daily – Page 39 – trippingdifferently

June 17, 2012

Spring Onions Spring…

My next green adventure – planting onions…

Before i get into that, i have to sob over the deaths of my beloved tulips… that’s right they died, died even before they had a chance to be anything more than green leaves… SOB!

How did that happen? Well, the cold got to them. Why didn’t i save them? Because i didn’t know that they were suffering from the cold. i’m no green thumb and have killed my share of plants. But still i wanted to grow something, something nice and/or edible. (See previous attempts here, here and here.) This year i researched and decided to go with tulips because i love tulips and they are said to be easy to grow. To cut a long story short, they popped up during unseasonal warm weather in March. Then as it is with unpredictable Swiss Spring weather, the cold set in again. However, i didn’t realise it would affect my tulips. My reasoning – they were planted before the frost and lived through the cold winter (in fact they need the cold before they can germinate) so they should be fine as temps were above freezing. Little me of no green knowledge – sigh! The bulbs needed the cold but once they popped they have to be protected from the cold! i found that out too late.

SO… i have grieved over them the last month and now feel ready to go for another green attempt.

For some strange reason, i had onions which budded while sitting in an open basket in the kitchen. Not all of them budded, just two. It has happened before and i normally just throw them out. But i thought otherwise this time. So i headed to the trusty old internet and found a couple of entries which talked about using the cut-off bottom ends of onions (normally thrown away), and another which said that it was possible to try planting onions which budded in the pantry. So i waited till the rains eased up (it had been raining almost everyday for almost 2 weeks before this past Thursday). And have planted them, hoping for some nice spring onions to eat. (Fingers, toes and eyes all crossed.)

So meet my onion babies:

syc

*happy to have sunshine days*

May 20, 2012

Tobias’ 8th Birthday…

Today, 8 years ago, this little guy entered our lives and life has never been the same again; it has never been better. Now don’t get me wrong, life hasn’t been a bed of roses; parenting is never a bed of roses but it is one of the most rewarding jobs ever… you just have to wait a fair while for the rewards to show up… hehheee 😉

t8birthday20120520 — Wasn’t he the most adorable baby? 😀

So on Wednesday, 16th May 2012, he had a party with his friends at the Coop Restaurant in the neighbouring village. (For my not-in-Switzerland friends, Coop is one of the 2 big supermarket chains here.) Now the party costs actually included a cake – but it was a simple chocolate or fruit cake. Tobias wanted me to make the cake and this year he was happy with whatever i wanted to make. (Previous years requests can be seen here, here , here and here.)

i made Cake-in-a-cone, something i have always wanted to try. These pictures show the progress after my experiments were done.

t8birthday20120520a — Clockwise from top left: Box prepared, Cake baked, Cones inserted into box, Final deco elements added.

t8birthday20120520b — Here’s the completed cake at the birthday party… i love the black and white checkered table 😉

The party started with the children (we invited 9 kids but 1 didn’t show) having to decorate their animal masks.

t8birthday20120520c — Left to right: the kids decorating their masks, Tobias in his finished mask and in costume… he is wearing the costume of the restaurant’s children’s mascot… Jamadu.

Then a shooting game – guess what they are shooting… the “wild animals”… just kidding… 😉

t8birthday20120520d — Left to right: Meet the “Wild Animals”, then the shooting the “Wild Animals” game… hehhehee… some of the kids were really quite good, they got quite near to the bulls-eye on the wall, which was their real target… 😉

Next was Spin-the-bottle with a twist; when the bottle points at you, you go get your gift for the birthday boy 🙂 i like.

t8birthday20120520e — Spin the bottle and Bring your gift… Presents!

After which, they got to decorate their very own little piece of carrot cake with icing and flowers and pigs and smarties. The kids went a little crazy as you can see below (and after i shot these pictures, the boys just drowned their cakes in icing!).

t8birthday20120520f — Decorating the carrot cake, see the overload of decorations!!

Finally it was time for the birthday song and birthday cake. My favourite shot.

t8birthday20120520g — The Group Shot! All of them have known each other for the last 3 years… started at Kindi together…

No, actually here is my favourite shot, taken today at home (a custom i started last year: to take a photo of the 3 of us, on the actual day of his birthday, at our dining table with a small cake).

t8birthday20120520h — Daddy, Son, Mummy… i love…

8 years have just flown by… i have watched him grow and learn and change, watched him take falls and pick himself up again, watched him progress through school, watched him make good friends and so much more… i wonder what the coming year for Tobias will hold…

syc

May 17, 2012

Bike Days – Swiss National Bike Festival…

A couple of weekends ago, Bike Days, was held in our little town of Solothurn, Switzerland. The Swiss are so big on biking that there is a national festival for it and amazingly, our small baroque town hosts this apparently large event. We had never gone and would not have gone this year if not for the fact that Tobias needed a new bike helmet (it is obligatory to wear one when riding here).

It was a 3-day event. We paid CHF10/. per adult to get in – children under 10 did not pay. There were bike races; cross-country and a few others. There were trick bike displays and jumping competitions. You could also test-ride some bikes. Everyone involved in the bike industry seemed to be there; people dealing with the body of the bike, makers of wheels, companies which provide spare parts, others in the sports-clothing industry and of course shops selling helmets. i never expected it to be such a big thing.

i saw competitors come from as far as Russia. Even a small thing (for me it was a small matter) such as cleaning products for your bike was on display. We are not really all that big on biking, at least i’m not. The man and the boy like it well enough. So we didn’t stay long and i can’t tell you too much, as such i will leave you with a picture summary of our visit.

Camera 360 — Left: A place for competitors to wash their bikes, Right: Crowds lining to get in

syc