Bittet, so wird Euch gegeben ....

"Bittet, so wird Euch gegeben,

suchet, so werdet Ihr finden,

klopfet an, so wird Euch aufgetan!" 

 (Matth. 7.7)

We had chosen this verse as a guiding principle for our marriage when we got married exactly 27 years ago today on April 30, 1988. When my father read this quote from the Book of Matthew during the wedding ceremony, he spoke in his sermon about the giving and taking in a marriage and that this promise was quite a tall order for any marriage, a lot of trust and hope put into each other to lay claim to this verse from the bible and to adjust it for each other, for real people, with jobs and other commitments, for day to day life.
Well ....  27 years later I would claim that it mostly depends on how hard and persistently you knock and how loud you shout when you ask for things ...

But it is generally a good rule to find fulfillment in giving rather than in taking. No disappointments there, if you give without expecting an answer or waiting for a thank you. And rewards will surely come, sometimes from unexpected sides, in a surprising form and out-of the-blue, sooner or later.

These are some door knobs that can be used for knocking or doors that can be passed through, to heaven or elsewhere  ....

more Here

Spring is here!

Ferrara is growing - she is now regularly going out with her mother.

                                                              als Zweibeiner!                    more here

For her older sister Franzi the outdoors season started today. She, two-year-old Fleur  and their friends had their first full day out on the pastures today - they had a lot of fun!

                                                                                 Fleur in front of theTaunus-Feldberg

Ich poste, also bin ich - Blogito ergo sum ?

Or should it say: "bloggo ergo sum" because "to blog" in Latin would possibly be bloggere, not blogitare ....
Anyway  - this blog is in German.

Frei nach "ich poste, also bin ich" fragt man sich gelegentlich, was so ein blog eigentlich bedeutet, warum "man" (sprich: Ich) das eigentlich macht: bin ich neuerdings narzisstisch veranlagt, dass ich mich selber gerne reden höre? Hört mir sonst niemand zu? Macht es mich realer, ein virtuelles Spiegelbild von mir zu produzieren, oder ist es eine eitle Selbstbeschau? Pubertäre Äußerungen einer menopausal middle aged woman, die sich in der "empty-nester-Phase" versucht, neu zu erfinden?
Oder ist es eine moderne Form des Tagebuchs, eines scrapbooks mit Text und Bildern?  Führt es nur dazu, dass man sich ständig um sich selber dreht, in der eigenen Anbetung stecken bleibt und nicht weiter kommt?
Interessiert es mich überhaupt, ob es irgendjemand liest - oder brauche ich nur die regelmäßige Form und Verpflichtung zur Kontrolle der eigenen Fotografie?
Oder  hilft es bei der alten ewig präsenten Fotografen-Frage, die sich jeder immer wieder stellt: was fotografiere ich heute?

Es ist sicherlich ein "Egotrip" - und ob es verwerflich oder überflüssig oder unlesbar ist, oder ob es nur der Information der näheren und weiteren Verwandtschaft dient, die man nicht ständig sieht .... - Allein die Tatsache, dass es jemand lesen könnte, zwingt einen dazu, nicht allzu schlechte Bilder online zu stellen und eine eigene Qualitätsprüfung durchzuführen, die zumindest den eigenen Ansprüchen genügt.
Und glücklicherweise bekomme ich gelegentlich reales feedback von realen Personen.

In erster Linie aber treibt es einen raus an die frische Luft, immer neue Aufnahmen zu machen!

                                                                     selber ins Knie geschossen....

The Photographic Gardening Diary - 1

The greatest difficulty in successful gardening is to find plant compositions that work well for the plants and are aesthetically pleasing. Most of the time we have a plan in our heads and try to implement it, and then, at the time when everything should grow up, the most surprising and pleasing vistas are those not really planned at all. Nature's behaviour can never be predicted precisely and if one actor in a carefully devised play is late or missing, the whole effect is lost. So every year again and again I enjoy in our garden the surprising combinations that plants create without our help.

I have kept a written gardening diary for a long time to record new planting experiments and other details, flowering times etc. and I always regretted not having taken pictures that clarify many details without the need for words. Therefore this Photographic Gardening Diary: it will hopefully support us with the planning of the garden year.

