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.
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.
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.
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.
Home is looking at a photo and immediately knowing how the spring evening smells, how it feels on your face when the first mist rises at dusk.
Home is familiarity with gestures and procedures. Everybody getting up and huddling a little bit closer when evening falls, maybe a campfire. Another glass of wine. Scents intensifying, companionship tugs you into the evening and conversation.
Home is moisture and growth in the meadows and fields, at least for me. Something so vibrant you can see and feel it, especially in spring.
Home is leaving and not being sad because it will still be there when you come back.
Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments and emails. I'm still trying to integrate the fact that grandfather is gone. Trying to go from the verb 'dying' to 'dead'. We'll say good bye to him next week Thursday and that will be a very sad occasion, but right now there are stretches of time when I don't think about it and even more time when I do think about him and grandma, but only happy and funny thoughts. About how it was when we were little and they in their prime of grand-parenthood.
Before burying grandfather though, my new godson and I will be baptized. Monday. And to be precise: He'll be baptized and I'll then be his godmother. Lucky him.
Jakob was born in September and is the son of one of my two best friends. Even though he doesn't like his mother to talk on the telephone (thinking she should much rather talk only to him, if she please) and wails loudly when I call, he's the the source of many happy thoughts at the moment nonetheless.
It's as my grandmother always says: 'Thus joy and tears come from the same face.'
Our grandfather passed away yesterday at the age of 86.
It's the kind of phone call we all dread, knowing full well that it must come one day.
What can I say? We'll miss him.
I'll make sure my children and grandchildren can say 'go to the pharmacy' backwards in German really fast. I'll be sure to tell them who got out the water hose when my brother and sister and I had water fights in the garden in summer. We'll be sure to remember how he used to drive off after a visit and had to stop five hundred meters away because he had so many tears in his eyes he couldn't drive.
Oh, and yes, I'll remember all my life how he used to hold Hanna upside down by her legs when she howled because he thought she might suffocate with her own rage (gratifying moment in the life of a sister). We'll remember the funny and the sad stories he told us, and I'll sure never forget the memorable phone calls that started out all happy and ended with him hanging up abruptly and without good bye because he didn't want us to hear him cry.
And yes, once in a while Daniel, Hanna and I will go to a restaurant and tell the waiter we would not like to pay (maybe we'll even wave the money around just a little bit), and when asked how we are, we'll answer 'thank you, bad as well'. Grinning a little bit.
