The end of the holidays has snuck up on us.  Things speeding up towards the end, with significant birthdays and grandparents visiting.  We made one last summer holiday day trip today just over the border to the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania.  Never get tired of this tourist destination  - first time we visited was around 20 years ago.  To make a long story short, the hill is covered in hundreds of thousands of crucifixes, which local Catholic Lithuanians and other visitors have placed there over hundreds of years.  The Soviets bulldozed the crosses a number of time but the site was always regenerated.


I don't find the place eerie - it's touching, and fascinating - a place where so many people have left a small token to honour their country, their family, their loved ones.  This visit I tried to focus the lens on  the home-made crucifixes placed among the mass-produced effigies of Jesus on the cross.





My first born babe turned ten last week.  Can't believe it was a whole decade ago I was labouring in the back seat of the car while Jem sped me past the Queensland Museum in the pink sunrise on the way to hospital.


TEN!!  I've gotta say that Tiss is turning into quite a gentle and considerate young man, particularly when opening presents and occasionally having to feign excitement at misguided gift from his parents.


Like this "man scarf" from his mum.  See that smile?  I expect I will be seeing a good deal more of that "I'll-indulge-you-mum-you-freak" grin before he descends into general teenage grunting.

So can you see the continuing theme in birthday presents around here?  Gotta say I'm  thankful for Star Wars, pretty soon the requested presents will turn in to "I want anything starting with an i..."


And in other news, my second born is starting grade one on Monday.  Don't know who's more excited, and nervous.  Me or him. Or should that be "I or he"?

Summer has been all about castles lately.  I suspect this is because Jem and I have downloaded and watched the whole first season of "Game of Thrones" in the last couple of weeks - I walk around during the day inventing new tribes of peoples that could emerge from beyond The Wall and proceed to attack the Winterfell stronghold...  that's probably why I was totally enchanted by the 2500-year-old tattoos on this Siberian ice-maiden mummy when she turned up in my news feed.  She could lead a new band of pagan warriors into that tv series, I reckon.




...great place for a geocache!

I first heard the advice Andy Warhol's mother gave him, on an album by Lou Reed and John Cale: "The way to make friends, Andy, is invite them up for tea".  So simple, no?

I saw Mrs Warhol's principle in action when Jem and I had moved to Melbourne from Brivegas and I started studying museology - everything was so new and I was very alone - and was stunned by a dinner invitation out of the blue, on my first week in class, from my totally intimidating classmate, who had the grooviest haircut and the most intelligently outspoken comments during tutorials.  We ended up at her place - in true Melbourne style, she lived in an old corner pub that had been converted into a share house - eating pumpkin curry with total strangers, and loving it.  Needless to say, Fiona and I have been fast friends ever since, and from that time I knew that Warhol's mother had it right.

Since we have had our new house it has been so much easier to invite people up for tea. I tend to do it  without much thought beforehand, and as a result we have made some interesting friends in the last year.  Like last month, for example, when it was one of those weeks with 100 things to do. Heatwave in Riga, gotta go to work, Tiss and I participating in the international folk festival Baltica, Jem has agreed to organize a group of expats to play AFL in Lithuania on the weekend, bank loan paperwork to organize, rental properties need looking after, we've double and triple booked ourselves for the entire week.... you know. And then one of my favourite blogging mamas pops up on Facebook -  "the Snapping Blabber" (hi, G!).  She and her family have been travelling the world for the last 1.5 years and been to SO MANY diverse and amazing places.  And her Facebook status update advertises the fact that they have hit LATVIA!  So of course, without hesitation, I write and invite her to stay.  Not that I know her, or anything.  Most contact we've had is me leaving a comment or two on her blog.  And before you know it, they have arrived at our house... all five of them! And we don't even know their real names. We weren't even home when they arrived - so left them the key hidden under the wheelie bin and crossed our fingers that they weren't really robbers or mass murderers.

