Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 161

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Sometimes you have to look really close to see something.
My friend and I like this spot which I mentioned a few days ago, the spring of a small river in our area.
It's lovely to rest there for a while, especially early at morning when no one else is there.

Can you see something in the rock wall?
Here you go. Sorry, the pictures are not good because of the zooming in.
We have no idea if that's supposed to be a little castle or church or who put it there and how, but isn't that a cute surprise?

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Shoreline Journeys Travel.

Jennifer from Shoreline Journeys Travel says: "My family is my strength and supports me on my travel journeys. I met the love of my life & best friend in 1993, we graduated college together, started our grown-up jobs, and were married in 1997. We traveled to Jamaica for our honeymoon and stayed at the Sandals Royal Jamaican (now the Sandals Royal Caribbean) and it started our journey together. I help couples plan romantic escapes to Sandals Resorts for honeymoons, destination weddings, and vow renewals, while also designing amazing family getaways to Beaches Resorts."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Lydia is talking about bringing courtesy back.

Aletha is sharing some Hawaii memories.

Nicole has three owlets in her cherry tree. I'm jealous!

Donna is making popeye pancakes (also called Dutch babies or German pancakes ... and yes, I'm confused because I have never heard of those being made here).

Barbara tells us about a day trip to the Douro Valley.

Pat witnessed the birth of two mule deer fawns in her garden.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us! 

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Peter Pan

What do you say we make a little trip to Neverland (sometimes called Never Never Land like in this case) today?
I have for you the first movie adaptation of the J. M. Barrie's play and later novel about the boy who wouldn't grow up - "Peter Pan" from 1924.

Again, you are probably familiar with the plot more or less.

First we meet the Darling family with Mother, Father, their three children Wendy, John, and Michael, and the nurse dog Nana. The Darlings are ready to go out for the evening.

When Mr. Darling is annoyed by Nana, his wife tells him about having seen a face at the window and that the same little boy had been in the room the other day, but that Nana had jumped at him and the boy - who had a bright light for company - escaped without his shadow. She thinks he might be coming back, but Father ties Nana up in the garden, anyway.
When the Darlings are gone, the boy comes back indeed to look for his shadow. It's of course Peter Pan and his fairy Tinker Bell who finds the shadow in the drawer.

He starts crying when he can't stick it back on and Wendy wakes up. They introduce themselves and Wendy sews on Peter's shadow after hearing he doesn't have a mother to do it.

Peter tells Wendy that he ran away the day he was born and that he lived among fairies. He lets Tinker Bell out of the drawer. When Wendy tells him that he can give her a "thimble" meaning a kiss, though, Tinker Bell gets jealous and pulls her hair.

Now Peter says he has to return to Never Never Land and the Lost Boys - boys who fell out of their perambulators as babies - because they will be afraid of the pirates on the island. Wendy is sad, so Peter invites her to come along and be their mother.
He teaches Wendy, John, and Michael how to fly thanks to happy thoughts and fairy dust, and although Nana breaks free to alert their parents, the children follow Peter and Tinker Bell.

On the island of Never Never Land, the Lost Boys see Wendy approaching. Jealous Tink tells them that Peter wants them to shoot "the Wendy bird", and Tootles shoots her down, but the arrow hits the "kiss" (an acorn) Peter has given her.
Peter banishes Tink for a week.

So, Wendy becomes the boys' "mother" with Peter as their "father", but while she has fallen in love with him, Peter's feelings for her are those "of a devoted son". He lets her know that Tiger Lily, the princess of the tribe living on the island (we're getting to that later) also wants to be something for him, but not his mother.
Wendy tells the Lost Boys about a mother's love and that the window will always be left open for their return, but Peter says that he tried to go back and the window was barred and another little boy was sleeping in his bed.
Now Wendy is afraid that will happen to them and she wants to go home and take all the Lost Boys with them for her parents to adopt them. Peter refuses to go with them because he doesn't want to grow up, but promises to send Tink along to show them the way.

