Band of brothers

My little urban micro garden desperately needed maintenance. So I got to work removing weeds, grass and rubbish. Then I trimmed the shrubs to nicer sizes that also hopefully makes them less attractive for dogs to piss on.

The result: A nice and clean little garden. And it was nice working on it :-)

Today is my friend Nantko's birthday but we can't really celebrate that with him coz he died a while ago. I drank a glass of Connemara in his honour. I often find myself thinking when going to a concert or something.. "Nantko would've liked this". He is missed...

I watched the last 4 episodes of "Band of brothers".

It's a great series.

Based on true stories.

They have some survivors of Easy Company do some commentary before every episode.

After the final episode they commented some more and only then do you get to see who they are. It was so moving it made me cry... These are men that went through all that crap to liberate my grandparents. More to think about on May 4th next year...

And then in the evening there was a bit of a fire in my street.

I spotted a whole 4 small wiffs of smoke. Hardly any bigger than somebody smoking a cigar. Well, at least it was no false alarm.

Fixing my garden

My garden was getting a bit yucky. Rotting leaves and bits of rubbish and weeds growing. Had to fix it.

The weather was OK and I find doing garden work very relaxing so I cleaned it up a bit. Nice result :-)

In the evening I watched the dvd Marjolein gave me. Very good movie!

Fixing my garden

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Wednesday morning I made a disturbing discovery! 1 cm wide cracks appeared in the sidewalk in front of my house. The tiles were pushed towards my garden, pushing a dent in my garden's border.
The most surprising of it all is that I can't imagine this happening overnight and I never noticed a thing until last wednesday morning when I went to work! Odd...

So this morning I took out the tiles. See the dent? Can't have that kind of bull shit! My border has to be neat! ;-)

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I removed some sand and put the border in it's original, straight line again.

See how straight that is? That's how I like it! He-he-he.

I put the tiles back in and that's that. I think the garden dirt got too dry and shrunk a bit, giving room for the tiles to move.

Early arvo I went to buy a few things for halloween. I hadn't had lunch yet so I picked up some chips at Wil's. He's a legend in the area. Very free spirit, nice guy.

I sat in one of the gigantic chairs next to the Wester kerk eating chips and spotting the local talent ;-P

Tower of the Wester kerk.

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Typical canal. The houses in the middle are the ones Anne Frank looked at from her hiding place.

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I went to a shop where they sell fun things.

Pretty berries on my walk home.

I still had energy left (I'm still recovering from a bad cold) and I cycled to the DIY store. I spent over 50 euro and because of that I got a free Lego toy!

The clock

Somehow I think they fucked up with the steps. I hope I'm wrong because I'd like to go in through the front again.

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This monster was coming through on my way home. The grass field in front is an excellent place for a summer picnic.

I watered my garden for the first time properly. I love it!

And this is Mic's folks' garden. We'll be having a birthday party there Sunday.

Mic, Mickey and Noortje.

Mickey, Noortje and Joke.

Finally they hung up the clock we bought for them at squash court No. 7. Unfortunately we played at court 6 today...

Right after. It was soooooo hot...

Mic won today; 2-3.

The finished garden

I decided to put the plants in today after all.

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Here it is: One finished Urban Micro Garden! I'm very, very pleased with it. Lots of people complimented me on it. I hope it will be appreciated by everybody and that dog owners will not let their dogs piss on it... (The full story is here)

I brought some garbage to the bin  and saw lots of coppers stop around the corner. Naturally I was curious so I went to have a look.

There were 6-7 cars and nearly a dozen coppers talking with a few guys from the "west"...

My last day in Australia.

Dear blog reader,

This is a special entry because it is my last full day in this beautiful land that is Australia. It is with sadness that I leave this country behind but I am very excited about seeing my family and friends again soon.

Tomorrow Nicole and I fly to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where we will stay for three days. Arrival in The Netherlands is scheduled for Tuesday morning 6:30.

V.


There were NO clouds this morning. Beautiful sky.

Not that Mason cared much.

I went to Tandanya this morning to learn more about the indigenous people of Australia. But instead of a museum, it was more an art exhibition. It was still very intersting. Especially the session at noon was very nice. There was an Aboriginal man playing the didgeridoo. That was my highlight of the day.

After the session I walked through the park to the pub where I met Nicole and some ex-colleagues of her. In the park I was attacked bu this beast! It cam running for me, hissing. But when I stopped walking, it also stopped one metre away from me. The funniest thing was that when I walked away from it, it actually came right for me! It was so funny. It pecked me on my ankle once, which was nothing more than just a tickle. And then it jumped back again. Probably to see me squirm in pain and agony from it's vicious attack! Well, too bad, because I nearly pissed myself laughing instead. Cute. I love animals so much :-)

The taps were frozen at the pub. You see that everywhere here.

My Coopers dark ale. Hmmmmmmm.

Late afternoon we went to Henley beach.

We wanted to have our last meal together, just the two of us, at our favourite restaurant.

Which is, the Thai Orchid.

Blog the blogger.

Because our internet connection is screwed in the phone exchange we went to Evida after dinner to have coffee AND internet.

That's kinda how I feel right now.