Baasha's birthday, a snake, and WTH WEATHER!!

Today Baasha turned 26 so I bought him 20 pounds of carrots. Even though I chopped them up I think his jaw might be sore after eating so many so far today! He gets to do whatever he wants today (except for the part where he had to be fly sprayed). I also gave him half a loaf of this dessert bread with raisins that I do not like.



"Happy birthday Baasha!" we both met him at the gate with an orange surprise.


































I spent a nice morning with him watching him eat hay by the goldfish pond and we both became covered in birch pollen. It's really bad here.






I cleaned my goldfish pond yesterday and washed the car but it's no use. In fact my camera was covered in pollen just from taking these photos. (See my goldfish under the pollen haze? Their names are der, die, das, and den - all words for "the". Dem did not survive the deep freeze.) Baasha trimmed this purple hazelnut bush for us yesterday. I hope it's big enough that he cannot damage it - I love the almost-black leaves.







As much as the pollen bothers me I have to be thankful I do not suffer allergies. If so I could not be here right now.

I accidentally left my kitchen window open and this laptop is coated, as well as my table, and everything else in my kitchen.







I cleaned this water bucket yesterday. There's no use. Poor Baasha's nostrils are yellow from breathing it, all of our lungs are full of it. I can feel it in my throat and every once in a while my eyes feel really dry - but I cannot complain.







A good rainfall might help. A really hard rainfall - I can barely remember such a thing.


Do you know we've only had 4 days with rain since February? I'm still counting. And the non-rainy days are not pleasant and cloudy, they are blue sky blazing sun and by noon it is too hot to continue working outside. The Germans who went to Spain for their Spring breaks are so pissed. They say we traded weather.

I'd like to trade 15 weather days with Seattle. I just read a report from March 2011 for Seattle. It says rain on all but 3 days! And those 3 days it says "cloudy." It rained over 6 inches in March.

I tried to do a similar weather search and finally my man found a report saying this is the dryest Spring in 20 years. We couldn't find anything about the "X many sunny days" because they just don't do weather reports like that here (by city). It rained 1 inch total in March.

Here is a depiction of the weather in this country. As you can see, we're almost at the top of the temperature scale. Look for the darkest red on this map and that is where we live. (Near Köln.) Normal people are happy about this. I'm not one of those people.






Here is the pollen chart for this country, for birch. Wait - it's not as bad as it could be? I doubt it!






On the way down the hang today I chased a snake until I caught it - I wanted to get a photo to identify it. I'd never seen this snake before and wanted to know if it is poisonous. It was so fast I almost couldn't catch it. (I had a net. I'm not afraid of snakes (it's the number of legs on insects/spiders that is horrible to me, and these guys don't have that scary aspect.))






It was actually really pretty - green with white and black patterns underneath. It played dead as soon as I put it in the net. It was about 50 cm long - half a meter. It had big eyes and a long black tongue and it seemed to be glaring at us. (Not my photo.)






It had the distinctive yellow marks like this photo from Wiki. The neighbor told us it's a Ringelnatter - what Americans call Grass or Water Snake because they eat solely amphibians. Well that means they're helpful to us! Cats are their enemies, according to Wiki. OK as long as there is no danger to Mercer, as there is with another snake inhabitant of our yard - the European Viper. That one is poisonous. Sounds like it could take on some cylons...






This is not normal - azaleas normally bloom in May! I remember last year (April 23 to be exact) I was complaining that our pasture was still dead from Winter. What a change. I would like to mow this lawn but today is Good Friday, a holiday in Germany, and we're not allowed to make noise today.






The next door neighbor's cherry tree is magnifient and will soon be "snowing" on us: )
They've invited us to their Easter Fire tomorrow. The moon is dark red at night due to no rain and after the fires it should be worse....