Indian Summer without the Indians

Photo: Shirley in “Yavlinsky for President” t-shirt, holding squash from the dacha

Have you ever packed for a trip and found out later that everything you had was wrong, wrong, wrong? That’s pretty much been my experience this time. I worried about keeping warm in the chilly days of fall. But the weather has been balmy. It’s “babye leto” or “peasant-woman summer.” You can think of it as Indian Summer Without the Indians.

My last post was a write up done on October 15, 1999. It’s now humiliatingly obvious that I don’t learn very well from experience. I’ve been through “babye leto” before – quite a few times, actually.

It isn’t just warm, it’s hot. Oh, outside it’s in the 60’s, but inside the temperature is in the 80’s. We have no control over the heating provided by the radiators, and the central heating for the city goes on and stays on after there have been three days in a row below 12C, or about 55F. And that's when "babye leto" begins.

We can cool the place down by opening all the windows, and in self defense that’s what we have to do. Still, it’s been too stifling to wear the turtleneck sweaters and such that I packed.

Before your imagination goes too far in guessing what I might be doing, let me call your attention to the photo at the top of this blog. I found a lightweight t-shirt to wear, which happens to be printed with the slogan “Yavlinsky for President.” It’s from the 1996 election. Grigory Yavlinsky is still running for president, gearing up now for the 2008 campaign. He’s regarded as a democrat, and one that has given “democrats” a bad name in Russia. He could have become one of the founding fathers of Russian democracy, but the founding of democracy in Russia will now be some time in the future. Yavlinsky would rather go down to defeat than bend his principles, but his main principle seems to be It’s All About Me. He will form alliances with anyone who will do things exactly his way. There aren’t many people in that category.

In the photo you see me holding a couple of the squash grown this summer at our country dacha. Plant a zucchini in the ground, give it 20 hours of sunlight a day, sit back and watch it grow. With the quantity of squash that we have, I have an obligation to fix a dish of it every day. I’m happier with our carrots, which have a sweetness that comes from harvesting after the first frost. These garden carrots are as unlike grocery store carrots as garden tomatoes are to the commercial kind. After I get back to the U.S. I’ll boycott grocery store carrots for a while, until the memory fades of what real carrots taste like.

We also have bounteous supplies of berries. My favorite is “brusnika,” a cranberry-red berry the size of a small bubble. My guess is that 30 – 50 of them would fit on a spoon. They don’t need to be cooked, just sprinkled with some sugar.

In spite of the heat, I’m enjoying being in Russia.