A new week on the winery. With all it's work and chores. And with all it's beauty.
Zucchini flowers. Very good fried or steamed (yes, the recipe collection is growing). Or just to look at and touch.
A good exhausting weekend behind us. And a dog to tell me when it's time to stop.
And just take a walk.
Does the sum of all the good things that happen in one day make it a good one ?
One of the shirts that will be available in the shop very soon.
Moule (clam. We called the cat clam.) and her baby. She seems to call him 'brau' with a rolling r. We might call him just that.
My first thrift store item ever. The thrift store called itself 'antiques', but the construction still served to drain salad leaves of water after washing them (one had to whirl it around at arm's length).
So does the sum of good things make the day a good one ? It might. But then it might not. Possibly maybe it depends on how you look at things more than the things themselves.
I'm learning so many things that are evident this summer. The kind that make you say 'well yes of course' when you think about them. When and if you think about them.
As I have never been a thinker I have a tendency to do things without thinking first. Which needs a lot of finely tuned improvising skills (One day or other these same skills will turn out to be very useful, I'm sure. Maybe lifesaving. Who knows.).
Finely tuned improvising skills and a lot of re-doing. Because some things just don't work if you don't think them through first.
For example: tomatoes need a supporting structure that will support both plant and fruit (building one while thinking only about the plant will oblige you to build another, more stable one about a month later).
A very important lesson I need to share: Don't put all 42 seeds of zucchini you find in a packet into earth, even if it seems tempting. You will very likely end up with 42 zucchini plants, them being a rather easy-going and easy-growing bunch.
And yes: 42 zucchini plant will present a problem, sooner or later.
Good zucchini recipes to share, anyone ? (This is only a third of the fruit we had in one week. I gave the rest away.)
...I just left without giving notice. I meant to, really, but departures are not my strong side. Theoretically I know I'm leaving. Practically I'm never packed and ready to go when it's time. So let's not even talk about telling anyone on my blog.
What's that ? They do have Internet in Germany ? Well gee, are you sure ? Would you like to hear one of my (many) good excuses for not using it to tell you about my vacation (the cat ate it. The bus was too late. It fell into the garden pond...) ?
But there were actually many good excuses for not using the Internet. As many as there were good friends to visit and babies to look and wonder at.
Hannah is my sister's goddaughter and namesake (in my mother's arms).
Jakob, my godson. With Lena, one of my two best friends.
You've already seen Jakob's shirt here. The pocket looks like decoration only when you don't fill the shirt with a baby, but it does have it's uses when you need to stow away grass and bits of wood you'd like to eat and your mother doesn't consider acceptable nourishment.
...and even though I enjoy knitting a new pair of socks for Vincent, I would like to have some sun between now and Christmas. There are tomatoes that would like some sun, there is a Vincent who would really love some sun, and there is my godson Jakob, who will soon be receiving these shirts, made of summer linen.
No one can wear linen in the rain, can they now ? Not even a German baby.
The summer bug (this summer is definitely bugging me with all it's rain) has also been transformed into some coasters, available in the shop if ever you fancy them.
If ever you fancy preparing fish in a salt crust I can tell you that it's a good idea. It will taste lovely and juicy. If you don't let it bake too long.
If you do let it bake too long, your fish will end up looking like this, and you will need a hammer and chisel to pry it from it's salty home.
You may believe me. I've walked both lines.
PS: If, for some accidental reason you end up with prehistoric results, don't tell your family. They will chortle for a long while every time someone mentions fish in a salt crust.
We live on a winery. When we needed to bottle our wines, there were no bottles available (a bit of a monopoly thing going on in the glass production in France), so now I'm growing them. So what if they're plastic ?
I'll admit to plastic bottles being neither organic nor as beautiful as peas, for example, but they do make good homes for peas and other little plants that need protection. Because there has been a war going on in my vegetable patch. The slugs against me, and honestly, I don't care about casualties any more. The next strawberry that I pick and find a slug living inside will provoke mean measures like beer traps. For the moment I protect my most tender plants with plastic bottles that have had their bottoms cut off (I found the idea in Country Living. A magazine I've fallen in love with because not only are the pictures pretty, but you can actually read the articles ! Not always a given when it comes to 'pretty living' and 'home ideas'. I have access to the British edition, so you'll have to figure out if the American one is as good on your own.). Every once in a while I find a snail or a slug inside a bottle, but most of them see only plastic and think 'oh no, yet another field of plastic bottles. I wish they'd grow peas like in the old days.' Ah, all right. This is the place in my post where my little sister groans something about 'not funny', so I'll leave you with images of some nice little bugs, after having ranted about mean little slugs.
