Sunday, June 5th, 2022. Week number 21
Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning right now at about 8:30. I’m sitting in the kitchen sipping some tea. Breakfast was some toast and fried cabbage. My cabbage.
I’m feeling pretty well put together this morning. But as usual it’s a little plus minus.
On the positive side, somewhere within the hour my man Dima is showing up with a partner, in a car this time because they need to carry some tools, and they are going to do their best to put a rain gutter finally on my bar and roof. This has been one of my basic concept projects since the moment I got here. Well, not the moment I got here but the moment I took the trouble to look around and figure out what the story was geographically. We have been in a drought for 12 years, it’s not going to get any better, we are more interested in killing each other and doing business in the wreckage then we are and paying attention about the damage we cause. I need all the water I can get if I want to grow some vegetables and beans here.
The garden is working. I wish I was faster with my phone than I am but this morning I found my first earthworm scurrying out of a hole where I pulled up a blade of grass. My beds are alive. I love it. I absolutely love it.
Everything but the zucchinis are moving and even my squash is finally popping up and saying it wants to do something. I have one section of the lentil Garden that needs to be weeded seriously. But with the rains over the last week or so, everything is alive. Even one of those trees that I was ready to give up as duds decided to start sprouting. It’s making me even rethink my pulling up that oak tree. You never know, right?
I have a lot more to say but as usual, Dima has just shown up early. I’m busy.
***
Okay, these guys are dynamos. And there is some interesting stuff that I thought I would put down before it gets lost in the shuffle
Firstly, after a year of debating whether to cut off the roof overhang or build some kind of support for the roof straps, my mandema came up with the best idea in about 1 second. Instead of plastic, he brought metal roof straps and simply bent them to the desired distance to end up with the tray halfway across the end of the overhang. Just like that.
We can all argue about how strong it will be with a little bit of snow but my first best guess, we’re not going to have any problems. I’m just interested to see how he closes the right side of the gutter. We are going to drain to the left.
The only other amusement to this day was that his partner, also named Sasha but somewhat less alcoholic than the last one, came through my gate with a gasoline powered weed wacker and a big smile on his face.
“I’m going to cut back some of your grass so you can walk around easier.”
“No.”
“What’s that you say?”
“No.”
“You don’t want it?”
“No.”
and then I said a few words that they didn’t listen to about global warming and sequestering carbon and water in the land and cultivating fertility. He waited for his chance to explain to me about his people, of course. I smiled diplomatically.
He seemed really hurt for not being able to use his machine. He apparently is very attached to his machine. He feels very useful when he has his machine. So I said he could cut away all of the high growing grass underneath the roof. Of course it is Rich and crazy because of all the water runoff there. He got to kill things for about 1 minute and level the area near where their ladders will be. He seemed sad to have to turn it off. The stench was horrific. I think he uses it as drugs.
Have I just created a flaw? Have I allowed a gasoline powered instrument to be on my land? Should I have told him to put the fucking thing back in his car and brought out my skythe and ask him to do it by hand?
These are revolting instruments and my world has lost a percentage. Pollution has been created on my land.
On the other hand, the price of the workmanship is correct, these guys work hard, I believe in the basic competence of their workmanship and I will have 1,000 more liters of saving capacity. It will be a giant step up in inefficiency and good use of resources. If that was worth 1 minute of pointless noise and gasoline usage, I humbly apologize for allowing the son of a bitch his moment of pleasure.
Also, there were a ton of mosquitoes over there. That roof really does provide a lot of water during rainstorms. I wish these guys had come out 2 weeks ago and without the fucking weed wacker.
***
11:15 and I am taking a tea break. Amazingly, the gutters are finished. I even checked it with a level. These guys did good work.
The only flaw with the plan was that we did not affix the final downspout. That’s going to be a project I’ll have to handle myself over the next while when I get my final delivery of water barrels. I’m going to buy four more and after I tie them all together, that will be the end of the water saving project. Two and a half cubic meters of water will be fine. It’ll give me 10 waterings even if we get no rain and when we do, any decent downpour will give me back about half.
But you can’t argue with the work. The guy says he will show up at 9:00, he shows up at 8:30 and by 10:30, everything is buttoned up and he is on his way. I don’t really think it’s important but I overpaid a little bit. I know it’s not about the money, it’s never really about the money, I just wanted to let him know I appreciate it.
I’ve been waiting 14 months. I can’t believe I could not get this stuff figured out. His decision was the easiest thing in the world. And if it’s a problem, especially with snow in the winter, I can add in a few blocks of wood and it’ll be fine.
One other interesting positive was when my ex partner showed up. It kind of changed the atmosphere between Dima and Sasha and myself. I’m not going to say anything about myself here but truthfully, my ex partner is kind of hot. Both guys sort of went brain dead for a few minutes when she was walking around and afterwards, they became extremely polite towards me. I personally don’t understand it, I’m just reporting what happened.
Where we are going to plant The grapes is still an issue. I have three places that would work very well. Perhaps four or even five potential spots have been brought up. They are going to need a serious trestle and very possibly I might want to train an overhang. As of this moment, I can’t really see the perfect plan but we will find it before the end of the day.
One final point before I get out of here for now. I’ve mentioned that everything is growing and going well. This morning, when I was having a look around, I pulled up a blade of grass and a big fat long earthworm came up with it. This is excellent. The rain has certainly helped but my boxes are alive and if we have worms living down there, it means that my soil is alive. My lasagna worked.
