Check!

Yes more mushrooms, there are loads of them of many sorts
now to get an edible field guide for mushrooms 

*Update - well here are the pictures, finally!
(Sorry no pictures tonight but I will upload them in the morning, otherwise I shall be up until the wee hours trying to get them uploaded.)

Beetroot dug up - check!, Carrots dug up - check! Hamburg Parsley - check! Small plastic greenhouse taken to polytunnel - check! Peppers harvested and dug up and dried- check! Cushion embroidered for the rings for our son's wedding - check! Friends and neighbours recruited to look after our apartments and stuff -check! And so the countdown begins for the big drive across Europe, just as foreign offices are issuing warnings about possible terrorists attacks across Europe. Smart! So does this mean that ferry operators will be on high alert? Wouldn't be surprised! Oh what fun we may have in store. At least we are getting done what we need to get done, even had my haircut again today so that's ready for the wedding. We also have a list as long as your arm for things to bring back, little things like cornflour, vegemite and cutter bars for two wheeled tractors and the list grows daily, Ian is hoping he will still be able to see out the back window. We will also be bringing back some sewing machines for the orphanage due to the fantastic efforts of one of our friends who has single-handedly organised getting the information out to people that we needed sewing machines and organised for them to get down to our son's in time for us to take back to Latvia. It remains to be seen how many we can actually get in the car to take back with us, but at least there is a later shipment where more can be taken.

There is a thornless blackberry plant in there somewhere

This week the Latvians have voted in parliamentary elections and they haven't gone for glamour and empty promises they have gone for integrity. They decided not to trust the old politicians who had rebranded themselves and were telling everyone that they would not follow the IMF guidelines nor would they make savage cuts but not where the money was going to come from. The Prime Minister, however, promised more cuts, more pain and the Latvians acknowledged that is the only way forward by increasing his coalition numbers so that his minority government is now a majority government. That does not mean that I agree with all the cuts, the rich could still do far more to alleviate the pain of the poor in this country, without the indignity of handouts but under the current system we have and the likes of the IMF breathing down their necks there is little choice. I am impressed with the Latvian voters who chose to reject glamour and hype, something many countries could learn from.

Our blueberry bush looking very fiery

On the subject of the IMF there was a small snippet of news where some influential economists wrote an open letter to the IMF demanding that governance is improved. Not much but at least it is a start. Who these "influential" economists are I have no idea and really only recognise two of the institutions that two of them represent but it is a start indeed. If the Western nations are calling on developing governments to show more transparency to counteract corruption then influential organisations like the IMF and the World Bank should be leading the way, not being dragged kicking and screaming into more transparent dealings.

One of only two aubergines we got from loads of very
healthy looking plants. We let this grow big for seeds
and I half expected it to be brown in the middle but it was
still edible, amazingly!

I decided to use a different template for the blog, you may have noticed, as someone commented that my blog was hard to read. Must admit the font wasn't easy on the eye but I couldn't really find another font that I liked and looked okay on the blog so I have gone for a different background design instead. So I hope this makes it easier for everyone to read, wouldn't like anyone to miss out :o) In messing about with the backgrounds though I found one I liked but then it decided to corrupt everything I had written and turned out jibberish; at this point I thought I had lost a whole months blogs before I had a chance to save them. Not happy was I! I tried yet another background and found, much to my relief, the blogs returned back to normal but I am not as keen on this background but I daren't mess around with it again just yet. Another problem I had was with google analytics because we are just plain nosey to know where people come from who read the blog or rather glance through it (well at least I'm honest). Everytime I change the background though it messes with the analytics and I have to try and work out how to correct it. So for my reference and anyone else out there who struggles with this, this is my version of how to do it.

How to add the tracking back to a blog

First get the tracking code from google analytics (this is assuming you have already opened an account)

Click “Edit” (on the same line as your blog address)

Click “Check status” (top right hand side)

copy code from the section "paste this code on your site" (do this exactly, don't copy any extra spaces)

Now go to web page dashboard

Click Design (on the same line as new post)

Click HTML (tab at the top of the page)

Search for  "< /head. 
Done - easy when you know how!!!!!!!

Yes there really is progress on our barn 

We mentioned in my English class last week that Ian had had his birthday earlier in the week and this week when we arrived he was presented with a bunch of flowers - as they do in Latvia - and a cake stand on which was half a dozen apples. It was lovely of them to think of him but it did show the cultural differences between our nations. I don't think I have ever seen men being presented with flowers and a cake stand before in the UK and certainly not something I would think of doing, but here flowers are normal and an accepted part of celebrations, from the flowers given to teachers on the first and last day of school, no matter what gender the teacher is, to birthday and name day celebrations, a new house or a first visit to someone's house, the occasions are numerous where flowers are the appropriate gift to give. Just in case you are wondering what a name day celebration is, it is a specific day when all those with the same name celebrate and there are calendars you can buy with a list of names by each day showing who is celebrating their name day. Today Francis, Modra and Zaigonis celebrate their name days, and just so you don't get mixed up Francis and Zaigonis are men's names and Modra is a woman's name, men's names end in "s" and women's in "a" or "e". You can see a list of name days for Latvia here

