Trees

 When I sit on our balcony and look out, I don’t see much of the calm little street in summer – I see the top of trees. And wonder: which sort of trees they are? Their leaves definitely look like oak. But their “flowers” were so strange. I‘ll have to wait till autumn (and I hope that waiting will take a long time!) and then I might be sure.

Or maybe I get that interesting App that Janet, the Queen of Seaford, mentioned on Facebook. (I will put in a quote later, because she will write a post on that).  

Berlin has lots and lots of trees – it is a green city with many parks, meadows and alleys.

At this time of the year the car drivers are unhappy: most have to park under the trees, and especially those ‘oaks’ drop little flowery things on their cars. At the moment it is even getting dangerous for pedestrians: the city complains that an invasion of oak procession moths (Thaumetopoea processionea) entered the city, polishing off most of the leaves.

a thousand hairy savages,
sitting down to lunch,
gobble, gobble, gulp, gulp,
munch, munch, munch

(Spike Milligan) 

Yeah – that poem comes very near the truth: the caterpillars are very greedy, and very hairy. Some trees only have fifty caterpillars, other have nests with more than thousand. And they are poisonous. If you come in contact with the hairs your skin starts to itch for days – so the City magistrate sends out people who have to get rid of the nests of the caterpillars – clothed in protective suits with breathing protection masks. In Berlin they are not allowed to use insecticides – on an auto hoist they use a sort of vacuum cleaner, and to “free” a tree from that plague costs about 900 Euro – for one single tree.

Zehlendorf, Grunewald and Wannsee are hit mostly, our street in the Bavarian Quarter is still green.

In the next street they have lime trees – which I would prefer: I love their mild coloured heart-shaped leaves and the sweet scent when they are flowering – and they look so lovely!

The Germans loved that tree so much that Schubert’s Lied: “Am Brunnen vor dem Tore, da steht ein Lindenbaum” became a folk song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJMqE17Gy1I&feature=related

At this time of the year the car drivers are unhappy: zillions of  aphids sit in the lime trees – when you walk under them, your shoes stick to the ground, it is really weird: the sugary shit of the aphids drops on the cars, too, and very quickly they are covered with a smeary sticky crust.

And then Berlin has a lot of planes (sycamore trees?). Those are especially beautiful, because the  light, falling through their leaves, makes you think you are in Paris. 

I walk along the Spree and think:

Sheer bliss! Thank you, Berlin!

The Painter Max Liebermann At The Sea

The day before yesterday we had 30°C in Berlin, today 25°. It is sizzling hot, and the Sightseeing  boats on the Spree are sparsely used.

Well: who will be in the mood to sit on the upper deck of a steamer for hours in these dog days of summer and let themselves be sprinkled by the stream of words of a tourist guide?  

No,  I know something much more refreshing.

In the Liebermann-Villa at the Wannsee there is a special exhibition till the 15^th August: “Max Liebermann At the Sea”.

Since 1872 Liebermann visited each year the Dutch North Sea Coast at Scheveningen, Noordwijk, Katvijk and Zandvoort.

I think it interesting that he painted for 20 years the life of the common farmers, but never the sea.

At the end of the 1890s the influence of the French Impressionists becomes noticeable: now Liebermann sees the Dutch landscape in a different light, he paints more out of the moment and uses much brighter colours.

He possessed a wonderful collection of modern French painters, and advised the new director  of the Berlin National Gallery Hugo von Tschudi at the acquisitions of paintings – 1896 they travelled together to Paris and they bought Manet’s “Winter Garden”. 

“At the Dutch seaside the change from Realist to Germany’s most important Impressionist was fulfilled“ they say at the exhibition. 

He painted the famous Beach scenes and discovered the open-air painting, fascinated by the play of light.  

This picture of the Bathing Boys is seen as the first real beach painting by Max Liebermann. 1875 he had painted that motif before, but there as a Naturalist – after twenty years he discovers it anew, painted the sea and created from 1899 ten pictures of bathing boys.

