Yesterday I wanted to pre-order my favourite rose "Gertrude Jekyll" for my Bavarian balcony too, and by chance I found this link:
https://www.welt-der-rosen.de/adressen/dtl2.htm (you have to copy it, sorry)
"Only" for German rose gardens, but the idea of such a specialised survey is bright. There are three rose gardens in my neighbourhood which I never heard of.
So fascinating, enthusiastic (and a bit fanatic) - I would enjoy and use a list of rose gardens for England when pandemic allows me to come again.
My new idea to serve you sometimes just "Snippets" fascinates me.
As before I will write long posts, but more often a short one - sometimes I will serve you a Lungo, sometimes an Espresso. You might want to chat with me, or just enjoy the cuppa in silence.
Variety, change: life is bursting with possibilities.
Whenever you see the photo above it signals: "Snippets". Hope you have as much fun as I!
I add something new to my blog: "snippets" shall be short posts about something that shoots through my mind - evoked by a newspaper, or a blog, or something I experienced.
In German telephone booths (used before the unimaginable time before the existence of cellphones), hung a plate with the words "Fasse dich kurz!" = "Make it short". (Very difficult for me)
So:
At the moment I do a "sort of" fast, just for fun: for four weeks I do not drink any alcohol. Instead of the glass of wine in the evening (with 0,1 - 0,2 l a ridiculous thimble in they eyes of the hardboiled) I drink a nice cup of herbal tea. No problem at all - I just wanted to find out if I miss it.
Till now I don't.
Query: Do you fast? On what? Why? How long? Do you feel an effect?
Tomorrow I travel to Berlin, so I will use the opportunity to send you, my blogger friends, the best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Stay healthy and in good mood, be thankful for family and friends. I hope to see you all in 2022!
Yours truly
Britta
The last days we had snow in Bavaria. A lot of snow.
A "funny" card hangs in the entrance hall that every tenant puts one hook further under the name of the next tenant - after a day of a lot (!!!) of hard shovelling. Cold Comfort Farm.
Fair deal - though I, city-spoilt, am neither used to clean the stairwell (we are 4 tenants) - including even the washhouse (and honestly: the stairwell, cleaned weekly is spick and span, so why bother every week - yet, of course I do (every fourth week) - nor shovelling snow.
It might substitute my fitness-centre (closed thanks to Corona): it must be done at 7 in the morning (I am a lark - that is not the problem - but they do so long and unnecessary parts in front the house (never used paths, Where Angels Fear to Tread) and in the street - shiver, shiver). AND it must be done as often as snow comes down (how can people do that who are at work in the nearby town?) till 7 o'clock in the evening.
In Berlin we have a janitor, who does the snow-shovelling, and two men who clean the stair well of the huge house built in 1902.
But I thought a while. Lady Chatterley sprang to my mind. NO - not what you might expect - but one of the tenants is a young forest ranger. So: quite strong. We made a deal: I pay good money for him shovelling the snow on the day when The ICEMAN my turn Cometh.
So we are both happy - and I am free to go to Berlin without having to speculate whether snow will fall or not. Perfect.
This is one of my favourite quotations of Karl Foerster, the famous German breeder of herbaceous perennials. A powerfully eloquent man and writer, born 1874 in Berlin, he died 1970 in Potsdam, and was an universally sophisticated man - my idea of a Renaissance man.
And yes: he wrote "will" and not "might" :-)
True: I looked for something different on that slightly rainy Sunday in Bavaria. I pushed myself to join a guided tour of the town (I hate guided tours! but do a lot to fight November-Blues) with the title "On the traces of the Hohenzollern in Langenzenn".
The town Langenzenn (10.652 inhabitants in 2020) was first mentioned in 945 as "cinna", a royal court by King Otto I.) and belonged since 1248 to the mighty Noble House of Hohenzollern.
And this is what I found: a jewel of a church. The then wooden church is supposed to be built in 945, burnt down 1388 in the City War from Nuremberg. Only a wooden Madonna survived, now "The Black Madonna", which became a pilgrimage destination. In 1467 the cloister was built for Augustiner monks, a three winged complex, built with sandstone and cloister and gothic cloistered courtyard wonderfully preserved.
In 1533 the cloister was shut down by the Lutherian Reformation (though they had the decency to wait till the last monk died - of course no novices were allowed).
I looked that one up on Youtube and beg you to watch it till the end. It is - and there I am utterly sure - one that will bring the political correctness-police into the arena - well: we enjoyed it immensely (and drank Coca Cola - the artistic video did not change our habits).
I am so glad to have been young in a wonderful time like that (even if you could take the video with a grain of salt - but look at the fashion! The make-up! You were allowed to be sexy! Men too! Me too! 😂)
Some of the (not highly intellectual) slogans here: "Girl power - woman's lib: Marriage or no marriage - that is no longer the question" "Woman becomes woman - and free" - "People who enjoy their time consciously - being in their right mind" (hahaha)
Since two weeks they are here. Hundred silly smiles and two hundred eyes follow you through the supermarket, and no escape: they are everywhere, in Bavaria, in Berlin - all over Germany. Even earlier than last year.
What is new: they point with a wagging finger.
Maybe they will give us a benign warning: although lots are here there might come the day when a gap in the supply chain of chocolate Father Christmas starts. Stockpile! Hoard! Squirrel away!
Who knows what might happen? Better safe than sorry.
PS: I feel more and more like Moses Herzog in Saul Bellow's wonderful novel "Herzog", written in 1964. I want to start writing letters to everyone - the first will go to the manufacturers of these untimely Father Christmasses - telling them that I will feel much better if they also put chocolate Easter bunnies there, just in case that the world sinks into even more chaos, or a Rip van Winkle-lockdown.