What have I been doing?

It is clear that Spring is a lot colder than in previous years, with more rain and wind than I like. We do have some good days, but when it is dry, there is often so much wind I cannot take my bicycle, and when there is no wind, it rains :-). 

Complaining about the weather is a Dutch sport and we have plenty to complain about! But still we have good hope that there will be more good days with warm and sunny weather. (we live in hope)

What have I been doing these past weeks?

Balcony

Working on my balcony is absolutely amazing, I love seeing which plants survived the Winter, and seeing things grow. When you work with something alive like plants it is always a bit of a gamble. Some plants do well, other do not and sometimes you cannot work out why you succeed or not. But that is part of the fun, you really have to give up the idea you can control everything and you have to go with what nature gives you. Valuable life lessons as well! 

I do have ants on my balcony, something I would not mind in a garden, but I do not want them on my small balcony. So I need to get rid of them. I usually try to stay away from poison, but in this case I have little choice. 

Books

These past weeks I re-read a couple of books by Nicci French, and I really enjoyed them again. I also have  little stack of garden-memoires and books about nature. I love to read these at the moment, even though most of these gardeners have gardens the size of football fields, and not a small balcony. But it is still inspirational and amazing to read.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Waterstones bookstore in Amsterdam, and bought a couple of nice clothbound Penguin classic editions of Bronte novels. I love the design of these books, but they also have very good notes and explanations. These look great on my shelves. 

And more

Now the weather seems to be improving, I have been able to take my bicycle more, and I love that. 

In the Summer my friend and I will go to Turin for a couple of days. We sometimes go on vacation together, the last time was in 2019 to Lisbon. Now we have chosen Turin and we are very much looking forward to visiting this beautiful city in the north of Italy. 

I have a couple of exhibitions lined up that I hope to visit, when things go well. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to visit an exhibition in Zwolle, but when I got to the station, there were problems with the trains. I have not been able to see this exhibition before it closed, and that is a shame, but fortunately there are many more to come.