The grass will be greener

You know what shocked me the most when I moved to this country? The dandelions. Here I was living in a place reknowned for neatness and orderliness and doing things The Right Way - and everyone had dandelions in their lawn. Along with a heap of other weeds. Laziness and unkemptness everywhere.

I tried to get over my Australian aversion to weeds. I did. I really really tried to like dandelions. And actually, the flower is quite pretty. Plus kids love the puff.

I thought I'd done it (although I still baulked at liking dandelion salad) ... and then I got my own garden. My own, dandelion weed filled garden.

I've spent a lot of time weeding lately.

The dandelions were dealt with pretty quickly... but as I inspected the lawn, words came back to me from my father. Grass names. Couch, kikuyu, paspalum.

Hmm, paspalum. We seem to have a lot of it. I'm pretty sure dad said it wasn't a good grass to have. And it sure is ugly.

So, in the afternoons after work with the kids helping, and late into the summer nights with the swallows calling out above, and for entire weekend days as the village passed by and teased me about wanting an English garden*, I've been pulling out paspalum.

Bucket-load after bucket-load after bucket-load. (Along with bucket-loads of stones) (And with some interference)

The photo above with me in it shows the extent of my paspalum-pulling obsession - I'm not on our side of the garden. The thought of weed-free lawn on our side and paspalum-infested lawn on the other was too much to bear.

Which added urgency to the weeding, because people were starting to visit the other half of the barn, with an eye for buying. And while C's godfather seemed to be OK with me ripping up the grass, I couldn't be sure the new neighbours would appreciate it.

My obsessive side was pretty sure my shy side would win if I didn't finish before someone moved in. So I stepped up my efforts, even weeding by feel in the fading evening light.

And I did it. I pulled up the last clump of paspalum just before my family arrived for 4.5 weeks.

Our new neighbours move in 2 weeks after my family leaves. Which just might be enough time to fill in all the holes I've made in their lawn...

* Just to have in writing for C's family, who continue to tease me: I'm not aiming for a perfectly manicured English garden, just one with pretty grass and no weeds.

So here's an odd thing

Discovering YouTube was a hallelujah moment - there I was with a heap of videos of Téo, and no way to easily show them off to my friends and family on the other side of the world. And then voilà, there was a way. Thank you YouTube!

So I uploaded a heap, sent a few links, videos were watched in the next few days, and that was that.

Except that was not that. Strangers are watching these videos too. And for some reason, two in particular seem quite popular. Nowhere near the league of Charlie biting Harry, which has been viewed something like 53 million times (I'm not exaggerating) and spawned a heap of remakes and even got the stars on TV, but still, way more popular than I'd ever imagined. Or can fathom.

One is of building the train set that Téo got for his second birthday. 486 views to date. Um... why? It's a nice reminder for us, and maybe the family liked it 2 years ago, but who is watching it now? I imagine the people who find it in a search click away as soon as they realise what they're watching.

But people are definitely watching the other popular one, of my niece making shortbread. Someone gave it a five-star rating! Two people have left comments! Recently! And it's not my brother watching it over and over - it already had over 300 views before he even got around to taking a look. Again I don't get it - it's cute yes, but not interesting for people who don't know us, surely?

And all the time, my all-time favourite Téo video has only been viewed 43 times.

It's all very odd indeed.

Another cute video

(At least, I think so...)



* 38 sec: I once saw a lilac cat (but not in Scotland)

* 1 min: he usually asks why the dog is in the darktime, and I say it's because it would be hard to see a white dog on a white page. This is the first time he's checked that other colours would be OK to see a white dog.

Singalong

Just to counter the negativity of the last post:

Weary

So I'm back for a bit... but feeling very weary after two short trips as a single mum in two weeks.

On the first trip (to the Matterhorn with mum) there was whinging and screaming in the car on the way there and back, Lukan was sick and screamed every night for hours, and Téo's behaviour was less than exemplary most of the time. Things were better on the second trip (to Luzern with my brother and his family) - and the kids slept in the car for most of the way there and back, thank god - but it was still tiring. Plus there was much screaming at bedtime after we got home last night.

And C doesn't get home from a work trip until midnight tonight, so there's no chance of a break today.

We weren't so lucky with the weather on Mount Pilatus

Back from the mountains

We're back from a short trip to take mum to see the Matterhorn.

Not allowing women to advance

I've been thinking about this for a while now, but I'm not sure how it will go as a blog post.

Anyways, here goes.

The week before our holiday in Scotland, C was the the UK for work. So I flew to Edinburgh with the kids, and he met us there.

To me this was the sensible thing to do: why waste money and time (and CO2 emissions) on unnecessary plane trips when I could perfectly well manage on my own? But several of the people C met with that week said their wives would never have allowed them to do the same.

Would not have allowed them?

Would not have allowed them??

I just can't get over this.

I understand not being able to fly alone with two little kids, and also not wanting to fly alone with two little kids. I have no problem if people in this situation choose, as a couple, to instead fly together as a family, with one party coming home from somewhere else to be able to do this. But the not allowing makes it sound as if the husband is getting away with something, or breaking some principle. And I just can't see what that something or that principle would be. It seems completely irrational. And also unfair.