Meanwhile, the pirates have ambushed the tribe who's guarding Peter's underground home.
Captain Hook, whose hand Peter had cut off which then has been eaten by a crocodile, has the drum beaten to make them think the tribe has won, and Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys are taken prisoners and carried to the pirate ship.
To get rid of Peter, he then poisons his medicine.
Before Peter can take it, however, Tinker Bell drinks it and is about to die. Only if children believe in fairies, she can survive, so Peter implores the audience to clap their hands (and I bet it got loud in that theater!).

On the pirate ship, Hook wants to send the boys over the plank, especially after none of them is ready to become a cabin boy. But of course Peter is there in time to save them all and instead send Hook over the plank ... where the crocodile has already been waiting.

Hook was a great villain, surprisingly it was a
different actor than Mr. Darling, usually they were
both played by the same one.

The crocodile spitting out Hook's hook ...

Before the others arrive at home, Peter orders Tink to close the window because he hopes that Wendy will come back to the island with him then, but seeing the sad Darlings he can't do it after all.
While Mr. Darling is looking for space to accodomate all their new children, Mrs. Darling tells Peter to stay with them as well, but he refuses and asks Wendy again to come with him. Mrs. Darling doesn't allow that, but promises to send Wendy once a year for a week of spring cleaning.
So Peter returns to Never Never Land alone.

Before watching the movie, I had only known about the play from "Finding Neverland" and then seeing the play (directed by Sally Cookson) on National Theatre at Home (here's a trailer) which was very fascinating despite being very long, and from which I first learned about the dark side of Peter Pan.
I then decided I would also watch the Disney movie, which I only knew in parts, and read the novelization of the original stage play.
I know that there are of course loads of adaptations, old ones, modern ones, musicals, sequels, Peter as a grown-up, even horror, but you have to stop somewhere, and I think I did a pretty nice mix.
And actually, this movie is my favorite so far.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room first.
The tribe I mentioned are Native Americans, but "We redskins - you the great white father" doesn't go down well anymore in our times, neither do the stereotypes, even if a review from 1905 said "Mr. Barrie presents not the pirate or Indian of grown-up fiction but the creations seen by childish eyes." Contemporary productions have to find their own ways to deal with that. You can find an interesting article in the Smithsonian Magazine.

I also mentioned the dark side of "Peter Pan" which actually comes across even more in the novel.
Did you know that Peter "thins the boys out when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules", however you want to interpret that? Actually, there's quite a bit of killing in the novel - although in the film the swords go visibly between body and arm like in childplay - and Peter is not a simple hero, either. With his dodging responsibility and always being ready for the next adventure also comes that he's often selfish and forgets things quickly. No wonder he needed a mother!
In the novel, he even forgets again and again to pick up Wendy for the spring cleaning and thus is very surprised one day when he finds her grown up with a daughter of her own and eventually that daughter with a daughter of her own ...

I don't think I would have noticed it that much in the movie, though, without reading the novel first although it really seems to be very close to the original play.
By the way, Peter was traditionally played by young women for a long time, the reason being that children weren't allowed on stage that late and grown up men not being right for the role for their looks, but also their weight. There's a lot of "flying"! (In the play I saw it was a grown-up man and I have to admit that it didn't satisfy me completely.)
The intertitles are mostly quotes, only Americanized in some cases, for example when being loyal to the King is changed to being loyal to the Stars and Stripes.

"Peter Pan" is another film that was thought to be lost until a print turned up in 1971. What a pity it would have been if it had vanished!
One blog author criticized Betty Bronson's play as overacting, but I thought it worked really well in this context as I imagined Peter as a bit of a show-off, and to complain about wires (which I didn't even notice during the first viewing because I was so immersed in the plot) in a movie of that time is just ridiculous to me.
A lot of well-known actresses of the time are said to have been after this role, but Barrie himself chose Bronson.

I also thought the special effects were great for the time - big fan of Tinker Bell's little room here - but we can't forget Nana, either. Who would have thought that a man in a dog costume would be able to move like that? But then George Ali specialized in playing animals on stage and screen. Possibly he was the crocodile, too.

