Lots of different things going on

Sorry that it has been a while since our last post. We have been studying Russian, painting the porch floor, doing lots of gardening, yard work, digging tulips, setting our chickens free to roam in their own personal park, tuning up an old lawn mower, a wiener roast and birthday party with the students, hanging a fence, burning some more tree branches and moving gravel.

Lots going on and sometimes writing a blog is the last thing on our mind. When we arrived here in November, there was a lot of things in our porch and slowly but surely, it has been emptied out and cleaned out. Shannon decided to paint the floor and it looks amazing! She did a great job as she did each half at a time. The paint smell was incredibly strong and we don't have any windows that open, but hopefully we can remedy that at some point. It would also be great to allow some of the summer heat to escape.


New coat of paint and a deep freeze

Something we have started to do is make our own bread. Our daughter Ashley sent us a "no knead" bread recipe and it is amazing! It takes about 5 minutes to prepare it one day and then you wait 12-18 hours as it sits on the cupboard. An hour before you are ready for it, you form the dough into a round loaf and then it takes 45 minutes to cook. We have done the plain recipe, but have also made raisin bread and another with flax, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. Yummy!


Mix up the loaf and let it sit for 12-18 hours



And there it is waiting to be eaten!



Raisin bread



Bread with flax, sunflower and sesame seeds

As we continue to work in our garden, we have to keep an eye on potato bugs. So far a number of potato bugs have been found and have now become part of our garden compost program! We are now eating spinach and onions from our garden and the peas have flowers forming. The potatoes are getting ready to flower, so it is time to hill them. All of our tomatoes have some blossoms.
 

Peony season



Flowers for the house.

Garry picked up a new mower and gave us his old one. We bought a new blade, cleaned the deck and changed the oil and cleaned out the filters and it still runs well. We just need to pick up a new rewind for it as the cord keeps giving us problems.

We finally finished getting our chicken fence up and this allowed us to make a way for our chickens to enjoy their "new park." We have nineteen chickens and they love their new park. They quickly get to it when we open the door in the morning and they are excellent at being back in their chicken coop between 7:30-8 pm.


Right before being let outside

Cutting the cement board.



The door works great.

The new "chicken park!"



Lots of growth and shade from the heat.

In between all of the yard work, we make time to study Russian. We are slowly making progress, although it seems to be so small. We have to give kudos to our Russian teacher Ulzana. Shannon and I are at different levels and Ulzana has been working extra at home to create different opportunities for me to learn. We really appreciate Ulzana!

One afternoon it was quite warm, so we decided to study Russian in our hammock. This is the first time we set it up in Ukraine. It was okay, but a hammock is meant to relax and sleep in rather than study Russian.


Shannon on her end...



...and me on my end.

We continue to clean up in the front and back yards. There are dirt piles to move and sometimes we find unwanted treasures under what we thought was just dirt - more garbage! But it is slowly coming together. In the front yard, we are digging up all of the tulips and storing them until fall and will then replant them. There are tulips all over the place with very little placement planning. We are hoping to create something neat as well as add some more perennials, like some lilies.

One day we were out walking and we came across these baby geese enjoying a mud puddle at the side of the road. It was cute to see them, until this morning, when they decided to take a road trip to our place and see what we were up to. I quickly shoed them out of the yard so this doesn't become a favorite place for them to camp out.


Baby geese alongside the road

On Sunday, we hosted a wiener roast with the students and Garry and Teresa. We cannot find any long wiener sticks like we have in Canada, so we use the longest shislek sticks we can find and sometimes it gets a little warm. But we roasted lots of wieners and then did marshmallows later. We stuck some of the marshmallows into some cookies, making a marshmallow sandwich, which was good!


Getting ready for the wiener roast



Cooking supper



Sasha cooking a hot dog and Tolik watching



Garry and Daniel

Monday we finally got back at our front yard fence. A fence is a necessary thing to have with the daily "cow parade" going by twice daily. I love the term "cow parade" that our daughter Rachelle coined. We had cemented the posts earlier in the month, but with wet weather at times and other things to do, we kept delaying it. It is now up, and the next thing to do is paint it.


The fence is up.



A view from the road.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went with Max to pick up a freezer to put in our porch as the fridge one is usually crammed to the limit. Sometimes we see some meat on sale, but we don't have room. Having a deep  freeze will be a blessing as the garden and fruit trees start to give their harvest.

We had mentioned it to Garry that we would like to get some crushed rock and the next thing we knew, it was arriving. We are trying to get some of the yard covered in crushed rock to keep the spread of mud to a minimum. Wednesday morning we started moving some of the rock around in between bursts of rain.
 

A load of crushed rock.



Shannon hard at spreading rock.



Checking to see if Shannon is still doing her part :)



Our garage



We're getting there.



A lot of work, but it cleans things up!

We are also working on getting ready for the Summer English Institute in Dnipro for three weeks in July. We have to have about 14 lesson plans and be ready to teach 4 classes a day. A lot to do and get ready for, as well as I also preach in Morningstar Church on June 9

On Tuesday evening we had pizza for supper at Garry and Teresa's as we celebrated Alona's 23rd birthday. Her and Nicholai have been married for a while now and have a young son, Daniel.

Alona's 23rd birthday party.