This year, my wife’s return to our mountain home in Svaneti was at least several weeks later than usual. I had come up several times without her, to host and show around various special-interest groups, mostly self-catering. Snow met us in late April (20 cm and -7 degrees C!) And again in late May (more of a long set of flurries, quickly melting, but still). The cold and wet prevented me from even starting on digging up the garden, weed-whacking the lengthening grass on the property, or other typical spring activities.
Then suddenly it dried up and warmed up dramatically, a week after we had come up together for the summer. Now, at last, was the time to get to work outside, before the somewhat clayey ground hardened from drying out as it usually does. Both the garden-digging and any fence-post resetting must be done now, while things are still soft enough for spade and hole-spike. Fortunately, some old and new friends helped us with the spade work, while I also got onto the weed-whacking of the already over-long grass.
Many other chores as we re-open for the summer tourist season, although bookings are down. Fears from seeing Georgia sandwiched between Russia-Ukraine and USA/Israel-Middle East? Likely. Anyway: reconnect the water fully, motor and all. Lights outside. Foozeball table outside. Check and clean all rooms and bathrooms. Write all bookings in the calendar.
Already, in early June, the rest of our property is ripe for its first hay-scything, now more commonly done by a gasoline-powered machine than by an actual scythe. I haven’t got the first, and am rubbish on the second, so I get neighbor men to do this, and to take the hay for their bovines at a discount too (we don’t have livestock anymore).
Clear the grass from around our newest seedling, a tiny walnut just barely getting through the winters alive at the moment. Now it needs some sun and less competition from the voracious hay and weeds around it.
Check all the fences for solidity… bovines and porcines will “test to destruction” all parts of it, and we haven’t yet had a year with zero break-ins, despite best efforts! But the miscreants always give themselves away with a moo or grunt, and we chase them out immediately. I am not at all averse, in my anger, to using a stick on their backs to try to enforce the idea that entry here will be painful, although rarely does a blow land, I must admit. They can move at speed when chased. Their entry and subsequent omni-vegetarian eating are a mess, and they won’t be allowed to visit a second longer than we can give them.
Dogs can’t be kept out, entering either simply by jumping the fence at various points or by nosing open the main gate, a skill that thankfully the ruminants can’t seem to learn. Canines I handle with more care, always with a stick, though not to attack with, just to threaten as I demand in a menacing voice, “Shishtaaa!” Which they seem to understand, as all local people know it. We don’t have a dog ourselves, deeming it more a nuisance than a necessity: last year’s quickly solved shop break-in demonstrated to one and all that our eight house-encircling video cameras do, indeed, work perfectly. Know it and be warned.
Thus we prepare for those who book in advance and, yes, even those who show up with no advance notice at all to try their luck. Ready, with a smile, for all.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
