Chiatura, Georgia

Perseverence: plant in concrete sidewalk

2 half-ruined Christian memorabilia spots

Kakheti,Georgia

Hazelnuts just fallen

Geese flashing by - can't even see their feet!

Vines facing Daghestan

Kakheti, Georgia

Nervous brood hen in a bucket

The perfect walnut

Still seeking the perfect bunch of grapes

Nr Chiatura, Georgia

Lali extracting honey in a hand-turned spinner

Lali having her ear pulled by her uncle

A kitten finds a temporary home between my feet

Kakheti, Georgia

Guinea-fowl on the baking-shed roof while Lali's mom makes bread...

... and taking off

Kakheti, Georgia

Guniea-fowl and tone (clay bread oven!)

Making twisted rope from thinner rope, for cows

Bread in the clay oven, stuck by itself to the oven's vertical walls to bake in a few minutes - mmm!

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Note, the "y" at the end is absent as it wouldn't fit in Twitter...

Kakheti, Georgia

More Guinea-fowl streaking by, and grapes remaining mercifully still

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Kakheti, Georgia

Spiderweb catching the sun, refracting it into colours

Grape leaf & tendril

VERY hot peppers

Kakheti, Georgia

Welcome to the blog's 3 newest visitor countries, making a total of 115: Rwanda, Lebanon and Iceland!

Experiments with panning the camera in the direction of travel of a moving subject - in this case, Gunea-fowl (top) and geese. The idea is to blur the background and some of the subject, but also - when it works - to have some of the subject be frozen by its motion being in the same direction & at the same speed as that of the camera

Kakheti, Georgia

Grapes up close, nearly ready for the rtveli (harvest festival)

Tamaz at the tone (pronounce that e as if it were accented, not silent), classic cylindrical clay bread oven; baked bread in the background at centre

Grape leaf in the sun

Kakheti, Georgia

Oh, the old pond and fishing hole... hot summer holidays... memories of precious youth, Tom Sawyer and Ray Bradbury

Alaverdi & Gremi, Kakheti, Georgia

Georgia's tallest church until the new Tsminda Sameba (Holy Trinity) Cathedral was built in Tbilisi; and another famous old church of unique character, both not too far from Lali's parents' village

Lali Lali, Wheat & Barley, How Does Your (Parents') Garden Grow?

Well, there are more than 50 things grown on their patch of a few hectares of eastern Georgia:

grapes (biggest crop), tomatoes, cucumbers, figs, walnuts, hazelnuts, onions, nectarines, coriander, bell peppers, hot peppers, corn, potatoes, cabbage, tarragon, basil, flat parsley, dill, watermelons, honeydew melons, various peaches, apples, various cherries, sweet purple plums, sour tqemali yellow plums, pears, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, carrots, beets, garlic, wheat, grass for hay, aubergines, quinces, zucchini, pumpkins, lettuce, mustard greens, leeks, mint, boxwood, bay leaves, persimmons, apricot, mulberries, sunflowers, beans, fennel, shallots, tobacco, and several things I know only in Georgian: shindi, qurma, kotskuri, kruzhuna, alucha, unabi, chanchuri and konduri. Whew, a lot of work!

More: They make or have made their own: cheese, yoghurt, bread, wine, arak, jams, compotes, liquers, churchkhela (walnut strings dipped in thickened grape paste), sour plum sauce (tqemali), tomato sauce, pickles, hot sauce, sour cream, butter, flour, sunflower oil and vinegar!

They also raise or have raised: cows, chickens, pigs, rabbits, guinea fowl, ducks, geese, bees...

Al in all, just a typical busy Georgian country home.

Akhaltsikhe, Georgia

Queen Tamar... such a good monarch that they call her King out of reverence. David the Builder's granddaughter, reigning in the Middle Ages. A new sculpture in the city called Newfort.

Chiatura Monastery, Georgia

Sadly, we arrived too early to get in, and had to return to Jvari Etseri a few hours later by public transport. A beautifully placed monastery in this canyon city.

Jvari Etseri, nr Chiatura, Georgia

Lali's uncle in his grain mill

Sunday drive

She & I under a grapevine ceiling

Chiatura & Jvari Etseri, Georgia

Lenin & Stalin from pebbles, Chiatura

Local children in an old car, Jvari Etseri

Lali picking tea (she knows so much about village life!), Jvari Etseri

Jvari Etseri, nr Chiatura, Georgia

I'm a little out of order again. These photos are from before our trip to Abastumani. Oh well.

Here our friend is excavating his marani, or wine store - a collection of huge clay vessels sunk into the ground and stoppered with earth. There's a layer on the top of the wine which must be removed using handy fig leaves. Then the wine is ready to decant - delicious!