Summer Time

It's kind of difficult to avoid patriotism in a country as small as Estonia. With less than a million Estonians, I can't help but feel that I make up a noticable part of our population. That affects the choices I make in life. If I were to move abroad then Estonian population would significantly decrease... And if I would decide to have more than 2 children, I would significantly help with Estonian population problem. Every person counts. I do my part! I am needed here!!! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself when the long-awaited summer turns out to be 10-15 degrees of cold rainy weather.

Okay, I can't leave my tiny country, but I wonder - If Estonia ever conquered a warm tropic island would I pack my bags and go live there?... Mhhh... hehe... probably yes.


I haven't been outside as much as I'd like. Actually it's more accurate to say I have consistently decided that I wouldn't like to go outside with a weather like this. It doesn't feel like summer at all! You know when I first felt like it was summer? It was when I went to the fresh produce market and saw that they sell freshly soured cucumbers, strawberries and sweet cherries. And the strawberries aren't even from Estonia because it's too cold here for strawberries this year! And I'm pretty sure it's always been too cold to grow sweet cherries. Because you see, fruits and berries are sweet because of sugar and plants need SUNLIGHT to make it. And since apparently we have no sunlight we can't grow sweet things.

Well okay, some plums or apples or pears are kinda sweet, but not even close to a ripe pinapple. Even most of the common berries - e.g. red currants - are really sour! Here people either have to learn to like sour stuff or they have to eat imported fruits and berries. Strawberries from Lithuania were quite good.

When I was in USA I had a conversation about Christmas time and I said that it's orange and tangerine season in Estonia so Christmas time always associates with gingerbread cookies, mulled wine and tangerines. It's part of Christmas tradition to eat lots of tangerines. The person I was talking with was amazed, "you grow oranges and tangerines in Estonia? ". And then I realized it can be horribly misunderstood - "No, I meant to say it's tangerine season in whereever they import tangerines from.".

But that's so typical. For me the end of summer is watermelon season, even though I never heard of anyone growing a watermelon in Estonia even in their greenhouse. Some other things - like bananas - are consistently tasty and sweet no matter what season we have here. And some things - like avocados - are never ripe and tasty. I actually thought avocados are all green all the time until I went to San Diego and a friend picked out a brown/black avocado in the store and said "this one is good and ripe.".

...but among the extremely rare sweet produce that we can grow in Estonia, strawberries are definitely the tastiest. The best part of summer used to be picking strawberries, making sure there are no snails on them and then eating them right there and then. Ah summertime. If I treat strawberries as a sign of summer then I can honestly say there is no summer and it's already the middle of June. Perhaps there is no summer this year.

Well, everything has a brighter side to it: at least I don't have to worry about post-delivery beach season!!! (BTW, "Brighter side" suddenly sounds like a deliberate phun when I look out the window at our summer weather).


And the baby... Well she has a stuffy nose from this wonderful sunny summer time...