The first blossoms have appeared in our strawberry patch. I counted them this morning: We have 57 mother and daughter plants now. I believe we had only 39 last summer, 3 rows of 13. I cut the umbilical cord between the plants when I weeded the bed a few weeks ago. I read later that cutting it produces larger berries while leaving it attached produces more berries. I wish I had known that before. I prefer the intense flavor of the smaller strawberries. It’s something I’ll have to remember for next year. I can’t wait for the harvest, though. I’ve already started collecting strawberry recipes in anticipation.

Haven’t found the inspiration to write. I’ll just photoblog for a little while until I get past the block.

Successfully finished reading the book Steffi lent me. Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink, the book upon which the film The Reader was based. Haven’t seen the film yet, but am looking forward to it. My first German book.

I killed a cactus.  I was following a watering schedule I found on the internet where the gardener starves her cactii during the winter months. She starts again in mid-January. I kinda missed that schedule by about three months, to the fatal detriment of my Astrophytum.

I thought I heard the distant sound of an approaching thunderstorm and then realized it was merely the grumbling of my upset stomach. I’m full of caffeine and have been lying in bed in a half-sleep for the last three hours. If only I could find the switch to turn off my brain…

I finally started sorting through the thousands of digital photographs stored on thumb drives, SD cards, external hard drives, back up CDs, unmarked DVDs and yes, floppy diskettes scattered throughout our apartment and in various cardboard boxes in the basement. What prompted this undertaking was a combination of insomnia and a warning that my laptop’s internal hard disk was running out of space. Sigh.

I came up with a plan…

1. My main folder will be called Images. It’ll have two subfolders: Photographs and Illustrations.
2. Photographs will be further divided into Originals and Modified.
3. Originals will be organized by Photographer.
4. Since the Akiko photographer will be the largest folder, the photographs there should be organized by Camera. (I have three or four, I think.)
5. Within the Canon Powershot folder, I could organize by Person, Place or Thing…

The schema at the end gets a little sticky. I finally decided to just look for all my food photographs and stick them in one folder.

I love taking pictures of food, which is where I found the cute photo of the pink sugar cookie I used for this post. It’s from last year, when I was staying with Jacqui, the same time period I wrote the post Addicted to Sugar.

Ironically, I am still addicted to sugar. They don’t sell sugar cookies here in Hamburg and the Happy Kappy cupcake bakery is too far for me to drive. So, I’ve been making and eating lots of divinity fudge. And pumpkin pie. Mmm mmm.

It does come with a price, however. I am now 30 lbs. overweight and jogging an hour a day hasn’t the slightest effect. I took a glucose tolerance and insulin resistance test this morning and in nine days I’ll get the sober results.

Until then… I’m going to enjoy my last week of diet freedom.

Gnome Hiding from the Snow

Matthias left early this morning. It was still dark outside and I was too exhausted to get out of our feather mattress bed. Without the energy to move the muscles in my mouth, I said to him telephatically, “You look so handsome when you wear your black suit.” I fell back to sleep instantly.

A few hours later I awoke to the sound of something tapping, gently rapping at my chamber window. I pulled the covers over my head to block out the light, but the sound was consistent, insistent, persistent. Finally I threw off the duvet to see what it was. A piece of velcro tape holding down the mosquito net had come loose and was flapping in the wind. Satisfied in having solved my mystery, my eyes focused past the window sill into the garden. My frustration melted into surprise and joy. It was snowing! Big, HUGE, fluffy flakes of snow!

Without brushing my hair or making myself a cup of coffee, I pulled on my snow boots and went for a short walk down my street.

The last time I saw snow was around this time last year while driving the Mustang cross-country. I had stayed the night at Bishop’s Inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico and woke up to snow. Steve McDonald had found my blog, so I detoured to visit him in Albuquerque. He never did send me those photos he took of us there.

One of my neighbors accidently left their clothes hanging on the line…