Pirogi!

Elrin is gone for three days. (One day and two half-days, to be exact… but still!)

The 6 hours’ distance does seem to be an insurmountable distance, and neither of us could sleep last night. It’s odd to suddenly have an empty space behind you in a bed, a space that should’ve been filled in with another person.

Well.


Artsiness

Elrin’s off having fun, and I get to stay in, clean, and make artsiness. (The said artsiness mostly takes form of 1. Learning to use a sewing machine (the long-overdue curtain project is looming just over the horizon) and 2. Staying up until 2am to make my first-ever attempt at pirog (pirog/pirogi/basically a type of pie). (The thing took a total of about 4 hours, what with dough rising.)

There is a Russian saying, “perviy blin - komom”, or “first crape will turn out badly”.



As far as appearances go, these are nothing like my grandmothers’ (the best cook I know (possibly rivaled by my mother), who makes veritable works of art in forms varying from blins, to pirogi, to pel’meni, to any other type of nutritious, delicious stuff that I’ve grown up on). Taste-wise, mine didn’t turn out too badly, though! The one on top has apple-and-pie spice filling, and the one on the bottom’s apple, currant, and mint. It took all my willpower at 1:30 AM to not eat all of the latter’s filling raw. T’was –good-.


Birds

Bird-watching’s fallen by the wayside for now, since the birds in question seem to be too busy making nests and glaring at one another (*cough* insectivorous robins *cough*) to possibly be interested in any meager sunflower seeds we have to offer.

Also, OtherKitty killed two wrens in this past week (one- still a baby), and brought them to our back porch to show off. This was sad on multiple levels, as both El and I love birds (especially the small ones), and the cuteness of the cat makes it very hard to scold him. We ended up getting OtherKitty a collar with a bell on it, and for days afterward, the faint jingling could be heard, as the wild beastie romped across the sloping back yard in search for prey. No wrens since then, so –maybe- it’s working.


Hiking

We haven’t done as much hiking last week, mostly because of me being a big baby about the entire cheek pain. (Which, by the way, isn’t hurting much at all today!) What we –did- do was a 30-minute outing onto the Sugar (Creek? Maple?) Hollow wetlands, without the camera, of course.

There were ducks in the wetlands, which were cute. There were also baby ducks in the wetlands, which were cuter. About five of them, along with their mom, were sleeping within five feet of the boardwalk, on some mossy logs.

There was a fair number of turtles out, as well, including a three-foot snapper, taking up most of a sizeable rock. There was another foot-and-a-half long one that slowly inched its way closer and closer to the boardwalk, as we stood and watched it.. I think it wanted a piece of our toes.

These reptiles put you in the mind for a distant, horrifying age, where humans didn’t quite rule the world, and everything and their brother was out to get them.


Plants

Potted plants continue to thrive! Of a particular note is a partly-seed grown/partly friend-given plain green spider plant, which has been putting offshoots with a huge amount of flowers and almost no suckers to speak of.



The flowers last only a day, but every day, I get anywhere from 3 to 10 new ones. Kind of curious how long the plant can keep going like this.