Photos and Stories behind them: My Kerria Japonica

As I have not been well enough to venture on a hiking crusade lately I have to be content with what my garden has to offer in the photography department. People that take walks in the countryside coughing and spluttering are not so inviting.

My Kerria Japonica is now flowering. It is one of the first to say “hello Spring is here”. There is a little story behind this bush. As well as being just a member of our local first aid group in the village, I was also on the committee, being the accountant. I must admit that accountancy was never my thing, but amongst the golden oldies of our group I was one of the few that had worked in an office and actually knew what excel was. The lady doing the accounts chose me as her successor. I said something like “I will have to see about it and let you know”, but somehow these words were forgotten and no-one asked me or told me that I was doing the job permanently.

I was keeping track of where the money was going in our group and what was entering. I did not like the job, I was warned by a certain person who had made his own experiences of taking over such responsibility. “You know you cannot make mistakes and you have to answer for every cent in the till” how right these words were. Once a year I was subjected to an audit where everything was turned over twice or three times, probably to ensure that I was not making off with a fortune by cooking the books. I must admit it mostly turned out well, but I hated the end of the year when I had to do the final accounts. This was combined with our annual Christmas party when I had to organise payments to our members for various tasks they had performed throughout the year.

Once a year we had the annual general meeting accompanied with a meal at the local restaurant and on one of these memorable occasions I was presented with a gift voucher for the local gardening centre for my efforts, at least I think that was the reason. With this voucher I bought my Kerria Japonica. I planted it in the garden, next to my blackberries and raspberries. My Kerria was not happy sharing her beauty hidden between the berries. We had a redo on the garden and I transplanted it to the edge where it has lived for the past years. My first mistake was to cut it back after it had finished flowering as the next year I was lucky to have four flowers. Now I just leave it to expand and it seems very happy. 

A little more than a year ago I was in England helping my dad to move from his house to sheltered accommodation and I noticed in the area of London where he was, Dagenham, that there were many of these bushes in flower. It has become a plant that I associate with the first signs of spring.

I left our local first aid society when I retired from work. I decided my days of accepting responsibilities were finished. I am now a golden oldie and do what I want to do and not what I have to. My successor is doing a very good job. I often meet some of the members as they live in my village or the next village. One thing I am a little proud of was the introduction of the www pages in Internet. I had just completed a web assistant course and asked if they would like a web site. “Oh yes” and a week later I was asked if it was up and running. I explained that web sites were not built in a day, at least the ones I made, but towards the end of the year we had our web site, of my own design. I did it for a couple of years and we were lucky to have a new member who ran his own computer company in his working life, so he took it over and it is still alive.

I learnt one thing from this exercise “do not say yes every time someone asks you for a favour”. I now let the others get on with it, but I have my Kerria Japonica as one good memory.

A Rainy Day

Today it really only rained once and that was enough. It was just "pissing" down, I can't find any other words for it. I took the photo at the supermarket this morning just outside the entrance. At least I do not have to give the garden any water this evening. I have two very unsatisfied cats that do not like getting wet in the rain.
"Did you say something" I asked my big fat Nera cat
"Leave me alone" she says "don't bother me, hisss".
Tabby, her litter sister is just ignoring me. She spent most of the day outside on a chair where it was sheltered but now she is occupying a cushion at the top of the cupboard next to Nera.

So what can we do on a day like this. Not very much, but here is something I made for yesterday's evening meal.

At the back on the left we have an apple cake (Äpfelchueche). Take a shallow baking dish and line it with flaky pastry - you can buy it already rolled out. Then prod the pastry with a fork. Take 3-4 apples according to their size, peel them, cut them in half and remove the middle bits where the pips are, also the stalks. Then cut the apple in slices and cover the pastry it with it. Put in a heated oven (about 180° C) for about twenty minutes to get the crust slightly brown. In the meanwhile put 2 eggs and milk making about half a liter liquid with some sugar in a jug and mix with the electric mixer or a whisk until liquidised and then take the apple cake out of the oven and pour the liquid over it. Put back in the oven and bake until the milk-egg mixture is solid. Take out of oven, sprinkle with sugar and some cinnamon if liked and the Äpfelchueche is finished. You can also make the same using plums or apricots.

