plum jam

dear all,
we are done.
it lasted for three days.
one for travelling to the plum orchard (located at a farm), picking and collecting from under the trees.
one for pitting the crop.
one for making the jam.
three days, four families, loads of fun. tiredness.
a plum jam made the traditional way, a jam that contains nothing but the fruit. no sugar, no preservatives, nothing else, but plum. worth quite much.
will please four families throughout the winter.
sunshine bottled for the hazy days.
this to the friendship between the four families.

photos from ukraine

hey all,

my husband and my daughter has joined a group of tourists who visited southwestern ukraine in early august. for some wiki-info about the location: click here. in the meantime, my son stayed out with friends and i had the chance to polish off a job i've done in late july.

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here are some photos of the trip, enjoy.

this is the view from the room. they slept there for two nights.


they were hiking in the woods.

there were lots of blueberries within the forest, but once they got atop the mountains, they found a meadow loaded not only with flowers, but with lots of raspberries (not pictured here).

this part of ukraine is partly a mountaneous area. the slopes face south which makes the villages down at the foot of the hills able to produce various kinds of agricultural produce. i was meant to say that although the hills are high the climate is not a typical mountain one.

my daughter sitting on a moss-covered trunk. she enjoys being in a forest and has a keen eye to discover all the secrets of it. she is always to first to spot the only mushroom or strange flower in a 15 meter radius. she will either be a researcher or an artist. or both.

the river somehow slows down at the bottom.

these are the ruins of a castle of kanko, where kanko is a small village. hm, that's not very informative...

i wish i had been there, too!

cheers,

watching the water

she paints her nails, can you get used to it?
she is now your wife, can i get used to it?


the first 40 years of my life are leaving me.


a boat, loaded full is leaving the bay. some waves return, run up the shore, up to the rocks, the waves carve into the rocks and return back again to the water.

the waves are getting smaller.

the boat is getting smaller, its figure is getting harder and harder to notice in the distance.


you are on that boat.
i am on the shore.


the second 40 years of my life has just begun. and i think it's just time we talked.

bad and good

about the contest.

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the contest is over.

i have read so many great pieces. the pre-selection made judgement easier for the judges and the readers as well.

i retreated and was reluctant to read further on once i was cast out - and i know that's bordering nasty. for some of the time i don't do well in team-building.

i tend to go alone, like a lone hunter...

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but i digress.

i loved to read so many uplifting and thought-provoking pieces. i loved that there were some poetry and some of the non-poetry pieces were quite poetic as well.

i loved sometimes the warm tone, the irony and the character building in the stories i voted for.

i loved to see myths created.

there was one among the many that stood out for me.

it literally made me sick. it was ranked high.

but i'm not going to continue on this matter.

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you know... when you do something great, and you do it poorly, you are still making good. you are adding to all the good in the world.

and when you do something bad and you do it well, you are doing bad.

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but hey, i'm just an old fashioned, tradition-loving conservative who loves to believe that despite all the wrong that's been done and is being done right now as you read these lines (if you do, if anyone does, that is ;) there's love and justice after all in this world.

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about my entry in particular.

i am sorry not to have entered into the elite-club ;) but jason was right about his decision - no problems with that.

rhyming is not easy, not easy in one's mother tounge, let alone in a second language.

i tend to think the backstory of my entry was weak and i have not worked enough on it. i wanted to write a parabole (hm?) but it needs more working done.

that's all :)

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