Eryngium alpinum—the queens in our Alpine neighborhood.
…in the dressing room…
…in Arctic Fox fur…
Queens of the Alps
Naissance d’un jardin exotico-méditerranéen
Mediterranean garden mystery unearthed
Tingles…
…yeah, I got them with this snow all around me. 12Nov2016.
It was the sparkles, the sparkling–it danced before my eyes and the more I looked at it, the more I danced with it. I danced with the tingles. That was fun in the landscape.
But I am not sad…
Fall is slipping through my fingers,
As has summer…
But I am neither sad, nor alone…we’re good.
Gnome Next Spring
c u nxt SPRING! 🙂
Stuck on a metaphor
Is this a living landscape where the sun, the earth and moisture combine in a joyous dance? Or am I reading too much into it? I see a dance hall.
Is this the invitation to dance? I think the moisture emerging from the earth in that cloud is wanting to dance in the sun. This cloud wants its dance card signed.
Dancing clouds—I’m stuck on that metaphor.
I’ve lived on many continents, in many climates but only in this region have I felt—joyous, dancing clouds. Only here have I seen the clouds emerge from the earth.
Yesterday I watched clouds emerge from the earth, become dancing players in the sky and then dissolve before my eyes. Over and over. Great pleasure indeed I had.
For dedicated cloud watchers, I have, in this region, learned to distinguish between watching the dance and participating in the dance. Yesterday I watched.
Here are some of the players arriving for the dance–look carefully–each has its own style:
I’m stuck in that metaphor; and I don’t mind. It is a simple pleasure.
Descent without mercy
At 2,300 meters above sea level, with the west-north-west wind rasping my face, chilling me colder by the second, I stood firmly and saw how…
It begins…winter descends upon all…without mercy.
Finally, I escaped…
…escaped from that procrastination flu, you know the illness…
got too much to do today, I’ll take a walk tomorrow,
besides it’s only the first week of autumn.
I escaped yesterday…
…to the autumnal heights…
Ephemeral?
Frost…can there be anything more ephemeral than frost?
…ummm…our presence on earth?
🙂 Let me try again. The humour in this reality?
Once more…the pleasure as I observed the morning frost on that wood bench in the Schynige Platte Botanical Alpine Garden? Is that better? 🙂
Sweet pleasure. Ephemeral. Always sought. Always welcomed. Always missed.
And then I stood up, took a long, slow, deep breath, and turned around…I understood.
Cheesed
I was born in and grew up in large cities–Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. With that big-city-supermarket-only detachment, I still look at farm life as a Disneyland attraction. City soft hands vs farm rough hands–same mentality.
But last week I, by chance, attended an Alpabzug held in a village in the Berner Oberland, Jungfrau Region, Switzerland.
Alpabzug und Chästeilet! says with exclamatory enthusiasm, we are having a party to celebrate our cows’ return home from the Alpine summer pastures and their cheese distribution.
The Alpabzug is a village festival where the people in the village come out on the main street to a parade of cows that welcomes the cows back home after their season up in the mountains. It is a jolly time.
The parade, led by trychlers (bell-ringers) finishes on the edge of town for a day long festival where people take photos of the cows’ head-dresses, enjoy each others’ company, jodelers, traditional music, eat chäsbraetli (raclette on bread) and buy the cheese made that year on the mountain.
The parade through the village reached the festival ground where the residents gathered to appreciate the cows with a party.
Village families make close relationships with the cows.
Farmers make decorative head dresses for the cows.
Decorative craftsmanship demonstrates human respect paid to the cows.
Open-faced raclette cheese sandwiches enjoyed by more than a hundred people.
The cheese from this summer has been brought for distribution to the village residents.
Each farmer has summer cheese displayed and ready for taste testing.
This season’s cheese, muetschli, for sale at 22CHF/kg is sold alongside jellies and jams made from local fruits and berries.
I like how the production and consumption of food is an intimate part of village life. I am amazed that it is still occurring as a village event—not a tourist event.
In my idealistic interpretation, I see the people thanking the cows for the milk given to produce the cheese that will be eaten throughout the wintertime.
What is the way it is said—local food by and for local people. 🙂