Second dacha week

I quickly posted photos, but I never did say much about our second dacha week. (Actually, I have more photos to add, but I don't have them with me right now, so I'll do it later.) Now that we're almost up to the third week, I'll tell you a little. Some highlights of the past week were that Jaan's caterpillar hatched! We saw a pheasant on the hill right above our dacha, and while we were out walking, I almost stepped on a hedgehog. I was holding Asya then, and after that experience, she kept pointing everywhere in the woods, saying "Yizha? Yizha?" (That's how she says hedgehog.) Will got our shower set up, and I'm really enjoying having that. He worked all day Wednesday to get it ready, since the water is supposed to come on Wednesday evening. It didn't ever come on that night, but we got it filled up on Friday. It's cold, but it sure is nice and refreshing!  Also, we celebrated Ascension.

The biggest treat of the week was that the Sullivans arrived late Thursday night! Saturday they came out to see our dacha, and they cleared our "weed patch" for us, all in one day of hard work. We have a separate garden patch. If you remember in one of the older photos I posted, there's a tunnel under old railroad tracks visible in the background. Our garden is on the other side of that. It was covered in weeds, higher than my head. We had pretty much given up on doing anything with it this year. Now I can plant pumpkins and watermelons and whatever else I want to over there! I just need to get moving on that. . . .

Oh, while they were clearing out the weeds, the Sullivans and Jaan found a huge snake skin! They also discovered new caterpillars that we're very excited about, but I'll write more on that later.