And because I already shared more pictures than I usually do, here's the Mermaid Queen.

Can you tell how much I enjoyed the movie? The video I saw also had a score that worked beautifully.
A truly magical experience with a very interesting backstory, absolutely a recommendation from me.

Last but not least I want to share a picture of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.
The first time I saw it we were there with a five year old and it was great to see how much she loved it (so do I). This picture is from the time I went with a slightly bigger ex 😉
Barrie commissioned the statue and had it set up secretly during the night. Can you imagine the surprise for people finding it the next day?

Sources and further reading:

1. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "Peter Pan" (1924). On: Silent-ology, December 6, 2018
2. Rick Aragon: Peter Pan (1924): A Review. On: Rick's Cafe Texan, February 8, 2012
3. Evelyn Harper: The Making of a Legend: How Peter Pan (1924) Enchanted the Silent Screen. On: Dark Skies, October 27, 2025

Bookish pet peeves #2

"I don't need any special preparation, because I'm not nervous, I don't have what the Germans call lumpenfever, which is stage fright."
That's from a biography about Peter Ustinov and it was the last straw.
Let's talk a bit about foreign words in books.
You can imagine that I notice the wrong spelling or grammar for German words or phrases in English books more quickly, but this is by no means a problem of the German language only.
I've seen Germans do "interesting" things with the English language, English or German speaking people with the French language and so on, and those are just the languages I know something about.

This isn't going to become one of those "your/you're" discussions (although some things like those can drive me crazy silently, no matter who does it or in which language).
It's not about blogs or social media posts, either. Although I often look up words I'm not sure of at the moment, I make my share of mistakes and typos, no doubt (and correct even really old posts if I come across them again).
I'm talking about books by big publishing houses.

Do you know what lumpenfever means? Nothing. A German "Lump" is a "rascal" and "fever" is not German, it's, surprise, English. The word they meant is "Lampenfieber", literally "lamp fever".

Among the languages Ustinov spoke was German, and although it was not always perfect, which absolutely added to the charm, I wouldn't be surprised if his biographer simply got confused by the German "Lampe" being pronounced like the English "lump" and of course "Fieber" and "fever" sounding very similar.
What I don't understand - and that may be an idea from a mad librarian's brain - is why that kind of information isn't checked before printing.
I think Ustinov's biography pushed me over the edge because it wasn't the only German mistake in it, it was just the most interesting looking one.

Of course it's not only books, but articles, TV shows, movies, news.
I will never not cringe (petty, I know) hearing Geoffrey pronounced with an o for the eo as in George instead of Jeffrey in German dubbings, but that's just the first one that comes to mind because I heard it again in a movie not long ago.
Having non-German actors play Germans can be just as terrible to listen to as can be UK actors playing Americans etc. and the other way round or Germans mangling a regional dialect that isn't their own (which I'm sure also happens in other languages).
I also think it's a matter of respect to learn especially how to pronounce names that are foreign to us and of people doing that professionally I'd expect it even more.

Do you have a pet peeve like that?


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 160

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

This is a picture friends sent me from their vacation at a camping site in The Netherlands.
What is it about chickens that makes me smile? I don't know, but I wanted to share that smile with you.

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Handmade by Amalia.

Amalia from Handmade by Amalia says: "Welcome to my blog! This is the place where I write about my crafts, mostly crochet, needlework and recycled paper, and a little bit about my life as it touches it - family, work, travel … I wish to live my life with creativity and kindness and my blog challenges me to do that. I'm glad you stopped by!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Paula shares with us how to make blackberry passionfruit iced tea.

Linda shows us pictures of the wrens that live (w)rentfree in her garden.

Amy is talking about her Friday Favorites.

Sally has combined black and brights for the latest Style Imitating Art challenge.

Lisa is sharing a bookish link up - A Good Book & a Cup of Tea.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Huckleberry Finn

In 1884, the novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain was published in the UK and shortly after in the USA.
Since then, there were numerous adaptations. The one that impressed me most, simply because it was the first one I ever saw, was one of the famous "Christmas four-parters" here in Germany, a German-French-Romanian coproduction from 1968 which I saw as a rerun (I had more a crush on the Huck actor than on the story, though).
We also had both books which are in my personal library now.

