Sunday Afternoon in Luxembourg

photo credits 2, 4: The Boy

Borage Aplenty

Before moving to Germany, I knew next to nothing about the herb borage. Even after moving into our house and finding a bunch of furry, blue-flowered plants out back, The Husband and I didn't know what they were (nor, oddly, did our garden-happy neighbor, who is older and has lived in this area all her life--turns out she's more of a Flower Person). After asking another German friend, we learned that our plants were, in fact, the edible herb borage. I really wasn't sure how to use them, especially since the leaves and stems are fairly spiky, so I didn't bother with them for a long time. 

Though we got rid of most of what we had while putting in two raised beds, a couple of the plants came back heartily this summer (apparently they pretty much grow like weeds in our area and are sometimes used in a well-known Frankfurter "green sauce" eaten with potatoes at certain times). I decided it was time to learn more about this free food growing next to our strawberries and tomatoes. According to some of my research, borage is a good anti-anxiety/stress, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diarrheal herb that can also help with hormone regulation, fevers, skin ailments, and coughs. Flavor is cucumber-like, and in fact, borage is often paired with cucumbers in recipes.

We've started using the leaves to make tea--a good way to avoid/diminish the spikiness of the leaves. To infuse, pour a cup of boiling water over 1/4 cup bruised fresh leaves. Steep five minutes. The flowers can also be used in teas or in drinks or atop salads or desserts. Since our own plants aren't supplying us with as many leaves as we've been wanting lately, we did a bit of--um, foraging during our bike ride the other day. Don't worry, our neighbor has plenty to spare!

Here's a good link about using borage, and here's another one, with recipes. 

By Bike in September

Ah, yes--we are indeed back in Germany now. School has begun, and we're starting to settle back into a routine. The weather was beautiful here for much of the weekend, so we decided to take a bike ride en famille (minus The Girl, who was in Paris with a friend's family). There are some great paved walking and biking trails in our village, beginning behind our house and just down the street. This is one we've walked many times in the past two years, but for several reasons, we hadn't biked there yet. 

Here's The Husband, atop my persimmon-colored Japanese cruiser. His much-used-in-past-years, fancy American mountain bike is pretty much out of commission--one reason we hadn't been riding together. He thinks he wants his own cruiser now--too bad we didn't buy him one while we were still in Japan, where this kind of bike is ubiquitous (and cheaper than here).

photo credit: The Boy

Our neighbor owns a large patch alongside the path, where he grows all manner of flowers, herbs, and veggies. Outside his home and throughout this space, he proves that he's truly a master gardener.

A short ride through the woods dead-ends into this open field, overlooking a neighboring village.

On the way back home, The Boy couldn't resist snapping a photo of one of The Ladies, who posed obligingly. Lovely!

Flea Market Fail

So, to explain my absence for the past month and a half: several days following my previous post, I headed across the pond with the fam for our annual visit to see family and friends. Every year at this time, I tell myself that I'll post at least once a week, but sadly, that never seems to happen. This year, I don't have that great of an excuse, as we haven't done as much traveling to several states as we normally do. However, I simply haven't been taking photos or doing anything terribly blog-worthy (watching back-to-back episodes of "The Millionaire Matchmaker" and making Sonic runs for Cherry Lime-Ades don't count, do they?). So I'm retro-ing it a bit with this previously-promised Fail account. Here goes...

A couple of months ago in Germany, The Husband and I had a free Saturday (The Girl away managing girls' soccer and The Boy without a baseball game). It just so happened to be the right Saturday of the month to head down to the Homburg Flea Market, a favorite haunt of my blog- and books-buddy Eurolush. It's just far enough away from our town for us not to have visited already, but this seemed like the perfect day.

