If you buy local, the choice of veg is still very limited round here. If you go to the Turkish shop you can get Italian peas, artichokes, fave and cima rapa. In Swiss shops you get everything that currently grows in Spain and Chile and other faraway places. No peas, artichokes, fave or cima rapa from Italy though.

Anyway. I decided to have root vegetable soup pepped up with some fresh lovage from the garden. And this is what happened:

First Tate joined in...

...then Amy came to help (they peeled onions and garlic, peeled the carrots and then tackled the very soft and wrinkly potatos...)

...and finally Sam could not resist the temptation and helped too (he proved much more patient and nifty in dealing with these potatoes, a fact Amy tried to blame on her peeler but I'm not sure there is anything the matter with that peeler)

So while they worked, I got the camera and took a few pictures. Tate cross legged on the work surface was too cute to resist. He is so lovely at the moment I’m rediscovering my photo taking appetite.

After a brief visit to my gran next doors, we returned to eat our soup and they gobbled it all up as if it was chocolate pudding. Sam and Amy had seconds and not a word of complaint. It was a good soup!

The other day, while I practiced rollerblading with Sam, Amy taught Tate to swing. And that was it: Sam finally decided to learn it! Never normally shy to outdo anyone and learn things super quickly, he had totally neglected learning to swing by himself.

I did a few swings with him on my lap to remind him of the movement and that was enough. Sam was swinging, swinging, swinging. Higher and higher. Totally thrilled and with amazing stickability. I would say he stayed on for at least half an hour.

Amy’s latest artwork… I love it!

…and here’s the artist trying on her latest clothes from the second hand shop.

The part of town where we live is called Schoren and it used to be a village of its own. It had its own dairy, fire brigade, two pubs (the “ox” and the “little pint”) and a council. This all changed in 1898. So it is easy to see that the notion of the village is slightly remote.

But there is one place in the middle of town where they seem to have forgotten to take down the sign:

It’s old and rusty and it is on the wierdest five-way junction - I love it.

Today the dairy is a corner shop with a disproportionally big cheese counter. Of the fire brigade and the council there are only pretty looking buildings left, the ox is a buddhist center and the little pint is a motorbike pub.

“Buchsi” is what everyone calls the neighbouring town. It’s really called Herzogenbuchsee. But that’s ridiculously long. It’s five minutes by train and ten minutes by car from Langenthal and this is where Amy goes to her Piano lesson.

I found this lovely teacher who had another little girl who wanted to take group lessons - so I committed to driving to Buchsi for a year. It’s been great although I hate the rush and the drive and having to drag Sam and Tate out of the house every Tuesday at quarter to four. Amy now reads music, she knows a thing or two about rhythm, she plays nice little tunes two-handed and she likes it.

Sam, Tate and me meanwhile have spent a lot of time at the library and the park behind the music school building. And sometimes we go for a wander and discover how pretty it is:

the park and on the second floor of the ancient corn house is the library. (Social services on the first floor and exhibition space on the ground floor)

a fantastic tree

we love this house - it is two rooms and a passage, that is all there is to it. This is one of about ten passages leading into the park, which is surrounded by old houses.

This is for Elisa: Tate sporting his modded birthday T-shirt. He wanted a 4 and he got one!

With Joan about to visit, I’m trying to clear out the sewing room, where she will stay. And as usual, I can’t get myself to stick everything in boxes and that be it. I will obviously do this later, but before I try to sort everything out, get unfinished projects completed, mend mend mend…

The projects are mostly fun as they involved making things. The other day I made this red wool dress for Amy:

(Amy had run into the garden to check out the hail storm… no coat, no proper shoes…)

After that, I mended for a few days, sorted some fabrics and then I decieded to make a similar dress for myself. An almost identical red, grown-up pattern and… that involved getting a pattern and the fabric, cutting it, tacking it all together, trying it on… one can easily see that it is not the most efficient approach to tidying the sewing room.

Today I finished sewing it and to my great disappointment it isn’t just right. It will require some careful tweaking. Being too annoyed and impatient to do tweaking, I mended two pairs of socks and two pairs of tights that had been laying on the bed for a good year. I put a new elastic in some leggins that had been there for even longer and started patching some fairly skinny children’s trousers - that is, for all those who have never tried, IMPOSSIBLE. At least, if you were hoping to get it done with the sewing machine.

