Spring Has Sprung in Nieuw-Helvoet.

Good morning you all, everywhere.
The predominant Spring colour around my house is yellow - but that's hard to see, so off-yellowish it is for my script...

Isn't it wonderful that the long, wet winter has almost passed? Today is the Spring Equinox, and our days are getting longer and the nights shorter and personally I cannot wait for those long evenings in the garden, wrapped up in a thick blanket (this is The Wetlands after all) as near to the fire pot as I can get without catching fire. The good thing about our Wetlands spring weather is that it keeps your beer/white wine nice and cool.

My new garden is a bit basic, but it does have some nice nettles... 
Last week I cut down the shrubs which needed cutting back, and I now have a neat pile of branches I need to get rid of. I tried to burn them, but they are too green to burn and my neighbours somehow didn't take to the smoke they produced... I'll have cut them in small pieces and give them to our garbage truck to take away, as this garden doesn't have room for a compost heap.

Do you know something, my cat Viggo has made friends with quite a few of the other cats in my street, and now wants to spend his nights out on the pavement, chilling with his mates. He has almost lost all the weight he put on whilst in confinement when we just moved house, and is very content.
I swear that every house in this street has at least one cat and most of them has at least one dog as well, and they all grin at me when I walk past with both my old dog Gina and cat Viggo in tow, except for one grumpy terrier who always needs to bark at us and makes me jump, as he hides behing the bushes and then runs out barking like the mad little dog he is.

All in all we are very happy here in our new part of town.
Hope this Sunday finds you happy as well.

Wetlands Woods - How Even a Tiny Spot of Green Can Lift Your Spirits.

We live next to a municipal plot of trees - optimistically called a 'wood'. Its is only 17 hectares, has no official name, but my persistent publishing in the local newspaper about it during the early years of this Millennium has coined the name "Kooisteebos". 

It has grown for 25 years by now, and has turned into a green haven for the people of our part of town. The foresters of the owner, Staatsbosbeheer, tend to ignore it (thank Frith!) for most of the time, they only turn up occasionally to cut down a part of it and cart the logs away. 

And for the last couple of years it has become very popular with dog walkers, as it has turned into the only part of this side of town where you are still allowed to let Boris run free. Thus I tend to choose the very early or very late hours to enter it. I do like dogs, but not when there are too many of them at the same time.

This windless drizzly  Sunday morning I was the only one there; except for the birds. I heard the green woodpecker, the many kinds of tits, the robins, the jays, the jackdaws and the cuckoo. Whilst my Gina was sniffing the grass, I noticed the hundreds of snails who were marching up the trees. Are they expecting high water? 

Ever since I noticed the birds falling silent seconds before a minor earthquake hit (me in) Athens, I keep an eye on things like that.

All this green always manages to lift my heart, however heavy it is. I was raised near the sea, but give me a forest.

The locals call this flower "Kikkerbloem" (Frogs Flower), as it appears when the frogs are marching and mating. It is like Belgian Lace, and gorgeous, and smells very green. 

This path marks the edge of the Kooisteebos; after this there are the polders, with lots of potatoes and fodder corn, and onions.

I know, it is not spectacular, not at all. But it is my green haven.

Froggie's In Love! Pondlife.

Ever since we dug a pond in the side garden, we have had frogs sharing their lives with us. Now, you may think: so what? But let me tell you, frogs (and toads) are fun!

I sometimes wake up in the night, and I hear their sing-a-longs through my open window, and can't help but giggle.

When I was young and growing up in the country, there were no frogs. The farmers around us, and we ourselves, emptied our toilets and washing machines straight into the waterways, which were practically dead. 
Thankfully things changed, helped by laws, and slowly but surely the waterway wildlife improved from the 1980s onwards.

We knew there were frogs in the waterways of the municipal forest at the back of our house. But would they come to visit our pond?
Well today, four years after my husband dug it, we have counted 24 frogs having a wild party amongst our pond forget-me-nots. 
Our cat Viggo sits watching them with fascination for hours. He takes the occasional swipe at the nearest one, and all frogs dive for cover underneath the water plants. But it won't take them long to resurface again, and their concert starts anew.

There is one emerald green frog in the pond, and this one I haven't spotted yet. He is different from the other brownish-greenish ones. His head and body are longer and thinner, and his eyes are more yellow, and he is almost iridescently green. He has the habit of sunning himself on a waterlily leaf, almost as if he invites me to admire his beauty. He doesn't socialize with the other frogs.

One of the common frogs.

Have a good look. What is that green thing on the stone over there? Yes, it's our 
emerald beauty. 
He (or she, but I've got a feeling he's a he) is trying to get the Japanese stone frog 
interested in his song.

Bring It On! Can't wait for better temperatures.

Spring has definitely arrived in the Wetlands. 
The birds are flocking and dragging bits of twig and tufts of dogs hair around, the fish in my pond have woken up, and the flowers in my garden and in the municipal forest behind our house are lifting their heads above ground.

 Aren't they gorgeous? I adore those March violets.
When my kids were small the patch of them at the entrance of the forest was small also, the size of a tea saucer. Now that my kids are young adults the patch has reached the size of a wagon wheel.

