I never experienced the number of mozzies that we had just until recently. When passing shady areas big clouds of them raised from grasses and attacked humans and dogs. My dog Lucy has a very silky and soft fur, and they settled on her mostly and not on wirehaired Linus. I was bitten a lot too if I forgot to smudge some perfume on my exposed skin. Nothing else seemed to work. Thankfully the few unbearable weeks of it now ended, mostly because of swallows. There are hundreds of them in the village, flying gracefully like noiseless sci-fi mini jets, taking sudden turns and ups and downs. They took to sitting on the ledge next to my bedroom window and I hear their chatter often, especially that other birds already went quiet. Breeding season is over and they don’t need to protect their areas from other males. They are preparing to leave us soon, unfortunately. Only another few weeks and swallows will leave us too and then I get really sad. I worry about “our” birds flying thousands of kilometers to their overwintering destinations and about them being killed in Southern Europe. That’s the favorite pastime of some weird humans there – song birds’ killing.
Now onto more cheerful things. My holiday flat is almost finished, I am only waiting for my cousin to install the kitchen. I am able to put together kitchen cupboards and will do it today, but am scared of cutting two holes, for the sink and heating plate, in the bamboo counter. I have tried woodwork a few times here but unfortunately whenever I attempted anything woody, it ended up wonky. Like my bed. It was left behind by the previous owner. I threw away 3 mattresses it contained (yes, the bed was 2,7m wide!), washed it in disinfectant and decided to turn it into a normal, double bed. I did it but it is uneven on one side, and I still have to fix it and am not looking forward to. The reason for it being the adventure of the big table (below), which was also left behind for me.
It was made to measure to fit uneven floors in the outbuilding, so when brought home where, strangely, floors are nice and even, it was wonky. I measured and marked it very many times before cutting. I already had the unfortunate experience of creating the uneven bed, so was very careful, but despite of it, still managed to cut one leg too short. The table stood for some time supported by two bricks to make it even . I will never understand how I managed to cut the table’s leg two bricks’ height too short? My cousin cut the brand new leg and the table is standing in my dining room and looks great as per the photo, but I completely lost my confidence as far as cutting anything made of wood goes, and the kitchen counter has to wait. Those very cool chairs were bought at Dänisches Bettenlager @ 15 Euro each. The Banksy’s print is sort of cheesy, but I like it because I tend to remember that “there IS always hope”.
Lakehaus Lebehn 