originally our plans for the pentecost weekend had been to do a two day walk in the napf area, a rather nice walking area between lucerne and berne. originally…

well, two weeks ago we set out to find the “across einsiedeln” geocache — which was supposed to be a rather simple one in easy terrain. as the weather was quite warm i didn’t put on my mountain boots but instead went in sandals — had i but known… we did find the GPS location of the “across einsiedeln” geocache, but didn’t find the cache itself. looking around i spotted a rather nice hiding place up a slope, climbed it, checked the spot, found nothing, then went back down to mrs d waiting on the path — and, hitting a muddy patch, slipped and twisted my ankle terribly! it hurt quite bad, and we returned home immediately, me grinding my teeth, mrs d trying to support me as well as possible. needless to say we cooled the ankle all afternoon and evening and on monday morning it did look better already.

having worked from home on monday, i decided to give it a try and went to the lab on tuesday — tuesday evening matters were worse: the left foot swollen and hurting like hell. so, wednesday morning i hobbled my way to the A&E at einsiedeln hospital: luckily nothing was broken, but the diagnosis was: torn ligament no walks for the next three weeks, and a brace to wear 24×7 for the next two weeks

so, that kind of spoiled our plans for the pentecost weekend. the foot is improving, luckily, and as of tuesday i’m allowed to drive again. as the weather was fantastic today (grumble, had i but worn those boots), i decided to finally tackle the gardening experiment i had meant to do all along: grow some vegetables and herbs on our balcony. the wooden container i had already assembled during last weekend’s enforced stay-at-home sunday and it was now time to fill it with a mixture of clay spheres (to retain the water) and soil — and, of course, some vegetables and herbs!

a trip to the local garden center (the “landi”!) later i had soil, clay spheres, and a green tomato plant, a san moreno tomato plant, a basil plant, italian parsley, english mint, an oregano plant, chives, french carrots, and an assortment of colourful radish seeds.

here the container once it was filled with soil:

a pixture of my buxus buxus along with the lavendel — which we planted four weeks ago:

at the landi i also bought a sheep, can’t have agriculture without sheep, really:

and here is the final result of my groundforce afternoon:

now i’m really interested in what this will turn out to be: vegetables in 3 months time or compost in 3 months time? hoping for the vegetable option…