OK - This time I'm (Jeremy) going to blog.... and Ive got great advice for any of you city-slicker tractor driving folk. So heres 5 tips that you should need to know before you hop into the cab.

1. Dont drive too close to the edge of the road after its been raining for days....hint, the road edges are very soft.

2. Always wear your seat belt.

3. Never have loose objects that could fly up and hit you ( ie. axeheads, spanners, diesel cans).

4. Know a local that knows what he's doing, and can pull you out.

5. When you are tipping over yell out " WOAH!!" and hope to hell for a soft landing.

In the last months some of our very good friends (and in one case also a relation) have left Latvia for good - and this marks the end of an era (and new beginnings) for all of us. It's been quite challenging to adjust to the idea of the people who have been with us through so much here for so many years in Latvia, are no longer here. I think in some ways we all have seen living here as a bit of an "extreme sport", so although we are excited for the new lives our friends are starting in other places, it has really rocked our world to say goodbye to two such enduring, stable allies in a space of weeks. So here's a tribute to Māra F., who with her hubby the fabulous Mikey has lived down the road from us for the last 7 years - I already miss our secret coffee meetings , weekly dinners at the pizza shop, collector's market adventures, masterly meat pies, games nights, and general mateship. It was a good seven years!
And of course Jem's inimitable brother Joel, who has been visiting us in Riga and then living here in stints for the past... 5 years? Joel, we all miss you like crazy already - for too many reasons to say. My mum even mentioned the other day that Kugs was looking the best it's ever looked because of you and that she would miss you!!!
Anyhow, this is not meant to be a sad post - best of luck in your new adventures both! We await your visits back to Riga eagerly. I just wanted to share some photos from the last few years....

Oh the title may not be interesting to you, but this is what our lives have been made up of recently. It sounds simple and straightforward, doesn't it. But oh, no. Now I know the truth and am slowly starting to nurture the farmer's daughter genes that are buried down deep. Kugures is 40 hectares of farming land. We haven't yet worked out how or what to farm here, or who will do it, for that matter. So while we decide how to make Kugures into an organic lavender plantation and humane chicken farm, we MOW. The European Union gives us funding if we DO mow, and fines us if we DON'T.
Up until this year the mowing has been taken care of by Ansis, the farmhand/maintenance guy we had living here, but he moved out last year and this year we decided to get the mowing done ourselves, as a family. It's hard to get help to do this kind of job, and it's getting expensive these days, plus its a big risk letting some stranger get into your megabucks tractor and drive it around. So we thought we'd do it ourselves. And like every good (post) Soviet woman, I now know how to drive a tractor. I find myself changing gears and levers with both hands simultaneously and get a small thrill of "how cool am I?!!" But most of the time its just plain hard work.
Contrary to popular belief, the tractor is a delicate little princess, and although it has the ability to drive over pretty much anything, if you do drive over anything unusual (ie. a big rock hidden in the weeds), you are likely to f**ck up the mowing machinery. What's worse, if you drive onto a slope the wrong way, you've got the danger of tipping the tractor. Kugures is pretty hilly, so I think that we are all doing our mowing with a healthy fear of big rocks and steep angles.
Then the princess also needs to be pampered. I've not only learned to drive the tractor, I can now remove the drive shaft, take it apart, grease all the relevant bits, and put it all back on again (mind you it's a two-person job). The best lesson I've learned from this aspect of farm-girlhood is that smacking things with rubber mallets can solve a lot of problems, and that I'm bloody grateful I've got a university education and don't have to make a living from tinkering with tractor bits.
There are a few interesting aspects of actually mowing, though - you learn a heap about field vegetation in the process. I would normally approach these fields, with shoulder-high weeds, from the ground - and that means a lot of bush-bashing and swearing at nettle stings. From the tractor it's a whole new perspective, and you can quickly see how the lie of the land promotes growth of different types of weeds - and pretty soon by just looking at an overgrown field you can see where the dips and ruts are, the hills and the infertile soil, all by the different kinds of weeds growing in various patches. The smell of the grass as it gets mown is wonderful. And all the storks that follow behind the tractor as you mow. They follow behind in groups, snapping and pecking at grasshoppers and field mice that are exposed by the mower. One day Jeremy had eleven storks following him, while tonight a fox was also in the fray, getting his evening meal alongside the storks.
The EU wants us to get it all finished by 1 August. And then we start the other 40 hectares down the road (another property - called Plocenieki - also a family property we need to mow). So now you know why we've been AWOL lately - don't expect me to have anything else to write about for a while!

