Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #32 – Roses and burrs

If I haven’t been posting lately, it’s because not much has been happening. That said, nothing happening is probably a good thing, taking into account all the bad news lately worldwide.

I still want to write a post about our hiking trip to the Alps in May, but I have to sort out all of my photos first. Anyway, for now, I thought I’d have a quick catch up over a Weekly small pleasures post. Weekly small pleasures as you probably know by now, is Mani’s blog event where you try to remember the good things that happened during the week. This is an easy way to be grateful for what you have and to focus on the good.

Roses. Every few weeks a different set of flowers dominates. You could probably make a new yearly calendar based on what is flowering when (although the timing does change from year to year). At the moment the roses are blooming.

Burrs. I have to mention them, because I find them fascinating: burrs. Did you know that burrs were the inspiration for Velcro? They are amazingly sticky – try taking one and throwing it at somebody and you’ll see how it sticks to their clothes (I know this because my husband cannot pass a burr bush by without throwing some at me!).

Ice-cream. Summer may be another rainy season here in Berlin, but at least it’s warm enough to eat ice-cream. My favourite places to eat ice-cream in Berlin so far are Giorgio Lombardi near Rosenthaler Platz, and Hokey Pokey in Stargarderstrasse. We also had a party at work the other day and now we have some ice-creams stashed in the freezer at work.

Brownies. I was going to a picnic on Sunday and wanted to bake brownies, but we didn’t have any butter. So I did a Google search for brownie recipes using oil instead of butter and came across this recipe. They were absolutely delicious. I made the brownies as the recipe states, except that I chopped up dark chocolate into pieces instead of using chocolate chips.

Cork man. I was at a friend’s apartment and noticed this cute little guy in her kitchen. She made it, and I want to make one too. Apparently people make them and put them up around Berlin, so sometimes you can see them sitting on top of a street sign. Sometimes silly little things like this make me happy!

Rain. So far June has been quite rainy, and it often seems to rain in the weekends. Although that spoils our outdoor plans, I am still always grateful for rain, because where I am from every drop is precious. Cape Town has had lower than usual rainfall the last few years and at one stage the dams were almost empty, with only about 10% of usable water left. So, I’m never going to complain about rain again. Water is life! I love the sound of rain on the windows too, and the earthy smell after the rain hits the warm earth.

Sometimes summer looks like this…

In fact we do get quite a lot of nice sunny, warm days here, but this sign always makes me smile when it’s summer and the weather has been grey for a few days.

Lakes. The result of all that rain? Lots of lakes. Although we didn’t have time to visit a lake this week, two weekends ago we went paddle-boating at Müggelsee, so I thought I’d end by showing some photos of our time on the water. We came across a lovely family of swans, which I wanted to share photos of last week but then I never got around to writing a weekly small pleasures post.