Here are some combinations in green hues that show up in our garden now.

Euphorbia characias in front of Choisya ternata "Sundance" and Pinus Mugo

Choisya ternata "Sundance"  is a wonderful evergreen background shrub, that starts to flower now. It is a pity that photographs cannot transport a scent - in the evening sun, this part of the garden wears a warm wonderful vanilla scent.  It is frost hardy here; in some winters it sheds many leaves but will recuperate in a very short time before the flowering season.

This is an early filled primula, that is in flower now. I don't particularly like it because of the artificial flowers but it was a leftover from a pot planting a few years ago and we moved it into the garden in a shady corner. There it proliferates and cooperates very well with Ophiopogon nigrescens, the black grass, that once caused a visitor to wonder openly, why I left the plastic binders from the mulch bags lying around in the garden...  on the other side are the leaves of little Astilbe chinensis pumila, that requires a lot of watering in late summer and may disappear completely if not watered and overlooked.

                               Epimedium rubrum in front of a Hosta under Acer palmatum dissectum . The different shapes of leaves combine nicely.

Here is a variegated Buxus sempervirens Elegantissima and below Helleborus orientalis with Symphytum grandiflorum as ground cover.

A gardening diary not only helps in the cases where you take a stroll through your garden in spring and realize that while you planted 500 tulips in pink and white in the autumn of the previous year, now not a single one is showing up... and suddenly you see all those well-fed little creatures scuttling around in the garden, crossing the walkway in front of your feet, as if it was their home - which it is by now, and you gave them the sumptuous buffet to feed on. And  now you also realize why your dog is so mesmerized and excitedly staring for hours at the compost and the dry walls. I once put a water hose down one of the holes between the stones of a dry wall and out came 2 m further along the wall from another hole a wet and angry little mouse trying to clean its dripping face and eyes like in a funny cartoon. Luckily the dog never got it.

We all share our gardens with many other creatures. For years, a robin had his territory in our garden and he often came to greet me in the mornings when I went down to the gate to fetch the newspaper. Last year, he decided to build his nest in a buxus pot next to our front door. I felt grateful and honoured that he decided we posed no danger, and his wife laid four tiny blue sprinkled eggs into his nest. However, he was  too trusting. A neighbour's cat got wind of this and robbed the nest when the little ones had just hatched. We have not seen him since. Maybe the cat got the whole family :(.

..

Spring is in the Air

Spring has finally arrived in our parts, birds are singing in the mornings, trees are unfolding their leaves, flowers are emerging from their underground dormant states. Our Kurpark is full of blooming magnolias!

                                           Magnolia x soulangeana

                                               Magnolia stellata

                                    Fresh rolled up hosta are coming out of the ground and unfolding their graphic leaves.
                                    I like them best in black and white.                                            

                                            Tiny Elfenblumen in my garden (Epimedium pinnatum ssp colchicum)

This winter was so mild, that our bougainvilleas survived with leaves and we even have our first tiny blossom ! In this part of the world, the mediterranean bougainvilleas usually don't survive the winter or - if they survive in a glass house - they usually don't show colour before July or August.

  and the Nilgänse in Bad Homburg's Kurpark have seven new family members!

Berlin's Niederkirchnerstrasse

We visited  the very impressive "Topography of Terror" museum  in Berlin - the site of the Gestapo and SS offices, prisons and massacres between 1933 and 1945. It is directly behind the leftovers of the wall on Niederkirchner Strasse in the formerly western part of Berlin, very close to Checkpoint Charlie.

                       
                                                                            inside the Asisi-Panorama

Directly opposite Checkpoint Charlie is the noteworthy and sobering Asisi-Panorama, a reconstruction of a part of the wall in pictures from the 1980s with broadcast voices. Two areas of devastating human experiences, of merciless mass murders, so close together in this nowadays rather peaceful city. It seems impossible to fathom, how people not too long ago could twice within less than forty years commit such sins against humanity. The need to belong to a group, to do as everybody does and conform to expectations, is much stronger than the individuals' conscience and rational brain. We see in the occasional outbreak of violence against strangers in all parts of Germany (and elsewhere in the world) that a primeval and animalish Angst can take over. It needs to be addressed rationally and overcome.

