A busy week

We've been in Canada for almost a week and it's been great but also pretty busy. Our first big event was our niece's grad. Allison spent 3 years at BFA with our girls where they became great friends. It was special to be able to celebrate her grad with her here in Canada.

We had a lovely visit with a former student of mine. She was part of the group of students I taught in the one-room school the year before we left for Brazil. Rose was pretty much the main reason I got through that very challenging year. It was great to be with her and her family again.

One more from Germany

We are packing up to leave our home for the summer so this will be my last post until Canada. See you there!

Goodbye

Yesterday Bethany said goodbye to this precious little guy and his family. It was a very, very sad moment. Poor little Max sat down on the curb, covered his face and cried and cried and cried. It was a hard moment for us all. Max's parents told me again that Bethany had done such a wonderful job and we have reason to be very proud of her. Definitely bittersweet at its best. She will be missed and she will also greatly miss this amazing family.
Home to unload her stuff and start sorting. This was the scene at 8:00 this morning...
...and by 4:00 it looked like this! Wow. What a transformation and what a lot of hard work today.

The best volunteers ever

These are the volunteer sunflowers that I transplanted several weeks ago. I cannot believe how tall they are already! Just a few days ago I measured myself against them and I was still taller. Not any more! I wonder how huge these plants are going to be in a few months. YIKES!

A beautiful Eck

Sometimes it's good to just stop and look around at where we live. It's so beautiful and lush and orderly and clean. We are blessed.




Yes, I do enjoy seeing the cows. So many of the poor beasts spend the entire winter in the barns so it sure is nice to see them out and about!

At the pool

For a small town Kandern really does have a great pool.
There's tons of green space. People come and bring half their households and spend the entire day lounging under the trees (and sometimes they swim too!).





These are the kinds of antics that go on. I was quite pleased to catch this in full action. The pool was quite calm this day as there was an event downtown otherwise I could have filled this post with kids running, pushing, shoving, wrestling....you name it!


I think we all know what this word means!

A few summers ago it was beastly hot. Apparently bacteria counts in the water were out of control. What was discovered was that the "boys" were coming to the pool wearing their underwear under their large, baggy swimming trunks and going in the water dressed like that. In order to stop this practice the "Speedos only" rule was introduced. We all gagged and tried not to think about it! We vowed that we would never go to the pool again, however, when it got hot enough we changed our minds!

Weed-itis

You've all heard all about my weed issues - probably more than you would care to! Well, indulge me again as I bore you with yet another weed story. Last night I heard a tractor in close proximity of our house. I didn't think anything of it because tractors are often going down the street or past our house. No big deal.
After a few minutes I glanced out the window and I stopped dead in my tracks (and then rushed off to get my camera!). There was a farmer spraying weeds in broad daylight! I couldn't believe it! I have threatened many times to buy some Roundup and get out there under the cover of darkness and spray those weeds into oblivion! However, I've never had the courage to do that for fear of what the neighbours would think.
But there he was - calmly blasting out the weeds.The ironic thing is that I had come in about half an hour earlier from scraping and cutting weeds away from the sidewalk along the street. Had I known that this farmer was on his way.......

From where I sat

It's amazing what one can see from the car. I pulled up and parked in Bethany's Swiss town yesterday and this little guy was on the tree beside me.Then these two were romping around. I've only included the "nice" picture and not any of the other ones that I took when they were raising some eyebrows!



One sees this symbol for the Canton of the City of Basel almost everywhere. The one for the Canton of the "Land" of Basel is similar but the top curves the opposite way and it has little humps across the top of it.