Linen feels so much like summer. Evoking sand, pebbles, the beach. It has a visual life and an organic quality of it's own, wrinkling, seemingly cracking, 'one' all the same. I'm planning to put a whole range of products made of linen in the shop during the next few weeks. Because it's summer. And because I have a new obsession.
In fact, make that two new obsessions. Printing being the second one. I know I'm being a child, but reproducing the same image over and over again gives me such a thrill.
These coasters (made of linen, of course) are in the shop now, as are these notebooks.
The print is called 'remind me', and I'll tell you more about it in the next couple of days. If ever I forget, remind me, will you ?
Do you think people measure time differently ? I do. Mine is measured by the things I get done during the day. If I had to measure time by how long it feels I'd say it's non-existent.
On the winery the days demand grocery shopping (that's a time-consuming expedition when you live in the country), cooking for the boys, housework (yucky piles of laundry underneath which I find the occasional scorpion), work for the winery, the garden, taking care of the zoo and work for myself. For what I really want to do. The illustrations and the things I make.
Usually I try to invent something new. For the shop. For me as an illustrator.
Which is exhausting after a while if you lack time to really think things through (all right. I'll admit to not minding any sewing pattern, ever.).
So just to see how that works, and because I felt I needed a break, I spent the last weekends and evenings simply recreating things and patterns I found in books.. Like the little elephant or this outfit which will go to Paris as a gift for someone's son.
And you know what ? I loved it. It's so relaxing. It stretches time just a little bit and feels as though I had more of it at my disposition. Because there was no inventing to be done. Only recreating.
sent me a bookmark with a holographic image. In which one can see an elephant rubbing his rear end on a tree. There is no way I could decently share this image with you, but you get the picture.
I'm suffering.
But, being a nice person, I sent her something in return.
(He's 'peanut, the wee elephant' from 'Last minute patchwork and quilted gifts' by Joelle Hoverson. The only change I made from the original pattern is batting his ears as well as his body. He seemed to call for fluffy ears somehow.)
I'm fervently hoping that Friday crafts announce weekend creativity.
Wishing you all a very happy weekend.
One day you adopt a dog or you come to have a puppy or the dog adopts you, but just imagine one second you have a dog. For example a German Shepherd. The kind of dog you never dreamed of having, not your design, or for whatever reason. But still, you have a dog.
You come to really like him. Those beasts are so touching, yours might just invent himself a second youth with all the hopping around and inventing new games, the ultimate goal of which is always to have his belly scratched.
You get used to your dog, the dog gets used to you, all is well in wonderland.
Then one day you come home, the dog is howling with pain, bleeding out of his ear, in shock and fright you take him to the vet.
And guess what ?! You've got dog genius. The only dog who can somehow detach the canal that permits hearing from the rest of his head, something highly unlikely and almost impossible. Nobody knows how he did it. But you can just assume he tried to poke a stick right through his head, into one ear and out the other. You're imagining all that ? Feel like you're almost there ?
Well, you can have the down loadable pdf adoption form on request. His name is Orion, I really like him a lot but he's being a pest. We've been to the vet three times in as many days, it has cost me about three years of my life in worry and a considerable amount of money, and him a lot of nerve.
Ah, but one still feels so sorry for the pooch.
I would even say pretty please and do some sweet thing with my eyelashes. Just for some light to take some photos.
Because I would like to update my shop with some shoulder totes but who would buy something vaguely resembling oatmeal with strawberries?
Or oatmeal with spinach, anyone ?
(The upside of short posts is that I don't make many mistakes in English. And the lesson from five days with rain is that a) you'll survive, b) plant's don't need light. That's a myth. They grow just fine in the rain c) people born in the South don't like rain and tend to get nasty after four days of water pouring over their heads d) you need to stay positive, though uninspired)
They were bottled yesterday and six samples of each arrived at the winery this evening.
The photo doesn't do them justice. It has been raining straight for four days now and there isn't any light to speak of, but we stood gazing at the bottles for five minutes with Christian and Vincent and were dazzled. Honestly. Suddenly the last months of work, chaos and panic have come to be in those very real bottles. Those very real nice and pretty bottles.
Ah yes, I forgot: The wines are pretty good, too.
After such a prolonged absence life will go back to normal on this blog. And maybe even on this winery. Bottling will take place Monday and Tuesday and I have all my ten fingers and toes crossed. Which makes walking difficult but will hopefully ensure the end of this miserable story about bottles and labels.
As a treat for myself I have indulged in some princess decoration. Pretty lights and a mirror. So when I use words I can't repeat in writing (figuring out the Overlock. Who on earth needs four threads in one machine?!) I can look into the mirror once in a while and practice a dainty smile.
Happy ladylike weekend, everyone.
