Warnemunde, Germany

Posted on 21 May 2019 by Katrina

The very first Baltic place that we visited on our recent cruise was Warnemunde in the former East Germany. Some people took bus trips to Berlin from here, but it was a seven hour round trip for a very short time in Berlin so we opted to stay in the lovely small town and enjoy walking along the beautiful sandy beach. Actually it was really quite warm and we really had a good time here.

I have no idea what it was like during Cold War times but there are now a lot of fairly newly built hotels and the place was heaving with German tourists so it’s obviously very popular with the natives. You can also take a train to Rostock from here if you really pine for a large town or city.

The streets were well planted up with mainly tulips and pansies.

We chose to walk back into the town using the beautiful woodland walk which edges the beach, it got us out of the glare of the sun, a good thing as I had forgotten my sun hat.

The town was very busy but we did manage to get one photo of a typical street with very German looking buildings.

There were some very talented sand sculptors around. Neptune is somehow very Germanic looking don’t you think?

I don’t know how anyone could have the patience to do something like this, especially as they are so fleeting and won’t last long after all the hard work expended on them.

So that was a glimpse of the coastal area of Warnemunde, I’ll leave the park for another post.

Home – at last!

Posted on 19 May 2019 by Katrina

For the last fortnight we’ve been cruising around the Baltic on Magellan and I have to say it was about a week too long for me. I was really desperate to get home after we had visited St Petersburg, but we had three more stops after that. Mind you, one of those stops was to Stockholm, a place I hadn’t been before and I was very pleasantly surprised by how beautiful it is.

I found the actual cruise to be rather boring, but I did manage to read six books, some of them chunky classics too. Unfortunately just about everyone on the ship ended up with a cold which developed into a hacking cough – including me and Jack, I’m still not feeling great. The air conditioning just about guarantees that any lurgy is liberally shared around everyone. On the plus side – despite having five course dinners – we both managed to lose weight! The food is another aspect of cruising that I didn’t enjoy. Most people seem to feel that as they’ve already paid for the food they’re determined to eat as much as they possibly can. It’s really off-putting.

Otherwise the highlight of the cruise was St Petersburg – as expected. We took loads of photos, well, Jack took most of them but at some point I’ll be using them in blogposts soonish. Meanwhile, I was so glad to get home and so impressed with the lush green growth since I had last seen my garden, I had to take a photo of it.

People have often commented on how green it is and I must admit that I’ve always taken it completely for granted but after having been surrounded by a grey Baltic and even greyer North Sea for two weeks – and what was worse – absolute flat calm all the time, I now appreciate my garden even more than I did before.

I love a good rough sea but Neptune seems to go to sleep as soon as I get on board a ship!

Blog hiatus

Posted on 4 May 2019 by Katrina

We’ll be leaving soon for our Baltic cities cruise, and wifi on those ships is dismal so I’ll be offline for a fortnight. I was just having a look around the garden today and noting how many plants are just about to come into flower, including several clematis and roses. Remind me never to go on holiday at this time of the year again! The clematis alpina above has been flowering for a few weeks already, this is the best it has ever been.

The acers/Japanese maples are all at different stages of growth.

Golden elder, euphorbia Fireglow and amelanchier are good and colourful in the photo below.

Yet more Fireglow is beside the dwarf apple tree, that apple tree was the only plant that was in this garden when we moved here – unless you count loads of grass as a plant.

The Rosemary below is in bloom and a spirea has become entwined with it, but the spirea will flower much later.

The heathers will have finished flowering by the time I get back so one of my first gardening tasks will be to cut it back.

I’m going to miss pottering about here, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy visiting – Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Taillin, Warnemunde, St Petersburg and Aalborg. I think I’ll need another holiday to get over this one coming!

The Colour of Murder by Julian Symons

Posted on 2 May 2019 by Katrina

The Colour of Murder by Julian Symons was first published in 1957 but British Library Crime Classics reprinted it in 2018. It has an introduction by Martin Edwards.

John Wilkins sort of drifted into marriage with May who came from a rough background and is a determined social climber, but as wives go – she’s cold and materialistic. Unfortunately John’s family’s wealth is in the past and he’s working in the complaints department of a department store in Oxford.

When John goes to the local library to change a library book he falls for Sheila the new young assistant, and becomes somewhat obsessed by her, almost immediately he’s wishing that May didn’t exist. John has given up just about everything that he enjoyed doing before he married May, she just wants to play bridge and disapproved of him being a member of the tennis club. Sheila is a member of the club so he starts playing tennis again and eventually gets a date with her, of course Sheila doesn’t know he’s married.

It’s all going to be very messy, but not in the way that most readers would have anticipated.

I’m not sure if it’s just that I’ve read too many vintage crime books recently or if this is a particularly predictable book, but I knew what was going on as soon as there was a murder – and that’s always a disappointment.

I was particularly annoyed because I read a book by Symons called Bloody Murder which is his thoughts on a lot of vintage crime fiction writers and he fairly tore into a few of them. He really didn’t rate Elizabeth Ferrars at all, but I think all of the books I’ve read by her have been better than this one. The cover is good though as ever from British Library Crime Classics. It has been taken from a 1930s holiday poster advertising the south-east of England holiday resort of Brighton in East Sussex.

Yetts O’Muckhart, Clackmannanshire, Scotland

Posted on 2 May 2019 by Katrina

After we visited the Japanese Garden at Cowden we stopped off at the village of Yetts O’Muckhart. I had spotted a sign pointing to the church and wanted to check it out.

It’s a plain 18th century very Presbyterian looking church. I’m not at all religious as I dislike that we’re the best attitude that many such people have but I love old churches, possibly because they’re always situated on what was a sacred site for some much older religion than Christianity. One which speaks to me more as it’s more about trees and plants. I see from the photo that they are hedging their bets here as they’ve chosen to situate a holly tree in front of the church – very Druidesque!

How do you feel about graveyards? I’m not so keen on modern ones but I do love to mooch around really old graveyards. If you look at the stone wall in the photo below you’ll see some really ancient gravestones have been incorporated into it. As I recall they’re from the 1600s.

The setting is lovely and it’s so peaceful.

It seems that almost all British graveyards have at least a few war graves, of servicemen or women who came home after having been wounded and didn’t survive. He lived to see the peace, surviving just 19 days after the armistice. At least he got a beautiful resting place, but it’s rather a scanty stone, no age given and no personal message from any relatives at the bottom of it. Maybe he didn’t have any. Note the spelling of the word ‘serjeant’. I wonder when they changed it to a ‘g’.

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland

Posted on 1 May 2019 by Katrina

Last week we took advantage of a gorgeous blue sky day to visit Branklyn Garden in the ‘fair city’ of Perth – the original one of course, not the one in Australia which is what usually pops up if you google ‘Perth’.

I’m sure that this tree is a type of cherry but there was no sign of any blossom on it – it has fantastic glossy red bark though.

The gardens aren’t huge but they’re just perfect for having a relaxing stroll around and you can have a sit down or even visit the very pleasant tearoom.

This is a hillside garden which is owned by the National Trust. It’s just two acres and it was created in the 1920s using seed collected by plant hunters.

There’s a pond which is fed by a wee waterfall.

The azaleas and rhododendrons were looking perfect.

And you get a good view of Perth from the garden. It’s just a short drive from the city centre.

Lastly, you can just catch a glimpse of the house which was built by the original owners, but it isn’t open to the public. This is a lovely place to visit if you’re near Perth, and you can always buy plants there which have been propagated from plants in the garden.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Monthly Archives: May 2019