Weekend purchase

I am so excited! I have flowers on my balcony this year!

ooh! pretties!

They go by many names. Cape Marigold. African Daisy. Rain Daisy. Spaanse Margriet. I just call them pretty!

two of these in the pot

These have white petals that are a really dark purple in the center. When the flowers are just opening (like the one to the left), the petals seem edged in silver. Just gorgeous!

one of these in the pot

This one starts off white, and then gets a purply blush to them. LOVEly!

I am loving my flowers. I keep peeking out the window through the closed blind to see them. Make sure they're ok. Ha ha! And they were so inexpensive that if my black thumbs happen to not do their best with them, then I haven't wasted much of anything. The care instructions on the pot said they'd do well in sun and also part shade, so I'm hoping they'll be okay on the balcony. I don't consider it to be "full sun" there, because it's covered, but it does get sun. There's a glass wall (a security wall, really, because we're on the ground floor), and when the sun is shining on that all day long, it gets quite hot there. Hopefully they'll be alright. I'll have to water them often, I'm sure, but I can do that!

Wish me luck!

Have a great day!!

xxx

Germany Trip: Part 2

Hello again! How have you all been doing? I hope everyone is well! We're good here. I'm enjoying another one of MY Days. Yesterday, May 13th, was a holiday here for most folks. It's called Hemelvaart here, and in English it's Ascension. And it's a national holiday here. Go figure! Since it's always on a Thursday, we (well, some of us) get the Friday after it off too. That sounds okay to me!

I've been putzing around, doing a little cleaning, a little hooking (crochet, folks! Crochet!!!),  and a little websurfing. I'm looking for yarns for my Next Big Project. I can't find exactly what I'm looking for but I'm sure whatever I do find will work well enough. All in all I'm just enjoying my MY Day. This might be the last one for a while. Work has approved me to do some more hours. Yippee! I was enjoying my free time, but I can't do that forever, right? Reality has to come around sooner or later.

Hmm...I haven't done that second post of our Germany trip pictures, have I? Well, goodness, I'm a slacker. Let's get that taken care of right now, shall we?

On the last day of our trip, we wanted to do something a little lighter than what we had done the previous days (visiting concentration camps). So we went to visit the town of Weimer. Here are some facts about the town:

• It's a very old town. Oldest records date back to 899.
• It was the capital of Germany before WWII.
• Weimer (along with Dessau) was the center of the Bauhaus movement

We walked through the city center, mainly. We saw the palace of Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. 

palace gates

Take note of the floor under the arch...

it's wood!

Bet you never woulda guessed that, huh? Me neither! From a distance, it looks like normal bricks, but up close, you can see the growth rings. I have no idea why anyone would use wood there. Can anyone enlighten me?

Behind the palace was a bridge over a little river.

you can see the palace on the left

At the end of the bridge were stairs leading down to the path beside the river. But under the bridge, in the 3rd and last arch, there was a little doorway. You can sort of see it in the above picture.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes," 

by Marcel Proust (a French novelist). 

You can see the stairs leading into the bridge. They lead into the right hand side oval cut out (seen in the picture of the whole bridge). I was feeling adventurous, so I climbed up.

the cute couple

It didn't really give me a new perspective on things (like the quote might suggest), but it did give us a cute picture. I love the view over our shoulders, the other side of the river.

Just off the palace grounds is the city park. This is where Goethe's garden house was. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it was decorated to look almost the same as it was when he lived there.

early spring at Goethe's Garden House

It looks a little plain now, but I imagine in the summer when all the flowers are blooming it's a beautiful spot. Especially if some sort of climbing flower grows up all the sides of the house (as the lattice everywhere indicates).

anemone - ground cover throughout the park

It was a nice day in Weimer. And a good way to end the trip to Germany.


xxx

Happy Mother's Day!

some flowers for you!

To my mom,

Ludi's Mom

and to all the mothers of the world.


Heather & Ludi

xxx

May Day

Happy May Day everyone!

I'm going to have to look up what "May Day" actually is. In most European places, May 1st is actually Labor Day. But I don't think that's what "May Day" means. I'm thinking May Poles and things. Right?

Since Monday April 26th was my birthday (no, I'm not counting them anymore, so don't ask), we went to the best spring flower garden in the world. Keukenhof. It's a few hours drive for us (near Amsterdam), but it is SOOO worth it. It was a fanTAStic day, weatherwise. Not too cold, not too hot, no rain. Absolutely beautiful.

Without further delay, here are the photos! Hopefully this doesn't slow down the loading of the site...

Beech Lane

I LOVED the border or daffodils on the far right in this photo. Everything is so impeccably trimmed. There are about 30 gardeners on staff, and every year the replant everything. I guess that's why it looks so tidy and organized. It's a huge garden too. I can't imagine all the work they put into it!

Hyacinths, Tulips and Daffodils

You could smell hyacinths everywhere you went in the park. Sometimes it was a little overwhelming. Good thing we don't have any allergies.

Tiny Narcissus that I didn't get the name of, unfortunately

 

More tiny narcissus

 My favorite tulip: Angelique (the blue flowers are Siberica)

Water feature

This one's called Roulette!!! 

