Friday, July 1, 2005

     In yesterday's entry, I talked about the history of our sweet corn garden. But I didn't finish. I wanted to show you a photo of how the corn is doing so far this year. Unfortunately, we had a storm the day before yesterday. It didn't bring much rain but it did bring huge gusts of wind. The winds were so strong that some of the tile roofs in the village were damaged. And so was my corn. Every stalk was flattened to the ground. It looks like it may come back and I'll keep my fingers crossed. Here's a photo I took last night...

     If you're wondering what those green mats are mixed in with the corn, they're weeds. Just like with the kurbis from last year, the weeds came with the compost. Herbert and I weed and weed and they come and come. Yesterday, Herbert came home with a new toy. It's a special blow torch for weeds. When I first saw him with it, I thought of my friend Mary Jo's husband Mike. He's kind of like the character Tim 'the tool man' Taylor from the show 'Home Improvement', always coming up with contraptions that have ten times the power necessary to do the job.

     But, if this blow torch thing works, it will be a miracle and a huge time saver. Apparently, you quickly singe the top of the weeds and then the root structure will be damaged, killing the weed and leaving the surrounding plants. I'm skeptical and a little nervous to have him try it next to my corn. I'll let you know.

     Besides the corn, we have another new garden project. It has to do with this Buddha that I bought when we were in Thailand...

     I always thought he looked a little lonely standing next to a bush. For the past two years, I've had an idea in my head of what I wanted to do about it. I wanted to build a garden around him that would include some flowers and a water structure. I drew it out on paper and showed it to Herbert. He was a bit hesitant for us to take on another project, but finally agreed. I 'drew' the garden for him with a hose. Here's what it looked like before we started digging the grass up...

     We've planted flowers around the Buddha and this is what it looked like last week...

     You may notice the orange marigolds in the photo. I'm not real fond of them. But, Herbert's mom brought me around 60 plants that she had started from seed and I had a hard time finding places to put them. Because I planted perennials that will grow larger in coming years, I agreed to put some of Frieda's marigolds in this garden to fill in the gaps.

     For the middle section of the garden, we are building a water structure out of an old wooden wine barrel that we got from our friend Fredu, the local distiller. The bottom half will go in the ground and the top half will sit on top. We ordered a bamboo spout from England that we'll use for the water flow into the top barrel and Herbert brought a piece of bamboo back from his last trip to Taiwan that we'll use for the flow from the top section into the lower section. Here's a photo of the barrel after Herbert cut it in half...

     The right side of the garden will be very simple. I wanted a bench where we could sit and enjoy the sound of the water flowing. I found plans on the internet for this bench, which we still need to build...

     Although the garden projects feel like a lot of work, it's fun to see things growing in summer that you started in the spring. I'll post new photos as we get more accomplished.

     Spring and summer are also the time for hot air balloons. They can be seen floating in the sky all over Switzerland. Here's a photo I took of one that flew over our village a couple of weeks ago...

     A year or so ago, I had promised a few friends that I would cook Mexican food for them and we could have a ladies night while Herbert was on one of his trips. Herbert was in Japan and Asia for three weeks in June and I finally kept my promise. I made all of my favorite Mexican dishes and after cooking for two days, was able to relax and enjoy the evening. Here's Mädi, Regina, Rosemary and Gaby before the appetizer... (Elisabeth had something else she had to do and joined us later.)

     The evening started out with warm weather, but while we were eating, the winds started to blow. No one wanted to move inside. Here's a photo of Regina with a blanket wrapped around her...

     Herbert and I had another dinner to prepare in June, but this one was for fifty people instead of five. Herbert's mother's family has a family reunion every two to three years. Frieda's maiden name is Sommer so the reunion is called the Sommer Fest. At the last, one three years ago, we agreed to host the next. We rented the shooting club's house and had the Sommer Fest on Sunday the 19th of June. Here's a photo of everyone eating...

     Herbert's cousin Fritz and Fritz's wife Doris came to Oberwil and stayed with us for the weekend. They were a huge help not only in getting everything ready, but in cleaning everything up when it was over. We also had a lot fun with them and were happy to get to know them. Here's a photo of Fritz helping to set up and decorate the tables and a photo of Doris cleaning up after most of the people left. 

     Last weekend, there was another festival in Oberwil. Our village's music group hosted the annual music festival for the entire region. The last time it was in Oberwil was about ten years ago.

     Bands from different villages came and played. The stage was in a large building that Fredu shares with his cousin for equipment storage. The cleared it out completely and rented a few tents to add space. It was hard for us to miss because it's right across the street from our house. Here's a photo I took on Sunday from the window of my sewing room...

     The small tent on the right was the kitchen where all the food was cooked. The festival also had a beer tent to the left of this main tent. One street over, they made a large bar and a cafe where you could get coffee and cake. It was quite an event and the music could be heard playing throughout the village until late into Friday and Saturday evenings.

     On Sunday morning, Herbert took this photo inside of the main tent...

     And here's a photo of one of the bands playing.

     Our dancing group helped out on Sunday with serving. They didn't need all of us and because I'm still not comfortable serving strangers in Swiss German, I didn't volunteer to help. Here's a photo of me and Lorella (who always seems to volunteer to help)...

     In Oberwil, there is a group of guys who always do the cooking for whatever event is going on. Herbert took this photo of them working in the kitchen....

     You have to really respect these guys. Most of them took vacation days to help set up during the week before the festival and then cooked the whole weekend. To make it even harder, the entire week was extremely hot - around 35°C (95°F). On both Saturday and Sunday, Herbert bought a round of beers for the entire kitchen. On Sunday evening, after the festival was over, we saw some of them sitting alone in the tent drinking beer. We walked over and joined them. After a while one of the guys asked where they could get a good cup of coffee. Since we have our new super duper espresso machine that we got from the kids for Christmas, we offered our house. They accepted. After coffee, everyone switched back to beer, wine and schnapps. This photo was taken at midnight and I won't tell you when the last person left.

     It was a good thing that I hadn't signed up to help with the festival on Sunday because on Saturday morning Herbert's mom had another small stroke and on Sunday afternoon, Herbert and I went to visit her in the hospital with Natacha and Patrick.

     Although we were very scared on Saturday, she seemed to bounce back pretty quickly from this one. She is still in the hospital, but getting her strength back. Next week she will go to a health recovery center for two weeks. I'm praying for a great recovery for her and looking forward to having my Wednesdays with her again.

     As I said in yesterday's entry, today is Herbert's birthday. Since we both have our birthdays in July, we decided to wait and have a big party on mine. Tonight we will a small dinner with the kids and Herbert's dad. Herbert is going to cook his famous pork filet with morel mushroom whisky sauce. We're going to start with a white gazpacho (soup) made with almonds and white grapes. We'll end with a honey, lime, ginger mousse with cherry compote. He got both of these recipes in his cooking club last Friday night. It sounds like a lot of work for him to do on his birthday, but he loves to cook. I'm sure it will be delicious.

     Okay. Whew! It seems as if I am finally all caught up. Hopefully the next entry will be more current.