September's end

The last days of September were a busy time in Viștea de jos.
We started off with a couple of day trips to Brașov and the ASTRA village museum near Sibiu.
The ASTRA museum is an open air museum which showcases traditional Romanian houses, churches, workshops, and other buildings from many of the regions in the country. It's huge—240 acres with 400 structures—and you could easily spend a full day there but since (as usual) I didn't do extensive research before going, we just stayed for a couple of hours. However, even with a relatively short visit, you can manage a decent tour and still get back home in time for someone's two o'clock nap. That's what I call a successful day.

What with day trips and other activities, we've not been doing much in the way of yard maintenance and it really shows— the weeds have gotten totally out of hand. Fortunately warm autumn afternoons are the perfect time to tackle gardening tasks so we started with the most pressing and formidable—the creek bed. It was a little daunting but with four of us, we made great progress. Pulling weeds isn't very glamourous but the end result is so satisfying.

Although the weather was mostly sunny, we had one cold, cloudy day which gave Mihai an opportunity to fulfill his promise to Domenico to make kouign amann (pronounced something like queen-ee-mahn). For such an exotic name you'd expect it to be more than just flour, salt, sugar, and butter but that's all it is. If you're interested in trying one for yourself and you're not near Viștea de jos, you can go to Companion Bakery in Santa Cruz and buy one although once you do, you'll be hooked. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Toward the end of the week we got an overnight visit from Marius. He's in Romania getting some important business taken care of, the end goal of which is to get the Gogosanus back to the home country. We're very excited at the progress he's making.
Gabi and Carmen drove by to pick him up and we all enjoyed a late afternoon lunch and visit.

I hope that your September closed with joy and included time spent with loved ones. If you happen to stumble upon a warm afternoon, I hope you take a moment to savor the sunshine before autumn fully takes hold.
Thank you for reading.
Be well.