Prechadzka cez Bertembos

After my yesterday’s craving for woods and nature I could not help but take Jonathan on a very leisurly walk through Bertembos, which we were planning to do at some point. Bertembos is a small forest wedged into the densely populated Belgium countryside, but it is a forest! It even has a beautiful forester’s residence right in the middle of it. And apart from abundance of wood anemones and lesser celandines I identified 4 kinds of other spring flowers:

Greater Stitchwort – Celastium holostea with notched petals and a square stem, relative to chickweed

Cuckoo flower or Lady’s smock – Cardamine pratensis – one of the commonest spring flowers of damp meadows, appearing just when the cuckoo first calls (Zerusnica lucna, Brassicaceae, bola pouzivana ako jarny salat alebo korenie – chut podobna zeruche)

And two creepers: Bugle – Ajuga reptans – apparently aslo  frequent in damp woods and grassy places (Zbehovec plazivy, Hluchavkovite, liecivy)

Yellow archangel – Lamiastrum galeobdolon - with nice smell 

 

 

The red sling and green birdie

Today we got a sling for our little one at Doekjes&Broekjes. All my dilemmas are over. In the end I decided for a woven cotton one, the lady in the store was very helpful again, she patiently explained the characteristics of slings from different materials and in the end showed me how to wrap it around me and put the baby in it. In the end it was only the matter of choosing the color and here Jonathan (whom I took to the store after lunch) was very helpful and encouraged me to go for the vine red one, the one that first captured my eyes. It was a nice moment to be in that store together looking at things that before would have meant absolutely nothing to us. And it was such a relief not to get into some terrible indecision state about what sling to buy.

And afterwards I still managed to go to the Open Day at Waldorf pre-school in Tervurenand spend an hour surrounded by wooden furniture, soft colors and drapers, wool, natural materials, flowers in pots and vases… I watched children kneading bread dough while the teacher was singing to them. And other children file on large pieces of wood. And I played for a moment witha little girl in a tin tub with sand and all kinds of metal containers and utensils. Not one piece of plastic anywhere. A grinder for grains. A spinning wheel. A house for imaginative play.  Beans growing in pots. Wool and and crayons arranged in baskets by color. Wood forks for finger knitting. Wood blocks. Little knitted gnome having a different color hat for each day of the week. ”Spring” table.  I love Waldorf schools’ emphasis on natural materials, texture, color, experience, rythms of day, week and year, nature, children developing at their own pace.

In th evening I knitted a little Waldorf inspired green bird, than only needs to be stuffed.

Velkonocne rano

After the cold, rain, sleet, snow and storms of the Easter week, Easter morning has arrived with clear blue sky, a flood of sun, singing of birds, coeing of doves, greetings of cocks and other farm birds. And peace. The nature could not match the Easter mystery better this year.

Jonathan is still sleeping like a content little baby, on the kitchen couch that has become our bed now.  I can hear him breathing as I am writing this. I still do not want to make definite declarations, but I am becoming more and more sure that I can start feeling the movements of the baby. The first time I felt a bit more certainty about it was during the Last Supper ceremony on Thursday. I was sitting on the chair leaning forward on my knees and I guess it created just the right pressure to feel the baby. Since then I have noticed a similar sensations sometimes  when I am lying in bed. It feels a bit like a few thumps of irregular heartbeat or some bubble moving inside me. Or, with imagination, even a little gentle playful kick.

Dokvitaju ceresne

The cherry trees on the way from the bus stop to the park are no longer fluffily pink. Lots of the blooms have snowed on the ground and those left are blending with the red-brown of new cherry leaves. Crocuses in the botanical garden have been replaced by daffodils. Anemones and lesser celendines in Tervuren park are no longer little dwarfs, but graceful forest fairies and knights courting and dancing through the nights. Trees still do not have leaves, but almost all bushes are clothed in fresh green. It is very cold though and sky these days looks like it wants to start snowing any minute. So it feels like spring is and isn’t here.

Like my pregnancy. It feels like it is and it isn’t getting better.  At the end of week 18 I am no longer in the throws of strong nausea all the time, but 2nd trimester bliss definitely hasn’t arrived yet. I still feel mildly nauseous lot of the time, and pretty badly on the buses and at occasional moments. Flues, colds, sore throats, coughs and the like seem to be just a memory of the first trimester, but so as not to have it too boring I started suffering from hip pain, which is normally  belongs to the third trimester. Oh well, I am still very happy I can move, read, cook, eat, go to work and sometimes I think even feel some tiny movements inside me. I can’t wait to be more sure it is the little one.

Botanicke objavy

Not only wood anemone is a spring flower inhabitant of Tervuren park. On my Friday walk I discovered lesser celandines. Their round leaves grow along many a path there.  But similarly like wood anemones growing in the park, they are pretty dwarfed. But still beutiful, tiny little yellow stars on a bed of green.

When I came home I did some looking into botany books and websites trying to make sense of English and Slovak names of some of Ranunculaceae species. So here is a result:

lesser celandine – blyskac jarny – there seems to be some confusion about it latin name – in English it is Ranunculus ficaria, in Slovak Ficaria verna - Interesting fact I found about it is that unlike lots of very poisonous Ranunculaceae, it has edible tubors and its leaves can be eaten early in spring before flowering.

marsh marigold of water buttercup – zaruzlie mociarne - Caltha palustris

buttercup – iskernik prudky – Ranunculus acris

wood anemone – veternica hajna - Anemone nemorosa

Dalsie botanicke objavy  a ujasnenia sa udiali dnes, vdaka botanickej zahrade. Konecne viem, ze hellebore – Helleborus je cemerica a witch hazel – Hamamelis virginiana je hamamel virginsky. A spoznala som novu jarnu rastlinku – corydalis – s priliehavym slovenskym nazvom chochlacka.