SMILEY SATURDAY -

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Lately I noticed that I am terribly distracted ! This morning I nearly put 10 (!!!) sweeteners in my coffee, I just could stop it at 3 because I realized that I counted until 10.

The last days I also was looking desperately after my glasses. Once I found them on the toilet lid in the bathroom. My cat Athur just sat in the tube and looked so funny that I thought it would be nice to take a picture. When I finally had found my camera of course not where I thought it would be, Arthur was gone.

In my painting course I went with my easel to the toilet instead of my bowl which I wanted to fill with water for my acrylic painting. More than once I went to the basement and when I arrived I didn't know anymore why I went there !

I think these are all spring signs !

Now I am going to the station to pick up Diane a blog friend who comes to Brussels together with her husband Rennie and this will be the first time I meet a Blog friend life !!

I am sure we will have more than a smily saturday !!

SHOW & TELL

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My friend Ilona has a lot of plants ! so many that her winter garden looked like a jungle. Now that spring gaves us new energies we did plant exchanges. I gave two plants to another friend so I had some free space and I got this one from Ilona.



I bought this flower pot and the plant just fixes in perfectly. I am very happy with the result.

Tomorow for the first time I will meet a blogging friend life ! What an adventure !
Diane from Norway accompagnies her husband Rennie on a business trip to Brussels. As he has to work and she is free, we decided to spend Saturday together ! I tell you Internet is something phantastic, I would never have met her without it and I hope I will get some other visitors too.

Saturday morning I will pick her up at Waterloo station (not in London) and then Waterloo belongs to us ! Napoleon and Wellington will have to see something with us two girls !

THURSDAY THIRTEEN - Funny Gardening quotes

As in my part of the world spring finally shows up, I thought about

13 Quotes about gardens

1. My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.

2. Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.

3. What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

4. There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.

5. Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.

6. Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.

7. God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done

8. Don't wear perfume in the garden - unless you want to be pollinated by bees.

9. Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots.

10. Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

11. You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt of your garden

12. Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise.

13. The best way to garden is to put on a wide-brimmed straw hat
and some old clothes. And with a hoe in one hand and a cold
drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

For those who don't know, the banknotes are Euros ! Money doesn't stink thinks Rosie !

MY WORLD - Good Bye Wheeping Willow

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In my world last week we had to separate from our beloved Wheeping Willow. It had shared our lives since 1975 when it was just a cute little tree. But now 34 years later it had become a very huge tree and the people who moved into the recently built houses behind our garden complained because it made too much shadow.

It was quite a difficult task because the tree also was very large and because of the houses around there was not much space.





here it started by cutting off the small branches



then one man, who looked like an alpinist and had a special safety outfit, climbed on the tree to saw the bigger branches.







The boss came to have a look if everything went well and it did !





I was fascinated by the man's work, and had the ambulance phone n° ready (not really)



He was of course secured



I thought what a hard job to do !





But everything went smooth and 4 hours later from our wheeping willow was only a small trunk left.

This had been cut off too of course and now we have a lot more light in our garden. But our cats are not very happy. Their natural cat tree is gone.

FUN MONDAY - Easter Baskets

Jeanna at Wisconsin Candy Dish proposed the topic "Easter Baskets": Share a story, is it better to give or to receive, what would you like in yours?


As far as I know we don't get any gifts at easter. Not in Belgium, not in Germany and not in Italy.

Children usually get an empty basket and have to search for easter eggs, real once in all colors or out of chocolate and little or big chocolate easter bunnies. If they have a garden and it is not raining they do their researches outside. Otherwise it's inside the house.



When I was a child my grandma used to tint the eggs herself in all colors, red, blue, green, yellow and my Grandpa would hide them in the garden but so nicely that sometimes one year later we still found eggs from the year before.

I did the same when our son was little and we colored the eggs together. Today I do easter decoration maybe a little different than the one you see above which I did last year. I haven't done any easter decoration yet because it is a little too early. Maybe next week.

WEEKLY WINNERS - Chinese Terra Cotta Army

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Last sunday I went to Masseik, a little town in Belgium where the exposition of the chinese Terra Cotta army took place. 10 of the about 3000 soldiers were exposed. They date from 210 BCE. They all were in human size (1.80 m, 5.9ft) and really very impressive !













There were also animals



and smaller statues of about 50 cm (20 inch). The arms had been in wood and they wore fabric uniforms which of course disappeared after such a long time. I only hope that prude Photobucket will publish this picture because it could "violate their terms of use" (it had happened with another historical statue a few weeks ago). So please only look at their heads !





The whole army once looked like these two soldiers. They had been restored in their original colors.

You can read more about this army here in Wikipedia.