In the back of our garden, there's a few special thistle plants: Weaver's cards. They are quite similar to the wild card plants, but their heads are a little more cylindrical than conical, and a bit firmer.

And to my delight, they are now blooming: 

 It's not looking too spectacular, the flowers - but I think it fascinating how they start in the middle and then the flower strip, consisting of a lot of single small blossoms, goes both upwards and downwards.

The Tudor Tailor is pondering the translation of Hanna Zimmerman's book about the Groningen textile finds "Textiel in Context". The finds date to the late 16th century, and they have been published in Dutch in a relatively small print run. The plan is to translate the text into English and supply new, better photographs of the objects in the translated version.

In case that sounds interesting for you, you can learn more about the project (and signal your interest in a survey) on the Tudor Tailor webpage here.

...are condemned to repeat it.

People, I'm scared. When I look at the news, I'm really, really scared.

My gran, who is now 101 and a half year old, grew up in Nazi Germany. She has told some stories about people sitting in their hallway, waiting to get some food. Her father being active in the church, and her mother being afraid of Bad Things Going To Happen (because of the church involvement, and because he was semi-openly against the Nazi regime, and supported people who suffered from it). Of people being shushed when chatting on their balcony. Of people in their acquaintance disappearing. These are a child's memories, so they are a bit vague, and some things she did not understand back then, which you can clearly read out of her tales... but if you hear these stories today, well. You know exactly what was happening, and why the mother was afraid, and that my great-grandfather was doing dangerous things.

Unless, you know, you'd be a person who chooses to ignore all knowledge about how dictatorships and extreme right-wing politics tend to go bad, and cause harm to many, many people - including those that are supposedly "proper human beings" or whatever the diction of the fascists is.

Part of Germany is going right-wing again, with a bang. A guy from the AfD, which is more or less the new NSDAP, has become District Administrator in Sonneberg, in Thuringia. How, how on earth can anybody living in a country that had the Holocaust get the idea that this is a good idea? (Well, if you ask me, probably it's because they are afraid (which in the current state of things everywhere is quite understandable), and one outlet against fear is aggression, and then you just need some scapegoat to be aggressive against. Because of course you are not afraid, no, because that would be weak. The AfD provides plenty of ranty talks about random people or institutions to blame for things going bad, and the corresponding aggressive talk against them, which makes them probably very appealing to a lot of people who are, in their hearts, afraid of stuff and looking for scapegoats, and an outlet for their frustration and aggression about things Not Going Well. And I can totally get this, as a reason for lashing out against someone defined as "the others". Note, please, that being able to understand how something happens does not mean finding it okay. I can completely understand a lot of things that I still find utterly shitty and horrible.)

I really, really hope that there will be enough people hereabouts to stand up, when it's necessary, and vote middle or left or green or whatever, just not right-wing... which these days, unfortunately, is not only the AfD party, but also CDU/CSU, which used to be slightly right of the middle. These days, however, even though the "black" CDU has done their best to turn more brownish than black, and have done so for years, it looks like those used to be going for the brown component in the black party are now preferring to vote for the openly brown "blue" AfD. (Political) brown is not a good colour. Especially not in Germany.

(Blue, in my personal life, is my favourite colour, so I'm extra miffed about their using blue as party signature colour. Blue, which is the colour of Mary (Mum of Jesus), and the colour of purity, and of woad and indigo.)

In a society where aggression is seen as fine, and where violence (only against the Bad People, of course) is seen as acceptable or even good, nobody is safe. I do not want to live in a world like that. 

In a society where fear rules, and aggression is seen as fine, you basically have two options: Shut up, be quiet, and go along hoping you will be spared, or stand up and fight. If you shut up and accede, you're supporting the system, and the injustice, and the acceptance of violence, and you are thus part of it - and that's not a good thing, and it does not guarantee you at all that you won't be one of the victims. If you stand up and fight, you are making yourself visible, and that's dangerous, of course, because then you may make yourself a target, and a victim. (Theoretically, there's a third option, which is to actively play a part in making society more aggressive and more filled with fear, but I hope that this is not really an option for anybody reading this text.)

