Piano

Here's Bea with his "Chop Stick Boogie" at his piano class concert last night. He was really pleased that he did it without making mistakes, and again, practiced so much he didn't need his notes. Well done Bea!! Youtube link here.

Fox cub encounters

Apparently, foxes love cherries. I wouldn't have believed it possible unless I'd seen for myself the cute little fox cub with his eye (and nose) on our freshly picked cherry stash this evening. Kids had great fun watching the little fellow skit around the garden looking for his dinner while we ate ours — and fed him more than his fair share of cherries. He didn't seem too bothered by us watching him at all. The kids were smitten.

Bea picking cherries.

The fox cub.

Bea and Ili watching the fox, seen in the middle of the picture.

Lake swim

Day at the garden, and then we took an early evening lake swim slightly out of the city at Kusnacht . . . was lovely and relaxing!

My-newts

We'll have to make a pond at our garden, as the children are pond-dipping in everyone else's. Lovely piccy of Bea with a pair of long-suffering newts. . . .

Yes, we have cherries

We didn't think they'd come to much, but the warm sun has ripened the cherries, and they are delicious!

Sternwanderung

It was the "Sternwanderung" today at school, which translates "Star Walk", and so-called as all the different classes take different walking routes to a central meet-up point — this year Pfäffikon Lake which is pretty but flat, with a roman fortress. Seems the high point for Bea with trying to catch fish on the way. He wasn't too impressed, however, that as soon as they all got together at the central point and had lunch they all turned around and had to walk back. . . . Here's Bea and Liam ready for the adventure this morning.

Ili on two wheels

I've always been rather on the cautious side and not too encouraging of Ili riding a peddle bike as we're city-bound  — don't think I could keep up with her unless on two wheels myself and it's more than my nerves can bare!! But, she's been very curious, and after her little two-wheeled "like-a-bike" she took to the peddles in the Hof today without any real extra effort. The balance is already there, just needs to master the B-R-E-A-K-S!!!!

Badi

If it's ain't hot enough, the locals don't seem to venture out swimming. So, a day when it's only 23 degrees, we find the swimming baths half empty. Good news for us hardy souls . . . .  Probably can't see from this piccy, but Bea is sitting on the side with some friends (female) that we met there.

Heavy weight

Ili on the post office parcel scales this morning. Only a few months off from five years, and she's weighing in around 15 kilos (more or less!).

Stolze Open Air

There's a small open air music festival held in our part of town every June. Last year it rained, and the year before too, and I have fond memories of Bea, Ili and friends stomping about in thick oozy mud in the park listening to the music. This year was no exception and after the first band the sky opened (after a week of stormy weather it was 'proper' full on rain) and the bigger kids were going with the flow, dancing and running in the rain totally soaked to the skin without care. Us grown ups were forced to take refuge in the beer tents. I wish I'd been able to take pictures of Bea and his friend Liam (iPhone and water a bad combination) but they were a hilarious pair, and truly got into the festival spirit until they were too cold to take any more and run off back home alone. That's Ili under the umbrella as we finally bailed out too.

Pants in the rain

We got caught in a big storm at the garden after heading up for a BBQ late afternoon. But "every cloud . . . . " as they say, and Bea and Ili had a fun water fight in their pants in the rain! 

Only way to keep cool

The only way to keep cool during this sweltering weather is to go swimming. Unfortunately, everyone else is doing the same thing and the swimming pools are crammed full! Here's Bea and Ili at Bad Allenmoos this afternoon.

Holiday Monday

Another holiday day today so we headed down to the lake (Mythenquai Badi) for an early before-breakfast swim to beat the crowds, and we certainly did. It was beautiful for the first hour or so with only a scattering of people. The lake water was only 20 degrees, so a little too cool for Ili (although she did manage a brief swim), but Bea managed to swim out to the raft and back and chased fish around with a bucket for ages. Great breakfast too as the new trendy bistro in the Badi is  run by our favourite vegetarian restaurant in town (a healthier offering to the old "wurst and fries"). But we had to bail out, as half of Zurich seemed to turn up and we took off up to the hills to spend the rest of the day in the garden (all in the paddling pool to keep cool!). Again, weather was a crazy 32 degrees today (and felt even hotter)!

Keeping cool

It's been scorching hot in Zürich this weekend (in the 30s!) and as the gardens are up on the edge of the woods, it seemed a good excuse to hang out up there all weekend and keep cool (when we weren't digging, planting, building walls, etc. . . ). We found out (over a lunchtime beer) that the garden cafe/bar puts up a bouncy castle for the children on hot days on the edge of the woods, so Bea and Ili were in heaven. Not many other kids around — even I feel young there — so they pretty much had it all to themselves. There's a couple of pics below of some of the other gardens above us which have amazing views across the mountains and lake. Ours is right down at the bottom, so no views to be had, but still great to have our own little patch amidst such wonderful gardens. Plant and wildlife is great. We spent both Friday and Saturday night barbecuing, and saw the cutest little fox cub close by both nights at dusk, so that's been added to Bea and Ili's list of things to spot. Being city dwellers we don't often see owls,  so the kids were in luck on the way back as we spotted an owl too.

 

 

Flower girl

All our spare time has been focused around our new garden at the moment. While there are some amazingly well-kept gardens in the same allotment area (Susenbergstrasse), the garden we have taken over needs a whole lot of work and a healthy bunch of plants putting in place. Ili and I had a lovely shop at the Bürkliplatz market to start on the planting. Here's Ili by the lake waiting for the tram back home.

Sports Day!

Bea had his first sports day today, and six classes went up to a really nice meadow in the woods for a morning of competitive games. They all stayed up there for a BBQ grill at lunch time. He was exhausted when he came back, but it was apparently lots of fun and not the regular games that I remember (long jump, high jump, sack race), but lots of team work with running, collecting and building stuff as part of the race.

Up a plum tree

Both Bea and Ili brought a friend to the garden this afternoon. Here are the boys up the plum tree (perhaps not as big as it looks in the picture), where there spent most of their time (not sure we'll have any plums left looking at the amount that came down as they climbed around).