The heating was switched on on the 10th. For two days the radiators knocked like in a submarine film, then went quiet and warm. A good start. Last winter the technical people said there was some airlock in the system, and in our house there still is, but on the third floor only.
Lyudmila says I write more about radiators than about the family. It is because the radiators are more reliable.
For those who asked (two people!), our recipe for cucumbers for the winter, in a three-litre jar: cucumbers, three cloves of garlic, dill umbrellas, a leaf of horseradish, a leaf of cherry, black pepper. Brine: 2 tablespoons salt for one litre of water, boil. Pour boiling, close with the machine. Turn the jar upside down under the blanket.
Forty-two jars this year. The balcony is full. Lyudmila says enough. I say there is no "enough" in pickles.
+41 in the shade today. I measured on the dacha thermometer, on the north wall under the vine. The cat sits under the bed. The water master was not drunk, and the canal gave water at six in the morning, so we watered before the sun. Short post, it is too hot for a long one.
The dacha is 14 km from the city, on the right bank of the Chu, in the cooperative "Neftyanik-2" (from the refinery, of course: in 1978 they gave the plots to the workers). Six sotkas. A small house that I built myself in 1979-81, from the bricks that were "left over".
This year: tomatoes (Bychye Serdtse and Lyudmila's yellow ones), cucumbers, peppers, dill, the potatoes, two apricot trees and one very old apple. The water comes on Tuesday and Friday from the canal, if the water master is not drunk.
New: Dima changed the colour of this page to green, "for the dacha". I like it.
(photo will be here)
Sunday at the dacha, first digging. The ground is still cold, but the apricot is flowering, early. We put in the early potatoes ("Nevsky", the seed from the Kobozev station market, not cheap) and the onions.
Now I understand the economic situation by the seed. The potato seed this year costs 1.9 som a kilo, last year 1.3. The seller says: "it is the new rate". I say: "potatoes do not know the rate". He says: "they know, uncle, they know".