Now for the cheesecake (Chäschueche). Again line a shallow baking dish with bought rolled out flaky pastry. Prod the pastry with a fork. Grate about 200-250 grammes of cheese (I use Greyerzer, but you can use any cheese you like, even cheddar - it just has to be a hard cheese) and cover the base of the pastry with the cheese. Then mix 1-2 Tablespoons of flour with the cheese. Put 2-3 eggs, and milk in a jug (to make enough liquid to cover the cheese) and add some pepper - I usually put pepper from the pepper mill in it. Then mix with the electric mixer or whisk. Pour over the cheese-flour mixture and bake in the oven at 180° until brown on top - usually about 30 minutes.

The apple cake is eaten cold and the cheese cake warm. In Switzerland we usually make a soup to be eaten with the cheese one and the apple is eaten afterwards. You can also eat the apple with some whipped cream. If anything is not clear with these typical Swiss evening meal things, then ask. It is a bit of a custom in Switzerland that Friday is the day to eat this sort of thing. I think it goes back to the days when Switzerland was quite catholic and no meat was eaten on Fridays.

Otherwise I have not got a lot to say today. I just stayed indoors and played with my computer and some photos. Thursday evening was interesting. We had another one of our first aid evenings. The husband of one of my colleagues had chopped his thumb off sawing wood. It was all very realistic with a chopped of thumb and lots of red colouring material.

We had to look after a complaining husband and make sure the thumb was securely put in a plastic bag in a second bag containing ice to get it to the hospital to have it sewn back again. Then my friends daughter cut her leg open with some wire which we looked after and eventually her son managed to drive a nail through his foot. Quite an interesting evening. We finished the evening off with plum cake and coffee.

So that is the Saturday report from a rainy Switzerland. My cats are not available to say a few words, they are still sulking and so am I as West Ham United, my football club, lost 3:2 to West Bromwich Albion (one of those clubs from up North somewhere in England). Here is a photo of my wet pampas grass in the garden.

First Aid Evening with the 5 Senses

This might look like we were having a seance with food, but actually we were having a serious lesson about the five senses. Most of you know that we have five of them (perhaps someone here has a 6th one?) - hearing, smelling, touch, taste, sight. Yours truly is the elderly lady on the right at the front, the others a couple of colleagues. There was another table with some of our members. On the photo the taste sense was being tried out and I must admit up to now I had only seen something like that on a tv show.

We were blindfolded and were given a spoon full of something and had to say what it was. It is really a test to see how good your taste buds are. The first was a hazelnut dipped in honey which I did guess. They we had something very sour, but the best was the last one - an Italian amaretto biscuit. they are made with bitter almonds and taste quite good.

I did have a small mishap with the first test. That was the a bit of a combination of touch and I thought taste - that was my mistake. I had to put my hand into a bag and guess what I felt. The first was easy - that was rice. The second one I was the first to try. There was a glass dish in the bag with something more liquid in it. When I took my hand out they were covered with a white creamy sort of thing, so I thought aha, yogurt and started licking my fingers. The shock was a bit crass when I found it to be face cream, and that does not taste very good at all. The idea was to touch and smell and not to eat.

Otherwise we spent a couple of hours going through the physical side of it all. Where are the taste buds in the mouth, where do you get the sour taste, where the sweet and where the bitter on the tongue. We had a hearing test with various noises and you had to guess what you were hearing. One was the wind blowing, but it sounded to me like modern classical music with a choir singing along.

All in all an interesting evening - the idea was for us to know how to treat people that might show signs of having problems with the function of their senses and being able to diagnose what was wrong.

We also sorted out who would attend which occasion during the year. I will be spending an afternoon at a local football tournament which can be fun when all those grown men have a cramp in their muscles, although depending who it is I just give them the ointment and they can apply it themselves. With the blisters I have to go into action myself, but no problem. I will also be at the town's market festival in the afternoon. I leave the evenings to the professionals.

Here one of the photos from last year's football tournament.

