Georgians believe that Georgia is the original Garden of Eden. Nature seems to make it so here. Things grow jurassic. Zinnias as tall as me and cabbages like swimming pools. Trees heavy with fruit sagging their branches support the men who climb them for a daily harvest. All organic. All free for the taking.
The yard full of children's play things from years past and thrown away from other cultures, all put to new use in the yard of a house in the village. A house likely the same as houses built centures ago. A lifestyle much the same as lifestyles lived centuries ago. Kitchen outside. Oven even further away. Indoors for resting only. Everything else in the fresh air.
Yesterday, the village girls came to play, as they've done every day since they discovered Sophie. For playthings, old paintbrushes and some chalk with water on the sidewalk entertain for hours on end. I swung in the hammock with Luca looking up through the quince and aleucha at the blue blue sky as the girls busied themselves with play all around us.
Irina and I then decided to go for a stroll up the hill. We went a little way and found a posse of girls at our heels, picking wildflowers to make boquets for Sophie and me. Each one a little bigger and more elaborate. Sophie cried when I told them such a thing was not allowed in Minnesota. Maybe we'll stop on the side of the road there someday to pick wildflowers anyway.
I heard mothers calling their daughters around 8:00 when the cows began to make their way through the village to their own houses. All were getting ready to tuck in for the night. The girls will ceratinly come again tomorrow.