A gingko biloba tree. This 7 year old tree will eventually
reach 20m tall, honest! Also gingkos grows in Siberia

I read an excellent article this week on the subject sadness and it asked if in the lifting of the stigma of depression we have lost the importance of just feeling sad? The article makes the distinction between the range of emotions that we go through, the way we go through ups and downs and how this is perfectly normal so why not embrace it, learn from it, but don't get bogged down in it or you may end up truly depressed. The article managed to do this though without diminishing the need for empathy with those who are depressed or even just sad, in fact it even argues that we should allow people more room to be sad, rather than hiding it and pushing it down. I find it very helpful to acknowledge that changes in life, even positive ones, can bring on a period of grief for the loss of something. I allow myself a period of mourning if you like but I also see it as a transitory phase, not one that will last. I think we so often push away sadness because we fear it and therein lies the danger to our mental wellbeing. Life is not all a bed of roses and sooner or later we are going to encounter down days and we may as well acknowledge them and acknowledge the grief we feel because the sooner we do so the more likely the down days will pass and sunnier times come around once again.

The spots of death

Ian and I were sad today as we went around marking trees which would be eventually removed from a portion of our forest. Some are easy as they are not looking healthy but some trees look perfectly healthy, they are just growing too close together and so we had to make a decision as to which ones to remove and which ones are to be saved. If we left them all then the forest would eventually lose vitality as the trees compete for space and so is a necessary operation to undertake for the sake of the health of the whole forest but sad as we don't like cutting down trees. Some trees are not so valuable commercially as others but then to remove all of them would also diminish the variety of life in the forest and so we have tried to maintain a healthy mix of trees, knowing that some will last many years like the oaks and the maples and some will not last as long such as the alder, a pioneer species that after 25 years or so gets diseased and dies off leaving the hardier species like oak to carry on. In one small section though we have found aspen, maple, oak, alder, hazel, spruce, willow, silver birch and rowan, not a bad mix of trees I think. As well as earmarking trees for the chop though we have planted some more, a gingko biloba tree and a cherry tree. Both trees have been planted in our orchard and importantly inside our electric fence for the time being. The cherry tree will stay in our orchard but we haven't decided on the gingko tree yet as it grows very tall. The gingko tree takes thirty years to fruit, so only 23 years more for this 7 year old tree, just in time for us reaching our 70s, how about that for forward planning. We have also planted a thornless blackberry type plant, not entirely sure if it is just a blackberry or some other cross, our Latvian is not that good, a red bilberry and a citronlianas or magnolia vine (apparently an excellent source of vitamin C and gives you lots of energy so we are told and not to be eaten just before bedtime). Trying to decide where to plant things is a bit complicated as we try and visualise what we want to do with the land and how big trees will reach that we are leaving and spaces where they will be removed but we are getting there.

Oh dear!

Bear Lake, Colorado, a site that Ian paid for with a sore
back the next day

It was turning out to be a pretty mundane week and was wondering what I was going to write about this week about life in Latvia, until today that is. I was just enjoying the peace and quiet in the other apartment and working well on my assignment, when Ian rang to say he was coming home he had hurt his back. Now he is having difficulty moving about and in quite a bit of pain which is worrying. He assures me he wasn't doing anything he shouldn't, just moved wrong and it went. I think that personally he just doesn't want to put any more potatoes in as he was up at 8am this morning planting some in the garden outside our apartment. It is not the first time Ian's back has gone in a major way. The last time was my fault as we were out for a walk with some friends in the Rocky mountains and because we were at high altitude about 10,000ft (3000m) I was having difficulty breathing, so Ian was helping me by pulling me up the hills - bad move! The next day he was the one who could hardly move and he ended up taking a trip to the chiropractors, the first of many visits. The time before that he was mixing concrete many years ago for our kitchen floor back in England and when I got back from the weekly shopping trip I could see there was something wrong as he was trying to mix concrete with a straight back. I ended up mixing the rest of the concrete and wheeling it in the house in the wheelbarrow. Boy did I ache the next day but at least my back didn't go. The good news is that we have a great friend who knows how to do massage for sports injuries so he came to massage Ian's back, so hopefully that will do the trick.

