Monday, September 12th 2022
They’ve gone all the way to the border. And watch to the end. There are even some Belarusian volunteers fighting for the Ukrainian side who have arrived at the Russian border as well.
The point is though, the Russians are not going lightly and not without causing pain to civilians. We have to take this sort of thing into consideration. This is not winning the hearts and minds. This is terrorism being driven out. This is not a counter offensive, this is an exorcism.
It seems that fighting is going on universally. In Kazakhstan, people who have put the “Z” pro Russian sticker on their car are being called fascist and told to go home on the territory of Kazakhstan. People are calling the police on them and telling them that their symbol is not welcome there.
Intercepted telephone conversations agree with the overwhelming forces going against the Russian soldiers. Again, you can read this as auntie Russian propaganda or you can take this as absolute fact. It does seem as if all the media no matter where you look at it seems to be in agreement. The Russians don’t want to fight anymore. Probably, they never really did.
Sun Tzu taught us many years ago that the moral high ground was very important for the morale of the army. If they actually believed that they were fighting for a good cause, they would go to their death. But if they didn’t believe they were in the right or worse, if they believed they were in the wrong, they would have no value for the fight.
The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
It’s hard to believe that people will risk their lives on bullshit racism and lies and especially so amidst constant corruption.
This is what I heard from people talking to the local soldiers stationed locally in this village at the beginning of the war. All the talk amongst the soldiers was that it was all bullshit, they were being used, everything was for money.
To close this thought, I go to a speech by Mr Zelensky which is as inspiring as anything he has said all year long:
Do you still think that we are “one people”? Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions? Did you really not understand anything? Don’t you understand who we are, what we stand for and what we are talking about?
Read my lips:
Without gas or without you? Without you.
Without light or without you? Without you.
Without water or without you? Without you.
Without food or without you? Without you.
Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary or deadly for us as your “friendship and brotherhood”.
Exactly.
***
It’s a little before 9:00 a.m. on another cold and overcast Autumn morning. I don’t know that we had so much rain during the night. Saturday night’s rain was abundant enough to give everything still standing a good soak and to fill all of my buckets. That really doesn’t matter so much anymore unfortunately. When we needed it, it wasn’t there and now that we don’t, well, such abundance.
The late blooming cabbage is actually looking pretty good. I’ve been harvesting it lately instead of the horseradish leaves. There is no reason not to do this. I don’t know if it means anything or not but I like cabbage leaves quite a bit. In different species of cabbage like cauliflower or broccoli, any brassica really, I quite like the taste of the leaves cooked. They become sweeter under heat and I find they are excellent additions to pretty much everything. I’ve been taking kohlrabi lately and I don’t just use the ball but all of the leaves and even the stems as well. I don’t say any reason not to. They are good eating.
I think I’ve also made a decision about staging our hay and fertilizer. I believe I’m good for deliveries of both and I think I’m just choosing a couple of practical places that are not going to hurt anybody too much. I’m thinking of putting down some boards under where the fertilizer is going and just to keep a lot of it from being wasted on the ground. But other than this I think we are ready to get moving today one way or another.
A second idea for the fertilizer has to do with using it in the boxes that are finished. To do this, the boxes would need to be cleaned up a little bit of weeds and either the topsoil pulled back or to have some other topsoil ready to go on top of the fertilizer. My perfect idea would be not to dig but simply add on top. The problem with this is I don’t think I have the legs to do the job of bringing in Good dirt. Perhaps this is a point of conversation one way or the other. If I had all of my physical faculties, simply adding to the top on top of the fertilizer would be my choice. We have plenty of planting soil and to mix that with some rich black from the forest canals would be pretty much super long with some fertilizer and then covered with hay for the winter.
I just got off the phone with Ghenna. He says he is coming by to talk about things. I guess we can get the entire logistical plan sorted out in not too many minutes and then it’s just a matter of when he gets around to bring the materials. In a perfect scenario, he might actually help dig some holes as well.
If you were to ask me how I genuinely feel about the situation, I would be much happier to be doing all of the labor myself. I don’t get any particular ego stroke when people work for me. During my days as a builder, I was never any kind of a boss who just sat around. I did all the work that needed to be done and I would be the first guy in there for the heavy lifting. I’ve never been a sidelines guy and although I’m happy for the progress, it is not as deeply satisfying as doing things myself.
Of course, there is another side to this and I am prone to laziness. Sometimes, I don’t throw myself into every job that needs to get done and allow myself to not work so much. I’m not such a young guy anymore.
What I’m saying is, this leg business sucks, I never get any kind of a call from Minsk that says they are ready to help me out and all I ever get to do is modify and improvise and figure out ways to live my life as best as I can. I’m not looking for any compliments for any of this and I’m certainly not looking for any criticism or trolls. I’m just saying that this leg business sucks and it takes away from any pleasure of getting any of this work done.
For what it’s worth on the subject, today I am with a cane. My leg took quite a bit of a beating last night and there was some pain during the night. But this morning I made a few orthopedic adjustments for myself, found a mildly comfortable spot and found that I could get by with a walking stick. This smoothed things out a little bit, added some balance for tricky moments and of course freed up a hand that allowed me to do some things. Again, not perfect but better.
I also picked up some walnuts this morning. I noticed them when I was out walking around and started picking them up and putting them in my pocket. There are not a ton of them. Droughts are droughts and if a walnut tree doesn’t have everything it needs to grow, it doesn’t make so many seeds. I don’t know all of the nuances about walnut trees yet so I don’t know if they are on particular cycles. The tree seems healthy enough and I don’t really see any rotting anywhere on it. It’s just really dry and it has been a murderously drought filled summer without enough water.
