Friday night was Musician’s Night. This is something like a youth group meeting with mostly worship and a bit of sharing/challenge. It’s awesome because so many young people come, and are in leadership of it. The group that played last night (and most often does), was S.O.S. The leader, Arta is 24. Most of the rest of the band is still in high school. I think that’s awesome.

It was a fun night. Usually Chris and I are, not only the oldest people there but the only non-Latvians, as well. This night was no different. The pleasant surprise was when Inese and Anda showed up. Anda is my Latvian teacher and fellow English teacher that the high school. We’ve been becoming better and better friends, and I love hanging out with her. Inese is the worship leader at the Talsi Christian Fellowship Church. We’ve been hanging out with her more lately, as she and Chris are talking about a number of music ideas. Both of these women are just shy of 30, married and have 1 child each. It was SO cool for me to stand there a talk with both of them! I love hanging out with the youth but sometimes it’s nice to hang out with people closer to your own age. Chris took a picture of the three of us and I was shocked when I looked at it, and saw my Latvian blood coming out. :)

The night was also special because it was Arta’s last night for a while. She left today for Albania to start her DTS (Discipleship Training School). She’s so excited and we’re thrilled for her, even though we’ll miss her.

It’s taken some time to get back in the swing of things and get settled back into life here, but it’s happening, albeit slowly. But, we’re still happy to be back and love living in Latvia.

Don’t worry, I don’t intend on turning this into a gardening blog, but it’s just so exciting to me right now. It’s amazing to me how a little seed, under the right conditions, can become a huge plant and bring forth so much food!

I’ve transplanted my radishes and green beans, and some of my cucumbers. In 2 days on of the beans has totally come out and even has leaves… so quickly and so big. I’m just amazed. So, there’s some pics here if you’re curious to see my gardening progress. Yes, I know, I’m quite a green thumb nerd.

Yes, it’s gardening time again. I figured since I should be in country this summer (or at least for the majority of it… you never know what could happen), I’d try it again this year.

I container garden, since I live in an apartment and have no yard. :) I got my tomatoes started a while ago, but “thanks” to Chris’ cat, I had to start them over. Yes, Chris’ cat. MY cat would never eat my tomato sprouts, so she is now Chris’ cat whenever we talk about the tomato incident.

So, I started again. I also found a site that showed how you can start your bean-type seeds in a ziplock bag in the window. So, I now have 3 bags of seeds, 1 each for green beans, radishes and cucumbers. I realize that the cucumbers probably won’t work like this, but I tried the “normal” way and that didn’t work for me either, so, I thought I’d try it anyhow. Chris says I have to wait a full 3 days before I can open the bags and look at them, which is in about 5 hours. :) Yes, I’m a little excited. Just ask my friend, Sher, whom I gardening “with” via the internet.

I also tried to start my tomatoes again, but I had to figure out a way to keep my, I mean, Chris’ cat out of my plants. I read about how you can use a 2L pop bottle as a sort of “green house” for your seedlings. So, I had Chris cut 3 bottles apart for me. It worked. Not only did the cat stay out of them, but they sprouted and are growing nicely in their little homes. We were also given some “cat grass” to grow… not quite catnip, but more for their digestive system, I suppose. That’s growing there, too. Hopefully this will be a deterrent for the cat as well.

In anticipation of my radishes sprouting today, I dug out one of the flower boxes I’m going to plant them in, found my potting soil outside and filled it up to warm it in the house. It’s still about 45″ outside, so these will be living in my living room on the window sill, if I can keep Chris’ cat out of them. Grr.

So, all in all, I plan to grow tomatoes (which I have done, successfully in the past on my balcony), green beans, radishes & cucumbers. Hopefully we’ll have a nice harvest over the next number of months.