I have photographed the bit that was free of a load of dog turds dumped unceremoniously smack bang in the middle...Those dogs...no feeling for beauty, have they?

They are edible, I'm told, but the thought of all those dogs
sniffing them and running through them and...well...you know, has always deterred me.

The mini narcissus are in my garden. I tend to buy them or get them as a gift in those pretty floral baskets which are sold from Christmas onwards (up to Easter), and when they have stopped flowering I plant them out in the garden. Two (or rather dozens) for the price of one...I do love a bargain.

So, I'm all ready for being out in my garden. Except...the weather is atrocious. It is cold, near freezing in the night, and raining off and on, and that wind...Brrrrr. Wind chill factor 3 degrees. 

People in warmer climates cannot imagine this, or they have trouble imagining it, but us Wetlanders are desperate for warmth and sunshine by now.

So, bring it on!!!

Post Equinox: Bring on the Warm Breezes, Please?!

Good evening to you, where ever you are.
The chilly, windy, wet weather has inspired me to write a Haiku:

cheerful pink pansies

shivering in the cold breeze

nonexistent sun

This morning I cycled to the hairdresser's, had my hair cut and styled, only to arrive home with it dripping wet and flat against my head. What a brilliant way to waste more than 30 Euros...I might as well have flushed it down the loo.

But, I did buy myself some cheerful pansies and put them on the garden table. And no, the photo shows catkins, which I love as well and they are inside, in fact I am looking at them right now.

Did you watch the equinox yesterday? I missed it. Totally. First I was in a classroom all day and second there was no sun over the Wetlands. Just clouds. Apparently we should all have moved to Norway for the morning.

And it was my last chance as well...I won't live for the next one. Oh well.

The blows that life deals you, eh?

I wish you a wonderful weekend. I hope the sun comes out for you.

Viggo on Spring

Hi there, all you cat lovers and Viggo fans. We hope this cold, foggy night finds you in good spirits!
Just for fun, as is our habit, this is an interview with fat macho cat Viggo.  This time I have asked him his opinion about Spring.

V: What's with the tulips? Where is my portrait?

Q: Sorry, I thought: Spring...tulips...I'll try to find a nice picture of you instead.

V: Too right you will! 

V: Hmpf. Slightly better. Not my best photo, though. 

     Right. Here goes.

I am an Autumn cat. We Autumn-born cats are known for our tenacity, our joie-de-vivre and our panache.

But I must admit I do like Spring. It's nice to be able to go outside without freezing my nonexistent balls off, so to speak. And everything smells fresh and delicious. The fish wake up. And the frogs and toads start hopping around the garden again. I do like a good romp with them. Did you know that they scream when you nibble their legs?

Q: You do not! Tell me that you don't do that, that's cruel!

V: Don't be such a wuss, woman! I only tease them a bit, I don't eat them. You know I prefer my crunchy nibbles.

And then the butterflies wake up, and the bees, and...

What are you doing now?

Q: I've taken some new photos of you, seeing that you weren't satisfied with the other one.

V: Let's have a look then.

V: Jeez, that's not much better, is it? Not what you call an improvement! I'm out of focus!

Q: No, it's called soft-focus.

V: It makes me look fat. It's bad for my image.

Q: Not at all, you look sweet.

V: Enough! I do not want to look 'sweet'! I am the defender of this garden and house, other cats won't take me seriously ever again when they see me as 'sweet'. Remember last Saturday night, hm, do I need to remind you? That rascal from two houses over sneaked in through your bedroom balcony doors, and I jumped him? Showed him, didn't I?

Happy Spring to You!!!

It's here!
Meteorically that is...not so much temperature-wise. March 1st and SPRING has sprung! Hurray!

Don't know about you, but I am a bright skies-warm breezes type of person.

We have just returned from Austria, where calf-deep snow was lit up by a lovely warm sun, and that is what Winter is supposed to be like, as far as I'm concerned.

Not the grey, windy, endlessly wet winters we suffer over here in the Wetlands.

Anyway, we can look forward to more daylight and judging by how many bulbs are already in bloom, a festive garden.

This afternoon something rare and incredible happened. Whilst I was sitting in my usual spot on the couch, with a cup of fresh ginger tea, searching out some music to sing to, out of the corner of my eye I saw something drop from a height into the box hedge. Or so I thought.

When I looked properly, it turned out to be a sparrow-hawk sitting primly on top of the hedge, looking alertly around. So I hardly dared to breathe, let alone move a muscle, with just the window being between this bird of prey and myself.

It sat there for a minute or three, and then flew off. And then I saw the reason for it being in the hedge in the first place; it had caught one of our many blue tits in its talons.

Now, obviously this is not that bird, as I didn't dare to move and my camera was out of reach! This photo is kindly borrowed from the Internet (and its credit goes to Zoom).

What a wonderful encounter!

I wish you a great Sunday, and a lovely Springtime.

Update: it has visited our garden twice more over the last couple of days! Oh dear, I fear it has caught on to the fact that we provide snacks...

Haiku on a Robin

Little Robin sings

His heart out in the cold wind

Catkins dance with glee