Update from the Garden

The little garden on our balcony is doing well.

This week we found a few little flowers on our pea plants.

We also found little, tiny, green strawberries.

The German word for strawberry is Erdbeer which means earth berry. Clever, huh?

Garden

Way back in March, Robin and I started some seeds to grow on our balcony. We weren't really sure how well they would do, but I would say so far we have done very well. We planted some flowers, carrots, beans, and spinach. When I left to go the the US the we had planted the plants outside but they weren't very big yet. When I got back, they looked like this. I am still not sure if we will get much of a harvest from these plants - our balcony has very little direct sunlight - but we are willing to try it out and see what happens.

It's not a "piece of cake"

I can handle baking cookies - I like cookies, it goes pretty fast, and I mostly get it right. Cakes are a different animal. I don't do cakes. I can never, ever get them to come out of the pan. EVER. No amount of butter, flour, non-stick spray, or grease has every worked for me.

While I was at my parent's house, my mom asked me to make a cake (gluten-free of course). I said sure, and didn't think much about it, until it came time to put the batter into the bunt pan. Then I remembered - cakes never work out for me. Too late then. So I greased the pan as well as I could (about 5 times) and hoped for the best. This is the result. You many notice something is missing here. Most of the outside of the cake (the part touching the pan) stayed in the pan! The rest of the cake came out. So, it looks a little weird, but it certainly tasted good.

Convenient

I must say, one thing I miss about America when I am in Germany is the Self-Checkout at the grocery store (and other stores)... Sure, you have to bag your own stuff, but I "get" to do that here anyway.

Eternal Spring

Once, when I was in middle school (or high school) I did a report on Guatemala. Several of the sources I used said Guatemala is the land of the Eternal Spring. I thought that sounded nice.
This year has been the year of the Eternal Spring for me. Spring was well underway here in Germany when I went to the US. The daffodils had already come up, the tulips were already coming up, and popcorn was popping all over the apricot tree. Seattle was a few weeks behind us, so I got to relive it all over again. It was lovely.

During my trip, we went to Utah. Spring had not come to Utah. They were in the middle of an eternal winter. The day we went home, we woke up to this...

Two inches of snow! It didn't stick to the roads, but it was on the sidewalks enough to make it difficult to take our suitcases out to the car.

After our trip in Utah, it was back for a few more days of Seattle spring. Then back home to Germany, where continuous good weather had already brought us into late spring, early summer. I certainly didn't mind going from rainy, 50-degree Seattle weather, to sunny, 75-degree Germany weather.

The one problem with eternal spring, is that I have had eternal allergies...aaachooo!

Blowing things up

Everyone likes to see things blown up in an controlled environment, right? Well, I like it anyway. Several weeks ago, Robins parents invited us to see a pair of old chimneys get removed (aka. Blown up!) to make way for a new subdivision. Robin had to work that day, but I went. I made a film, enjoy.

Long time, no post

It has been quite a while since my last post... my excuse? Well, there was this, then that, then a trip to the USA, then this and that some more, and so on.
So, I suppose I can update my blog with some of the things I have been doing.
I got back last week from spending almost three weeks in the USA. While I was gone, Robin made a book of all of my blog posts from 2010. He did a really great job. Robin really wants us to have a way to record family history. A blog is one way we have found to do that. He was really excited to get it all published into a book. I really like it :)