Floriferous! Verdant! Glorious!

Although garrish in color and perfumeless, I LOVE the poppy!

 

On my early morning rounds, saying "Hello! and Welcome!" to old friends and praising God for his creation.

A normal day in the life of Moi

Within two hours, I went from digging around in rotting fish guts at the dacha (the small one) to rolling melting-chocolate truffles with my tanned, worn hands.  Fun, no?!

At the dachona

So... dachona.  That is the Russian word "dacha," made large by the Spanish suffix "ona."  What would that be?  Ruslish?  Spanski?  Whatever it is, we love it!

Rob and I had quite the workout, chopping holes into the hard-as-rock clay.  Shoo!  I think that if I hill up the three long rows of potatoes properly, with composted cow manure and straw from random piles that are scattered about the farm, we might get a crop.  We also planted several squash, much to Ty's chagrin (I have a dream of filling up the new, roomy pantry with them, to use every Friday night!), and a couple of rows of Jessie's once-homeless tomatoes.  Anything we harvest this year from the dachona will be a bonus. 

While Rob and I were sweating and giving our broken ol' bodies a challenge, the children were throwing rocks at tree stumps, rolling old tires down the barn hill and climbing on ladders to who-knows-where.  It was joy!  Joy!  Thank you, God.

Dancer S

I am SO grateful for Above the Clouds, S's ballet company.  The founder and director is an African American woman, her teacher is African American, and a good near-half of the students are African American.  That just doesn't happen in the ballet world.  But here, it does.  Thank God!

A dream realized

So, last year the kids and I learned a song called "My father gave me an acre of land."  It's catchy.  I liked it.  And I wanted it, that acre of land; though not from my father, since his is far away in the frozen tundra.

And with recent choices before us, I was quite certain that if we made choice A (Which we did, thanks to God.), I'd have to kiss travelling and farming land saiyonara forever.

However, my Father gave me an acre of land.

Musical debut

Rob's drums never looked so cool.

Sophie was such a choir singing champ!

My two African lions

My peace flags

Floriferous!

The Pasque Flower, right on time!

So many potential apricots!

Which I then had to cover because of the late, freaky snow storm.  My Dearest Apricot does NOT look good in blue.

These too I had to save from the snow and cold... at least we had sunshine inside.