dachas, continued

Every time I upload more photos off my camera I am faced with the piles and piles of others already languishing on the computer that I still have hardly had a moment to look at, let alone post... These are from about a month ago, in mid-May, when there was still ice on some of the lakes near town, and leaves had not yet emerged... Evenings still frosted the bleached grasses, the skeletons of old rosebushes, pale tattered pods and birch tissues hanging quietly amongst the birdsong.

I went with my friend to visit a friend of hers who is an ethnopedagogical researcher, and we all went to see her dacha she was tidying up in anticipation of full-time summer living. She leant me some books from her generous, creaky bookshelves sagging the floor of the cabin, and we had some snacks in her gazebo (in Russian, besedka -- from the word for 'conversation') and picked the straw-flowers out of window-baskets and her brother and son watered some of the winter-parched bushes, dug the ground for cucumbers.
The pond was beginning to melt, but no one was waiting for the ducks by the duck-hunter's shelter; radiation from Japan had scared many locals about the possible contamination of water-birds (that's where many Yakutian ducks spend the winter...). Smoke hung gently over the thawing lake, a still, mirrored drift. My friend and I walked around the edge, through the tufts and sedge-grasses, listening to the sounds of distant radio crackles, a baby crying, dog chorus, emerging summer ghosts.

Dacha gardens usually include cucumbers and tomatoes, cabbages and carrots, and potatoes; kabachky (summer squashes) and peppers are sometimes included, along with onions, and garlic. Flowers are usually pretty hardy varieties, perennials... the growing season is so short here, even with the long polar daylights and continental warmth, that it is often sad to wait for delicate little petunias and violas to bloom only to be killed in early August frosts.

So many birds were already singing, even in the chilly night, searching for nest building materials and gossiping about mating season, likely, and the distant forest fires... That bird is a sort of sandpiper (tuluk? in Sakha, kulik in Russian).

Sakha people spend very little time inside in summer, as I noted before, because it's simply so short. If you can do something outside if at all possible, you do it, either at the dacha, or on your apartment balcony in the city, despite the dust and heat. Eating outside is savoured, with the help of nice mosquito-deterring candles, like this one here, in the shape of Sakha goddess Aan-Alakhchyn (spirit of the earth and fertility). Spaces where families live, work, and relax are often marked with a rope called salama, decorated with birchbark ornaments, tufts of hair, brightly coloured cloths and small baskets that can hold alaadjy (little pancakes) as offerings to local spirits and also invoke the protection of the gods in the Upper World (they travel down from the upper skies by means of these twisted horsehair ribbons). The placing of a new salama was always the first thing done in summer when a family moved to the sailyk or summer-place, and still seems to be an important part of consecrating a house, a classroom, a barn, or an event location each summer when the year begins.