I'm no Princess

But my husband got quite romantic today and took me (without the kids, yay!) to Rundale Palace, the most opulent and impressive palace in Latvia. I've been there three or four times, and, to be honest, not much has changed there, but it's the first time in my life that I'm really really REALLY interested in the palace park.

So we drove a bit more than an hour to Bauska, quite a sleepy city that looked weirdly deserted. It was great getting there, there's nothing like talking all the way about all the things that I want to talk about without the kids listening.

Someone had poured some washing liquid or detergent in the fountain.

We saw a wonderful private garden that I would have loved to see more of.

We spent quite a long time looking for a place to eat. Any place with reasonable food at a reasonable price. Everything was closed on Sundays. I thought Sundays were the most profitable days, but I suppose it's just me.
Finally we found a strange place called "The Tavern". It looked rather cheap and dirty, a bit like a diner in American movies where a frumpy exhausted wife serves some mediocre food and her grumpy husband stands behind the counter. Only it wasn't like that. The food wasn't particularly cheap, and I must say, not too good either, and we waited almost an hour for it. But we were hungry and willing to overlook anything, even the very sour raspberries that tasted a lot like vinegar.

Then we went to the palace. It's huge and it's astounding, and as soon as you get in you feel that you would never want to live there, and you wonder how on earth they kept warm in there.

But we weren't allowed to take pictures (I didn't want to pay for that, knowing that I could never take better pictures than on their web page), so this is the only one I took, because there is some man in the painting with a fly above the lip.

You can't really see it in this photo very well, but there's a fly. It reminds me of this very popular picture. It must be a thing - an insect on the lip. A note to myself - must research.

All in all, I was quite happy when the tour was over and we were out in the park. It was a feast for my eyes, and Arthur indulged me, so we went to look at every plant and every gazebo.

I definitely want a pergola, and Arthur promised to make me one - "some day".

On the way home we were stopped by the police for speeding. We were very disappointed, because we hadn't noticed the sign and we don't ever go over the speed limit on purpose. After some 20 minutes spent nervously waiting for the policeman to write the ticked for 40 euros, we were set free with just a warning, and the policeman told Arthur to by flowers for his wife (me!) for those 40 euros. As if I needed flowers - it was enough to be set free without the fine!

Upon our return home we found out that kids had had two other kids over, and they had spent the whole day with them. As soon as the old folks are out of the house, the young ones are having a party!

It's Sunday night as I'm writing these words, and tomorrow is a new week with (hopefully) a lot of work. And I have to get my stuff together about the weight-loss stuff, it's getting me down a lot lately.
Tomorrow.

Summer Heat Wave

It's so hot it's very hard to get down to work. We spend our days swimming in the river, and I spend my nights translating.
The garden seems a bit tired - or it might be just me. Lobelias have spread and filled out all the space, so it looks nice. It's always interesting to see which plants take over the garden. It's lobelias this year because I've sown literally hundreds from seed and now I have lobelias everywhere. Surely it's going to be something quite different next year.

Each year my knowledge and understanding of gardening grows, and so do my ambitions.
There are things I know I won't be sowing again any time soon - like the leafy goosefoot (chenopodium foliosum) that I'm quite disappointed in. It's called "spinach strawberry" in my native language, and it tastes nothing like strawberries. If anything, it tastes like spinach, a bit bland and to some extent even a bit unpleasant. It gets better if it's very ripe, but still... It does have some ornamental value, however.

Gladioli are starting to burst open, and the blood red silk is spilling out. I love gladioli, but I hope they wait a bit. I planted them later on purpose - to have flowers to give the teachers on September 1. I do hope they wait just four more weeks... But you can't keep a flower in the bud if it's determined to come out.

I've harvested the onions - not a lot, and not very big, but those are just some nice side-effects of having spring-onions up till now.

On Friday we got the firewood delivered. It's one of those seasons - like you have a strawberry season, and then there's the car repair season, and there's firewood season. I will have to find time to put it all away in neat rows in the shed... But not today. It's just too hot.

It was just as hot yesterday, and I suggested we went on a nightly roadtrip to the seaside. It was the best decision - the trip was not as excruciating in our AC-less car, and the beach was rather vacant, if not for some youths in tents. The water was just perfect, and I did just a tiny little bit of skinny-dipping in the dark while the kids had their sandwiches in the dunes. Made my husband excited about swimming in the sea as well.

I'm longing for a thunderstorm. The last one was four days ago, and it seems like an eternity. Everything is dry, and I'm tired of this heat. Will I really have to go downstairs to the cellar and search for the electric fan? I hate wasting electricity on things I can do without, bet I have a huge job to do this night, and perhaps it's time I admitted I really can't do without it.
But four days ago we had a thunderstorm that was also long overdue, and I sat on the stairs outside the house and let the water cool me down, and the dog was so anxious about the thunder I had to comfort him constantly.

Oh, good times. Weather.com is not my friend and predicts some rain no sooner that next Thursday with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius every single day...
But it's summer, and in just seven or eight months I'll be ready to give up anything just to have some warm weather again.

On Sheep and Nuts

Arthur and I, and my brother's family had a great time at a fantastic homestead/guest house/deer garden. It made my brother long for his own little (or rather, quite large) house by a river, preferably a very great river with wide, sandy beaches, while Arthur and I agreed it was nice but we wouldn't want to live that way any more. It seems that homesteading is not for us at this point in our lives. It was amazing, though, to see what those people who used to call themselves absolute city-dwellers had achieved with their own means and their own hands. I think I would love to have a guest house some day, but it might take some decades - there are much too many things I still want to do before that.

This is a water power-plant at Ķegums.

The sheep of the deer park (we didn't get to see the deer up close, but the sheep more than made up for it!). I still hope to keep some sheep some day, I adore sheep!

A huge vine-tree. You can't see that in the picture very clearly, but it was the thickest one I had ever seen,

A very old and almost blind boar. We felt sorry for it because we had fed all the bread that the owners had given us to the sheep.

I saw a red hazel for the first time. Now I intend to have one in my garden, too. I think I even know the perfect spot for it.

On our way back.