Category Archives: Umzu

Tomatoestomatoestomatoes

Of all the plants we sowed in our garden this spring, the tomatoes and peppers were the only successful plants – probably because we grow them in pots instead of the soil. Almost everything else has been eaten by slugs. Too bad they don’t seem to like dandelions, we have way too many of them.

   

Anyways, the tomatoes for which André has lovingly cared since March are starting to yield fruit. I already froze some “regular” tomatoes – most of those are going to be used for cooking – and today I picked the first bowl of cherry tomatoes (about 1.2 kg/2.5 lbs).

These are really very tasty! We’re having pasta casserole with cherry tomatoes, broccoli and ham tonight: Nudelauflauf mit Schinken und Brokkoli. (I substituted some of the brokkoli with tomatoes, since we have so many.)

As usual, click the photos for bigger versions.

Another earthquake

This morning around five we woke up because the bed was shaking. Yep, it was another earthquake. We were even able to feel aftershocks, I think. It was a 4.0 on the Richter scale, and the epicentre was about 50 km north of here, close to Andernach (where we lived until last summer). Here’s the data and a map (time shown in UTC, so add two hours for daylight savings time in Germany).
I also found out that a second earthquake happened half an hour later, but we didn’t wake up again, probably because it only was a 2.0 with nearly the same epicentre.

The local newspaper, the Rhein-Zeitung, says the first earthquake has been the strongest earthquake in 15 years (article in German).

Going for a walk

The weather has been quite nice during the past week, so André and I ventured on two walks during the weekend. On Saturday, we encountered a couple of swallowtail butterflies (Schwalbenschwanz), which are supposed to be quite rare in central Europe. It was the first time I’ve seen them, but André saw one in our garden earlier this year.

Schwalbenschwanz

On Sunday I took a photo of the village in which we live. As you can see, it’s very small, only about 50 houses, and it’s surrounded by fields and pastures.

Dorf

As a bonus, here are some wildflowers growing next to a field. The red one is a poppy (Mohnblume), and the blue ones are cornflowers or bluebottles (Kornblumen).

Mohn und Kornblumen

Click the photos for bigger versions.

Happy Easter!

In Germany we celebrate two days of Easter (Sunday and Monday), so technically I’m not too late. Yesterday we were busy hiking the Baybachtal (link to German site), and after 20 km (12.5 miles) I was too exhausted to post.

As you can tell from the lack of updates, I’ve been very busy during the last couple of weeks. This was mostly school-related, but during the last week we finally started working on our garden in earnest, which had been neglected by the previous tenants. I can’t quite offer before and after photos, but I do happen to have a picture of the surprising amount of snow we got on March 22. Luckily we still had the snow tires on our cars, but a neighbour didn’t and managed to get stuck right in front of our driveway at 7 am, just when André and I were trying to leave for work.

snow in spring

Fortunately the snow (all 20 cm or 8 inches of it) only lasted for two days, and after that, the weather has improved considerably. It’s been warm and sunny for the last week, and the temperatures have reached 20°C (almost 70°F) over the weekend. The same area of our garden looks like this today:

easter 2007

The flowering bush in front of our neighbour’s walnut tree, by the way, is a Ribes sanguineum, or Flowering Currant (Zierjohannisbeere in German). The bumblebees just love it.

(News) Flash

You should really keep paying attention to the speed limit while pondering why the heck someone flashes their brights at you even though your headlights can’t possibly be broken because you just had the car checked at the garage the previous day.

It turns out that you remember the other reason why some drivers flash their brights at you in Germany a few seconds later when a blinding red flash indicates that you have just been photographed by the police: The driver was trying to tell you that there’s a speed trap around the corner.

This is what happens if you’re taking the scenic route through the Rhine valley instead of using the autobahn for your way home from work as usual. At least I was only going a little bit over the speed limit; we shall see if I get a ticket or not.

(Related: Why did you flash your brights at me tonight?, Headlight Vocabulary.)