters he can keep track of, the temperature when cycling, his geographical position (a bit of a joke when he is not able to get out and must use his stationary trainer bike, although one day the computer must have been having difficulty locating the satellite as it recorded him going up the road to the technical school and then straight back down through the allotments and that was really without leaving the comfort of his training room) oh and oh so many oodles of other little tidbits of information. So happy!

Master bedroom

I have spent a lot of the weekend on Skype talking to our son about design ideas for our new house - well maybe! Our son is studying automotive design and so loves to play around with new concepts in design and has the right kind of computer programmes that can put flesh on ideas. I have an idea of what kinds of things are needed in our new house - my dream list if you like; we have an outside measurement - much greater and we run into problems with steep slopes and disturbing the land too much, we also know what we will use the house for and so fitting it into the area in an aesthetically pleasing way has been a lot of fun. Still not sure how it will work out in practice but we have enjoyed the process, altering things according to my knowledge of the lie of the land and some practical considerations and his ability to fit things into a space and think of some novel ideas. 

A little dark, but I hope you get the idea. A utility room
under the stairwell. This would be situated next to the
outside door, essential when there are animal bowls etc, to
clean and vegetables to wash.

We went to an agricultural fair this last week and we see we have started a trend. There were two stalls who had started importing small balers this year. Now why couldn't they have done that last year when we had to import ours from England? We have cards from both of them so we can check for spare parts, which is useful after a slight altercation with a tree stump during the baling season this year. It is about time too as the smaller bales are much more sensible for people for many people to use than the big bales. We saw the difficulty our neighbour had trying to collect the big bales off her steep slope. She thought our bales were small because our baler was broken, bet she's wishing that the baler they used on her slopes was broken too.

What a week it's been

A Latvian tradition at weddings to place a lock on a bridge

I mentioned two weeks ago our car failed its technical inspection (MOT for the Brits), the wheel bearing was bust on our two year old vehicle. Fortunately it was fixed under guarantee with no questions asked at the garage; we did wonder if they would quibble with it. We had a sneaking suspicion the failure was due to an underlying problem exacerbated greatly by the violent shaking that the inspector put our car through to test the suspension. I guess we should be grateful to him, if that was the case, as it saved it breaking whilst we were driving into Riga a two and half hour journey away. What we didn't want, however, was another repeat of the violent shaking on the re-test so we took it to a different vehicle inspection garage and they were much more gentle with the car. I think we will be there next year as well, as the guy who did the test actually spoke pretty good English - always a bonus but I guess also continues to make us lazy with the language.

Ruin at Aizkraukle

I know that learning the language is important and I am still picking up words. Just as in Denmark I often find that I know the Latvian for words that my friends do not know the English for. Nouns I am fine with, linking them together into a conversation is another matter entirely. It did strike me though that you can know a language fluently and still not be able to communicate. I feel we have been able to communicate to our neighbours our love and care for this place by gardening and making sure we take our turn on the cleaning rota (roster) and occasionally going the extra mile, like clearing ice in winter or brushing up the stairs when it is not our turn when we know it is our boots that have carried a lot of mud in. We also make sure we shop locally and these things are noticed. I am not being vain in the least, when you are a foreigner in a small place with few foreigners there is no hiding and you live life in a goldfish bowl. All these actions do communicate though, in many ways much more than words can and I think that is why we feel very accepted by our neighbours - maybe not all of them but enough to feel welcome to stay.

View of the Daugava river from Aizkraukle

On the subject of gardening, one of the decisions we made this year was to buy a rotavator. Ian has served his apprenticeship over the last two years and dug the allotment plot by hand, getting rid of many of the weeds. This year though he hasn't got the time to do that. The tractor drinks far too much diesel to warrant bringing it all the way from the land to plough the allotment and for medium sized areas a rotavator is needed really. This means we can also dig over the allotment at the other flat too, as well as small areas on our land and in the polytunnel. It does feel a bit like cheating but we do have to be practical too. We went to the diy store to have a look at them and they managed to find someone to help us in making a decision who spoke English, well kind of. He actually spoke English with a heavy Irish accent. There were times that I could hardly understand him and I had a dickens of a job trying not to laugh when he used distinctly Irish phrases. It just seemed so bizarre to be stood in Latvia, speaking to a Latvian with this pronounced Irish accent including the mannerisms of the Irish and to top it all he even seemed to have picked up the Irish blarney - the way of speaking none stop to make a sale. At least he managed to convince us that the cheaper rotavator was the way to go as it was less likely to be costly if it hit a stone. The more expensive one though would perhaps have been easier to manoeuvre, plusses on minuses on both sides. Ian couldn't wait to use the rotavator so off he went when he got home to try it out on one of our allotments, and the following morning he did the one outside the apartment where we live, the one that took two years to dig over! Now that is saving time!

