- Good morning! It has been a few weeks since
I wrote, as my normal Monday morning routine got broken up by a birthday (my
own, more about that later) and a fantastic weekend away. But now we are back
to normal. This first Monday of August is rather windy and a little cold. I
have been asking the people around me when this windy season will finally end
because after this comes hot season and that’s always my favourite. So I sit
with a nice hot tea and a fleece blanket covers my legs. The girls think I
exaggerate. They sit in their summer dresses on the cold cement floor and play
with their Lego. Somehow they seem to think that admitting that you’re cold is
a sign of weakness that should be avoided at any cost, so whenever I suggest a
jumper or a pair of leggings, they will run away as far as they can. Oh well,
they won’t literally freeze here, so I guess it’s al right.
- Lego is the latest big thing in our house.
Almost two weeks ago a big suitcase arrived from the Netherlands, filled with
craft supplies, magazines, clothes and Lego. The girls have been entertained
ever since. It’s not that they aren’t entertained normally, but their focus has
been pretty singular lately. All our conversations go along these lines.
‘Girls, do you want to go with me to the beach/read a book/make a craft/bake a
cake?’ –‘No, that’s boring. We want to play with Lego.’ And so they do. From
the moment they wake up to when it’s time to go to sleep. It’s fine though. In
the suitcase came a toy for me too; a new camera! After all the reading and
researching, I was nervous that I had made a wrong decision (on the internet,
there are as many cameras as convincing opinions about which one is best) but I
have been really pleased with my choice. The camera is great, it’s a joy to
work with and the quality of pictures is amazing. From now on the blog will
probably come with many pictures because I cannot choose which ones I like
best.
- Since the girls interests are fully
focussed on Lego, I am missing my sidekicks in the kitchen. Last week Hartmut
asked if I could bake something ‘because it will be nice to have something
sweet’. I thought it would be cool to bake some muffins with the girls, but
they were not interested. I am glad that I baked them anyway because it turned
out that I needed them. That evening we had planned a zoom call with Meryl and
Richard (friends from Cape Town) and before the call Hartmut asked me if I
wouldn’t want to wear something nice or put on some make up for the call.
Looking back, that was a really odd request, because Hartmut doesn’t care that
much about my clothes or make up and in all the years of video calling, he had
never asked that before. So I kinda ignored it, and we started the call in old
but comfy clothes and my usual ‘naked’ face. Meryl seemed to be super
interested in my birthday and while I was trying to stop talking about it,
because there was just not that much to say (I did not have a real party). She
kept on going back to that day to ask me how I celebrated, just so that I could
say again and again that, besides a cupcake with the girls, I did not really
celebrate anything that day because I was sad and I missed people. Then Hartmut
went to the kitchen ‘to make some tea’ and Meryl said ‘well, let’t have a party
now!’. Suddenly lots of other anonymous people with weird names came into the
zoom call and at first I thought that it was another zoom-feature where you could
have pretend friends in your call but it turned out that all of these people
were my real friends, hiding behind funny names and pictures. They all gave me
clues to help me guess who they were and if I guessed right, they changed their
picture and showed their face. After everybody entered, Hartmut gave me a
birthday cake (the muffins I baked) with a candle and all my friends had cake
with a candle too and sang happy birthday. What a great surprise! It was so
nice to see all their faces and to feel like I had some kind of birthday party.
I am so grateful for creative friends, internet and a husband who helped to
organise it without me suspecting anything. Next time that Hartmut tells me to
wear nice clothes, I better listen because you never know.
- ‘I know I should not feel this way, but I
do. Maybe it’s wrong but I am really happy that this chicken is sick because
now I can practise what it is like to be a vet.’ Sophie talks to me while she
is holding one of our chicks who seems to be going blind. Big growths have
started to form on both sides of her head, and with every day passing, her eyes
are more closed because the growths get in the way. As a result, she cannot
really eat because she cannot see the food, and when she walks in the garden,
she constantly gets lost because she cannot follow her mom and brother. The
girls have taken the chick (her name is ‘Liefst’) in and are determined to
nurse her back to health, or at least to keep her alive. Their dedication is
amazing and especially Sophie loves it as her latest dream for the future is to
become a vet or a ranger. Fortunately, their efforts are not without result.
Liefst eats out of their hands and seems to be gaining strength again. Last
week, the growths even fell off (we have still no idea what they were) and
although Liefst is still thin, small and a little fragile, she can walk around
with her family again, and find her own food. But her favourite is still to
come to the girls and eat whatever they give her out of their hands.
- I know I have said that our farm is big
enough and that we shouldn’t add another variety of animals to it, but
sometimes things happen and you have to change your opinion. So Saturday we
added an unexpected new kind of animals to our care. Well, actually, I am wrong
to say that. These animals chose to come to us, and we just moved them to a
safer and more convenient place. What happened was that a group of bees had
started to build a hive in our garbage bin. It turns out that they can do that
pretty quickly so by the time we discovered it, it was a rathed big swarm. The
bin isn’t exactly a safe place to have a beehive, neither for us, nor for the
bees, so we decided to move them. They had attached their hive to the lid and
we looked for another lid to cover our bin and made a kind of box out of the
lid that they had decided to make their home. Hartmut hung the new beehive in
some trees in a far corner of the garden and the bees seem to be pretty happy
there. I am looking forward to see how they will do and if the hive will grow more.
Bees are important for the environment and I really like them so I have
actually been reading articles and listening to podcasts about beekeeping. It’s
something that I thought would be a nice thing to do in the future, when we
live in a more permanent place. But now the bees came to us to give us a
practise round; how kind of them.
- Yesterday, it was the birthday of one of my
nephews in Namibia. The girls have 6 cousins and I find it difficult that they
don’t really grow up with them. In an ideal world, it would be easier to visit,
and we would be able to at least celebrate special events, like birthdays,
together. Unfortunately the world isn’t ideal so in order to make the cousins
more ‘real’ we always celebrate their birthdays with a small party and cake. I
didn’t feel like making an elaborate cake but obviously that wasn’t according
to the plan of party-planner-Sophie. ‘Just make a car cake, he will like that
and it’s easy’ she said. You are probably thinking with me that a car cake
sounds pretty complicated. But Sophie had an idea that was actually really easy
and quick. ‘Just bake a normal round cake, cut it in half and then put the two
parts together with some icing in-between. Then cut a little bit from the front
and the back to make it a car shape, use muffins to make tyres, ice it and it’s
done!’ The muffins became Marie biscuits, Doris added sweets for the lights and
I have to say that I was rather pleased with the end result.
- The girls ask for something, my tea is cold
and it’s time to wrap up. I am going to post this blog and get on with the
other things I wanted to do today. Have a great week!
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