I couldn't help but think of these women as controlling princesses, or else as wane 19th century type women who have to take themselves off for a lie down all the time and are never expected to be able to do anything for themselves.

And this got me thinking... is this type of behaviour in some women today setting us all back? The men C met with were all professionals, probably managers. Does having a wife who doesn't allow them to do perfectly sensible things if that means the woman has to do something by herself colour their view of women as a whole? Does it make them believe that women really are less capable, or else irrational and demanding? And does this consciously or unconsciously prevent them from giving female subordinates the same chances as male subordinates?

I know that there are other factors behind women not making up 50% of top management, and not being paid as much as men on average. And while I believe in equal rights, I'm not sure women will ever make 50% representation everywhere, at every level - being the ones that bear the babes is not something that's easy to get around, or even something that necessarily should be gotten around.

But still, if there's a lot of these not allowing wives and girlfriends, it can't be a good thing for women as a whole.

What do you think?

Tables turned

There were mornings, when Téo and Lukan were little babies, where C would wake up and say all amazed Hey, did he sleep through the night? And I would look at him bleary eyed, and say No, I fed him at midnight, then 2am, then 5am. And C would be Really? I didn't hear a thing.

These days, when I hear Lukan wake up at 7am, I say to C all amazed Hey, did he sleep through the night? And he looks at me bleary eyed and says No, I gave him a bottle at 5 am. And I'm like Really? I didn't hear a thing.

Happy birthday to me!

C and Miksy: please note the 3 and stop talking as if it's already a 4.

(And thanks to Claudio and Scilla for bringing a cake round this weekend, otherwise I wouldn't have had a birthday cake at all!)

Our back door

Just quickly before I take myself to bed... C's godparents gave us an olive tree as a housewarming present, and I love the way it looks next to our back door. Makes me think of the Mediterranean every time I see it. (Although I have fears for the survival of the olive tree as well...)

Incoherence

OK so I was planning to write a post tonight about our Venus fly trap and the fact that really a better name would be "very delicate, occasional small bug trap" (only I was going to make that the punchline) because, after feeding every trap with a great big fly within about two days of buying the plant (only I was going show this with a picture of all the traps closed), I googled "overfeeding Venus fly trap" and found out that this was not a good idea.

Some people say you can give them a bug once every 2 months but others say you should never feed them ever at all because the plants need a lot of energy to digest bugs and giving them too many weakens them and is the leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death. And even those who say you can feed them say the bug shouldn't be more than one-third the length of the trap, but the house flies we put into the traps were at least half the length of the traps.

The googling also taught me that Venus fly traps can only be given rainwater and definitely definitely not water with a lot of calcite, which is what our tap water is full of, and also that the soil must always be wet and never ever be allowed to dry out ever, and that preferably they should be in some kind of terrarium to keep the humidity up and that if you don't have a glass terrarium you should improvise with PET bottles if you want healthy plants, and that watering problems are another leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death.

The rainwater bizzo has been a bit pesky as it's been a drought here ever since we bought the fly eating plants, so I have basically been stealing people's collected rainwater to keep them watered. But I haven't been stealing enough so their soil has dried out a couple of times. (Maybe more than a couple.)

And then the googling also taught me that the plants need a lot of light and that even a sunny windowsill is not light enough and you should put electric lights right up close to them to be sure they are getting enough light, and that lack of light is another leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death.

I like my Venus fly trap and honestly want it to be happy, but sticking it in a PET bottle with a light 2 cm above the traps just isn't going to work for our living room decor, so, with the overfeeding and dry soil as well, I'm not sure how long it's going to last. But it has been making new traps like crazy since taking up residence on our sunny windowsill so I'm trying to think this is a good sign and that maybe it's not as delicate as google results would have me believe, and not that it's growing these traps as a stress-induced last-ditch all-or-nothing desperate attempt at survival.

Only I've been working long hours lately so I'm too tired to put it all together nicely.

I have done my usual trick of accepting too much work and not having enough time to do it, this time before my mother arrives next Friday for a week followed directly by my brother and his family for 3.5 weeks. So apologies for the light posting last week... and apologies in advance for light posting over the next few weeks.

Class, 100% class

So I'm on this email group for local expats, and ages ago someone offered free cooking books that she wanted to give away. Free? I'm in on that! I immediately claimed a whole bunch of them.

She wrote back to tell me they were mine and that I should call her to arrange a pick up. But I never did. Partly because I then got swamped with work - big projects with urgent deadlines that even make me forget about lunch. And partly because I hate using the phone.

She finally wrote to ask if I'm ever going to pick them up, because she's having a baby and she wants to clear out the room that will be the nursery. I still didn't call... until today, a week after the email.

She was in hospital, having just had the baby.

I don't see a friendship forming here.

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Unfortunately our unclassiness sinks lower than this.

Since Saturday Téo has been running around with no pants, in my latest attempt to finally get him toilet trained. This is working quite well, but he's constantly fiddling with himself.

Tonight we interviewed a possible babysitter (J is leaving us soon to start studying). I was sitting next to the woman - who is from our village - on the same couch, but twisted to face her. Téo climbed onto my lap, also facing her. We realised too late where his hands were and what he was doing.