Eisblumen

The first frost and snow have arrived in these parts.  

These are pictures of a broken window taken in an attic in Frankfurt that I was renovating last winter. Nowadays all windows are so well insulated and double or triple glazed, that it is rare to see such nice ice flowers anywhere . 

Pictures were taken in the early evening with an iphone as I did not have my camera with me, with a dark blue sky in the background during the "blue hour" and yellow city lights reflecting through the window in the lower part of the pictures. I wish I could have kept the window in this state on "non-repair" ....

Plant of the Month : Viburnum farreri

This large bush grows up to two meters  and the same across and starts flowering at the nastiest time of the year, at the beginning of winter, in November, in the midst of decay and cold wetness. 

What a pleasing and welcome sight! 

I like it much better than the more well known Viburnum bodnantense "Dawn" , flowering a little later, because "Dawn" has a stiff upright growth with branches sometimes growing out in awkward unnatural angles. V. farreri has a pleasing vase-like growth habit and makes a form of a bush like in a children's drawing, branches long and slightly curving to the outside. Of course only, if you don't mess it up by cutting it back undiscriminately with a hedge trimmer, as so many people do ... leave it be and it will naturally grow into a very pleasing shape. It looks especially good with a dark background of a yew hedge or other evergreen conifers or rhododendrons. 

In addition it has the most delicate scent - at this time especially valued. Its whiff gives the promise of a coming spring and that better times are sure to follow. 

The genus Viburnum has many more valuable medium- and large sized shrubs for every season  that flower at different times throughout the year. 

Wanderlust - Paris

I had prepared this post for times when at a loss of ideas, but the atrocious events of the past weekend by barbarians that are trying to send mankind back to the dark middle-ages justify this post now, for a cultured and wonderful, vibrant city in need of every bit of support it can get even if it is just a "thinking of you". 

My daughter spent a semester at a Paris university in 2013, therefore I was in Paris quite often for photographic explorations, only a four-hour train ride away. 

 visiting the Louvre

The Opera - Palais Garnier

Malmaison

 in Notre-Dame

 La Sainte-Chapelle 

La Seine

 Galerie Lafayette

macarons

 She is wearing black

Il pleure ...

November 9, 1989

Coming back from a short trip to our home in Philadelphia in the US, where we both were on graduate studies from 1988 to 1990, we switched on the old black&white TV that my uni supervisor had given us (we were very thrifty as we were both on academic scholarships that provided tuition and basic living expenses but only one flight home). What a surprise on the regular evening news:   we saw people dancing on the Berlin Wall back home in Germany, hacking at the wall, chiseling off pieces!
In utter delight we saw the "Trabi"-parade passing through Brandenburg Gate  watched by armed East German border guards but unharmed,  where people had been shot at only weeks before! That was my 27th  birthday on November 9, 1989.

 
After the travel restrictions had been lifted, we had a huge influx of people from East Germany and from the former East Bloc countries. Over 2 mio. ethnic Germans from the dissolving Soviet Union, mostly from Ukraine and Kasachstan, arrived in Germany between 1990 and 1996 and since then have mostly successfully assimilated into the German society. 

Nowadays we seem to see a repetition - refugees, whole families from Syria, Afghanistan and other failed states on the Mediterranean Sea, in search of a life in safety, are coming in huge numbers to the European Union, over a million this year alone to Germany, sometimes walking on their own two feet over months and years the whole distance of over 3000 km from Syria .... 

So far the overwhelming majority of Germans have been very welcoming. Nearly everyone seems to be involved or knows someone involved in help efforts, collecting warm clothing and shoes, providing housing,  if only freeing up sports halls and moving training to other facilities to provide temporary shelter before the winter comes.  
Is that because so many of us have experienced  being a refugee in their own lives and families? When millions of Jewish people tried to flee Germany before WW2 and had huge difficulties in finding a country that would take them? Or when the German population of East Prussia, Pommerania, Sudentenland and Silesia - more the 11 Mio. people - were expelled after the war with the restructuring of the German map, escaped with bare necessities and had to build new lives from scratch in the rest and what was left of Germany? Or maybe it is our sentimental touch and we want to relive the Trabi-parade of 1989? 

Maybe, we just want a challenge, we want to make it a success, we try harder, we make it work - and then we will have a celebration!

guardian angels in dreary weather in November ...

Wanderlust revisited - Edinburgh

It is getting dark here in Germany, wet and grey with the shortening hours of daylight.  Foggy, misty, ... Scottish!

I had spent lots of time in Edinburgh in the past years, where my sons went to boarding school during the final two years of their education. They had a great time, and so had I, visiting the Edinburgh area and the Fringe Festival which usually took place when their new term in August started.  Looking through my archives though, in search of a "Scottish" grey damp atmosphere, I could not find a single misty dark picture. It seems the weather was always fine - or I have fallen into the amateur photographers' trap of only fixating the nice moments in life ...

... older sisters! ...

Edinburgh's Princes Gardens 

 On the Royal Mile

 Sir Walter Scott Memorial

Calton Hill

I have been reading Diana Gabaldon's part historical part phantasy series "Outlander" set in Scotland. The books are wonderful for light reading at the pool in summer. And as the series has eight extremely thick volumes, they will last through several vacations. Which made my husband  lament rather unnervedly that I had developed an unhealthy addiction to some unknown Scotsmen! I guess the books are for women: Which woman would not want to be like the heroine, an all-knowing, admired, progressive, modern doctor, much ahead of her time, who survives and travels between centuries, taking up all sorts of roles that we would like to try out, heals people with herbal medicines and sometimes self-grown Penicillin (think about it ! How likely is that ?!) ?  And on top of that she experiences the greatest, truest love affair with her wedded rough-gentle red-haired Scot (Hm, maybe not ...).

Having read these books which play in the 18th century around the Jacobite risings, the Battle of Culloden and the loss of the clan system in Scotland, I can fully comprehend any Scottish desires for independence. 

the new Scottish parliament next to Holyrood House

For male readers, Ian Rankin's crime stories with Inspector Rebus might be more suitable: Edinburgh at its gruesome best and its dark grey mostly damp Scottish granite scenery. ...

Arthur's Seat, the hill next to Holyrood House which belongs to the Crown and is often in fog. Some of Rankin's murderers make use of this area.

more Scottish Poets: 

Sir Walter Scott

" To all, to each, a fair good night, And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light."