It snowed, but not long

First of all what did you do today. Well this morning, not very much. It started snowing. Now in Switzerland it just doesn't snow. You get wet snow, powder snow, icy snow, all depending on the size of the flakes coming down and the temperatures. Today was warmish for snow, so we got wet snow which has the giga size of flakes. This means that your garden looks like this

within five minutes. As it was Saturday and I somehow had a second sense that this catastrophic predicament could be the case today, based on the negative experiences of North England yesterday, I had already bought most of the food supplies on my hunting expedition on Friday. This meant my presence was not really needed today and Mr. Swiss being Swiss and having grown up in such weather, I decided he could go shopping today with the car. What came in five minutes was already gone by the time he went, the snow fall was a short lived episode and soon disappeared. I was surprised to find this in the garden when it melted

The first signs of Spring have arrived in the shape of my crocus, although Mr. Swiss said they had been flowering all week. As I usually spend the week at work I did not see them. My cats don't like snow at all, so Fluffy slept all day

Tabby watched the world go by making a careful examination of everything that was happening from her perch on top of the cupboard

and Nera, well we just left her to her own thing. She was a bit irritable today after nearly scratching Mr. Swiss on the nose and snow coming down which she does not like. She just made her pin up pose as if to say don't touch me, I'm in charge.

I used the afternoon to do some things I should have done during the week. First of all I caught up on the accounts for our local first aid society. As I do the payments all online and play with Excel tables, it was only a five minute job. Then I had one of those invoices to pay for myself, also online so that was dealt with. The Chinese New Year being just around the corner on 07.02.2008 it is better to deal with you debts now, before anything happens as Confuscius probably said and it being the year of the rat you never know. My cats seem to think it will be a good year.

I devoted a certain amount of time this afternoon to a new photo for our first aid web site. I had been meaning to do it for some time. I had collected some 100 photos over the past couple of years so combined them for a new introduction photo. Up to now I had a photo of the two villages, which was getting a bit boring with time. Here is the result of my efforts

You won't find me anywhere - someone had to take the photos. And now it is time to feed the family once again. Until the next time

Today was 10x more points at the supermarket and we had our annual Christmas party.

Yes, today was one of those super shopping days where we were all rewarded by the supermarket chain "Migros" in Switzerland which can be compared to Sainsburys, Asda, or my dad's favourite Morrisons in England. If you are equipped with a "cumulus" card every time you buy something it is drawn through some sort of infra red light and you get points. Once a month you get vouchers for 1% of what you have paid. At the same time Mr. Migros knows what his shoppers are buying and can aim at them with more confidence. Basically I don't really care if Mr. Migros knows what I buy, as long it is on the shelf when I get there.

Now and again Migros decide to reward their faithfull shoppers and we have a special day where more percent is given - today it was 10%, and so everyone flocks to Migros on that day to spend ten times more than normal. Basically they are the days when I would like to avoid Migros and do my shopping elsewhere. However, tied down by the lunch hour, which is really only an hour and the spacious car park the Migros have, I don't have a big choice during the week. I also eat my lunch in the store's restaurant.

Today I went to lunch 20 minutes earlier which really was a good idea. As I was walking in the shoppers were walking out. The restaurant also had enough space and I started my shopping attack just after twelve, being able to finish it towards one. I took the photo at the till whilst I was waiting for my turn to come. My son worked in this store for 4-5 years whilst he was studying at the university to earn some money to pay his way. He used to go on Saturdays and holidays. He just loved those special days, but he did say at least the time went quickly. His favourite customers were the nice little children who had already started eating their chocolates and icecream before they got to the till. I don't blame him really. The latest hit in the supermarkets are mini trolleys for the children. If it is not bad enough to have to go shopping, the children are really encouraged to start practicing at a young age. The proud mothers give their offspring the trolleys and the shopping is put in them. Needless to say on days such as today you have to be careful that you don't fall over one - the children are not so good at steering as the adults. There are also large posters showing that the children's shopping trolleys are not fitted with brakes.

