Friday 22 April 2022

April 13, After Work & More

Last week Wednesday (April 13) was so warm the day felt more like early summer than spring. People tend to throw off most of their clothes as soon as the first rays of sunshine appear, and so on that day you could observe people looking as if they were on their way to the beach rather than in a middle-sized town in Southwest Germany.

My day was busy, but with daylight lasting until past 8:00 pm now I was still able to fit in a nice long walk after work. I chose a very familiar route and did not take many photos, just a handful as a future reminder and to compare with the ones taken on March 23, when I walked there as well:

No kestrel on that tree today.

Sahara dust once again.


The covering on this field is to help the asparagus come along.

And there is the ferris wheel again! Can't see it?

You can now!

There are two more pictures I want to show you, not related to my walk on April 13. The first one was taken on the morning of the 9th, which was the extraordinary Saturday I told you about here:


The second one, and last one for this post, was the full moon as seen from my bedroom window on April 15 (Good Friday) at 20 past 11 pm:

14 comments:

  1. Same here with people throwing off their clothes. It's a strange time of year when you can see some people dressed in full winter gear still and others with bare arms and legs!

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    1. When I am working from home (which is still mostly the case), finding the right outfit is no problem, but when I need to leave the house early while it is still close to freezing, with the day warming up to almost 20C later, one really has to choose carefully what to wear.

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  2. We've had a glorious week too. Jumpers and coats have been discarded. I'm not quite ready to bare my legs yet.

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    1. I still keep my padded winter coat handy; only when I am really sure I won't need it anymore, I shall wash it and put it in the drawer until next winter. Right now, the chilly wind and cold mornings and nights definitely still call for jumpers and coats.

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  3. The weather is warming up here with dips into cold temps on some days. I was out for my walk with my winter coat, hat and mittens when a saw joggers and children in t-shirts and shorts! Brrr! We will have weird weather this weekend. It might reach 80s (F) on Saturday but dropping back down to the 50s (F) for Sunday!
    Enjoy your weekend!

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    1. Having been a jogger for many years (and planning to take it up again soon), I understand that one can be perfectly fine in less warm clothes when out for a run than what one would wear for a walk. But I am on the cautious side there because I hate being cold, it wears me out. Therefore, I rather carry a cardie and not need it!

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  4. That is a spooky picture of the full moon. It would be great for Halloween! Don't you love it when you finally start getting warmer days? It is trying to warm up here but winter keeps sneaking in and out. 🙂

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    1. It is rather Gothic, isn't it! A bat or two flying across it, a looming mansion underneath, and you have the perfect Halloween setting :-)

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  5. Some very nice skies there. We had Sahara sand a few weeks ago - a very rare event here, and not a welcome one as we had just had the outside of our house painted, and all the window sills and balconies etc. had a thin layer of red! But they do make for pretty skies. The photo of the lit up wheel is charming, and i like the feeling of twilight in your photos. When I try to take photos at that time of the evening, it usually comes out like an overcast midday!

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    1. Most people here complain about the Sahara dust, too; my Mum had thoroughly cleaned the entire glass front (top to bottom) of her dining room which faces the balcony, and then the dust came...!
      But I have heard that it is like fertiliser on the ground, with all the silicates it contains, and does our soil good.

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  6. Last time you took a photograph, the moon peeked in on your kitchen, if memory serves.

    I hear that when Germans move house they take their kitchen with them: counters, cooker, sink, everything.
    *German Homes: How The Germans Live/ Meet the Germans.* YouTube. DW Euromaxx.
    The Germanophile who fronts these videos is Rachel Stewart.

    The field of asparagus in sunset reminds me of Ted Allbeury the spy novelist who loved asparagus. His obituary is in The Guardian online, 3 January 2006.
    He was the only spy novelist who worked in the field well into his maturity, and he was familiar with East Germany as an undercover agent.
    As Len Deighton writes: *No one knew Ted very well.*

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    1. Many of my pictures are taken from my kitchen window, so it is very likely the last moon shot before this one was from there.

      Hmmm... "Germans" moving house; is there such a thing? My parents have moved house with us several times when we were young, and I have moved a twice before I settled here in my own flat. But we all have a different approach, and more often than not, kitchens stay where they are, same as bathrooms.
      Also, how "the Germans" live can not be generalised, in my opinion, just like you can't say how all Russians, all Italians or all Americans live. Sorry if I sound a little spiky about this.

      Did they grow asparagus in East Germany? I wouldn't know, but I know it is "the Germans" favourite vegetable :-D
      When in the spring of 2020 almost no travel was allowed because of Covid, special permissions were negotiated for all the workers from Eastern Europe (mainly Romanians these days, whereas there used to be mainly Polish workers previousy) to come to Germany so that we could have our fill of asparagus! You won't find many Germans working the fields. Too hard work for too little money.

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  7. ... and to think my librarian filed away Ben Macintyre’s WW2 espionage thriller Operation Mincemeat and Len Deighton’s Cold War classic Ipcress File as cook books, archived Mick Herron’s sardonic spy thriller Slow Horses next to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and filed Bill Fairclough’s espionage epic Beyond Enkription under cryptography before she completed her MI6 induction program.

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    1. That's an interesting filing system! Certainly not what I was taught at Librarian School, where I went from 1986 to 1988, loving nearly every minute of it.

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