Aizkraukle ruin

Well as if we haven't got enough to do we also helping some friends of ours to realise a dream and buy a farm for them. This one is 10.5 ha (26 acres) of arable and 26 ha (64 acres) of forest. The property is also right next to a lake but that means there is a drawback with the forest as it can only be selectively cut and never clear felled - which is fine by us as I don't like the idea of clear-felling anyway - it devastates eco-systems and of course doesn't look pretty for quite a while. The intention was that we were going to own half of it (well 49%) but we can't even own half of agricultural or forest land until next year when the laws, hopefully, change. It doesn't stop us building up a business with our friends though, we hope to grow vegetables and they will be raising animals and we can supply the feed for that too. Between the two forests we can also develop some commercial enterprises from them - not quite sure yet what but we have a few ideas floating around like charcoal, mushrooms and willow structures. So if you have any ideas then do let me know.

Yes, our poly tunnel actually now has plastic on it!!!

The big news this week has obviously been the ash from the Icelandic volcano. Once again the fallout from Iceland brings severe disruption to Northern Europe, only it isn't the banks this time. Interesting how such a sparsely populated out of the way place can bring about so much chaos. Riga airport has been shut too and a team from England who flew over to help out in a local camp were due to fly back today (Monday April 19th) and have now been told they can't get back before the 1st May, fortunately that is a hardship they can take. Another friend was due to fly out to Latvia from England last week and won't be making it out until the summer I guess now. How inconvenient I now have to wait for my special delivery of face flannels to arrive (I just can't get what I consider normal sized face flannels here in Latvia). I am sure I will get over it though. And just in case you don't know me that well, I am joking. For some people though they can get so wrapped up in their own little worlds that something like that can be a major annoyance but for many people this whole episode is more than inconvenience I know.The strange thing is though, that just as scientists predict that things would be hotting up and causing us all sorts of problems God seems to send us something to cool things down a little and show that there is more ways to travel than by air. It has been quite interesting how inventive people have become over their attempts to get home and some have enjoyed the challenge. It has also caused others to wonder what a world would be like without planes. These kinds of things get me excited as it means people are being forced to think outside the box, and that makes life less predictable but more exhilarating and rewarding.

I love this view out of the polytunnel.

Of course there has also been no end of moans about the costs to the airlines, but what about the positives? I guess those going on holiday or wanting to get somewhere aren't happy but the hotels close to airports will be as are the ferry and train operators. Are those gains taken into account? What about the gains from staycations? Or people saving money instead of spending it on holiday tack? Surely there are some winners as well as losers? Maybe some farmers who normally export will suddenly find there is an internal market after all and not need to export their goods by plane. There are those of course who chose to make a fast buck by driving people somewhere at extortionate prices which was not a very positive thing to do, or the raising of prices by hotels near airports but a lot of good will have come out of it. For some the extended holiday (vacation) means extra time spent with their children, it has meant being resourceful, it has meant that people actually begin to wonder what would happen in a world without planes.

By the way I found out this week I am not going completely mad, the captions for the photos are only available on the Blogger draft and not the regular blogger and so I wasn't able to add captions at all before anyway.

To rescue or not to rescue that is the question.

Ian was doing his knght in shining armour bit this week - well what else do you have a truck and lots of time for, especially as he likes the word "semi-retired"? Okay it was not knight in shining armour, more like man in shiny red truck accompanied by his trusty companion for the day, our neighbour Bruce. A while ago I mentioned that we shouldn't succumb to white charger syndrome, the need to be seen as a rescuer or a knight in shining armour. I am not saying that we shouldn't help but our whole identity cannot be built on that and I still stand by that but being available to help when asked is important, we can get too busy to be of service to those who need a helping hand. The rescue entailed a two hour drive to collect another neighbour's white van that had broken down and also involved being stopped by the police but fortunately it was just a routine stop. Being stopped by the police can be a little entertaining here as they are usually just looking for someone who has been drinking, or driving without insurance, which is common enough, and it confuses the policemen that we have Latvian licenses and Latvian car but unfortunately still don't speak much Latvian so generally it means they just check documents and send us on our way without any hassle at all.