The Lower gardens are not so wonderful. I’m afraid I didn’t do very much at all about adding to the quality of the dirt there. Next year my first project will be to build up the lower gardens and add some good strong land. That plan is of course imperfect because we don’t know the future. I’ll talk a bit about that later. But as of the moment, I’m really happy.
Let’s take another break here on this high note. A bit later today or for sure tomorrow I’m going to wax philosophical and I’m afraid I do not have all good news. Americans, they say, I raise to be optimists. Everything is supposed to be possible in America. My daughter’s mother had a different philosophy though. She told me never to be too happy because something terrible is probably coming very soon. And I am quite afraid that something terrible is exactly on the way.
***
It’s 9:15 and this day has finally come to an end. Actually, my ex partner went home about 2 hours ago. She took a cab and I didn’t blame her one bit. She did a massive amount of work. I did too but comparatively, she carried the load. As for a genuine accounting, something that is always very nice to have, the boxes got cleaned, she did the last bit of weeding in the lentil gardens, she ended up weeding all the gardens a little bit, I helped a little and we replanted some peas and some beans doubling up on what we have. We also planted five grape plants which will probably do more to change the character of my house than anything else. We did not plant the lavender. We argued as to its location and decided better to plant sweet potatoes in their place. The sweet potatoes will probably overrun the whole garden and we decided that planting a perennial like lavender would be better off closer to the house so we could enjoy the smell. The lavender is still too small to put anywhere but we have a plan where it’s going.
As “Media-Polesie” reported earlier , on June 4, a control tactical lesson of the next stage of testing the response forces will be held in Pinsk. Brest paratroopers will work out the actions of the landing units to overcome the water barrier.
So all of this got done and we have gutters on the barn. It was an amazing day and both of us were in ridiculous pain by the time we got to the end of it. She called me from her house and said she was completely dead and I just answered politely. I was too tired to do anything else.
I did have some things to say though about the situation outside of my little world. There are some things regarding the war that need to be mentioned. Pretty scary stuff really.
Yesterday, there was a military demonstration in Pinsk. Officially, they called it a training session but it included some armored vehicles and some emergency road building across the river. I guess they are anticipating that in case of a war, the new bridge is probably going to be the first thing to go.
I first noticed this from a short Instagram film made by a friend of mine.
I wrote to her the moment I saw it.
What is this?
It’s practice. It’s education.
That’s propaganda. We will have War here soon. especially if Ukraine joins the European Union and NATO. I don’t believe this 100%, but I believe this maybe 75%. This is a seriously frightening demonstration.
She gave my comment a like. Turning to the local media, this is the official explanation of why we needed military displays going on in the middle of our Saturday.
If you don’t have an available translator, this is a brief approximation of the article.
Paratroopers on armored personnel carriers arrived in Pinsk
Media Polissya
Three military vehicles were photographed by eyewitnesses on Belova Street in the capital of Polesye.
Several dozen military vehicles and vehicles will move forward for a forced march, force the Pina River and swim across the water area right along the city embankment.
The first combat vehicles have already arrived in Pinsk. They were photographed by eyewitnesses on Belova Street near the bridge over the Pina in the Stolin direction.
As I’ve said many times, for the most part life just goes on. People are inured to any sense of excitement or worry. The truth is that nobody has a choice. I have friends who have left or are in the process of leaving specifically because they don’t want to be here when the war starts. I can’t say I blame them. I probably would prefer to be somewhere else myself.
The real truth is though that we are quite isolated with the Russians right now. If this sixth packet of sanctions is real and they truly wish to cut off Russian oil, something they should have done in place of any sort of harm to the general population, this will definitely have an impact on Moscow. There is nothing more important than money and if genuine economic stress or the loss of oil revenues is real, this will Garner a reaction.
In addition to this, I’m not completely convinced that anybody is going to genuinely join the fight against Russia. It’s one thing to send money and weapons, it’s another thing to genuinely risk lives. And it’s even more to elevate this thing into an all-out War. I think most people are aware that Russia really doesn’t give a damn where they send their missiles.
Along these lines, I do have some thoughts from the president of Ukraine exactly about how little Russia cares who dies.
But with all this means here is that if the guns actually get blazing, the brunt of it is going to be taken by this country. This is what happened during the second World War and I promise you this is what will happen here in southern Belarus. If NATO joins the fight, it’s going to go right through us and I guarantee you that having tanks in town is going to be a pretty common sight. And if the army is preparing for the eventuality of our bridge getting blown up, it probably means that they understand there is a great possibility of our town being one of the casualties of the Russian Ukrainian War.
It’s pretty ominous stuff. It’s a pretty difficult time. It’s a difficult time for everybody and it’s also a very difficult time for me.
Would I leave? It’s a difficult question. I don’t really have a life outside of here. I don’t have any work that’s calling my name and I don’t have any people waiting for me who could not live without me. I’ve been independent my whole life and have managed so far taking care of myself. It would be nice if the West would focus their attention and their sanctions on upper management and not generally cut off people’s ability. I’m not supplying any weapons here, I just like having the ability to go to the market and buy a loaf of bread from time to time.
Of course I really also don’t much enjoy all of the extra negative attention that comes my way. I’ve said this a thousand times that there was a time when people were more human and respectful. Everybody had their jobs and everybody was making their way and people were not as parasitic. Nobody was so clever back then and everybody knew they had to put in their work days. Now it’s different and along with the change of everybody being a wise guy is all of the racial negativity that comes along with the training. And yes, people here have been being trained since 2014. They have been trained for war.
This is the most annoying thing, you know. I don’t want to fight in any wars. I don’t want to be anybody’s pawn. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want some peace and quiet.
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