But nevertheless I prefer pictures like these:

By the beginning of World War I in 1914 the visits in the Netherlands end. 

Here is a link for a short tour through the exhibition (in German) bei German TV ZDF: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1313490/Liebermann-Ausstellung-zum-Meer-eroeffnet

What You Focus On Grows

What You Focus On Grows!

This is the title of a great new song by my best English friend Stephen Russell ( the one with the jacket and pink guitar) aka Barefoot Doctor, and Leakster. You can see and hear “Get Spanky!” on Youtube, 

 

you can buy it on i-store, and you can utterly enjoy it: it’s really uplifting music that makes your heart happy, your eyes bright and your body moving!

As I have told you I “lost” my garden when we moved to Berlin - but I gained a wonderful city, so: no complaining about that, especially as our beautiful flat has a large balcony – where “Gardening in High Heels” is so much easier. :-)

We moved in the middle of November 2010, and you can imagine that I had other things to do than garnish my balcony.  But while unpacking many chests, I dreamed of spring and summer.

What you focus on grows.

At least: it hibernated.   On my balcony stood some refugees from Hamburg: five pots with roses, and   clematis, lavender, catmint and Cranesbills. In the cold, cold winter my fugitives shivered in ice and snow.  I protected them with that air-cushioned foil nervous people like to crush between their fingers – we had lots and lots of it from padding the moving chests.  

 

All winter I doodled plans of what I would plant on my balcony – till Husband reminded me gently that once in a while he wanted to sit on the balcony too, without using a machete to chop through the roses. I, sleeping beauty, refused to lend my ear.  But I threw out the over-dimensioned teak-table we had imported from our terrace in Hamburg.  I changed it by mere wishcraft:  I detected it in a shop-window of the KaDeWe: an unusual oblong white French table – “No, sorry, Love: this is not to be sold – it is decoration!”

So I focused on it – every time I passed the shop windows. And by chance (and courage and persistency) I got it: What you focus on grows!  

 

 

The first new plant on it was a pot of beautiful horned violets that Stephen bought me on the farmers market at the Winterfeldplatz. It was very early in March – but: What you focus on grows. 

 

And then the roses started to grow leaves, “Gertrude Jekyll”, “Abraham Darby”, “New Dawn” “Auguste Luise”, and a dark red Austin-rose just start to bloom!  

 

 

That proves it: What you focus on grows!

Getting Things Done

I simply LOVE organising. And, as you may guess, I love pink. Organising gives structure and makes me feel in control (haha). Everybody knows the effect of To-Do-Lists (I love to cross out a task that is done) - and I possess more than one Filofax (though I only use one now - otherwise it would get very complicated). Especially at the beginning of a new year I have the feeling to start afresh - though on a minor scale I get that virtuous feeling every Monday (not for me the song "Tell me why I do hate Mondays").
Nowadays I have my To-Do-List almost everytime in the same room where I am. Before that I had splendid ideas in the bath/kitchen or living room - and then I forgot them easily. 
A big item creating disorder are newspaper - Daily newspapers, and Good Housekeeping etc. Now I have started to read a newspaper or journal with a pen in my hand - I mark what I think is worth keeping, cut that article out AT ONCE or write the interesting web-address on an index card.
I don't know how long this system will be used by me - at the moment it works nicely.
One tip from a very old household book I really appreciate: they wrote that you should put on your make-up before starting to do housework (or paperwork).
I do - it makes me feel better ( as does making the bed in the morning) - and you never know: the postman always rings twice :-)

E.F.Benson and I

Isn't he handsome? 

And I am so proud that the E.F.Benson Society printed 'one of my little daubs' ... 

Gardening in High Heels: Modest, Demure and Pure...