Close by, on Lindenstrasse 9 - 14,  is the Jewish Museum with its expressive Daniel Libeskind architecture.

It shows  detailed exhibits about Jewish life in Germany from before the middle ages up to now. Most impressive are its rooms of "Voids" :

                                                             
                                                                                        the Holocaust Tower

                                    the Memory Void   (Installation Shalekhet - Fallen Leaves,  by Menashe Kadishman)

"Stolpersteine", stumbling blocks, have been installed in many places on Berlin's walkways to commemorate individual people's lives and the places where they lived or worked.

A very helpful informative guide to these historic places are two books of the "Pastfinder" series by Maik Kopleck , Berlin 1933 -1945 and Berlin 1945 - 1989 with very good historic maps of Berlin.

Ein Koffer in Berlin ...

For a large part of my life I hated to be German. It must have been a leftover from my parents and grandparents who were so ashamed for their people. This feeling of being in the wrong and apologizing for one's existence must have been in the general fabric and atmosphere of our home. For my parents, Berlin had the reputation of being the source of everything evil.
Times have changed. Germany's happiness index is definitely on the up - a few people still more or less openly hate us (apart from the obvious Greek press),  notably Martin Wolf of the Financial Times whom I like to read if I want to get some adrenalin into my bloodstream in the mornings  - but the new generation of young city people don't seem to care whether they are German or anything else. They simply enjoy life. For me, and for the time being, Berlin is the most interesting livable city anywhere.    Berlin

This occasional "Being German" blubber and photo series is about some totally randomly selected peculiarities of this part of the world that I observe and collect. I will start with "the Currywurst!"

Ever since Herbert Grönemeyer's "Currywurst" song, this peculiar dish is famous. It is actually a normal fine "Rostbratwurst", served cut up and smothered in Ketchup and curry powder. In Berlin there even is a museum dedicated to the Currywurst ...

Simon Winder, a germanophilic Englishman, in his immensely readable and funny "Germania" book has some nice passages about German food and German Wurst.  I recommend the reading, if you want some - incomplete and personalized, but very interesting -  overview of German history.

Her first outings

Some fresh pictures of our little easter egg here!

                          What is mum doing??

Und los geht's! 

          und alle Viere ...

Maybe we should call her Ferrara. 

Plant of the Month: Euphorbia characias

This dramatic plant is a bit of an unreliable actor. In strong winters, it tends to lie like an ugly black snake, a nearly dead mass on the ground. If you  are not patient - or your gardener does not know this plant and cuts it back then -  the remainder will surely die. If you ignore it and put up with its ugliness, it may turn up its large yellow-green bright heads, when the sun starts to come out and the frosts have gone, and will rise and shine towards the beginnung of April, to present large yellow flower heads on long lanky stems. It is still not very common in Germany - I found it while visiting English gardens. It needs dry sunny soil, but - if you are patient - it will come back most springs, even if is has been lying under snow. I tried it out for the first time nearly twenty years ago. Then, I bought the subspecies  wulfenii with even larger flower heads. The mother plant died  long ago, but its offspring in the wild form is still present in our garden. Ours moved from a wall, where I planted the first specimen for protection as was suggested by the nursery, into the wild under the cedar tree, in very dry, warm conditions, and direct sunlight in spring, when the sun is still low. Lots of kindlings will come up at the most surprising places with dark green or bright yellow flower heads. The green ones are less attractive, so I removed them meticulously that they would not propagate. Now, we have only yellow ones. The wild form has slightly smaller flower heads than ssp wulfenii, but is still a very dominant and pleasing sight in the garden at this time of year.

Euphorbia characias in front of Choisya ternata "Sundance". 

A New Family Member!

   This year the easter bunny did not bring eggs - he brought a foal !

Just before midnight Kilara gave us another healthy daughter. She is bigger and more bony than her older sister Franzi and the birth took a little longer, but in the end she managed alone. Here they are, two hours after her birth, fit and healthy: 

We had hoped for a stallion but as I am the middle one of three sisters , I cannot complain! Any suggestions for names? Has to start with an F again ....

Here is the old post with the story of her sister Franzi:  Franzi's birth