(I think they meant the casino game with a wheel though.)

Tulip fields

They had a section of the park called Inspiration Gardens. They had guest gardeners doing the displays here. It really was inspirational.
 

Flowers in wool stockings, hanging on a fence. Who would have thought of that?

I can do that, right? (on a much smaller scale...)

More tiny narcissus - this one's called Minnow.

There was also an orchid show going on at the same time. Here are a few of my favorites.

Sawadee Green Star

This is a pale green with vibrant purple center. Just gorgeous.

An orchid with a very small bloom - looking quite dramatic planted in a row. It was the palest of greens, with a subtle pinkish center.

close up - no idea of the name, unfortunately!

Like my new shoes?

It really was a fantastic trip. I wish I had a back yard (or any yard!) to do some spring flower planting in. They are just beautiful!

Can we go again next year, Ludi?

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. And I promise to post the rest of the photos from Germany soon. See you later!

Heather

xxx

Birthday Wishes

I can't keep track of all of the birthdays that are in April in my world. Cousins, uncles, friends, my sister. April is CRAZY with birthdays! So here is one big birthday wish for everyone with their day in April:

make a wish...

Today was another one of MY Days. I was off work, but that doesn't mean that I've been lazing around enjoying the nice weather. Unfortunately. I would love to walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of all the blooming things for you all to see, but that wasn't meant to be. I've been cleaning! And baking (I made snickerdoodles for the first time ever. Yummy!). And shopping. And now blogging. How has your day been?

MY Days might be a thing of the past soon. There have been some staffing changes at work, and I am trying to get more hours. I like my days off, and being part time, but hey...let's get real here. One cannot live on MY days alone. Someone's got to support my yarn and tulip habit, you know. ;)

I hope you all have a great day, and I promise I'll post some more pictures from our Germany trip soon.


xxx

Germany Trip: Part 1

If you're wondering why I hadn't posted in so long, it's because we were on vacation last week. We took a trip to Germany with Ludi's parents and another couple who are friends of Ludi's parents.

It was not entirely a pleasure trip. You see, Ludi's grandfather (his dad's father) was a victim of WWII. He died in one of the concentration camps. During the war, after the German occupation of The Netherlands, Ludi's grandfather went to work for the Germans at an airport/plane factory near home. We will never know if he went voluntarily (because he needed the money for his family) or if he was recruited by the Germans. By "recruited" I mean he was more than likely forced. After being transferred a few times, he eventually ended up at Mittelbau-Dora camp (concentration camp). This is the place that the Germans set up a V2 airplane bomb factory in tunnels in the mountains. And that is where Ludi's grandfather was basically worked to death. He died there and was cremated there. His ashes were most likely dumped on the hillside next to the crematorium.

Mittelbau-Dora memorial (crematorium in the background)

There are a few other camps in the area that Ludi's grandfather was sent to. The first one he was sent to was probably Buchenwald.

 Buchenwald Memorial

There they had a quarantine area for new prisoners (to try to prevent the spread of diseases), so that was where most prisoners get sent to first before being transferred again. Ludi's grandfather was sent then to Dora to work in the tunnels (the bomb factory). When he was too weak/sick to work anymore, he was sent to another camp (Ellrich). It was basically a death camp, where prisoners were sent to die when they were no longer useful because of being too weak or too ill.

Ellrich Memorial (crematorium spot in the background)

This is probably where Ludi's grandfather died. At the time, there was no crematorium. All of their dead were sent back to Dora for burning. (The crematorium was built at Ellrich about 6 months after his death.)

Every year (I believe) the camps have memorial services on the date of their liberation by the Allied Forces. Every few years, Ludi's family goes to these services. It was the first year for me. I knew before hand that it wouldn't be a fantastic fun happy time. I thought it would be sad. Depressing. Haunting. Well, it was all of those. It also made me really angry to see first hand how these people were treated. How could a human being treat another human being so? It is beyond comprehension. The terrible conditions. The awful, purely evil things the German army did. Not just to Jewish, either. Because Ludi's grandfather wasn't Jewish. He just had seen too much for the Germans to let him go free.

In America, we didn't feel the same ... (searching for a word) ... torture about these events. It was so far away, and so long ago. 65 years ago now, basically. But here in Europe, where they experienced it first hand, they remember it like it was yesterday. I used to think "Oh, it was so long ago, can't we try to let it go?" I have since changed my mind about that. 65 years is not long enough to heal that wound.

Not enough by a long shot.

More information about the camps we visited can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald

I'll make another post about our Germany trip, a more pleasant one. To leave you with a little more positive picture, these flowers were growing all over the place. I don't know what they are, but they sure are pretty. They're short, kind of like ground cover. Anyone know what they are?

Happy blue flower in a sad sad place

See you again soon.


xxx

Hoppy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!

Easter Brunch

We made our traditional holiday brunch this morning. French toast. SO yummy! I even still have syrup left from a trip about a year and a half ago. We don't have this breakfast very often, so the syrup is lasting a long time!

And no, that's not coffee next to my plate. It's chai tea latte. Yummers!

And for dessert:

Easter candy

What could be better?

Enjoy your holiday!


xxx