13-IV-2022.
The first week of april was still rather cold. The apricot blossom looked still okay, having appeared so late in the game, but no, one of the nights this week the temperature went low enough to kill almost all of it. If we make two jars of pekmez it'll be a success. On 2nd it was raining; on 3rd we took the twins to Lidl and they had to wear jackets with hoodies. Even I reverted back to wearing socks. Only on 4th they went out to the street, as it was sunny but still rather chilly. They had to wear those fuzzy dirty-pink jackets.
In the evening the 73th frendz parti was at Borče's. Dragana was a bit late, she saw a guest to the door when she reported at 19:25, but despite the bad leg, came only two sips of rakija behind us (we brought some tutifruti, just one liter, ran out of big bottles). The special tutifruti with extra pear fragrance is still not found. Now I'm relabeling the casks, this time the tape goes around the handle, stuck to itself dangling off, so the surface is flat, easy to write on, and can't fall off. We were all in good mood, discussion didn't touch showbiz nor any of his stories about Ndranghetta or anything like it. He played some music, sicilian, corsican or whatever, just loud enough to be heard and pass unnoticed. Nobody played music off a phone... everything right, and excellent food. I managed not to overdo it this time, not to get into half an hour of half a coma while digesting.
The sidewalk at Lesnina is in the works. The trees they took out will be replaced with new ones, this time in thick concrete tubes, so it won't spread its roots shallow under the surface, so they won't lift the pavement. Everything is almost in place but nothing is finished. She says her apartment is full of dust since this is in the works, she could sweep three times a day.
On sixth we finally sat outside, waited long for that. All in the yard. The Zelena had kittens, four. Around tenth Džimi also had a few, can't know how many, she took the corner by the chimney, unreachable.
On 8th she planted the potatoes. Of the two frames we made for the rows, one goes for this, and then she saw she still had about two thirds of seeds left, so we made two more frames, thinner. This time I didn't screw with a driver, used the drill on all 32 screws. Piece of cake. The trick to grow potatoes in those raised boxes she nicked from yoochoob channel by some Russians. She watched dozens of those, how they grow them in buckets, sacks, old tires and wherever else, and these guys seem to have the best crop. The trick is to plant them into a hole about a bottle deep, then when it reaches half of the depth, cover with soil. Then once more when it fills the hole, until the soil is about 25cm from the seed level. The underground part of the stalk is where it grows more roots and then potatoes on those roots. If we get half of what these guys were getting, we buy no potatoes this year.
The other yoochoob trick she had to try is meat in a jar. She already tried one, ground and cooked with some spice, and five days later she took it out to make spaghetti sauce. Excellent, Raja asked for seconds.
On tenth we went to Lidl and bought, among other things, a stupid ceramic knife, they're already cheap enough to risk it. From what we heard, a good one comes in a batch of five bad ones, which sort of work excellent for whole two weeks and then you just throw them away. This looks like ordinary steel, but razor thin, in a ceramic sheet, the visible steel is perhaps 2mm. But it cuts like mad, need not apply any pressure on it. And it cost just 340 dinges, and comes with a sheath, which is smart, in case anyone rummages through the drawer blindly, there'd be blood knee high.
On eleventh we hosted the 75th frendz parti. The cherries on the street (even the small sour cherry in the middle) were in exactly the full blossom, and we also showed the current looks of the yard - look here strawberries, here potatoes, there daikon radishes...
We drank quince, and apart from the usual salties and sliced, she prepared some shank rolat - sliced it with that knife into cubes of about 1-2cm, sauteed it, then covered the jena pot* with cling wrap, then moved just the meat into it, then added only a few ladles of its juice. It's not exactly pihtije (lacks tendons mostly), but more like švargla sans all the bacon and lard. Turned out excellent.
We had quince once already, but Dragana was somewhat indisposed, had doctors appointed for the morning, so she had only one, while Borče limited himself to three, out of solidarity. This evening we had the popravni and... well, it was better. She flatly refused the wine and went on with quince, while he opted for a dark beer... then came back to rakija. I had another coughing accident, a piece of radish went into my windpipe, and while I coughed it out, she took me out to the terrace, not to frighten everybody again. Meanwhile Dragana poured one more to herself, which she never does. Then when she visited the bathroom I refilled the bottle. We drank 1,2l, which is about double the usual 0,5-07l and two liters of wine (sometimes three, if I join them).
Gave him Varoufakis's book about the bankstery and virtual money... which I haven't read. I got to about one third when I understood that I still haven't read anything I didn't already know, so I quit.
Next time, her place, not monday but rather tuesday, she's going with her gang to a theatre show in Belgrade, after two years. There, it's three weeks already since we were demasked, Putin won over corona, everything's kind of coming back to normal... except the ham piece is cheaper than shoulder, because all the meat is going up, it's the on ham alone that the state imposed price limits.
On twelfth the shelves arrived, metal. We took four larger, 60x120x80, and one lower. Two will be on the terrace, to hold the rakija - the casks already take 5 square meters, and the others in the small storeroom above the kitchen, to hold all the yarn, so Nina would have a place to sit and do some work, because it's near impossible to do downstairs, kids keep interrupting her, asking for this or that. I expected a bag of screws, but this goes by slits and strips, which fit neatly into each other and hold the construction rather strongly although it's a bit slow to assemble that way, one has to knock it bit by bit into position, without bending. We assembled one and a half storeys, i.e. they did, while I was cleaning the space where to put them. The old chicken cage, that she made way back in 2014, was 2cm wider than the terrace door, couldn't take it out so we took it apart. We could have opened the other wing of the door, but the lower bolt was all rusty, the cats peed on it for years.
