It's Friday already again, and I think it's time for some pictures to make the week end with a bit of colour, especially as the weather forecast for here is mumbling something about "cloudy, and not much chance for sun". Which is a pity, because there's several spots of crocus flowers hanging out in our garden, looking like this:



and they are only waiting for the sun to shine down on them to open up to something like this:


but totally refuse to do so unless there is, you know, proper sunshine for more than five minutes.

There's also some iris, however, and these are undaunted by clouds. They just pop up one day and stand there in all their blue glory:


Totally undaunted by anything the weather might throw at them. When we had a bout of snow on Monday and Tuesday, and everything was suddenly all white (including our willow fence),


the iris still went "What? So there's snow, do you want me to care?"


Pretty little iris. I like your attitude.

It's finally raining again here, and there is a good amount of water coming down gradually - very, very much appreciated by all the plants. (Plus it means I might soon be able to finish washing my fleeces!) The cat does not feel as happy as I do about the rain, though - for her, it means a sleepy day, as she prefers not to get wet if she can help it. No umbrella for her - though she could theoretically accompany me, under my umbrella, when I'll walk to the post office later today to send off some parcels.

Speaking of outside and the garden, we recently had the pleasure of meeting this guy:


It's a ladybird beetle larva, doing what they do best: eating aphids. In this case, sitting on a (wild) poppy bud. Judging from the amount of aphids still left, we could have used about twenty more of its kind, though!

Today's a public holiday here in Germany, so you're not getting a proper blog post - just garden pictures instead:

 ...blooming lilies...

... blooming poppy...


and the Ecuador Purple Chili is doing its thing, too.

It's hot outside, by the way... and the sun is shining like there's no tomorrow. Once it has cooled off a little, I have gardening work to look forward to, but for now? It's time to relax, and have a coffee, and some strawberries, and a nice quiet afternoon.

A while ago, I was presented with a little coffee cup filled with coffee beans. Except that the beans were not roasted, and someone had dropped them into some soil inside a little flowerpot inside that coffee cup, and poured some water over all that, and watered them again and again and... the result were a couple of small coffee plant sprouts.

The largest one, meanwhile, has grown to look like this:






Some day, the Internet tells me, this thing might actually bloom and have coffee cherries later on. It also tells me that this will probably take another three or so years... well. I think I'll just go on buying coffee in the meantime, and I won't hold my breath for home-grown! It makes a nice plant, though. Not as decorative (yet) as the Ecuador Purple Chili:


but then purple chili fruit is really hard to beat, decorativeness-wise.

Final fun fact about coffee: The plant belongs to the same plant family as madder... does that explain why plant dyers love their coffee?

It's sunny outside, warming the water in which a sheep fleece is soaking. It's wool-washing season again!

And it is a joy to be outside in that beautiful weather (although wool washing season also means that I am waiting for a good, heavy rain to re-fill my water supply). Plus the view is nice - it's one of my favourite times of the year for looking at our living willow fence: the time when it's all lush and green, but it is still possible to see a bit of its structure through the leaves.



The peach tree that we planted on an espalier last year has actually bloomed this spring, and now it has three or four tiny fruits. I hope they will hang on there until they are nice and big and ripe!

This day today (much like yesterday) has been totally and utterly devoured by the Beast. That is, of course, the book due to come out soon, which has been privately named the Beast for ever and ever... or at least since before I came in on the project.

The fact that it's coming out soon means that it's been typeset, and edited, and we are currently reading the proofs, trying to catch any remaining errors. Which means that Gillian read it all, and I read it all, and we are now making sure that our edits don't contradict or overlap and are getting it all nicely in shape. That, in turn, means another chat session tomorrow, when we will hopefully get through most of the remainder...

At least I got to sit in the wintergarden and look at nice garden flowers while doing the reading. Like this one:


And that one:


And now back to get a little bit more work done today!

It's absolutely amazing what a long weekend (extended by one puny little day!) can do to one's email inbox. Possibly the timing of the long weekend, just after the opening of the Forum registration, has a tiny little bit to do with that... but it's still amazing.

While I had hoped to get a lot more stuff done during the past three days, at least it was very nice and relaxing. Plus a good bit of gardening has been accomplished, including transplanting some green guys who were not doing well in the place they sat, and potting all the rest of the seedlings who needed potting. We now have a little chili plant parade, and I'm very curious to see what will grow out of the seeds of last year's odd chili with the black fruits. It should have been an "Ecuador Purple" just like the others, but it was definitely not.

If you are looking for a decorative chili, by the way, I can recommend that kind - they grow violet fruits that turn to yellow, orange, and finally red. And are quite spicy. (Full disclosure? We give most of the fruits away - they taste nice, especially the purple stage, but I grow them mostly for their looks since we don't eat very spicy foods.)

Our willow fence is also coming along nicely these days, and I hope we'll have the full height that we want (and thus finished the pattern of the fence/hedge) by the end of the summer. The way the shoots are growing, we will definitely have a harvest of basket-making material in winter!