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Janu Nakts (23rd - 24th June) is Latvia's most widely celebrated festival and, despite ancient attempts to Christianise it by renaming and moving it to St. John the Baptist's Eve, is still a celebration of the summer solstice. In the old Baltic Religion of Latvia and Lithuania, the shortest night of the year was the night when evil spirits and demons were abroad trying to overpower the sun goddess, Saule.
We spent a wonderful Jani with a group of friends in a house by the sea. Good friends, barbecued food and plenty of wine were the fuel for our night, along with some reflection on the traditions that gave rise to this festivity. We spent our time either watching daylight fade over the beach or keeping the fire burning and the surroundings well lit to keep evil spirits at bay.

In the Baltic tradition, fires are lit and kept burning all night to send the spirits back to their own realm, and houses, cars, animals and people are bedecked with wreaths made of the leaves of 'good' trees (oak, silver birch or rowan) for protection. A fire lit in a basket and hoisted on a pole symbolizes Saule dancing on the hilltops and everyone must stay awake all night.
However a surfeit of wine, and the knowledge that Oliver was going to get up at 6:30 whatever we did, encouraged us to go to bed before sunrise, despite Latvian folk songs threatening that those who sleep on Jani night will stay unmarried and find their fields of grain flattened. As we are already married and are growing no grain we felt we could tempt fate a little. And the evil spirits? There were plenty of more hardy people to keep the fire fed.

As of yesterday, I was more or less on holiday. Apart from a few loose ends to tie up, I can look forward to six weeks free of any children other than my own, and I have no one but myself to blame for any problems they cause me. There is a list of things that I want to achieve at Kazaki - not a long list, but including some fairly major items. So yesterday I headed up there for a few hours to water the plants and get started, before heading back to Riga for a summer event in the evening. But it was a beautiful sunny day, and the first day of the holidays. I set the water pump and sprinkler to work, made a cup of tea and sat in the sunshine with my book, enjoying the light breeze that was keeping the mozzies away. Apart from periodic spasms to move the sprinkler or make more tea, I didn't move for four hours. Birds singing, the light rustle of water nourishing the vegetables, trees swaying above my head and perfect peace. What better way to start the holidays?

Ten days of temperatures in the twenties and plenty of sun has finally kick started our vegetables. Most relieved of all are the herbs - especially basil and rosemary, which had been in a state of suspension, not really growing, although not unhealthy either. It has also brought the insects to life and, apart from the irritation of mosquitoes, has enlivened something that really likes basil, and leaves neat little rounded holes in the leaves. Not having any idea who the culprit is, we were mystified about possible solutions. So we went and asked.
Our local organic shop is run by a farmer and his wife, and we turned to them for advice. Apparently, we probably have flea beetles, and she recommended two organic solutions. The first was to go into a coniferous forest, find a stand of ledum palustre (wild rosemary?), which will be close to blueberries, make a solution from it (sorry, I am a bit vague on the details) and spray. The other option is to spray with water and sprinkle with fine wood ash.
No prizes for guessing which one we chose. Apart from the fact that we have no coniferous forest close by, neither of us is likely to recognise the herb (vaivarins in Latvian), unless it is the only one around and we took some to Riga to check. The ash treatment is simple, and we hope will be reasonably effective.

Cutting brushwood into smaller lengths with a bow saw, using your knee as a rest for the wood. What is the inevitable result? Blood, of course. Having cut a not-very-neat triangular flap off the top of my thumb, I dissolved into worry. Not about the cut, which was obviously not too bad, but whether I dared risk a provincial Latvian hospital, or needed to head back to Riga and cut our weekend short. I needn't have worried. Our local hospital was modernised recently, and is considerably nicer than any I have visited in Riga. And every cloud has a silver lining - my inability to work the lawn mower or grip any tools left me free to deal with the student reports that I was supposed to be spending time on last weekend.