This Week in Wijnjewoude 2024

Week 26 Creating a rich interior life may vary from person to person. Some folks turn to prayer or meditation. Others enjoy the quiet gift of nature, where gardening or long walks in the outdoors dissolve our petty troubles and allow us to retreat and reflect.  (Weekly newsletter from John P. Weiss) (I've already taken Boeke out twice today - it gets light at around 0400hrs - he knows that I am up at around 0600hrs and so a little whimper gets him outside...) “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” (By Albert Pike - a Southern Civil War General, amongst other things - perhaps not such a good chap after all - but I liked the quote in relation to what we do here - not so much for the world but in some small way for our clients) A quietish week made up of lots of little things... The weedkiller Roundup is banned here now - so we have started experimenting with salt - which we use to melt the ice on the walkways in the wint...

  Week 25 As the finish line gets closer...I simply wonder where all the stuff is going to go...We have people lined up for the apartment(s) and I still have to do a bit of painting. The existing tenants, Mum and 3 kids, are going to move into ours - hopefully we can leave most of the furniture here...now that I'm "nearly 80", I wonder if it's an old people thing...trying to get rid of clutter? (I seem to remember Mum using the "quart into a pint bottle" saying). From The Economist Last person on the left looks a bit like I feel... (reminds me of another saying that I liked..."I'm not comforted by the fact that it's your side of the boat that's sinking"). The Economist is also forecasting a Trump win...they're one of few few news sources that I trust...so I hope they're wrong Ikea Hacks Janny looks a lot of stuff up about "Ikea Hacks" - things to do with old (and new) Ikea stuff... We're off to Assen in a minute to...

Week 24   For age is opportunity no less  Than youth itself, though in another dress,  And as the evening twilight fades away  The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I just watched the footy - hard to be buoyed after that...but OK... oops, in Delzijl (tidal) On Monday we had 42mm...and it feels like it hasn't stopped since. I couldn't do any mowing! Now, there's a seldom mentioned side-effect of Global Warming... The ongoing wet weather in the Netherlands has created a shortage of spinach on the supermarket shelves, RTL news reported this week. Spinach takes four to five weeks to reach maturity, so farmers sow their fields continually to be sure of enough stock. But the continual rain means “we are still starting up,” spinach grower Edwin van Uijen said. “The spinach still in the fields has had it. The soil is too wet so the roots die and then the crop fails.” The potato and other crops are also being affected, Judith van ...

  Week 23 We had to vote in the European elections during the week. A lot of other countries are voting today. I don't get the swing to the right...perhaps I see it it too simply - "is life really that bad that you think someone like Wilders (or Trump) can make it better for you?" (or maybe it is just a matter of "punishment" ). At least they are holding Wilders away from the Prime Minister position and they didn't dominate the European vote. It has been very wet in the Netherlands for 8 months. The KNMI announced last week that spring this year was very wet. That will not have surprised anyone who comes outside regularly. What makes the situation even more exceptional is that the previous winter and autumn were also much wetter than in an average year. In fact, it has often been noticeably wet in the Netherlands since last summer. Only September last year and March this year were approximately normal, but the other 9 months were often wet or sometimes even ...