Then there were these hardy early-January bloomers, in a patch of daffs that lasted from end of December or early January right up to a week or two ago before fully ending their bloom – in the process surviving snow and a freeze or two.
When I resumed posting last week, I started with daffodils photographed several weeks earlier, on March 7 on my way to work. Then, biking home from two lovely hours of doubles with friends late on Tuesday the 2nd of April…what should my eyes see but this lovely patch of flowers (are these daffodils? jonquils? something else?) lit by the late-evening sun.
The rolling hills and lakes at the French-Swiss border. (If you want to check your maps, I’m reasonably confident that’s Lac de Joux.) Yep, we’ve been back to Geneva for meetings again, during our posting intermission…
Yes, we’ve shown you this dramatic maritime museum before, and by night as well. It really does stand out when one’s walking over to the Muziekgebouw for a concert, as was the case here in early March, during (brother) Steve’s latest visit.
The quaint and historic eastern-Netherlands town of Zutphen on the Ijssel, where I spent last weekend playing lots of tennis in my first-ever “tennis camp” weekend with lessons and matches. Great fun and nice to get away for a bit.
Welcome back, dear readers. One or two of you have reached out to double-check that all’s well in my world. Truth to tell, it’s been a hard slog of a winter season / past six months in both life (A’dam really can get grim, wet, and windy in the winter months) and work. But there are moments of joy always, and this captures one of my finer bike rides to work recently. Imagine, if you will, the contrast between this and biking home into the wind and rain at the end of the same day. Which is a thing that has been known to happen more than one could wish, lately. I’ll try to get back to dailies soon, if not immediately.
This’ll be my last daily post for a while, ending with a reminder to seek and value small wonders in our lives. The cherry blossom pics below were taken on December 30! I first saw some of these trees in bloom on a gray late-November walk in 2021, and was delighted to see some trees in this same set again blooming again more than two years later at the tail-end of the wettest-in-history NL autumn of 2023. (The 2021 blooms were more pink-tinged, so might have been different specific trees but all in the same place.) What a blessing, given how monotonously, monstrously, constantly gray the autumn and winter months can here. Thanks to whatever urban and parks planners associated with the city of A’dam chose these trees to plant here. 🙂 The mushrooms above would have been photographed on my exploratory walks around my new neighborhood, after I moved to this new place in early August. Enjoy this break from daily posts and alerts, as I intend to. Who knows when I’ll be back to dailies.
Above: Stadsloket is one of the city’s administrative services offices, which are scattered around A’dam’s many neighborhoods. Below, two last photos taken along the marathon’s route in October, just west of the Rijksmuseum which you can see in the pics.
(so much world, so little time....) 