Today, however, I have the earliest adaptation for you, "Huckleberry Finn" from 1920.

I doubt I'll have to worry about spoilers much this time.
Here's the plot.

Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry have found a treasure and received some money from it.
The Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson take Huck in as his guardians. Huck isn't happy about having to behave, but stays to be able to be part of Tom's gang.

"Pap", his father, is after the money and abducts Huck to a remote cabin. After Pap tries to kill him in delirium tremens, Huck fakes his murder and escapes.
Seeing the townspeople putting bread with quicksilver in it in the river tells him that they think he's dead and he makes Jackson's Island his "kingdom".
One morning, he finds the sleeping Jim there, one of Miss Watson's slaves. Jim has run away because Miss Watson intended to sell him to a bad man. He can hardly believe Huck is alive and asks him if he can stay with him.

Huck goes into town for news disguised as a girl and learns that the townspeople suspects Jim of having murdered him before running away and that they want to go look for him on Jackson's Island.

So they take the raft that Jim built and go down the river where they meet two thieves running from some townsfolk.
One of them claims to be a born Duke and an actor (the other calls himself the King in the book), and in the next town they scam the audience with overpriced tickets for a stage performance.

Further down the river they meet a man asking the two thieves if they are the brothers of a Mr. Wilks who has died. When they hear that he left some property, they see their chance to cheat Mr. Wilks's three daughters out of everything.
Huck, however, falls for one of the daughters, Mary-Jane, and after a while he reveals to her that the "brothers" are crooks.

Then two men turn up and can prove that they are the real brothers by knowing about the tattoo on the dead man's chest.
Huck and Jim don't manage to take off without the two crooks, and when they reach the next town, one of them sells Jim to a man named Phelps. Huck decides to save Jim. When he arrives at the plantation, he's greeted by Mrs. Phelps who happens to be Tom Sawyer's aunt and thinks he's Tom.
On the way to Pikesville to fetch "his" trunk Huck meets Tom.

He tells him about his adventures and Jim and of course Tom immediately comes up with a plan. He'll pretend to be his brother Sid and they will help Jim to escape (which involves dressing him in a woman's frock).
When they sneak Jim out and head to the raft, the townspeople are after them and Tom gets shot in the leg (that footage is missing from the video). Although Tom wants to go through with the escape, Jim insists on Huck getting a doctor who has Tom carried back to the Phelps's house.

The next day Tom's Aunt Polly turns up and tells them that Miss Watson has died a month ago and has given Jim his freedom as Tom knows. When asked why he wanted to free a free man, Tom replies that it was for the adventure and that he wants to go on another one with Huck.
Huck, however, wishes Aunt Sally would adopt him, so he can become an educated young man and return to Mary-Jane.

And that's also what he tells Mark Twain at the end - that there's nothing more to write about him but maybe a love story some day ...

I'm not going to go into the controversy about the book itself. The movie had a few racist moments, but that has more to do with the source itself. The n-word is used just once by Jim himself. I don't know if that was on purpose.

William Desmond Taylor (more known today for his unsolvedn murder in 1922 and the following scandal) made three movies from the Twain books, "Tom Sawyer" in 1917, "Huck and Tom" in 1918, and "Huckleberry Finn" in 1920.

The movie had been considered to be lost until a print was found in a Danish archive in the 60s and restored in 2006. As mentioned above, there is footage missing which is explained in intertitles.
E. W. Kemble, the illustrator of the original edition, said that Taylor took his illustrations and brought them to life.

Indeed, the movie is also rather faithful to the book although things have been left out, for example how Jim finds Pap's body or the deadly family feud that Huck gets to witness.
Leaving those out makes it rather a gentle adaptation although the part in which Huck is held prisoner and threatened by Pap is quite violent.
I think it would have been interesting to see more of how the narrative around Jim has been handled which is unfortunately missing, for example the escape (shame on Tom for hatching a complicated plan just for the adventure instead of letting Jim know he's a free man). I would have preferred that to the story of the Duke and the King which was very slow.
Also the relationship between Huck and Jim wasn't explored much except for Huck's decision to save Jim after he had been sold.