On thirteenth we finally went to Klincaid, first time this year. Everything in blossom. Apricots there will be none, and two of the trees seem to be dry. But then we'll have cherries, cherries, plums (not so much), pears... We brought two big bottles of aquarium water (the fish love that one) and four sacks (not full, too heavy) of soil to cover the potatoes. We didn't notice anything being stolen this time. She picked the weeds where they grew through the potting holes in the foil, said it comes out quite easily, the soil is humid and loose beneath, ideal. Even the big plants, almost tree sized, went out without a hitch. Next time she brings the tomato saplings to plant. I tried to start the T2, the newer trimmer from Lidl, but it wouldn't. Leaks fuel somewhere.
The next day I went to buy paint, because we decided to paint the wall where the shelves will be, now that we're redoing that corner. Took the T2 to repair, visited two places, one said you got a torn hose, that's where it leaks. The other said nope, the hoses are all right, your carburetor leaks. Look, you bend it like this and the fuel leaks from the exhaust, nothing we can do about it. Well who does Parkside? Nobody, they're a phantom, you buy it and use it while it lasts. Hmm... the švorceniger doesn't work either, and the guy who repairs them is all alone, and now mid season there's no way that he'd do it in less than two months. So I'd have to buy a new one - what I mowed yesterday is the street lawn, where it doesn't grow so tall. In most of the orchard the grass is knee high, no way to mow that.
So next day I bought one. Not a Stihl, no matter how much the shop owner advertised it and passed degrees of compliance with their rules, it doesn't take any blades but Stihl's, and it costs 38000 regular and 50000 for a stronger engine. Oh, man... do you have anything else? Well we have a Hyundai... with a stronger engine, 20000. What stronger, it's a 1,4kW, while the old švorceniger had only 0,9 and was strong enough. So I bought that, and tried it on the front lawn, and packed it for the next day. And it was actually cheaper than the T2 - 19990 vs 19999.
It was somewhat cold on sixteenth, there was even some drizzle before and after, but we got the job done. She planted all the tomatoes she brought, I don't know how many tens of saplings of which sorts, and I scythed almost all that I planned to. And one thing I didn't, the disco saw slipped in the direction I didn't expect, and the engine is stronger than I'm used to, and off goes the william pear, its trunk no thicker than a spade handle, and all in blossom from top to bottom. And I was just trying to nip the branch which grew from below the graft. Phew... I got grandly pissed off, and it didn't help that she came at me with „well look at what you're doing!“ - well no I guess I was looking at the sky while aiming the blade. And then the girls screaming when we came home helped even less because something wasn't working in their roblox game, specially Sanda took it to use screaming as a method of pressure, if you scream loud and long enough, the problem will get solved, something will give. But this is roblox, the current crop of it doesn't have any way of earning the mickey money in the game, it's now ransomware, pay with real cash. And on yoochoob they show shills who either get those things for free and get paid to brag about it, or they just invest and get paid by sheer thousands of visits, or they just have too much money and don't mind pissing it on virtual nothings. Then I tried to talk with Sanda about screaming, calmly, like is it hard to scream, may I help her, should we scream together. And then Nina flies into it with „and what about it when they scream at a rock concert? I never went, but you did“. „I wasn't screaming, but kudos, on the relativization scale this comes at about nine... is there any pair of things that you won't find equal...“.
We drank some of the quince before sleep, but it didn't help, I was still in rather bad mood on 17th (a sunday), so I clobbered someone on burundi, who told me in no uncertain engrbian terms that I could skip a comment against engrbian once in a while. I said „You don't want that. I usually skip this kind of thing a dozen times a day, but if you insist on doing it once... I can do that.“ There was more, he wrote an additional message, I wrote four, and then silence.
I think it'll be a strike, I'm back to writing Byo until I meet myself, and burundi may cool its balls for a while. Here, I write it in two directions - one is the current month (like this, that I'm writing, in serbian first, on 17th), and the other is from it into the past, where I'm translating into serbian, and where I've reached 2001. Diving into the XX century today.
More than a year ago I went from the start to the future and got stuck in the spring of 1995, which is the time when I have very little written down, so it takes rummaging through materials, which are mostly the comments in code at the time, and sparse messages on sezam, whenever I wrote something there that would jog my memory on what was going on in rl at the time. So I gave up at that point and went on from the current moment backwards, translating from english into the serbian version, and adding things to the current articles, not adding new ones (except, perhaps, 2-3 per decade). I expect to meet myself in a few months, and then I might start writing on burundi again. The permanent consequence of the last strike is that I stopped writing in the SF theme. If you don't like my left elbow, you aren't getting the right one either.
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* traditionally, such glass vessels are called jena, after city of Jena, where Zeiss optics and glassworks were. Name is mostly absent from western culture because that city was in East Germany, the politically incorrect one.
Mentions: burundi, Byo (Byo), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), engrbian, frendz parti, Klincaid, Lesnina, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pekmez, pihtije, popravni, rakija, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sezam, švorceniger, tutifruti, in serbian
5-V-2022 - 25-III-2026