I had a truly wonderful weekend - a little bicycle ride for a visit to family, relaxed evenings, having lovely cake with friends and planning our summer holiday trip together, and finally having a nice meal (which included eating this year's harvest of red and white currants).

And now my brain is absolutely free of blog-worthy archaeological or textile-related things. It's summer, and I blame the slack season for slack in my brain as well.

So I will at least share with you my favourite way of eating red currants, which is also a very easy dessert: pluck red currants, wash and de-stalk them, and put them into the bottom of a bowl with a little sugar so they are not incredibly sour (only very sour). Prepare vanilla custard (Vanillepudding) and pour the hot pudding over the currants. Let it cool a little - can be eaten still warm or cold. That's it - a summery dessert that reminds me of my childhood and is something of a comfort food for me.

And next year, I hope our currant bushes will carry enough berries for at least two preparations of this dessert!

It's summer, and we have summer temperatures outside - though luckily we also had at least a little rain earlier this morning. It's by far not as bad as the drought in England, but it's been much too dry for the season here since about March, and by yesterday our water vat for the rainwater was almost empty. (This even though we have been using hose water for the times when we were watering the lawn to return it from "Extra Crispy Summer Edition" back to "Merely Really Very Dry Summer Edition").

Anyways - the flowers are blooming, most of the beds are more or less weeded (I leave in the things I like, since weeds are only unwanted plants), all the tomatoes are set outside, we did a little walking tour with friends through Franconian Switzerland, and yesterday afternoon we went crazy and used a few of our leftover willow rods from the fedge to plant a chair. It's going to take at least two or three years before it's a proper, useable chair (and whether it will be comfy or not is totally unclear), but it was a lot of instantaneous fun to plant it.
The cat, meanwhile, has also settled in well. She now knows all our living space, but she'll have to wait another two to three weeks before she's allowed into the garden, due to the vaccination shots she still needed. Her favourite pastimes: sleeping (naturally) and hoping for something to eat.

And now I'm sitting here with a coffee before me - the week can start. Today's agenda: send off the taxes - the Most Patient Of All Husbands has filled in his part, so I'm out of reasons for procrastinating with the sending-off. And after that... on to organising work for the Textile Forum!

 As promised, some pictures. First of all, a tulip from our garden - most of them are done with their blooming now, but a few last ones - the black ones, mostly - are still holding their own.


And this is the current market stall setup, with the new banner in place. This is how the stall looked at Freienfels, and I'm very happy with it!


And finally... Madonna, hanging out on the living room carpet...