Lewis Sargent made a convincing Huck, and it's notable that in a time where blackface was prevalent in movies, the part of Jim was not played by a white man, but by George Reed.

All in all, the film will not make it into my list of favorites for rewatching because I struggle with the story itself.


Sources:

1. David Kiehn: Huckleberry Finn. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Essay. 2011
2. Lorraine Lo: Huckleberry Finn (1920). On: TCM. Articles. October 10, 2011

Tell Us About ... Sunshine

I have been asked if I'd like to participate in the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the month.
My posts will go live a little early (to avoid collision with the silent films), so if the posts of the others are not live yet, please check back later.
The current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After, Marsha in the Middle, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and me. It's fun to learn how differently everyone interprets a topic.
You can play along and link up with us!
If that's too short notice for you, maybe next time? The prompt for July will be "Dance".

This month's prompt is "Sunshine". Ouch.
I'd like to start by describing a cartoon by one of my favorite cartoonists, Graham Annable aka Grickle. My favorite are his vampire cartoons.
I don't share artists' work without permission, but you can find the cartoon here.

You see a vampire sitting on his couch holding a portable game console. Behind him there's a strange looking armor, his wolf is sleeping on the rug, a side table holds a skull lamp. Everything is grey, the only colors are those of the console and of the warm light shining from it - and the caption reads "The only reason he played Animal Crossing was to walk through the sunshine again."

Awww 😍
But, uhm, yeah, I'm not that vampire. I'm the kind of vampire who doesn't flee the sunshine by necessity, but out of conviction.
I was the "shadow child" under the tree at the local pool while my friend impersonated a sausage on the grill because she loves the sun.
I'm the one who lets the shades down when others pull them up.
Drag me into the sun and I might be hissing at you - or possibly dissolving in a cloud of dust like Hammer's Dracula.
If you have been around for a while, you already know that I'm very much drawn to the moon instead of the sun even if I won't find me flying in front of a full moon.

What you may not know, however, is that I don't have anything against the sun as such, not that I had ever given that a real thought before.
There's no question about our needing the sun. Our planet needs the sun for light, warmth, gravitation, vitamin D - in short, for life, and a lot of different cultures already knew that a long time ago, only they credited solar deities and built solar cults around their beliefs.

Goddess Sunna at the V&A,
public domain via Wikipedia

We all know the stories about ancient people panicking during a solar eclipse. I experienced one full solar eclipse myself, and although it was raining and we didn't get to see anything, the darkness and the silence gave me an idea of how much scarier that must have felt to people who didn't understand what was happening there, not knowing if the sunlight would return.

Trundholm Sun Chariot
Picture by Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0

When I was a kid, my yellow pencil was always the shortest. I absolutely loved drawing a big sun into the corner of every classic "landscape with house" picture. Not a full sun, just one like this here - yes, this is practically a copy of the picture I remember drawing at my friend's house once at the tender age of 8 or 9.
Okay, not really, I only had felt-tips available, but no light blue for the sky and no brown for a tree, and filling out the grass wouldn't have worked for the flowers, so I had to make some small changes. Can't say my drawing abilities have much improved since then as I'm usually not a fan of tiny houses. Maybe it's a fairy house. You get the idea, that's what counts.
As you can see my suns always had a wide smile and the alternating short and long rays.

Suns (and sunflowers which don't have their name for nothing) didn't just turn up in my drawings, though, they also made their way into my jewelry creations.

Center picture via pxhere

So I guess you could say I appreciate the sun as a life giver and inspiration and love the concept of sunshine as long as I don't have to be in it directly myself (and for that I even have my medication as a valid excuse).
I think that's a pretty good compromise 🌞

Now let's see what the others have to tell us (Debbie is still travelling).

Suzy writes about her changing relationship with sunshine and why she appreciates it far more now than she ever did before.

