Flying Back and Straight to Dinner

I decided to get an earlier flight back this time round and this was fortunate as we were invited round to our American friends, Jim & Beth, for dinner this evening. With the flight landing on time and being Basel airport I was out and on the bus back to town by 5.45pm, getting to Jim & Beth's nicely on time with the sun still shining on their (huge) patio. A few drinks later and the disappointment of losing yesterday was soon forgotten.

Back to the UK fo rmore football!

Just about to go back for a few days in the UK where I will get to see the second leg of the Champions League quarter final versus Villarreal and the FA Cup semi final versus Chelsea. It's been quite a lucky break to have both games close enough to each other that I can fly back for just 4 nights and see two important games.

Day 5 of Lavatory Cleaning & a BBQ at the Allotment

With really good weather today we decided to take a bottle of sparkling wine up to the garden and have our first BBQ (well more like a wood burning grill) on our small Chiminea. Unfortunately we haven't got round to getting an axe to chop the biog logs up and so we had two small problems. Firstly getting the fire started and secondly trying not to burn everything on the BBQ! We managed in the end but tomorrow we will get an axe! We also started to plant a few things with Potatoes going in and lettuce seeds, rocket seeds and radish seeds in the cold frame.

Up on the Allotment - Day 2 of Lavatory Duty

Luckily the Swiss are so very clean and tidy that the loo cleaning assignment isn't proving too arduous or too messy. Today it was a quick 15 minute swoosh. It also gave me the chance to plant the garlic, some Basil as well as a new lavender for Claire.

Up on the Allotment - Day 1 of Lavatory Duty

One of the best things about our garden/allotment/Familiengarten is that there is a sense of a proper community up there. We have met our neighbours (and subjected them to mulled wine and Claire's Mum and Peter) and found them to be wonderfully helpful and friendly. The garden runs on a "everyone mucks in" sort of philosophy which means there are chores to be done over the year. One of those is a week's lavatory cleaning which you can pay to "opt out of" but as I've got the time there was no need for that. Today was day 1 of our week's "Tour of Duty". We also will be spending one Saturday on the garden with other allotment owners to do a day's general maintenance etc. Of course, it's not all hard work as the garden has various weekend fetes and parties for the whole community to get together too.