The town of Homburg is really overtaken by this monthly market, which is really, really huge. We had difficulty finding a place to park, and in fact, our chosen spot resulted in the gift of a little white ticket on our windshield at the end of the day. Yeah, that should give you some idea of how the day went. Here is another clue:

Do you ever see something so very ugly that you go, okay--how could anyone want to buy that? Well, we found plenty of those kinds of things at Homburg. Here is another plum specimen:

Can you believe we didn't buy this? Me neither! But to be fair, there was lots of cool stuff, especially some great French enamelware in several stalls. It was hard to resist, but alas, it was pretty pricey. After several hours of browsing and enjoying the sunshine and a brat or two, we almost left Homburg empty-handed, but at the very last stall I visited, I found this:

No, not the sweetie dog, silly, we already had him--the photo! It's an old photograph of a German boys' school--maybe just one class, I'm not sure--and their stern, bespectacled schoolmaster. I found it charming, and it cost me all of one euro. I fixed the frame a bit, and up this went in our living room. It's simple, and I like it. Maybe I'll do a bit better the next time we venture to Homburg, though, and here's hoping it'll be a ticket-free trip.

Savon de Marseille

I know. I've been away from here for a couple of weeks, and now I'm back with a post about--soap. Not just any soap, though; it's savon from the famous perfume town of Grasse, where we took an excursion on one of our spring break days in Southern France. Notice this soap; it's pastis-scented! What's not to love? I picked up a couple more at the shop, too--in "olive" and "cedre" scents. I got a little overwhelmed by the many choices available on the rack in the front of the shop, but I settled on three that really say "Provence" (and "Riviera") to me. They're from L'Eau de Cassis, and they're delightful.

In non-soapy news, I didn't quite make it into the Top 25 Expat Mom Blogs, but I came pretty close (41st?). Thanks to those of you who voted! It's an honor just to be nominated.

Field Trip Fail: Vianden

First of all, I do apologize for not being around here the past two weeks. I had at least four posts in mind (I know--wow!), but unfortunate circumstances (I hate unfortunate circumstances!) kept me from posting anything at all. The Husband had a nasty virus, and then his back went out, and I have been playing nursemaid in a serious way for the past week and a half. He's getting better, but it's slow going. Very slow.

The day before he came home sick, he'd decided to take a day off, and he and I took off in his Mini Cooper for a late-morning journey to Vianden, Luxembourg, an adorable town just over half an hour from our house. We had no purpose in mind for this visit (his third and my fifth, I think)--just a walk through town, some photo ops, good views of the famous reconstructed castle (not pictured--ahem), and some lunch.

It was a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot. Perfect short-sleeves weather, really. And as you might ascertain from what I've said so far, the town is pretty darned photogenic.

So I know what you're thinking as you read this. "Is that all? Where are the rest of the photos--the GOOD ones?" I hear you asking. Normally I do a bit better than this, right? 

I am sorry to say that after something like five years, apparently I still cannot properly operate a Nikon D80. I expect it to take perfect, postcard-worthy pics every time, but occasionally, it fails me (or more likely, I fail it). Either way, almost every photo I took that day was quite literally a wash-out. I thought I'd be sneaky and post some photos I took in the town last August, but alas, I can't find them anywhere (lame).

Evidently sometimes this is the best a gal photographer-poseur can do:

I know--sad. And hey--I'll be back with another Fail story soon; I've got plenty of 'em!

**In other (non-fail) news, the editors at Circle of Moms kindly nominated Fairytale Hausfrau for inclusion in their upcoming list of the 25 Best Expat Mom Blogs. I appreciate the shout-out, lots! Now, if you like FH and would be so kind, you can hop over to the Circle of Moms link in my left sidebar at the top, then when you're there, scroll down and clicky-click on the "thumbs-up" to vote for my blog. I doubt I'll make the cut, but at least you can help keep me from looking so pitiful! And--you can vote every day until June 6, if you're so ridiculously inclined. Thanks bunches for your charity--mwah!

April and May in the Garden

photo credits 1, 2, 8: The Girl

It's been astoundingly beautiful and sunny in the German countryside. That's why I chose to take some garden photos in full sun--to show you what it's looked like for the past month or so. It's rare to have so much sunshine here, so I've been trying to take advantage by being outside as much as possible: watering and checking on all of our plants, going for long walks, and watching lots of baseball and soccer. The lack of rain hasn't been so great for the farmers, unfortunately. We finally had a thunderstorm last night, which cut short The Boy's baseball game and made us all go running for cover. It didn't last long, but at least the fields got a welcome drink.