I have had history lessons in school. I've read "Lord of the Flies" and Bert Brecht's plays ("Arturo Ui" especially) and I've watched a play about "Die Welle" (The Wave) when I was in my late teens. We went there with the school, and to this day I remember the fear I felt when at some point a group of actors went off the stage to stand in the auditorium, two in front of each door leading out. 

I watched that play, and it made me aware of, and afraid of two things at the same time. The first thing is the realisation of how easy it is to establish totalitarian structures and a regime of fear and inequality if you go about it in the right way. And the second thing is that I am not sure I would have the guts to stand up against it if it starts happening in my time, and life, and region. 

Germany used to be a relatively nice and safe place to live in. I do hope, fervently, that it will stay this way, and that we'll manage to keep the right-wing fanaticists in check. That enough people realise, soon enough, that talk about burning down refugee homes and re-establishing concentration camps and lining up people on a wall and shooting them (and yes, these are actual things that AfD politicians said, in public!) is Not A Good Thing, and that rampant violence will not care about details like whether this doctor with a migration background might have saved your life later on, when you need a heart bypass, but since he was killed due to his skin colour, or eye colour, or pick-whatever-stupid-reason-instead-here-to-get-a-scapegoat, well. Dead doctors don't operate.

Brown is not a good colour. Fear is not a good feeling. Violence is not a good solution. A society based on the Might Makes Right hurts everyone. 

Nobody should have to suffer from any of these. Here's hoping we'll manage to not repeat our Nazi history. Here's hoping I'll be strong enough to do my part in preventing it.

Medieval hats are something that we mostly know from images - the finds are, unfortunately, very rare. At least that is to my knowledge... should you have a treasure trove of medieval hats somewhere, let me know!

So I was very delighted to hear about the find of a medieval hat that is in the Västerbottom Museum in Sweden. And there's even information about it online, you can find it here.  The images directly in the web entry are not too good, but there's a colour photo in the pdf that can be downloaded on the site. I'm a little sad that the dating is only "medieval", which is not very precise... but I'll take a non-precisely dated hat over no hat anytime!

Today was set aside to finally deal with the yearly tax paperwork... and hooray, it's almost done. A few last checks to make sure nothing stupid has happened (like last year, when I managed to put a large number in the wrong field, messing up about... everything) and then it can go off, so that part of the yearly Bureaucracy Worship is done and dusted. 

Which also means that I'll be able to go back to all the other (nicer, and more interesting) jobs to do tomorrow. One of the other things I did today was harvesting the last of the woad seeds outside - after snapping a picture first:

I really like how they look, those seeds. They are somewhere between purple, black, and brown in colour, and they can even be slightly iridescent. The flowers are nice, but rather small and yellow, and the leaf rosette is pretty, but to me, the seeds are the most spectacular aspect of the woad plant. 

The only reason I don't leave them on the plant until they fall off is, obviously, the shop - because if you want to sell the seeds, you have to harvest them... and now this year's crop is available.  

This year, I'm quite happy with the successive flowering of plants in our garden - there's been no gap yet, with something attractive to the bees always in bloom. At the moment, it's the lavendar that takes prime position, though it's not the only thing getting attention. 

There's still a number of plants I'd like to have in the garden, or have more of, but I have sort of accepted that this takes time. There used to be foxgloves and calendula, but they have disappeared, and I'd love to have them back. Probably that means some seed buying, or some seed stealing, at some point in the near future. And then maybe it will work this time around, maybe not - eventually there will be plants that thrive with the soil and amount of attention they will be getting here, and then it will be fine. 

