Our grandson showed us this pond where he knew that a nutria lived. It wasn’t shy at all.
It must have lots of fans besides me because it looked so well fed, not to say fat, that I’m sure it gets treats from many visitors to his watery abode.
Best of all, I think he liked me, too. Seeing what he brought over for me.
Street names often are handed down for generations and the actual meanings are often lost in the process. And we are left with humourous names like these: In Switzerland (found in the middle of the Odenwald, where Switzerland is far away). Dragon’s Stone (no dragon have I ever seen there). Near the house painters (formerly a street where housepainters had set up buisness, possibly). Street of the heavenly spirits (near a church, I reckon, or possibly a distillery). In the butcher (literally: inside a butcher, not a butchery). Little Hare Alley or Little Bunny Lane (I didn’t find a Big Bunny Lane in this town). Bike House Lane (a play on words: written with a T [Rathaus] it would mean town hall, but there is actually a bike shop in this road),
This Gingko in the Weinheimer Schlosspark is 180 years old and over 23 metres high (the sign says 20 metres but the sign itself is about 20 years old and the gingko hasn’t stopped growing).
Ceramics, shop signs, letter boxes, car decorations, name signs (I changed the name), windows, sculptures. I love them all! The first tiny elephant is particularly for geriatrix – she knows why.
I found I have so many elephants on file, I decided to split them up and post them over two weeks.
Pub signs, beer signs. painted pebbles, elephant hats, murals,a classroom poster, an elephant cow bell, playground equipment, an info board, and actual, real elephants. I love them all!
In autumn, the highveld, the central plateau in South Africa is swathed in pink and white with blooming cosmos flowers. Cosmos are not native to South Africa but are said to have come with bags of horsefeed for the British troops during the Boer war to the area.
These days, I really get a kick of seeing cosmos in small patches in the gardens around here.
I’m a fan of … #127
We are novices at geocaching and found our first two caches this week. The first one was a plastic capsule hidden in a fork of a tree in a bog near a pond. We were so inexperienced that we didn’t carry a pen to put our name down so I took a photo of the event.
This was the site of the second cache we attempted. It is definitely the right site but we didn’t find the cache. We later spoke to some more experienced lookers and they hadn’t found the cache either so it probably wasn’t our fault.
The third one was a teaser. We had the right location and we looked and looked and were just about to give up when another geocacher came who remembered a similar hiding place from a before. Would you believe that what looks like a screwed on square metal plate is actually a magnetic plate with the cache behind it?
We had fun.
In some parts of Germany houses (not just roofs) are covered with wooden shingles. It’s a very special look.
WWW = Weinheim, Wachenburg, Windeck. Weinheim is a town of 45,000 inhabitants in the Rhein-Neckar-Metropolregion, i.e. it’s in a triangle with Heidelberg and Mannheim in the Upper Rhine Valley. I like this shot because it spans so much history. In the foreground is the old industrial area, the building on the right is part of the old tramway station, and towering above is the castle ruin Windeck where once the lords sent from the Abbey Lorsch reigned over the area.
A more typical shot of the historic sites – from left to right: the Wachenburg (about 100 years old), the Windeck (about 1000 years), and the Blaue Hut (somewhere in between in age).
The Blaue Hut is one of three remaining towers that were part of the medieval town fortifications.
The Rote Turm, so called because of the reddish sandstone features (or possibly some other reason which I did not understand), and the Hexenturm, or witches tower which as far as we can tell never housed any witches.
There is a third castle in Weinheim despite the name Zwei-Burgen-Stadt, or two castle town, and it’s the Schloss. Rather more like a small palace than a rustic castle it used to be the home of various noble families throughout the years and today houses the municipal administration. The park is open to the public but was still private property and only opened once a year at Easter when my father was a little boy.
A final view of a section of the old part of Weinheim including the street I grew up if not the house.
The house is actually in this winterey shot, and now it is not the half-timbered house in the centre.
I hope you enjoyed these glimpses of my hometown. There are always views turning up amongst my photos.
pictures imperfect blog 