I have found the first violets! You need a few secret places, and eyes like a lynx, because they are still tiny.
Husband disapproves deeply of plucking flowers on a stroll. Of course I don't pluck protected flowers or dig out anemones, but from violets I cannot withstand: from a little dark lilac patch I cautiously take here one violet from a group of seven, there one of four - so the impression of a 'carpet' remains, I am never greedy, never ripping holes.
My friendship book monishes me to remain "modest, demure and pure" like the violet, "and not like the proud rose, which always wants to be looked up to". Even in those old school days that advice has never made sense to me - I had other aims, and was already too tall for the violet metaphor. But what I only sensed then was confirmed later in the garden:  those seemingly modest ones often are from a rather prepossessing sort; silently and persistently they overgrow wide spaces, push aside others which maybe "proudly" giving up... What will The Poet tell us by that? Or Life? Be careful if someone is too modest, who clings to you till you cannot breathe anymore? And you are not even allowed to whinge, because they are so in need of protection, those Little Ladies who coquet with their diminutiveness but are bursting with life force under this tender wrap?
The violet does not love shade as many people believe, recalling the poem's line of "the violet in the moss" - and then think of darkness. Of course we find violets at the feet of hedges, but the violets that almost run riot in my garden have spread over the warm gravel walks. You have to read closely and be a gardener to let Christopher Lloyd's subtle sentence: "Sweet violets in purple, mauve, pink and white make themselves very much at home"  melt on your tongue like a candied violet. Vita Sackville-West recommends violets as carpet plants, they embroider every lawn violet on many patches.
That much to modesty...
But the perfume of  those few little deep lilac flowers is so intense, so dark and spicy, that one forgives them everything. Nine little violets succeed to fill up the almost four metre high room to the stucco with odoriferessness - for that I will forgive them even their overmodesty...

Please, do come in - you're welcome!

You asked me to tell you how we live in Berlin now. 

Please, do come in – you’re welcome!

Oh, I’m sorry – I have totally forgotten that there are no electric bells beside the entrance door, and no name plates.

There is only a brass button – you press it, it purrs – and then you have to fight against the really heavy door.

If it is not after 6 pm, that is. Because then we have a problem, at least when you have forgotten your cell phone, and you came around spontaneously (if you have rung me up before, of course I will look down from the balcony). Decades ago there has been a concierge here (another vocation that almost became extinct!) who after a sharp glance let vistors in. But you came in the afternoon and now you are standing in the entrance hall of our house. 

An estate agent has told me that in the Bavarian Quarter of Berlin there existed a directive that the entrance hall for the staircase had to be built in marble. 

What I like is another directive that said that ‘even’ in the rooms of the servants there had to be a stove (that was not at all common in 1900 – when we looked for a flat in Berlin we sometimes saw tiny rooms formerly built for servants: the high walls were divided with a sort of intermediate floor – so that two servants could sleep on two levels one above the other).

Even though there are no bell plates next to the entrance door, you can find out on which floor we live: in the direction of the atrium you’ll find a big old wooden frame with carefully drawn names of the inhabitants. 

Yes, there are many: the house is built like a U – the front house and two wings, the rear buildings.

We live in the front house. When an unknown neighbour rang to fetch a delivered parcel and I introduced myself and said: “Sorry, I haven’t met you before”, he said apologetically: “I live in the rear building only”, and I asked quite aghast: “Why ONLY?” Today I know that the expensive flats are those in the front house, in the rear wings live young academics, artists and the janitor.

On the staircase of our house lies a thick carpet – so the sound of the steps are absorbed.

But let us take the elevator! I have the key for it and will come down. 

The elevator was built in 1900 – that was a special luxury at that time, in which the building tycoon Haberland built all the houses of the Bavarian Quarter – all equipped with electrical light (normal houses had gas), warm water and bathrooms – and it is said that the houses also had a central vacuum cleaner station, but that station I cannot discover ;-)

The elevator was modernized in 1977 –I feel a little bit ill at ease when I gaze at the metal plate which reads: “Dear user of the elevator! (…)  In case of an entitled emergency call with good cause  you will be connected with the control centre (…)” 

See, I wonder: Who decides what is ‘an entitlement with good cause’?