Losing our view

A similar view in February of this year

I can't get out in the garden this week to plant potatoes or anything else as I need to get my work finished on my course before we finish next week for summer, then I shall be out catching up with all our neighbours and getting seeds in. Mind you it has been cold this week so I don't think it matters to wait a week anyway, the wind has been bitter at times. One thing we will probably not be doing though is planting potatoes on the land, we have been told by many people the wild boar love potatoes and so we are just asking for trouble if we do. If we do plant some just to see if how they do then we will probably fence it off somehow. We were at a bbq the other day and we got chatting about the wild boar and the explosion of numbers and problems farmers have with them. The wild boar are fed over winter to keep their numbers up for hunting and one of our friends has seen the feeding troughs 10m away from the boundary of his property but for some reason the local authorities that deal with that sort of thing don't seem to be anxious to deal with farmers' concerns. The wild boar cause many problems through what they eat and how they go about it. They eat the eggs of ground nesting birds, many of which are protected, they root up the ground for different roots and tubers which can destroy vulnerable species of plants and these areas then can become infested with invasive ground elder. The digging that they do also means the ground is so uneven that it is uncuttable, reducing the amount of land that farmers can utilise fully. Uncut fields quickly turn to forest in Latvia which is fine in some ways but does mean that the numbers of birds adapted to meadowland are further reduced, the Corncrake being one of them, a protected species. It also means that farming is increasingly not viable when farmers are already struggling to make a living. I think it is about time the authorities take notice of this problem as these problems are occurring in protected sites designated by the European Union. I think there will be some letters heading in certain directions and I shall be finding out how to get the attention of those who need to take attention. Busy summer I think! 

So much green after so much white

So different to February

The rest of the week has consisted of trying to work out what trees we have on the land and it is getting easier and easier to identify trees as we get to know them either by their bark , by their buds and now the leaves that are unfurling. We are also beginning to find out what uses the trees have, which hopefully will be useful in the future. I find it is incredible though how much attention to detail that God has put into the design of trees, it never ceases to amaze me. How can anyone think all this arrived by accident? Aspen has diamond shape marks on its bark and the leaves appear to flutter all the time, Norwegian Maple has yellow flowers that make it look frothy in Spring with a sweet scent that you catch on the breeze at times, the Rowan leaves have unfurled revealing their charm so gradually. Did you know there are two types of birch with peeling bark, downy birch and silver birch? Silver birch has weeping branches whereas downy birch is more upright but they can also hybridise. So many differences, so many uses, God is not boring at all, otherwise he could have produced one multi-functional tree that does everything but then the world would have been far more boring.

If you look to the bottom of the flag pole you can see a
greenhouse covered in plastic and finished!!!! Not worked
out why it is covered in yellow plastic though. Any ideas?

The same greenhouse started three weeks ago!!!!! Okay
ours is much bigger but I don't think that explains why
ours has taken 6 months.

Our poly tunnel is nearly finished amazingly. Only the doors need finishing now, they are up just not fitted properly, but at least both layers of plastic are up. It is still frustrating the way the workers disappear for days or even weeks at a time without telling us what they are doing and what the problem is but at least we have got this far and we can put plants in it now. Our workshop is nearly finished too- the poor guy is fed up with it now, he just wants it finished. 






On a completely different note, times taken for post to arrive has been interesting. We had one piece of post from America to tell us the IRS have lost a piece of paper from a filing for 2008 (of course they didn't say that they had lost it, but since they had one sheet and not the other I somehow think it was they that had lost it and not us; after all they did not shout earlier and it is over a year since it was filed), it did, however, require a response within 30 days and since it was dated 1st April and didn't arrive until the 3rd May that was not going to be possible? I think a delay due to some far flung volcano  on some out of the way piece of rock had something to do with it. In contrast our son sent his wedding invitations off on the 5th May and our daughter got hers today (10th), the same as we did, only we are in Latvia and she is in Australia and our son is in England. So that seems to mean that if you are going to post something somewhere you may as well post it to Australia it doesn't take long at all.

Cowslips

My course Managing Sustainable Rural Development is very informative and certainly in the early days excited me greatly as I read through the literature but a lot is repeated and crosses over a bit with a previous course on Development Management and so has become more routine in places but one academic writer in particular does excite me, he has a sense of humour and a humility which is commendable and he also writes some interesting articles, his name is Robert Chambers. This is what he writes in his paper 'Reflecting Forwards"

"We have agency, the ability to act and change the world, and this brings with it responsibility for the effects of actions and inactions. Responsibility is an unsmiling word, often used critically – ‘That is your responsibility’, ‘Who is responsible for this?’ and ‘Who can we pin responsibility on?’ meaning who can we blame."

Snails anyone? Unfortunately not the beginning of our
snail farm. 

How true that is, and yet he advocates that for those who have money, who have privileges and that includes most who read this blog no matter how small you feel, should be taking responsibility for the state the world is in with all its inequalities. We do have the power to act, no matter how small those actions, we also have the power not to act and to ignore the injustices. Take the example of this film student who put together a simple yet profound video, an anthem for the youth of today perhaps. A rallying call to put the destructive practices of this world into reverse. A call to action!

A proposed design for our business. What do you think?

One thing I have liked to do ever since I was a kid was to play about with figures from time to time and the recent sale of the Picasso nude for a record sum of $106m reminded me of the song "Nothing ever happens" by Delamitri where it talks about a painting going for the price of a hospital wing and wondered how much of Latvia's debt would it have paid for had the money been put towards that and not a painting and found it is a small but not insignificant amount of 1.4%. Also if each Latvian owed $3260 - (that is the IMF loan divided per person and is equivalent to 5-7 months teachers wages- all figures are approximate by the way) then it would pay off the debt for 32,515 people which is a rather large number of people, instead it paid for a painting!