The Big Switch - Part IV: An Interlude

As YP rightly remarked in his comment on this post, I like order and tidiness in my flat, so all this disruption was getting to me and it was no wonder I was on the window sill, contemplating leaping out.
His comment was certainly spot on in its first part, although not quite so much in the second :-)

Tuesday was a beautiful day, cold to begin with, but looking very promising with plenty of sun and blue skies. I couldn't do anything at home, really, while the painting was going on, and so I fled the "chaos" (it was not as chaotic as it appears from the pictures) and accompanied my Mum into town.

She had to take some books back to the library, a welcome occasion for me to have a look round at the place where I well and truly became a Librarian all those years ago (we are talking 1986 - 1992 here). Ludwigsburg's City Library has undergone many changes in the past years, and I had not yet seen the latest one. Maybe this will warrant its own post; for now, it was just the start of our afternoon out.

We walked across the sunlit market square with the market still going on - the scent of strawberries from one stall was so strong, we nearly fell for it. But we knew we did not want to carry boxes of fruit around all day, and so went on to the palace grounds, where I took these pictures:

 Gorgeous!!!

I loved playing here as a child, and since there was nobody about but me (my Mum was having a little rest outside those hedges on a bench), I made this experiment with the self-timer on my camera:

When you cross the pond on the stepping stones, each stone does something different: One makes the frogs spit water at you (a big hit with kids on hot summer days!), another one makes the yellow ball go up on a jet of water, one makes the crowns on the frogs' heads move, and yet another one does nothing. I must have gotten soaking wet here countless times when I was little! 

The alley lined with yellow tulips:

A year ago to the day (what a coincidence!), I told you about a stork unhappily in love. I was genuinely worried about the poor unfortunate couple back then. Imagine my pleasure when we now found a couple of storks, both "free as birds", nesting at the same spot on the roof of the aviary! I don't know whether one of them is the same stork I observed here last year, but I like to think so, and hope he either found a mate from somewhere else, or they let his chosen one out of the aviary to join him. 

Forgetmenots in abundance:

This was not the end of our outing, but this post is becoming a bit long, so I better stop here.