Photo Diary December 2010

This Photography Diary-December 2010 lens got a Purple Star.
I knew 13 is my lucky number, always has been.

It was drizzling and raining all day and we had to go to my mom to change a lightbulb in her hallway and bring her some groceries. Then suddenly, while we were driving through my beautiful land, the sun appeared for a moment long and made the most beautiful rainbow visible and yes, you guessed it right: I had left my camera at home. It was a full rainbow and so beautiful against the dark clouds.

Last year, when I was driving home from my mom, there was a full rainbow too, over the road I was driving on and I thought:

Suppose it was a normal bridge and I could drive right through,
would it then count to make a wish, or maybe even two?
Then I would wish with all my heart that 'soldier' was an unknown word,
that all the people in the world would really have preferred,
to call their neighbour 'Friend'.
That all the poor and hungry ones, would get paid and fed,
that they could sleep, when winter comes, in their own warm bed.
But how I tried (I drove real fast), the rainbow kept her distance,
so maybe war and poor and hungry, are just a part of our excistence,
to which we're all condemned.

Sometimes I wonder, sometimes I don't.

Today's admission will be a short one. I've been busy figuring out how to feed my sheep, because I can't reach them anymore by car and I don't see myself walking with a 25kilo pack of hay or a 50 liter water barrel. This afternoon they were snowploughing the roads and I stopped one ot them, explained the situation about my sheep and he promised to plough the road along the dike. So this late afternoon I put a water barrel and two hay bales in my little van and drove towards the sheep, only to discover the man had misinterpreted my request. He had freed the entrance of the dike, but had shoved all the snow further on the road, making a blockade of at least 80cm high and as wide as the road, so now I can't even get there using a sled. My dike consists of three seperate pieces and the sheep are not in the piece where he cleaned the entrance. I've made the situation visible for you by copying the view of my dike from Google Earth.
So first thing tomorrow I have to call the city hall and ask them to help me out here by getting rid of the snow on this road, so I can get there with my little van.

First decade of the 21st century has passed. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

I promissed you to show you our traditional family Bishop's wine and the baked cookies.
The photo shows the old kettle (originally a choclate kettle) which has been in our family for ages. Don't know where it came from, but it always was used to brew our annual Bishop's wine in. You won't say, but it can contain 3 litres of liquid. About 10 years after my father died, my mom moved out of the big house and I inherited this kettle and I've been using it the family way each New Year's Eve to make the traditional Bishop's wine. You start making this wine not later then noon if you want to drink it in the evening. It needs to simmer at least 5 to 6 hours in order to get the orange and lemon juice come out and mix with the wine.

THE FAMILY RECEPY:
* Pour 3 litres of common wine in an old kettle or high pan.
* Take a juicy orange and decorate it by sticking gloves in, making a nice patttern.
I use a fork to make holes first.
* Take a lemon and decorate it the same way als the orange.
* Take three sticks of cinnamon.
* Add suger. I can't exactly tell you how much sugar, because that depends on the sweetness of the wine. Start with a third of a pack (kilo).

Put all ingredients into the wine and put the kettle on a very low heating source. In my home that's either the wood stove or the coal stove, but you can put it on your kitchen stove too. One warning: DON'T LET IT COOK!!!
You have to stirr it regularly in order to get the sugar dissolved and you have to taste it regularly to see if it needs more sugar. I needs to taste rather sweet in the end, but the sweetness must not overtake the taste of the wine.