Photo dump: summer!

It's been a while. Life, what a lovely excuse.

We haven't gotten much use out of summer clothing so far for two reasons: 1) is that the Bavarian weather fairy refuses to acknowledge we're a few hours away from July, presumably a summer month, and 2) forest kindergarten appropriate clothing is always long sleeved and practical and often waterproof.

This has been our summer so far:

Finally!

Spring in the Englischer Garten.

Didn't spy any naked sun bathers, but I expect it's merely a matter of time until I do. We saw plenty of all the other ingredients for Munich spring: beer, ice cream, street musicians, including an enthusiastic young man having a go at Habanera on his violin. And a brass band playing in the Chinesischer Turm as people were drinking beer down below, of course.

Something also happened at the Monopteros.

Viennese waltzes at Hofgarten.

Oh, Finland.

As Munich moved further towards spring -- fighting it every step along the way, whining and crying -- we moved our rear ends to the airport and flew to Finland. Oh, the snow banks of late March! The sunlight has been plentiful however, and it hasn't been as cold as I anticipated: this winter has been long by Helsinki standards, but overall it's been quite mild as this year found temperatures below -40C being measured nowhere in Finland.

 Here, some photos.

 

Wordy Wednesdays: Things That Grow In The Dark

That's today in five images. I'll spare you the sixth and seventh, which were of the chicken I was going to cook for dinner. It was one of these pay-more-for-feeling-better-about-eating-meat free range, happy chickens -- I suppose as happy as one gets when they're slaughtered and plucked, anyway -- and although the date claimed it was good until tomorrow, it was busy growing green parts. The smell was reminiscent of, well, not of death, but rather of new life, if you catch my drift.

I enjoy eating a variety of fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut; I think mold is tasty on stinky cheeses; I love snails, mussels, oysters and shellfish; I'm trying to get better at cooking offal, although I still find myself sadly limited to liver. (I've been eyeing the kidneys and heart at the butcher's and intend to make a move one of these days, really.) But green chicken? I was dry heaving as I threw that out. And then I dug into the dust bin again, took a few photos of the green parts with the "best before" date visible, and emailed those to my husband, who in his turn forwarded them to the supermarket chain with an "is this a chicken I see before me?" email of complaint.

We will not be eating chicken today. We may not be eating chicken ever again, eww. Thankfully I had a huge spicy tuna salad for lunch, see image, and can afford to snack on nuts and fruit and dark chocolate for my second meal of the day.

Finally enough snow! We've gone sledding every day to take advantage of this rarity. We've also shoveled a goodly amount of snow with our set of hers and hers shovels, one for myself and one for Her Majesty, who insists on helping.

I remain highly amused by the impractical southerners Bavarians venturing out in jeans, ear muffs and no gloves and then complaining about the cold. I suppose this goes a long way in explaining why wool socks are so hard to come by here and wool socks for small children more so: nobody wears them.

Honey, lay off my shoes

I love these boots with spluttering enthusiasm. They're from the 2012 Autumn/Winter Kavat collection and I'm excited to have found them in the right size in this colour. It's a little late in the year to buy new warm shoes, but children's growing feet do not appear to listen to my sensibilities. I can't believe my daughter, age 3 years and a few spare months, is in Euro size 27 by now. Well, 28 for winter shoes, space for woolen sock et all accounted for. I don't think these will fit in the autumn anymore, but I expect we'll get a good few months of use out of these.

Another recent purchase, a Skip Hop lunch bag from the -30% bin. It fits a regular sized child's lunch, is insulated, and clips onto another bag or a stroller.

Friday mornings are for forest playgroup. We both enjoy traipsing about in the woods, and it certainly helps to prepare the spawn for starting forest kindergarten in April. Being Finnish, I cannot write a sentence without the inevitable "fine, but..."; here's the downside: like many activities for children, it's at the ungodly hour of 9 am. No, don't tell me kindergarten will start even earlier, I've ignored this up until now and can do so for a few months still.

But, come on, this is not winter. Look!

Behold: loot!

And then my sister-in-law and I took advantage of my spawn and made her model hats and clothes for our webshop.