walpurgis night

Dancing around the bonfire on Walpurgisnacht, I am sure the little witches will remember that forever!

hug a tree

Arbor day celebrations everywhere, so I went and hugged a tree, because they are fantastic!

strange weather

Dark and damp, windy and warm, the weather has been rather odd in the past days, presenting us with a sky changing by the minute.

fields of daffodils

Fields of daffodils at Tower Hill, swaying in the wind and glowing bright, a  magnificent and breathtaking view.

little blue stars

Flowers like little blue stars, fallen from the sky into our yard.

friendship & laughter

Hardly anything in life is as good as friends to laugh with!

little waddling duckies

A lovely memory of Easter in Germany many years ago, when a friend turned a spontaneous walk in the park at dusk into a magical Easter happening, leaving the kids in awe. They still talk about it and we love to think back to it every year when we wind up the ducks.

colors

Hooray for colors and creative chaos. And hooray for awesome people (you know who you are) who introduce their friends to something as wonderful as Pysanky - we are obsessed :)

bonfire - fire wood

Getting ready for Saturday's traditional Easter bonfire. We will need big flames in this very cold weather - one could think this is one of those early March Easter weekends and not the end of April... shiver....

forsythia

When we teeter-totter between cold and warm, sunny and cloudy, wet and dry and all of that in a day, then we know it is April and time for forsythias. Did you know they belong to the olive family?

sun in hiding

Maybe a bit hidden by thick clouds and not exactly our image of spring, but there is something very beautiful about the sun hiding like this, something so soft and gentle, like a promise of warmer days to come.

azalea

No matter how gray the day is, the pink azaleas scream spring.

more catkins

Today's late afternoon sun illuminating the catkins of our two French pussy willows to some ethereal glowing fluffiness.

holy rock

There are cool rocks all over the house, but this is one of the very unique ones with many holes and quite black. It appears that there is no place in the world that I can go to without picking up some rocks.

egg

What a perfect shape - the incredible, edible egg. I am so happy to be only mostly and not completely vegan, my culinary mornings would be so sad without eggs.

pussy willows

I remember being a little girl and totally in awe of the soft, velvety catkins. I still am.

reminisce

Today our lovely piano tuner came by who visited Augsburg/Bavaria with her husband last year and together we got to reminisce about visiting the beautiful cathedral.

sticky notes

Essential for the functioning of family life, they conveniently fill all the little holes in my brain that seem to creep up in the mid-forties.

food

Food looks mighty good after 38 hours without it.

opposable thumbs

Lack of opposable digits are very annoying to our cat Mika, who knows all the answers to the Sunday cross word puzzle, but cannot fill them in. Am I glad that I can write!

hydrogen

Sunday nights are Carl Sagan nights at our house, at least until the kids are in bed and I switch to Masterpiece Theater. Today Carl accused us all to not give enough appreciation to atoms and so here I am, showing my gratitude for number one: Hydrogen. Like the kids say, we are all made of star stuff!

Picture from here

baby shower

A Saturday spent in the company of lovely people - some known and some new - to celebrate the coming arrival of another little girl is just a great way to spend the day and it's fun to host.

knives & spatulas

The twelve year old is helping with the dishes, obviously with an engineering mind - kind of cool, isn't it?

sunshine

Thank you sunshine, you are lovely!

miracle

I am a notorious indoor plant killer, I seem to leave my green thumbs out of doors. I received this Gerbera at Christmas and almost killed it off rather soon after. Unable to throw away a plant that is not truly dead, I moved it to the kitchen and low and behold, with a little TLC it looked not only better every day, it started to bloom again!

grey day

Calm and relaxing - grey days of spring, inviting peace.

yummy goodness

Chocolate-almond cupcake with peanut butter frosting. Who knew that a cupcake can be so delicious while being vegan, gluten-free, whole grain and low glycemic.

return to regular spring

With all of Friday's snow melted and the sun warming up earth and soul, we return to our regular spring program :)

poladroid

Today I discovered poladroid, a software that turns photos into a virtual polaroid, complete with vignetting, aberrations, scratches and all those other imperfections that make it perfect - one of my favorite juxtapositions.

spring snow

March went out with a snow storm, appropriately welcoming April with a lot of white fluff, blanketing the awakening plants like this Hamamelis (witch hazel).