I can’t think of anything else important to add. With the land inspection done, I am not sure but I think the only outside interest to worry about is whether or not I ever get to go to Minsk for some medical help. As far as my leg goes, I am feeling pretty confident as to my healing abilities. Like I said, I am able to get around a little bit now and even a cane is enough to get me through 99% of what I need to do. The world is becoming a little bit more comfortable again. But still, I can do a lot better. Any time guys.
***
Indeed, all the way to the border.
***
It’s all the way out to 8:00 and I have to say that today ended up being a pretty busy day. I definitely wasn’t expecting this much going on but that’s the way it turned out. All In all, I would say it was an amazingly professional Day. Even with a little bit of nuance in there trying to make this thing Fall apart, things got done as they should. I have no complaints.
To start out, I got a call from Ghenna telling me to open up the gate and let him in. He came with a horse cart full of manure and ended up dropping it pretty much where I advised him to. We had another idea for a staging area but I guess he had a hard time guiding the horse cart to the area in back of the barn. I might not have left him enough road. It’s okay. Where he left it is generally a pretty good spot.
He had also brought along my fourth steel post for the grapevine trestle. He said he would be back after lunch to deal with those things. He is in complete agreement with the plan. I have three places that I think would be appropriate for new trees. I think I could handle even another 10 more than I have but before I do this, I want to make sure that there’s something definitely interesting in the job.
The basic plan for buttoning up the field and all the boxes is that where we are going to plant trees, they need to have some wood ash and fertilizer dropped into the hole where they are going to go. For the trees that already exist, they are to get a little bit of a weed clean up, have some fertilizer laid around the base and then have this covered with a thick wad of straw. This will give them a little added warmth and some trickle down nutrition heading into spring and hopefully, this will mean a more productive year. As for non-tree spaces, the idea is either to dig up the land and lay a layer of fertilizer underneath that or, and this is my personal preference, to simply clean up the boxes, lay some fertilizer there and then cover it with some new soil. This will either come from my Forest like I did last year which will be a lot of work or perhaps we can find an expensive service that might deliver me some pretty decent topsoil. I believe in the second one more than the first and from what I remember, this really shouldn’t be so much money. The forest is no money but it’s also 100 wheelbarrow trips and I sincerely doubt that I will have the legs to do this work.
As for Ghenna, the biggest difference today was that he agreed to allow bank card transfer of the funds. Up until now, our entire relationship has been Cash and Carry. He shows up to do some day labor and at the end of the day, I have to give him some amount of money. It’s not usually a lot of money. The market doesn’t pay day laborers so much money mostly because people understand that they will use the money to get drunk. I am just more into the convenience of not having to constantly replenish my petty cash supply. And of course, if Lena is going to be on a drunk, not having any cash around gives me an honest excuse to allow her to party on without my help.
If there is some kind of ethics question about why I’m working with Ghenna, who absolutely got drunk on some of the money that I gave him earlier in the day before he came back and Lena, I don’t think it has anything to do with anything except that Ghenna’s help is far more useful and has far less pity in it. Sure, I appreciate having a clean floor. This is so true that today I took the trouble to walk around sweeping the place up. That I have enough leg for this is without question. Everything that she does to my house, I definitely can take care of myself push come to shove. I’m even a little bit proud of myself for this.
Also truthfully, I didn’t appreciate having a drunken party suddenly appear in my living room. I don’t remember inviting these people into my house but suddenly, Lena was dragging her drunken party along with her and expecting me to be a part of it. Ghenna might come out a little wasted in the afternoon, but he did the job he was there for and painted all of the posts. And for what it’s worth, he didn’t charge me for the paint or the brushes and the work itself seems to be contained within the entire fee. He even tried to give me a discount on my next batch or batches of fertilizer.
Tanya showed up when the gate was open. She has a new haircut. She looks a little like a knight’s page from the 16th century. I don’t like to criticize women’s hairdos. She was also a little blitzed as usual but with all of the rain we’ve had over the last few days, there is a possibility of mushrooms appearing in the forest. I may be a little angry at her manner but if she comes back from the forest with mushrooms, I want to make sure I’m in on this. Actually, this could be a problem if I don’t have any pity cash. I’m going to have to think deeply about this situation if we actually have mushrooms.
All this went on throughout the morning and by the time everything was finished and the gates were getting locked up, it was time to have an English lesson. I think it went pretty well. You can’t really tell by first lessons because everybody is very enthused and everything is very new. When the honeymoon is over, we find out where the real truth is and who has character and who doesn’t. Still, I am only setting the bar reasonably high. The boy is younger than my usual students, I am a friend of his father’s and perhaps it’s time simply not to stress students anymore. I’m sure there is an easier way which will be worth a very reasonable percentage of my previous goals. Why fight if nobody wants it?
That was it. With the end of the lesson came the end of my day. I got a message from my ex partner saying that she found some cheap noodles if I want to get a bunch. I did. I told her about all of the materials and work that is coming our way and after this year of suffering and village politics, she was amazed at how easily everything is going. I guess we’ve done something right this year.
I had some oatmeal and some fruit. I haven’t been hungry since this morning’s pea soup. It was a remarkable soup, very flavorful and I enjoyed every minute of it. And like most things that start from whole foods and stay radically simple, I really have not even been close to hungry all day. It’s funny how that works out. The simplest and least expensive food in the world is the one that is the most satisfying.
We have a few more garden projects tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll cost me a few pennies but I’m not worried. It’s kind of cold around here now. It’s good to be busy. My life is definitely super slow right now and is in no way exciting. I don’t feel the slightest pressure on me from anybody right now. Things are getting done but no pressure. I much prefer it this way.
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