November walk between the lakes

As we live at the edge of our village, we can enjoy the view of handmade lakes out of our upper windows. Well, we can see only one of them, but I love to walk along, or rather between the lakes at every season. When I worked in the city centre I used to cycle between the lakes and along the river to work - now it's still my favorite way into town. But when I cycle I don't stop that much to take photos.Yesterday the weather was so wonderful, I took my camera for a walk.

This is the view from a nearby hill, that you will see in my pictures from yesterday.

 Farmer's track = my favorite way into town.

 Wild geese love the lakes.

The centre lake with the hill where I took the first photo in the background.

Happy Birthday Dad!

My Dad grew up during the war and always had to work very hard. Spending all his life in a nursery didn't give him much time for holidays or even days off - like animals, flowers allways need attention. 

Still - he always kept his humor and his friendlyness. At long last he is a pensioner now and can enjoy lazy days. Looking after himself still is an adventure for him, but he is doing great.

Today is his 76th birthday and we will celebrate it in our house as we have more space and more experience in baking.

She's coming home!

Today our student daughter is coming home for the first time after leaving for Kiel 5 weeks ago. Over here, life went on as usual, just as if time stood still.

But for her everything up north was new: moving into a stranger's flat for 1 month, finding a shared flat and furniture, making new friends (with skills to help her move), starting to study and now learning to learn everything she needs. 

I hope, there will be some time for us to talk, so I can imagine what my "little baby" is doing now on her own. Her grandma is definitely proud of her -  watching from heaven......

Music of my life - Part 1 Albert Hammond

When I fell in love for the very first time at the tender age of 12, I said goodbye to nursery rhymes and German pop songs and turned towards English music.  In that situation Alber Hammond had the perfect song in the charts: Everything I want to do I bought that record and played it countless times, dreaming of the boy who never wanted me as a friend.

Some weeks later I got the album for Xmas and bought many more records and CDs over the years. Although some of his hits like "The free electric Band" or "It never rains in southern California" are still played on the radio, Albert wasn't much seen in Germany for almost 40 years.

In 1988 he recorded a lovely Xmas song and we still listen to it every year Under the Xmas tree. At that time I was living on my own without TV and I had to visit some friends to see Albert in a Xmas show. 

2005 he had a TV apperance to anounce a new CD. It was different music and the musician looked rather worn and very old. 2010 his homepage promised a tour in Germany, but that year I waited in vain.

Sometimes good things need some extra time. Something turned that old man into a health concious granddad who wanted to taste the feeling of the stage again. This year Albert Hammond had his first European tour in Spring and on Mother's Day I drove all the way to Hamburg to see my teenage idol live on stage. 

The concert started with "Everything I want to do", but I didn't have my camera ready just then. I only filmed one song which is now official shown on Albert's YouTube channel To all the girls I loved before. Needless to say that it was an unforgetable evening with a cheerful and very fit entertainer and happy musician with a fantastic band.

After the concert I joined the queue for an autograph on my oldest album cover of Albert Hammond and for a photo.

These days Albert posts regulary on Facebook, sending his love to everyone who still admires him.

Party Time

Yesterday our youngest daughter had a Halloween Party with her friends in our house. Surprisingly two of the selfmade spider webs we made 10 years ago still exsist and are still used for decorations.

The girls had plenty of suitable foods for Halloween - either with pumpkin or with crazy colors. We got some pumpkin muffins - they were delicious!

At long last we also got a pumpkin for our front door!

The next parties will be next weekend: our daughter's friend and my Dad will both celebrate on Saturday. As they both love our home made biscuits, we did some more baking today. To make sure, nobody mistakes them for Xmas biscuits, we chose suitable motives: The teenager will get horses, cats and dogs and my Dad, a professional gardener, flowers and 4-leaved clover beside his favorite fruit-biscuits.

Border shopping

Today is a church holiday for all catholics in Germany."All-Saints-Day". More or less. Some counties with a high catholic population have a church holiday, other counties, like Lower Saxony have an ordinary work day. Bad luck for the catholics here - lucky day for the protestants in catholic counties. Nobody promised life to be fair.

As we live close to the border of catholic Northrhein Westfalia, many Westfalians use this day to go shopping in the protestant neighbour county. Soon the city will be packed with shoppers from across the border. As my working place is not in the city, we don't expect a busy day, although I'd love to sell wines to the shopping tourists.

Have a look of the city. The photos are not brand new, but nature looks almost the same now as in March when I climbed a church tower to take these pictures.

Halloween

In Germany Halloween isn't such a big event as in the USA, but our children loved to make scary decorations themselves when they were small. Like weaving spiders' webs with black wool and cutting bats out of black card board. For many years we had real and pottery pumpkins in our front garden and lit candles inside them every night for weeks. Now the girls are grown up and we don't have any decorations anymore. Although our daughter will have a Halloween party in our house on Saturday......well, I better lock myself into the bedroom. 

Some children go from door to door these days and I prepared some nice gifts for them - but no one came to our house. 

Our most famous Halloween pumpkin from 2006