And now I am looking forward to a relaxing week-end. It seems to me there is always more stress at Christmas. Yesterday evening we had our small Christmas party at the 1st aid group of the local village, of which I am accountant and webmaster. Accountant because I am the only one that knows how to operate a computer. I didn't have a clue about bookkeeping but the girl I took it over from said I would soon get the hand of it. I have, but I am still not the bookkeeper type. The web thing was my idea and I am still not sure if it was a good one. I can only do a basic site, nothing complicated, but it does for a local "Samariterverein" (sort of St. John's Ambulance). Anyhow we all met in the club house of the local village football team which is equipped with a small kitchen. Our boss lady has a farm, and it is custom that she always makes a pumpkin soup for the evening meal. It is really good and we eat our "Griti Banz" (see photo below) with it. The Griti Banz is a bread pastry formed in the shape of a man and is custom to be eaten on 6th December (not that I want to show off, but in this country it is a childrens festival day with presents from the Father Christmas, and ..... also my birthday). So after the soup and bread, we got down to eating the chocolates, peanuts and tangerines that were also on the tables. I can't remember how many bottles of wine we got through (although I don't drink - especially when I have to drive through the Swiss countryside at 11.30 in the evening to go home). Being the accountant I had a lot of cash with me that I payed out to various people that had done service through the year. Attending local football tournaments, the local agricultural college open day and measuring blood pressure for the village population twice a month. We used to help at the local blood donation sessions, but due to less and less donators it is no longer carried out in our village.

Knowing that this was the last time we would meet this year we all said goodbye and wished each other a happy Christmas and New Year. Actually this is the time when I have a lot to do for the financial side. We invite the village population to donate by post and then the donations start coming in, meaning I have to keep up with the bookings nearly every evening, otherwise I would quickly get behind. It is nice to see how the villages respond and give their donations. The work we do is basically voluntary and if we received any payment it is more symbolic. At the beginning of January I have to do the annual balance which is also quite time-comsuming.

An Evening Out

I just had to post this video. It is one of the funniest I have ever seen and almost true. At the moment in the cold weather the cats don't go out so much in the evening. We have a cat flap but the problem is that one of our cats is blind through an accident he had a couple of years ago. He gets around quite well, but I wouldn't like to let him out on his own. He would find the way back, I am sure, but he just doesn't notice danger any more. That means that if our cats are out when we go to bed, that is ok, as they can come in again, but the cat flap is locked, so if they want to go out again (usually around 4 in the morning) they start scratching on the bedroom door. In the case of our fat black cat, she doesn't scratch, but pounds upon it and it sounds like a sledge hammer is at work.

My blind cat, Fluffy, usually sleeps through the night. He is awake about 5.30 in the morning and acts as my alarm clock. As he is a tom cat he makes the most noise when he miaws. The situation in the film above is almost realistic. If they do happen to get in the bedroom early in the morning it is one big pawing session until you take notice of them. I remember before we had the cats we decided they would not: be in the bedroom, climb on the table in the kitchen, not be fed from the table etc. etc. These ideas lasted about 2 hours after my sweet little kittens arrived and now they have taken over.

They are letting me out this evening. I have an evening with our local 1st aid group and the last evening for completing the first aid help course. I don't even know what the topic is this evening, but will will probably be dealing with someone that has had an accident. Lots of blood and broken bones (naturally all artificial) I sometimes wonder if I would be any good if anything happened. In any case I am on the list for people to help if their is a mass accident somewhere in the area. Being the only person in the groups that knows what a computer is about, I will be armed with my camera this evening to take a few photos to update our small web site. When I asked if they wanted a web site, one of the members asked "is that a www" so I told her Yes. A week later she asked if it was already working. I sort of explained that a web site is not born in a day, at least the ones I make, and until I have all the information and photo material it would take a time. I spent a year on it, but I wasn't really in a hurry. I had to wait a bit for the text as I cannot write German very well, just speak it. Anyhow one way or the other it exists and everyone seems to be happy with it. I am also in charge of the financial side of our group, again because I am the only one that knows how excel works.

The weather is very cold at the moment, but no snow yet. Our car is ready to go, equipped with its Winter tyres. I just don't know if I am ready to go if it snows.