Then I made this from the cut-offs of my unfinished dress:

Next up are some more curtains. I only ever completed three out of six when I last did curtain work.

Bees normally swarm in May or June… not ours. Both hives swarmed at the end of April. They are probably half the reason I have not posted anything for a while as they kept us busy.

The first swarm landed on my rhubarb plant, which had just started growing properly, a few fat leaves, already fairly big, ready to spread out to their full size. The bees were under leaves, above leaves, on the ground beneath… in other words: the swarm was impossible to get into a box. we tried a few times but quite obviously never managed to get the queen in and as a result they all go out again rather than the rest coming in.

eventually they found a more sensible spot in a neighbour’s garden and Dave was able to catch it.

Barely had it gone into its new home, the second hive swarmed. it decided to attach itself to a low wall running along our road. I mean… they are supposed to hang from a tree and then you place the box underneath, give a tap on the branch and they all drop in. end of story. it was not to be.

the swarm on the wall was spread out across a 40 cm on the wall and obviously on the road side of the said wall. so there we were… guarding the bees or rather the innocent passers-by. in the second attempt, Dave managed to get the queen inside and the others followed.

here is Dave guarding the bees

Now we have four hives full of bees, well, they are not terribly full as are all just half a colony after splitting into two. But with a bit of luck they will soon be back to their old strength and have enough time to collect a bit of honey. although, we still have loads from last year and we are just very happy to have two extra colonies after we lost one hive earlier in spring. In a week or so we can have a peek inside to make sure everything is ok. by then the swarms should have a nice broodnest while the old hives should have new queens starting to lay eggs.

We’ve just had a three week break from school and it’s been the quietest holiday ever. The highlights had been the trip to the clock tower in Bern, Tate’s birthday, Easter, a trip to the circus and a visit from Esthi with her children. So I decided it was time for another outing: A brochure from the railway company gave me the idea and unwittingly we ended up on Steiner school territory.

In a beautiful spot in the countryside, there is a retreat and conference centre that includes a permanent exposition called “Sensorium” - it offers a sensory exploration of the senses and contrary to your average science museum this is absolutely spot-on for young children like ours.

We got there by train and postauto on a rainy Friday morning and we loved it from the first moment. Sam surprising us with his exploration of a large scale “hanging row of balls”. One of these:

random children from a website

We spent two hours with the various exhibits before stopping for lunch. Amy, Sam and Tate were remarkably calm, no pent-up energy at lunch time, just calm sitting, chatting and then drawing at the art table next to the picnic area (right in the heart of the exposition - you would have had to go out of the way to find the cafe!). They loved it and after another two hours of playing with our senses, we happily went home.

In the evening, they told Dave all about it because they want to go back with him. Particularly Sam, who is well aware of how much Papa would like it and how much he would explain things to him. I tend to not tell them much as I like them to explore it for themselves and, obviously, because I don’t understand many of the phenomena scientifically anyway.

By rubbing the handles with wet hands at the right frequency you can make this metal bowl sing and froth up the water inside

While playing with the sand pendulum (creating patterns in the sand) we lost Amy. We eventually found her at the mircroscope. Sam instantly joined her and together they went through the sample box - effortlessly placing them in the right spot and adjusting the lenses.

On Wednesday we finally got it together to get Tate back on his pedal bike. When we last tried last autumn he could ride it but the bike was still a bit too big for him so getting on and off was tricky. Now he has grown a bit (he is still wearing clothes a year later than Sam did and is rather short compared to other children) and the bike is perfect - it took three tries and he was off… Cautious and a bit scared, as that is his nature, but he did it!

Dave is spending a lot of time in his workshop these days. Every now and then he comes up from the basement with the things he’s made, like this birdfeeder:

He also made a windmill, which I keep meaning to take a picture of, but every time I’m ready it seems to be blown over and yet another blade is broken off. At the moment it is being fixed again and we are still intending to paint it to make it weatherproof.

Meanwhile he is working on the next windmill and I discovered my dream windmill in a book: