Botanical garden

Spring is a good time to visit the botanical garden: So much to see, especially lush green and colourful flowers. Such a peaceful and easy going atmosphere, calm and serene. I really love to go there.
This little greenish pond looks spellbound with the brown curly fern in front.

A pair of mallard ducks, enjoying the people taking pictures of them.

A collage of flower beds and trees I'm very fond of.

And beautiful orchids!

Time is passing fast in the botanical garden. Good to have a sundial at hand.

Spring walk

The next day we did some sightseeing with the family and went to the City's lake. A walk around the lake is 6 km, too much for everyone to walk, so we just visited the north bank. At the balustrade we witnessed the "love locks"-phenomenon which has spread around the world and finally reached our place as well. Affixing padlocks to fences, gates and bridges by lovers should symbolize everlasting love. Cute little tokens of affection.

We went to the nearby town hall and wanted to take the elevator to get to the top of the dome for spectacular view. Unfortunately we would have had to wait almost an hour as it was quite busy. So we decided to wander around the adjoining little parc.

I found an interesting looking tree trunk with a curious hole...

Then we went to the newly rebuilt castle.

It was all white and shiny. Inside are conference facilities and a little museum.

In front of the castle were pretty beds of yellow and red flowers.

First time for me to see yellow hyacinths.

Well worth seeing is the baroque style garden. We lingered from one pretty flower bed to the next water fountain, enjoying the many colours of spring flowers arranged in geometrical order.

Love the pansy violet. Pretty colour for a new blanket....

 

Happy spring walk with a happy family.

Spring activities

Last weekend we went out flying. Yes, flying with a quadcopter, a model aircraft Peter bought for work. The quadcopter is equipped with a camera and is going to be employed to fly over fields to give an overview of crops. First we spent the morning at home searching the net for instructions, and thanks to Youtube we found really good videos how to get the software working and the aircraft started. Then we drove outside town to a field far away from buildings.

Our first flight was a bit of an adventure as you cannot see the little white quadcopter well against the bright sky when reaching 50 meters of hight. I'm also not used to estimate distances of flying objects, our little fellow always seemed to be too far away from us. The camera which is mounted underneath the body of the quadcopter was connected to our tablet. We could see the hight, distance and battery status and of course the field it was flying over. We trained starts and (soft) landings and how to use all the control instruments. It was such fun, and I'm sure the people who are going to work with the quadcopter will love it too.

Coming back home I admired our spring basket with the pink hyacinth. It grew every day a few centimeters and got heavier too with all flowers opening almost at once. I tied it to the basket handle as the flowers touched the wall already.

My mixed stripy blanket is growing too. I tried to balance the colours as I found the combinations so far a bit too much. Via ravelry I found out about random stripes and colour generators like this one here and even one for squares here. Amazing what is out there in the net! I have not used the generators though, but bookmarked them for future use.

I visited a tea house the other day with my lovely friend U. It is a small shop where they sell tea and cakes. In a little room at the back of the shop you can also drink tea and eat yummy curries. It's been a long time since I sat in a tea house (in Frankfurt there used to be one a few years ago). In our region I didn't know any, and I was very surprised and pleased to find out about that place. Have to go there more often!

Tiny indoor greenhouse - diy

As spring seems to be beginning soon I thought it would be a good time to plant herbs. I love fresh herbs in my cooking, it gives meals a special flavour, fresh and full of taste. So I usually have frozen herbs in the freezer and a pot of basil on our kitchen window sill. Most herb plants in a pot I bought in the supermarket though don't survive, so the idea of cultivating herbs myself came into my mind. There is also a plant which is used in Korean dishes, called perilla leafs (sesame leafs), that I really love but cannot buy freshly here. I would love to grow this plant myself and got some perilla seeds to try it out. As I have no experience as a gardener I was not sure which way would be best to start growing plants from seeds. So I surfed the net and found an easy and simple idea to build a tiny indoor greenhouse here.
All you need are eggshells, an egg container, some soil and a plastic bag. Well, why not trying it out?

Just fill the eggshells with a little soil and scatter the seeds on top, fill it up with a little more soil and pour some water. Additionally to the perilla seeds I did some eggshells with oregano and thyme seeds. Those herb seeds are sooooo tiny it was impossible to scatter them evenly. If they would all germinate it will get very crowded in the eggshell.

Then place the filled eggshell into the egg container and cover it with a plastic bag with some holes for air. I placed my mini greenhouse on the window sill and hope that I will see plants growing.

When they have developped leaves and roots they can be repotted into a bigger container, the eggshell can be broken softly without damaging the delicate roots. Well, this is theory right now.
I tried to grow perilla last year in a little glass jar with kitchen tissue as underground. They germinated and developped tiny leaves and roots but when repotting them into soil I damaged the roots that got stuck in the kitchen tissue. I planted them with kitchen tissue still on the roots into soil but the tissue would never dissolve and the roots did not grow further. So that was the first planting experience disaster. Hope this one will work out better!