Scent of lilacs

My kids used to love puzzles - especially the ones where you had to find what was different in two seemingly the same pictures. I wonder if it would work to do a reverse puzzle of some sort - one where you find the similarities?

What made me muse about this was seeing the poppies resurface in my yard and I thought about the poppies over in Ukraine. There are so many similarities between 1930s USSR and 2009 Canada. Poppies for one. Lilacs, too. Irises. Sweet-smelling apple blossoms. Proud, tenacious yellow dandelions. 

I think my grandparents would have liked it over here. Many did leave the USSR. But after 1928, that opportunity for spring in a new country faded.

June 4th, 1937. Eduard Ristau is arrested at #66 Andriivska Street. His charge? National fascist work and propaganda against the Soviet government. I visited the place where the house once stood. Lilacs were blooming like crazy - even in 1937 - the year of the Great Terror - the scent of lilacs was in the air.