This lily is having a wonderful time with its doubled flower.
A Photo a Week Challenge: Beauty
Living in Switzerland with the Alps at my back door, what choice do I have. I am in Kanton Solothurn, which is the next Kanton North from Bern and the Alps are at home in the Kanton of Bern. The big three, Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau are the ones we see. This is a Winter view, so a little more snow, but in Summer they also have snow on the tips.
For a tourist they are impressive mountains, but for the Swiss they have names and throughout my 50 years experience of living in Switzerland, I now recognise them by name. The tall one on the left is the Eiger. We would often spend our Summer holidays in Grindelwald and the Alps are then not at the back door, but in the garden more or less. We would look out of the window of the chalet where we were staying and the Eiger was watching us, at least it seemed so.
If the light if right then we have a good view of them from the top of the hill where our local castle is and from where I took this photo, which I took with the zoom lens. And if the clouds play right, you can get some really good views. And so presenting the Bernese Alps.
FOWC with Fandango: Trickery
Our store bake their own bread. You can watch the bakers making the shapes and sizes from the supermarket.
Plaiting bread seems to be one of the tricks of the trade. I have baked them myself, but they never look as good as the bakers make them. And from experience I can tell you they also taste very good. It is our week-end bread.
RDP Friday: Tool
Two years ago we were surrounded by tools. Tools that I did not even know existed. Some were used to make noise. They bored and hammered, scraped and ground and some even threw out sparks and flames, but we survived. Our complete building was being renewed from the bottom to the top. The walls were being newly isolated. It seems before a new isolation is put in place, you have to remove the old isolation.
The work began at 7.30 in the morning and finished around 4.30 in the afternoon with a morning break. How I loved that morning break. From 9.00 until 9.30 there was silence: no sparks, no thumps, no grinding. You could even hear the birds sing again. Of course there was a lunch break for an hour. We were then eating. After lunch we would like to retire for an hour. However, this was when the tools awoke to life again.
Now and again strange objects would be found in our garden. These we decided to keep, you never know, they might be useful one day.
One day the tools disappeared. It was sudden, we were not prepared for it, but life returned to its normal quiet state of affairs. Just remember, if you see workmen approaching with tools, then beware. The quiet life you lead will be finished. They aim to disturb.
Good Morning
I did not really know where to start this morning. I have been so involved with the Easter Shopping Show that I have had absolutely no time to go on a photo safari, but I hope this is the last day for a while that you only see my garden and its surprises. There was a surprise this morning when I decided to take a photo of the sunset with a few clouds looking West. I then saw a blaze of colour on my cell phone camera and discovered that my apple tree buds had now opened.
I took a closer look and yes, they are appearing all over the tree. If the weather stays fine as it is at the moment, no storms or heavy winds, they will stay and in a couple of weeks will have little green knobs in the centre which will one day be my next apple harvest, but that will be September/October and now I want to enjoy April and of course May.
I decided to zoom in for a closeup just to make sure that the apple blossoms were really genuine.
I have really had a photo famine this week. The only place I had been to was the supermarket on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday was reserved for mounting Summer tyres on my car. There was really no time for a wheelie anywhere. The only wheeling I did was in my car to the store. Now the food hunting safari is accomplished. We will survive until Tuesday afternoon when I have planned the next shopping excursion.
This afternoon I intend to go into town, I am curious to see how it is on a Good Friday, a holiday that is one of the highest in the church. I remember my childhood days. Good Friday was the day for mum to clean. She was never an intensive cleaner, but Good Friday was the day when a mop, bucket, water and a bad temper arrived from mum. Dad and I would escape. I think it was a free choice for dad and he helped by getting me out of the way of mum’s labours. I know, but I have no idea why mum chose Good Friday, one day in the year. Her housework was always something to hate. We are talking of the fifties, after the war and dad would take me to see his old haunts in the City of London where he worked as a messenger boy for Lloyds Insurance company in his first job. It was a walk around the narrow alleys of the City with its twists and turns. We would have liked to have visited a museum, even an art gallery, but it was Good Friday and everything was closed. They are memories of dad and me I still treasure: two lonely East Enders in the empty City of London. I must have been about ten years old.
We returned home hoping that mum had finished her tasks and that her bad temper had thinned out.
My Good Friday today will be nothing special, just the usual. Mr. Swiss asked if I have a lot of cooking to do, but I told him it will be just fish today with a sauce on top (one of those frozen items that our supermarket sells).
I also got a notification from the optician that my new eye glasses were ready and as their shop was in the mall where I shop I naturally picked them up. This is about my tenth try for a selfie and I still look like an escaped prisoner. All I need is the number hanging around my neck. It is the best I could do. There are far too many details on this early morning photo. I am quite pleased with the glasses, and I can now read the small print. Ok I no longer have my film star allure, but golden oldies are no longer as fresh as the daisy we used to be.
So now I am off to take it easy. No more shopping, no more planning, just doing what I want to do and when I want to do it. I am fed up with these people, especially in Facebook, that always come with the same saying “Life is good”. It is only good when you do not have holidays interrupting with your daily “good” life which tends to ruin it.
In spite of my anti holiday Christmas/Easter grinch moods, I will now lay back and watch the grass grow. Have a good Easter those that believe and celebrate (I do neither) and see you around now and again.
FOTD 18th April 2019: Allium
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Vanishing Point
Vanishing clouds
A street scene in Solothurn, Switzerland
The local rail tracks
