Dacha
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2006
1
12
32
Trip End
Jun 14, 2007
Almaty,
Kazakhstan
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Zhanara has gone to the dentist.
I'm in bed listening to to Jobim's "Um Rancho Nas Nuvens", "Nuvens Douradas", and "Aguas De Marco" and then finishing the blog with Oscar Peterson's "I've Never Left Your Arms" and "Autumn In New York".
Yesterday we went with some of our friends Saule,Kyuanish and their daughter to their dacha(country home) to collect apples and pears.
The drive took us about an hour.
country living
We had to head past the Almatenski suburbs, and head past one of the small neighboring towns. The drive lead us into the foothills of the Tien Shian Mountains. Here, we drove up a curvy dirt road past little houses on the side of the hill that reminded me of Switzerland when I rode the T.G.V. to Milan. This was a pretty gorgeous road. Fall is in the air here. But, the remains of summer still seem to hold on. You could smell the apples as we drove around 2 kilometers up the road to the dacha. When we arrived at the dacha, we sat down and drank 'Soviet Champagne' out of tea cups and ate sandwiches. As we ate our lunch we could hear the fruit dropping all over the place. There are so many different varieties of apple you can't keep up with their names. Some of these are bigger than the biggest grapefruit in California! The famous Aport apple of Almaty is the biggest and best tasting. On the flip side I've even seen apples the size of blueberries!
By the end of our day, our harvest yielded hundreds of pears and apples.
This was one of the most picture perfect days. The sun was still warm, yet the temperature became significantly cooler by the end of the day. A reminder, that the season is changing and summer is over.
Comments
Apples!
Finally, an apple supply that can keep up with Zhanara's appitite for apples! Was her apple picking strategy, 'one for the basket, one for me?' =) Thanks for the updates, Daniel. I wish you both the very best. Lots of love. Serena
hey!
Can't say I'll keep responding. Too lazy. But, its nice to get these letters from you... everythings slowing down over here...Hitler's still in power, and congress is shreding our constitutional rights....
Omar