Sally shares sunshine-inspired outfits and handmade jewelry.

Leslie packed a little El Paso sunshine in her pocket for their trip to the UK.

Even though her students begged her not to sing, Marsha loves music.  This time around, she’s writing about songs she loves that mention sunshine!

Amy writes about her first year of freedom to chase the sunshine in all four seasons.


And now you. Tell us about "Sunshine" and link up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

10 on the 10th, uhm, 9th - Things we love about the coming season

Sorry, one day early as tomorrow is already full with another post which should have been posted on Thursday which is already full with a silent movie post, though. How can blogging be so complicated?
Anyhow, with no further ado ...

Uhm ... you may think this should be very easy, but for me it isn't.
Let's see how far I can get.

My birthday.

Now that was easy, wasn't it? Not that my birthday is such a special day for me. I have never celebrated it the way many others do (except once, but that's a long story), there's no party, small or big. I may have one or two visitors which I enjoy and I'm not averse to one or two gifts, especially small surprises, but I'm just as happy to spend the day all by myself (why do I have the urge to add a smiley to make clear that I really mean that?).

That's what I call a sustainable
birthday card, I loved the idea!

That doesn't mean I'm one of those people who have a problem with their birthday as in seeing the numbers go up, by the way. I'm just past the childhood excitement, I guess?
Fun fact - I have always taken the day off from work, no matter if I had something planned or not, so it was always "my" day.

Ice cream coffee.

"Excuse me, what?" I hear you ask.
The German word "Eis" can mean both "ice" and "ice cream". "Eiskaffee" is not the iced coffee that Americans know.
During my friend Jenn's second visit in Germany we went to a café and asked her if she wanted to try it. She vehemently declined because she thought we meant iced coffee and she was very surprised to see what we got. After trying it she immediately had to have her own and it became one of her favorites.
I rarely ever drink coffee, for years - iced coffee wasn't a thing in Germany then - this was the only way I had it at all.

A classic "Eiskaffee" is easily done. Put some vanilla ice cream in a tall glass, pour chilled coffee over it and crown it with some whipped cream and a wafer or a "cigarette russe".
It's usually served with a long spoon for the ice cream and a straw to sip the coffee.
You don't like coffee? Try an "ice chocolate" instead.

Summer memories.

Actually, summer memories have been a 10 on the 10th topic before. I have some good memories, but reading the post didn't help me for this one because those were things that won't be happening again, one reason being my reduced mobility - no summer fleamarkets, no travelling, no long walks in the woods, etc.
I still have the memories, though, some fun ones and some funny ones!

Summer rains.

After a scary hailstorm some years ago, I'm not as relaxed about thunderstorms anymore, but a nice long rain after a hot spell is absolutely the best.
When others rush inside, I'm going out there to cool down.

I love this old picture and I can hear, smell, and feel it.

Trees, lakes, and ponds.

In my opinion, they are the best spots in the summer heat, hands down. Some would probably pick beaches, but I'm not that much of a beach fan which is convenient as there are none in the area.

Public domain via pxhere

I don't know how good my chances are to get anywhere, but at least I made it to one of my favorite spots this month. Extra points for no people being there so early in the morning, except a biker who took a picture and left again.

The Lautertopf, the spring of the small Lauter river.

Whining.

As you can see, I'm seriously grasping for straws here now!
I love to whine in summer. Well, I don't love having to whine, so in this case I guess "love" means I can't help doing it. Sometimes it may be more of a pathetic moan. Very annoying.

My fan.

I'm my fan's biggest fan and I don't care if people tell me that a fan is doing nothing. It does for me. If that's just in my head, that's fine by me as long as it works.


That's it from a grumpy summer hater.
Sorry, but I just couldn't come up with more than those quite weak seven because summer is my least favorite season.
(If you wonder why I didn't mention flowers, well, they are not summer-specific, are they?)
After a very hot week I told several people that I'm very much looking forward to September and my favorite season.
I even asked family to help me get to ten, but all we realized was that we are very different in some regards! 😂