Back from the Netherlands

 

It was such a beautiful stay in the Netherlands! Though "stay" isn't the right word: after one day in Noordwijk we went to the Veluwe - to visit the famous 

"Kröller-Müller Museum". 

A "Museum & Sculpture" - including many paintings from van Gogh that I had never seen before (not even in print). 

I quote from a brochure: "The Kröller-Müller Museum is the lifework of Helene Kröller-Müller. Between 1907 and 1922, she and her husband Anton Köller bought almost 11,500 works of art (...)." So this is her: Helen Kröller-Müller 

Very interesting also the 25-hectare outdoor gallery - with 160 modern sculptures in that garden, though we didn't see very much of that because it rained heavily. 

You will know me by now: I enjoyed the surrounding nature, though dripping heavily, as much as the art. 

And am a little bit proud of a photo I took through the window: 

foxglove before a tree. 

 

I Deleted an App

 

Dear You, 

yesterday evening I got a WARNING on my cellphone. A warning from my new weather forecast App. 

"Terrible thunderstorm in the evening" it said (no: shouted), and gave advice what to bind, shelter, save and keep tucked away. 

I am amenable to influence. Though I had my doubts: the sun was shining and the air quite hot for the beginning of May. I looked at the four red blossoms that had - finally - opened on my well-winter-protected tiny camellia, sighed and started half-heartedly to change my balcony into a fortress.  

Well, well, well. As you see on the photo above, the thunderstorm came. With strong wind. 

Best watched from inside, as lightning started too. 

Rain, pouring. Which was good, as we didn't have much rain here the last two month. 

But nothing terrible happened. Just a normal thunderstorm. 

And I got a bit angry. I know that it is important to warn people - remembering the catastrophe we had in the Ahrtal. But still I felt that here one had been dramatic with intent: the media blow up every molehill to a mountain, every pimple might be cancer, the weather report uses the vocabulary of war. 

Our world has so many real problems, so much terrible things happen, so many liars and drama-queens (and kings!) around. 

Angrily I deleted the App - and loaded a beautiful new one up  instead that my son had recommended: it tells me which birds are singing just now around me. 

Of course I know the song of the Eurasian Black Bird, the Great Tit, the Blue Tit, the Sparrow, the Common Chaffinch, the  Greenfinch, the Common Cuckoo. 

Yet the Serin was new to me. 

So: this App makes me happy - not terrified for nothing.