We drove out to the country on the weekend - a quick reconnaissance trip to grab some springtime loveliness - because dandelions are blooming all over Latvia this week - pieneņu laiks - which is always the most beautiful week of Latvian spring. Even though we've just spent almost two months soaking up Australia's eternal summer, over there the weather is so spectacular and relentless that it kind of becomes... mundane. Like a naturally beautiful person who looks good at any time of the day, and dressed in anything. One of those people who don't work at their beauty and just live with it. You get used to looking at them after a while. But Latvia in spring and summer is more intense. The beauty is more like a mousy girl getting a glamour makeover for the ball - she's spent all year looking ordinary, and now it's all on - solarium tan, new haircut and colour, slimming undergarments and a glamorous designer frock. You see the girl and are surprised that it's really her! She looks fantastic! I almost didn't recognise her! Its that quality of amazement that you get when you see Latvian countryside doing its thing. Surprise and delightfor its splendidness after the last bleak months.
We rolled up to Kugures on Saturday arvo and hopped out of the car, and all stood there for a good few minutes, dumbstruck by the total sensory immersing experience - the air was still and warm, and every breath you took was saturated in a sweet scent of honey. All around us the fields were golden from the millions of dandelions that had bloomed everywhere. Still and deserted, with a yellow carpet stretching on and on, both sides of us. The orchard and trees around the pond were blooming with cherry and apple and dogwood blossoms. The big oak tree in front of the house had the hint of bright leaves beginning to poke out, while the lush long grass beneath our feet had us ripping of our shoes in no time, the kids running through knee-deep flowers to look at the storks in the nest and check out how the cubby-house survived the winter.
In Stephen King's novel Lisey's Story, which I read last year and was creeped out by (in principle I don't read Stephen King 'cause he freaks me out, but sometimes there's nothing else to read) he describes a kind of parallel world where the main hero goes to when he is in psychologically dire straits - called Boo'ya Moon - a paradise which embodies the full ripeness of summer, where by day there are exotic perfumed, colourful flowers everywhere and there seems to always be a beautiful sunset or sunrise in the sky. Slightly deserted and with an edge of danger, though. King's description of this land is what came to my head over and over during the weekend playing outdoors at Kugures. (By night, mind you, Boo 'ya moon became a nightmare land complete with monsters and sinister noises, but my comparison stops way before sundown).
So the Tiss swung and swung on his new swing and I did't get a scrap of work done. Jem and Mikus dug up my garden and we planted some seeds for the summer vege patch (which will be very modest this year, we started a bit too late) and generally lazed about in the sun with yellow pollen-stained knees. Bliss!

Mikus had a fabulous costume party for his birthday... complete with green (chocolate) frog hunt in the local park and a rocket cake made by Oma. He (and we) had a great time, and with his rapidly developing capacity for speech, came upstairs in the evening after our last guests had left and said: "I've had such a lovely day!" So that's it - now he's three and the "terrible twos" are officially over. Yipee!

People in Latvia make pretty stereotypical assumptions about Australia. Most people assume the capital of Australia is Sydney, and pretty much everyone thinks that we have kangaroos jumping around in our back yards as a standard feature. When people ask me stupid questions about Oz, I usually go along with it. The girls in my singing group delight in my answers whenever there is a new girl joining our group who brings out the typical line of questioning: „Oh! You’re from Australia!! Wow! Did you have your own kangaroo??” Me: „Sure I did! It had a collar like a dog and we had to tie it up by the back fence so that it didn’t jump away! And koala bears sleeping in gum trees out the back...”

A few weekends ago we stayed for the weekend at the Grampians National Park (about 350 kms out of Melbourne), where this actually WAS the norm! For those of you who haven't been there, the landscape in the Grampians is pure exotic Aussie fare - I was just as amazed as the dopey European tourists. We would wake in the morning to cockatoos on the deck, and kangaroos grazing in the front yard. I wonder why we never made the trip out here while Jeremy and I were living in Melbourne. Although everything was parched and brown, the grass trees, huge mountainous rock formations and spectacular views over valleys and hillsides made for an amazing Aussie tourist experience. Bushfires are a constant threat here (a big one ripped through the area around two years ago) and the terrain seems so wild that there are times when you wonder how wise those ‘whiteys’ are, making homes in the area and imaging that they can tame a bit of that rugged wilderness.

While there – with Jeremy’s parents and brother Jamin, wife Julie and their son Luka – we celebrated my birthday, a classic meal at the Grampians hotel (love those pub meals that spill over the sides of the plate) and an ice cream cake for afters. Just perfect – especially the three eager young guys who helped me blow out the candles.

In Australia the sky is bigger. You are so aware of it. When you go outside at night your gaze is inevitably drawn upwards to the millions of sparkling diamonds - the crickets singing all around and that huge, expansive sky above.
The place I notice the sky the most is at Point Arkwright in Coolum. We've been coming here for ever, and a few weeks ago we had the delight of introducing the boys to our special spot. A week spent under that sky with good friends - eating fish and chips on the beach, poking around rock pools and seeing the tide come in.
At the Point the sea is wild, angry. The surfer boys stand on the dunes in the morning watching the swell. The waves surprise you with their ferocity and try to dump you in the shallows, the water foaming and bubbling effervescent, washing smooth the sand and bringing up broken shells and bits of driftwood.
I know a secret place amongst the rock pools where all the hermit crabs live. They're always there in multitudes, if you go at the right time when the tide is low. Around the back of a huge rock are some sheltered pools where they congregate - in stripey and patterned and conical shells. The boys were amazed to hold the shells in their hands and then feel the tickle of little claws, nipping and scrabbling to get back into the water.
At lunch time we would retreat to our shaded shack made of weatherboard and tin, in a little hollow just behind the dunes, with rainbow lorikeets screeching in the trees around. We walked back to the beach in bare feet over the gravel when it got cooler, to watch the sunsets and say goodnight to the foaming, pounding ocean and that incredible sky.