Meanwhile the little lemon tree has decided to make more leaves again. I'm very happy about that, as it had been flagging for quite a while, even though I had tried to get it enough (special citrus plant) fertiliser, and have it watered correctly (it did not like getting too dry at all, and actually wants much more water more frequently than the instructions everywhere had led me to believe). But even though it's supposed to like hard water, it did not do too well with it (so now I use rain water), and the special fertiliser also didn't cut the mustard. The leaves it made were relatively few, and they were more yellow than green.

I finally figured out that it lacked both iron and magnesium, so I provided both - what a good thing that we had an iron oxide (for making iron gall ink) and chalk (for bouldering) that are the two key ingredients in iron and magnesium fertilisers. I had to guess for the amounts, and delivered some more magnesium a few days ago, but at least the iron has arrived, as the new leaves are a nice dark red (as they should be, or so the Internet tells me). 

Regardless of its plights, and the fact that it does not look very pretty (rather irregular and not decoratively tree-ish), it has taken its job of making lemons quite seriously, and we've been able to have home-grown lemon for quite a while now. It is also getting ready to try and make some more, as you can see on the image!

So... any plants or flowers you would not want to miss in your garden, or urban green space like your balcony?

If you're following me on Instagram, you might have seen photos of my Trusty Red Suitcase - one of my premium travel companions. (Technically, it's probably an item, but it is a) so important and b) so large that it counts as a companion. At least I think so.) 

We bought this suitcase about 6 years ago, and it has been my go-to luggage hauler for a good number of work trips by train and, occasionally, even by plane. It is large, and lightweight, and it came with four little wheels and when you gave it a push, it went "wheeeee" all through the room until it hit some wall somewhere.

That went for a while, and then somehow, it didn't go "wheeeeee" anymore. Quite to the contrary - it became rather hard to push or pull. Some closer examination quickly showed the reason: The plain bearings of the wheels had given up. They'd been made from plastic, and three of them had worn out, and the fourth had, at some place, gotten so warm through friction that it had half molten (so the wheel still hung in there, but quite lopsidedly). 

Quite clearly, the makers of these wheels had not intended them to run for several kilometers through city streets and train stations, bearing a suitcase with a weight of about 30 kg (which is the maximum of what I can still handle, and which also ends up being the total weight more often than not). Probably most buyers of that kind of suitcase don't go "oh, well, I have time enough, the weather is nice, I've just spent 5 hours sitting on a train, and it's just three kilometers to the hotel, I think I'll walk." (Which is how the little suitcase has racked up the kilometers.)

So... also quite clearly, something needed to be done. Wheels made for heavy duty were bought, with proper ball bearings, and got installed by the Most Patient Husband of All Time (whose patience did get tested, as the modifications necessary were quite a few). And then, lo and behold! the suitcase went "wheeeeeeee!" again when pushed. (So much that at some point it got little stopper wedges to secure it on the train.)

But now, on the way back home from the trip to Berlin... it lost one of its wheels. 

Apparently, not only the wheels in their original version were not intended to go for long rolls... there's also a limit to what the anchoring of said wheels would take. And, quite clearly now, that limit did not include hopping the suitcase up and down curbs while weighing, ah well, you know. (There's a technique to really easily get the suitcase to hop on a curb, provided that is not too high, but it's probably not the most, erm, gentle on the wheels. As you approach the curb, you give the suitcase an impulse by pulling on the handle so that the front wheels come up into the air, and then once they come down again and hit the ground on top of the curb, you do the same in reverse to lift up the back wheels. Works fabulously.)

I went back to search for the wheel that had gone AWOL, but couldn't find it again, and did not want to cut it too close with my train, so with a heavy heart, I abandoned it in Berlin Main Train station, somewhere on the way to platform 1 in the basement. 

Its companion on the same side of the suitcase also wobbles a little... which means there will be some more Frankensteining of my little-not-so-little red travel companion soon. We're considering the installation of some metal plates to make it a bit more sturdy. And then I'll be looking forward to many more years strolling through train stations, and faraway cities, with it!