Even as the posts have not been very regular from the Paus Haus, life has gone on. Blake is still doing great, growing quickly and developing his skills. By now he can hold on to something given to him, he stands when given two supporting hand he can grab on to and he is smiling like a little ‘Futzemann’. When Ana talks to him he starts to make noises trying to formulate a response. His bothers and his sister simply adore him. There seem to be very little jealousy issue with neither Gisele not Markus. At the moment Blake is sleeping between Ana and myself because we decided the old crib was not really good enough any more. We will by a crib/bed for him very soon.
Meanwhile our main work in the garden is really finished. The terrace is dug including the building of the retaining wall and putting in some rugged grass seeds. There were a whole bunch of spots which needed some more grass. The first patch in front of the house has by now a whole bunch of little grass plants starting to peak out. The kids have pretty strictly stuck to my ‘orders’ not to walk over the freshly seeded spots. It is interesting to see that they really listen. Our little vegetable garden though has not the smallest plant yet. I am interested to see how long it will take.
Today we went with the kids to the Wilson Farms which is mostly one big store, where one can buy fresh fruit, vegetable and other ‘organic’ products. It also has a small gardening part where we saw some nice blueberry, raspberry and blackberry bushes. They are not ccheap but also not too expensive. We will plant some 4-5 blueberry bushes on the property line which is right in front of the sun room. Ana likes to create a little more privacy on that end. At the upper end of our property, where the forest starts we will plant some raspberries and blackberries to contain the leaves and make the view on the upper end even nicer. The plants should gow up there and we just have to worry that they do not spread out of the forest line 🙂
Spring has started, last week we had three days with 28-32 C which was like an explosion for the plants. Meanwhile the temperatures have gone back done but we had today a beautiful day at up to 18 C. I am in fact right now enjoying the sun room with open windows, a cigar and a good calvados. Leonard Cohen is singing his greatest hits which always reminds me of a trip to the black forest with Christoph Klemp, who lead the older folks of the catholic youth in the St. Evergislus parish.
I remember there were Georg Voelzgen, Martin Wolf, Ralph Wingendorf, myself and our fearless leader Christoph. We drove in his old VW beattle with Leonard Cohen and excellent conversation. The backpacks were loaded on top of the car. We got excellent Spaetzle with cheese and tomato sauce from his aunt in Freiburg, if I remember correctly, and went to have some great hiking. The interruptions at the Kneipp stations I will never forget. They were even in the summer very very cold and Ralph and I had a contest who could stay inside longer, watching our feed and lower legs turn red and blue, but the walking got so pleasant afterwards. We found and ate a whole bunch of wild blueberries. Poor Martin Wolf did not take them well and the blueberry incident on the stairs has become history, when they all came back and fell down the stairs…. This long hike was also the first time I remember that I was completely destroyed a few kilometers before we arrived at our destination. Luckily we had some wine gums, the ones with sugar, and they saved me. That was probably the first time I experienced a recovery from too low blood sugar. I was fine and full of energy again after a 15 minutes break.
Now that we have decided to stay in the US — I had gotten an excellent offer from the ETH in Zuerich to become the successor of Felicitas Pauss — Ana and I are thinking about all the things we would like to get done in our house and garden. There is a long laundry list but we have time and we will start soon to knock off the most important things. I think the new table for our dining room will come first, followed maybe by our master bed room layout. In the summer I would like to build a deck in front of the sun room to make use of our rather large garden. We are really blessed with a wonderful property which we can improve over the years to give the kids a great place to grow up. They often do not even want to leave the house because they are so comfortable here.