Just an update about the language. We are still struggling as we don't pick up the language quickly, it develops word by word and that is only occasionally. We have tried to see if any teachers of English would like to teach us Latvian, but so far have drawn a blank but since the schools have just gone back then there is still time. So pray we find someone soon.

We are working on trying to get equipment together to work on the land and that has meant trips here there and everywhere - well that is what it feels like at time and has usually meant Ian doing a lot of leg work as I have been a good girl and stayed at home to study. Our tractor apparently is on its way here from Italy and so should be on a truck..... somewhere.... en route, so who knows where it is at the moment, but at least should be here soon... well possibly! We have also been to look at some poly tunnels which have a wooden constructions. The wood we think is sourced here from Latvia from their own wood yard (if we understood correctly that is). We are working on the premise that wooden constructions are repairable and also they can be double lined which is a boon in this climate. Next challenge will be to get them ordered and at least one up before the winter then we can start veg off early next year. Once winter sets in there will be no chance of getting one until well into the spring, especially if we have as much snow as we did this last winter. It will be a race against time I think.

Today we intended to set off and purchase a wood stove so that we have some independent heat, as it was very very cold last year before they decided to put the communal heating on and there is no guarantee that they will even switch it on at all this year. We decided to check with our apartment manager first, to see what was happening about the heating and we found out we needed a piece of paper giving us permission to be able to install a wood stove in our flat, which is reasonable enough but hadn't been told before even though we had asked (boy oh boy mutter mutter). She wrote down in Latvian the permission that we needed and rang to find out where we got the paper from and we duly set off on a 45km trip to Madona. As it turned out it was more like a treasure hunt. We got to the fire station only to find no one there who spoke English but in German were told to come back later, so off we went for lunch. A little while later with the help of Google translate we were told we couldn't get the paper there we had to go to see the building inspector at the town hall. With the help of a very kind lady from the tourist information office we found the building inspector. He could speak some English, but told us we couldn't get the paper there for our area we had to go back to Ergli and we were given the name of a person to speak to, and when we got there.....? The office was closed and they only work Wednesday and Friday mornings. So no paper, no fire! Well not yet anyway. The hunt will continue for the elusive paper. Part of the problem here in Latvia is that some things are done illegally - sometimes out of ignorance of new laws and sometimes because it costs too much to do it legally for many, and then with the crisis lots of offices have shut and certain operations amalgamated so no one is really sure who does what now.

Well besides treasure hunts and rescue missions it has been gardening this week, bringing in the harvest. We now have about three quarters of the potatoes dug but it has been hard as it has rained quite a bit over the weekend and I was getting a little worried they may just rot in the ground but there was a bonus to a wet weekend - a husband at a loose end. Ian finally painted the outside kitchen wall, it is not quite the colour I wanted but it looks better than it did and freshens the place up so I am not complaining (can't complain too much I chose the colour, so don't know what happened there). I have also been trying to deal with the glut from the garden and trying my best to use up courgettes (zucchini) and green tomatoes and I am getting to the stage that if I see another courgette this year I think I will scream. Betty Crocker's zucchini bread is very useful for using up lots of courgettes, so thanks to my neighbour Kim for that recipe, and I added courgettes to the green tomato chutney thanks to Google for that recipe. I have also made green tomato mincemeat - no idea what it will taste like but it smelt wonderful and Christmassy - oh the wonders of google for recipes, next project is green tomato ketchup! Hmm????

On a more serious note the news is still not good here in Latvia. The winter looks like it is going to be a tough one and I have a great deal of respect for the women getting in their crops this year (allotment gardening is mainly a woman's job here), for them it makes a considerable difference to how well they do over winter, for us it more an inconvenience if we don't get everything in as we can still go to the supermarket and buy what we need to if necessary. One of the frightening statistics in the news is that 68% of people who are working have taken a cut in salary this year. It is hard to imagine what it is doing to people or how they feel, we hear snippets from time to time such as they wish someone like Sweden would come and take them over again, or they would like to go back to the certainties of Soviet times which is all a bit scary really. There are times that we wish we could sweep in here on a white horse and change everything but it won't help, we need to encourage, we need to be responsible with our purchases and above all we need to pray for wisdom as to what we should do under the circumstances.

(Photos: Our newly painted kitchen and the largest lettuce I have ever grown)