And Finally...Sun in The Wetlands, Life is Good!

Hiya, lovers of the outdoors :-)
Today I have a huge smile on my face, for today the sun is out and the wind has turned to the South...Suddenly my garden is what it is designed to be: a haven.
Not so much a windswept battlefield where my hanging baskets are swinging wildly dripping from their branches and my goldfish complain of it being too wet!

I am writing this in the garden, under the sun umbrella, with a cup of home-grown nettle tea at hand, Viggo and Gina by my side and a very loud cuckoo just off to my right in the bushes.

And Life is suddenly good.

This evening I am going to meet up (hang out, say my kids) with my few female colleagues and have a leisurely meal (chill and booze, say my kids) in the garden (hopefully!) of one of them. So Life is better still.

Only six weeks to go until the Summer holidays. Better, better still!

The poplars are moulding, shedding, what-you-may-call-it; the air is full of white fluff. Cotton on the mild wind. I kinda like it.

That cuckoo is really belting it out now! Gina has turned tail and removed herself to her basket indoors; too loud for her.

Just to make my point; this was two days ago...

So...I would like to wish you all a lovely day. I am going to enjoy mine, I can assure you!

All photos © Renée Koopman

Blue Zones? Tell You What Makes a Viggo Blue!

Hi fans, Viggo here, with an update on my big fat woman.

I am NOT satisfied with the progress my woman is making.

Last time I told you about the kilos she had lost whilst in Rome...Well, she gained them again.

I was so not-amused, I tell you! Here I am, trying to keep her spirits up, giving her good advice every day, overseeing her workouts, making certain she wakes up nice and early every morning...And what do I get? No result. Zilch. Nada.

So I did some research, and I came upon this Blue Zone stuff. People on far flung (read: backward) islands who live mostly on veggies and some fish drenched in olive oil, or alternatively mostly veggies and kelp, live up to one hundred or more and do so in good health, good spirits and- if you believe those stories- have sex twice a week whilst enjoying a good social life as well. Could be this is at the same time - I missed that bit due to the fact that a bumblebee distracted me.

Anyway, nothing ventured nothing gained, so I've put her on a new diet: the Blue Zone Diet minus the kelp (wouldn't know where to get that from) and plus the wine. 

Will keep you updated as to the weight-loss. Or gain (Frith forbid!)

The Joy of Cycling - Wetlands Adventure No. 1 (or two...)

When you live in an entirely flat country, with only a few bumps that hardly deserve the name "hill" in the far South and the far East of your (otherwise tiny) country, you get used to wind.
And wind is precisely the thing that you either love (when you are a sailor) or loathe (when you are a cyclist).

Now there is such a thing as a sailor-cyclist (a species which takes along a folding bicycle onto their boats), and they are a curious lot, but on the whole you can divide my countrymen into two categories: the sailors and the cyclists. 

The landlubbers amongst us love to keep their feet firmly on terra firma, and only take them off to push two pedals round. Needless to say, I fall into category two.

I love my e-bike! I suffer (well, I play it down, but anyway) from arthritic knees, so cycling became a tad painful of late. But then some years ago a colleague pointed me towards e-bikes, and my horizons broadened considerably again. Not only did my school have a wizard cycle-plan, which paid half (!) of the cost of acquiring said e-bike, but it conveniently lies within cycling distance from my home - 13 kms.

My bike is a Batavus Allegro E-90, an original Dutch make, and has 8 speeds and an action radius of 130 kms (I do have the largest battery). This radius will diminish somewhat over the years (as the battery ages), but so far it is plenty for me.

Last Summer it has taken me all over the country, right up to the North and back again, in easy 80 kms a day stretches. (You can find the story on this blog, in August 2014)

The Wetlands is an ideal country for cycling. Not only is it flat, as I mentioned before, but it has an extensive cycle path network which even the biggest dummy can follow. There is a signpost on every corner and fork in the road, I'm not kidding you!

And we have a cyclists repair and aid organization, in fact we now have a couple I believe. Got yourself a flat tire and you don't want to repair it yourself? Call the number and a nice man comes and does it for you. At a price. That goes without saying.

But here it comes: using an e-bike will take the wind factor away almost entirely! All of a sudden I will cycle to work in a wind force 7, and it will still only take me 35 minutes, instead of the usual hour it used to take me with that wind. It is wonderful!

I overtake most other cyclists and even youngsters on mopeds have trouble overtaking me. The only disadvantage (as such) is that you are vulnerable to nasty accidents when your speed is 24 kms or more. But you can choose to wear a  safety helmet (I don't - I am prone to bad hair days as it is already).

The Summer holidays are approaching fast, so I am researching new cycling adventures. I'll let you know.

Viggo on the Goldfish - Quite a Fishy Business!

Hi fans, Viggo here!
Today, as I played around a bit with a freshly caught mole, I noticed my woman sitting next to the pond. I know she's partial to those goldfish, Frith knows why, they are such dumb animals.

