the very long easter weekend

i've been very busy these days and then, in the middle of it, cocooned in the village for 4 whole days with nothing to do, no computer no phone signal, then back to deadline again. so the whole easter weekend feels a bit weird and far away now.
the weather is going so fast! lilacs have bloomed and are almost gone by now, within one week or so. chestnuts too, though i've barely seen any.
time is going so fast! this week it's 10 years since i moved into my apartment in cluj - i remember the lilacs back then, and the busyness back then. this is a busy time of year, always, apparently.

but now back to pictures of serenity:

a metaphor for my long weekend in the village!

the grass in the village grows amazingly fast. my father had to cut all the grass in the garden/yard etc. already!
the problem is that there's already barely any water in the stream. and i would have thought there was an upside to whole rainy time of march +april!

my father carries water for mum's flowers

these swallows made a nest in my aunt's stable

we don't have lots of animals around our house, for obvious reasons, so for animal sightings i have to go to my aunt's. there's cattle there, and new chicken and everything else (cats).
(again, i hope this mini/video gets embedded. i can totally see it on my computer and i have done this before and sometimes it's worked, sometimes not. i have no extra clue how to do it, come see it on my laptop if you can't help, thx.)

(e.t.a. no luck - sadface)

the path to my aunt's place

apparently, this is the only picture i've got lilacs in. my favourite flower, for shame!

there are 19 chicken to this mother hen, nobody has ever managed to catch them all together in a picture

in the meantime, back at our house, mum was airing the bedspreads and carpets and pillowcases and everything else. she found this pillowcase i'd never seen before, embroidered by my grandma:

it says: "sleep with me in mind/so that you dream of me" - it's from a romanian literary poem, rather than a bible verse or something. the twist my grandma used to put on common things.

ok, on to serious business! my aunt baking for easter, for realz, i.e. in the old style bread oven. this is bread and cake for 3 families, although we didn't ask for it, we received it just by virtue of existing. see how easy things come.

bread buns

walnutty cakes

this is the emblematic picture of my aunt working the bread oven, which will have to satisfy you in case the video doesn't play (e.t.a. : yep!)

and the cakes are beginning to take shape and color

the most important thing to do on easter is egg-painting. back in the day we used to do it the traditional way (with natural dyeing, i.e. onion peel etc. and natural patterns, i.e. tying the eggs in a pair of tights, with leaves attached to them, and just boiling them like that in the dye). now things are easier: artificial dye! stickers!

stage one: testing the color

stage two: picking the less hideous stickers out of the bunch

stage three: display, my mum's style.

not to forget: stage four in the egg saga is where you and another person knock your eggs together, and the one that doesn't break "wins". in my case a win is super-irrelevant because i never eat the boiled eggs. my parents love to regale me with stories about their childhood, when the winning egg captured the loser/broken eggs, which was the whole point of the competition: FOOD!!! my father has apparently been known to eat 20 eggs on an easter day. 

an easter tradition i love is when you have to wash your face on easter morning: in the washing water you put a painted egg, a coin and a nettle, so you get to be as beautiful as an egg, as loved as money and as tough as a nettle.

i honestly do this every year - and still no toughness...

the rest of the holiday was pretty much the usual: church service from 2 to 5 a.m. (i managed to stay awake by sniggering with my womenfolk, on the womenfolk side; also, by counting the people in church - about 55 all in all) - then eating, sleeping, a bit of sunbathing (it was hot, but sometimes cloudy), listening to our resident nightingale singing.
also, my dad HAD TO go looking for some mushrooms.

he really picked them in the hat, it's not just photo shoot display

we also took a walk in the village, which is always an occasion for me to lament the state of the abandoned houses.

and my dad put up some props for the future/potential vine:

HA! and now we come to my really-favourite part of the weekend. the real "easter eggs", as it were:
on friday night my mum discovered this nest in a bush, very close to our house and very low , close to the ground. so perfect:

day 1 (evening)

then she visited the nest again next morning, and scared the bird in the process. the bird had been productive:

day 2 (morning-ish)

after that, we were sort of watching the nest all the time, so obviously this happened:

day 3 (noon-ish = when i woke up after church service night)

sorry, little bird, for disrupting your home, but i'm glad you kept returning.
also, i missed seeing a hedgehog by our house one night, because i was paying visits to humans.
ok that's it.
love,
c