The trick about "inviting people up for tea",  has been learning to swallow my own internal standards-for-visitors, inherited through a long line of proud hostesses.  My grandmother's version of Mrs Warhol's advice would definitely read: "The way to make friends, dear, is invite them up for tea - provided you have vacuumed the living room, got lipstick on, pastries in the oven and polished the silverware.  Anything less than this standard of preparation, and you should turn out the lights, draw the blinds in horror, and pretend you aren't home".  As a result, I have been using my "drop of a hat" invitations as a form of shock therapy.  The beds aren't made, there's "skiddies" in the loo, and you've got visitors.  Deal with it!  So once I got over my "oh god" moment, it was brilliant.  Our kids instantly got on like a house on fire, the "Snapping blabber" took over my kitchen and everyone was happy.  We listened to tales of travelling the world, ate pancakes, went to the beach, and were pleased to share a bit of why we love living in Riga with our visitors.  Quite a few days later, we waved them off on their next adventure, happy for taking risks and making friends.

This last weekend, we had an adventure with some other new friends, this time in the country... but more on that in the next post.  A sneak preview in the instagram feed on the right...
 "Little B" checking out our snowglobe collection.  I think she has been to more countries than we have globes.  The pic above is of our farewell dinner.  A bizarre but tasy combination of smoked flounder, chanterelle sauce, and pinot noir...

But not this year!!  Oh no.  Mum and I decided to wreck the starlings' summer, and covered the trees in alfoil, which made shiny, rustling christmas decorations in the trees to scare away the birds.  Didn't do much for the wasps though, who came in droves when the cherries got ripe.  I spent a week in July fighting with the wasps for the cherries, and ended up with WAY too much jam and pie filling, with more cherries in rags, being munched on by fat, happy wasps.  So in my desperation, I had to resort to making bottles of...


Latvian olives.  You know, cherries with lots of sugar and vodka on top.  Let it sit until New Year's Eve, makes for a tasty celebration.  You wanna come over?




The fields are totally amazing at the moment, because our neighbour hasn't yet mown everything.  The wildflowers are over the kids heads in a lot of places, and when you walk in the field you can see the inspiration for Latvian folk costume colours, right there in the field.  Lots of subtle shades of browns and greens and yellows and purples.

I could go on, but summer is galloping, galloping, and I actually started this post weeks ago.  Need to post it so that I can write another one about the rest of the goings on in our part of the world.  Over and out. 

School holidays mean disappearing to the country for extended periods of time - summer is finally upon us and the weeds and grass is growing so fast that you can HEAR it growing if you stop and listen.  Nightingales and cuckoos are singing in the woods beyond the house, and the perfumed air is soft and warm, even when you wander out into the permanent dusk that is "nighttime" in midsummer in this part of Europe.  Midsummer eve is but a week away, and the fields are full of wildflowers of all description.  The other day I needed to race back to Riga to do some folk singing, and managed to make a traditional wildflower wreath for wearing with my folk costume rather than the dour headscarf I usually wear in the colder months. Gotta love the array of blooming plants to choose from!The boys have willingly taken to the great outdoors, and disappear for hours into the yard, playing fantasy games of riding on magic carpets (the hammock), or finding bewitched swords (sticks) and going on magical adventures (bashing through shoulder-high weeds).  We bought the boys pocket knives, and they have been very responsible so far, proudly clipping them to their belts, and using them to scrape bark of sticks and cut this and that.  Back to Riga next week, sadly, to do a bit of work and such. Being in the city at such a glorious time of year is no good.  No good at all.  The beer gardens in the old town make up for it a little, I guess, but we will definitely be racing back to the country asap!



It's also the perfect season for making salted cucumbers - not marinated - yummy, crunchy, salty.  A total no-brainer to make, even I can get the recipe right.  Cucumbers in a jar.  Dill, garlic.  Pour over water with salt + a bit of sugar added.  Voila!  In about 5 hours you've got salted cucumbers.

Who are these cheeky kids making themselves cups of tea?  A big hit has been the Donald Duck camping and survival book, which got pulled out the other day.  Under its influence, we've been digging fire pits and making damper-on-a-stick (which, of course, the kids insisted on making but refused to eat.  I couldn't even convince them to eat it by saying "this is what they eat in AUSTRALIA when they go camping... )