Anyway, she claims she has written a Haiku about those silly fish, whereas everyone knows it is ME who is writing those Haikus!

I'll prove it to you:

Goldfish gaze upon 

my reflection in their pond

and blow me a kiss

There! Obviously you are able to recognize the hand of the master?!

Am I Blue? - The Beauty of Flowers in the Blue Spectrum.

My garden is blooming as if it is afraid there will be no tomorrow...
Not that I am complaining, mind! I adore sitting there with a cup of coffee very early in the morning, when my neighbourhood is still asleep, and watch the bees and bumblebees visit my poppies and digitalis. Viggo and Gina by my side; they are wise to this morning ritual.

And this morning I want to talk to you about my love of flowers in the blue spectrum.

Spring starts with white and yellow, in the Wetlands. In February/March, when our earliest bulbs start showing their colours. They are followed by blue and purple, if you ignore the fact that our tulips show every colour under the rainbow (even black!). Tulips do not count; I like them, but they are very very contrived.

In my garden white and yellow is followed by blue and purple, believe me! And there is a period, right now in fact, when the white and yellow mix with the blue and purple.

There is something about these blue and purple and pink flowers that speaks to my soul. 

Sounds a bit melodramatic, I know. 

Yellow is a cheerful colour, but flowers in the blue spectrum have an introspective quality in my opinion. It is not a coincidence that melancholy has got the label 'The Blues'. 

Here you have the ordinary Cornflower. I allow it to seed itself everywhere it likes, simply because I adore it. When I was a child that devoured books, I used to read about cornflowers in the cornfields, except in our cornfields there were none...The wild flowers were sprayed to death in the sixties and seventies. Thank Frith that nowadays they are allowed to bloom again, and well-thinking farmers even sow them in the verges! It makes for wonderful bicycle rides, I can assure you!

This 'butterfly' lavender is another favorite of mine. I always make certain I have one next to the garden table, where it scents that entire corner.

I have shown you those two photos before, but they prove my point. Lovely, lovely colours!

(By the way, if any of you know how I can upload them so that they are positioned right next to each other, please tell me how to! I cannot)

So. Blue Spectrum? Yes, please!

Viggo Update on the Weighty Problem

Hi fans, Viggo here!

I promised you an update on my big fat woman, and a Viggo always keeps his promises.

Now, if you remember, I put her on a diet, some weeks ago.

She tried to take it seriously, I could tell, ' cause the little man en little woman were complaining loudly about there not being anything good to eat in the house. They are such pussies; if you give them a choice they would live on hamburgers, popcorn, pizza and chocolate. They should try living on MY diet for a while, see how they would like a bowl of crunchy cat nibbles twice a day...

Anyway, my woman started with gusto, and then what did the silly woman do? She went to Rome for 4 days. I ask you! Rome! Home of the pizza!

She swore to me she only had 1 pizza, and okay, it had those tiny salty fish on.

Anyway...I ordered her onto the scales, and to my amazement she appeared to have lost 1,5 kilos. So I didn't have to torture her.

She was really happy and by way of thanking me for my support she wrote me one of those Haikus. I like it, it is about me! Here it is:

Cold wet cat sneaks in Tiny love bite on my chin Paw prints on the sheet

Like it?

Ah...the joys of blogging (and the surprises!)

When the mood hits me (it is a definite mood) I surf around Blogger and try to find fun blogs to read. Or interesting blogs. Or thought-provoking blogs. Or... You'll get my drift.
I have found a few little gems this way (you can find them under "The Blogs I Like to Read").

But, I'm sorry to say, I have found a lot of drivel as well, as well as had some nasty surprises.

Now I'm not that internet-savvy, and it serves me right perhaps.

Take for instance a couple of minutes ago. Nothing nasty, mind, but something my old brain simply does not understand:

I visit the (nice!) blog of someone in Arkansas I regularly read, and from her own blog list I pick a blog with a title which intrigues me. I hop to that blog, so far so good. I am now onto a very recent interesting blog by a dog lover. I am a dog lover myself, so I want to add her blog to my blog list. I take note of her URL, add it, check if the link I've added works, and find myself (bewildered!!!) onto a blog about (wait for it) dogs in Dubai which has not been active since 2004.

How is this possible? Beats me!

Still.

Blogging has proven to be one of the constants of my life ever since I discovered it (rather late, but better late than never) in 2013. It has taken the place of the diaries I have kept since childhood, with the difference that those diaries were the unvarnished truth-according-to-boring-old-me, and this blog does get a nice shiny coat sometimes, and is edited. Wouldn't want to give offense. And I have started to upload my latest writing project, called The Menopausal Detective on a Slippery Slope in the Pages section.

Due to the fact that Blogger is an American invention, most of my readers are in the USA...Hi, folks! But people from far flung places like Zambia and India and China appear to read it as well, and this is fun. Hi, folks!

This panorama from the Colosseum is rather like my blog, I think. Its appears to be quiet, just another anonymous guy and me. But if you look closely, you can spot hundreds of other people in the far distance. That's you :-)