Life in Weiden, Travel + Life Abroad
It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot like Summer
In the morning, the sun beams straight through one of the big windows in our bedroom, flooding it with light from about 6am onward. Our bed is its target and warms beautifully, like a cake in an oven. This is fine by me. I love light. I love sleeping with all the windows wide open and waking up to the sun on my face. It reminds me of summers spent at our beach house, where the sun rises behind the water and shoots straight through the windows of one of the bedrooms. Of course Australian mid-summer sun is hot enough to make sleeping with it boring bossily down upon your face, quite impossible. It is the best kind of wake up call. It pushes you out of bed and into the cool of the beach house kitchen, for a cup of tea and surf-inspection through the binoculars. But late Spring sun over here is just balmy enough so as to kiss one awake with only a gentle insistence. It doesn’t force you out of bed, instead makes your final hours of slumber extremely enjoyable. If you’re me. If you’re SG, it’s irritating enough so as to rouse you and force you to rise with it, which is what the poor sod does on the evenings he gives in to my banging on about ‘natural light’ and ‘sunshine in the morning’ and we sleep with both blinds up. I have a feeling tonight the blinds will be down.
These past few days, the feeling of summer has crept into the air and made itself quite comfortable. The weather seems to have stabilised (touch wood) and the evenings are long and warm. Pallid and spray tanned flesh is out and about, Weiden’s new bubble tea shop (it acquired about five years after the rest of the world experienced the bubble tea boom) is pumping and, best of all, most notable of all, the biggest signal of sun-drenched things to come has sounded its horn. In a blinding flash of tropical colours and a clap of sweet, heady scents summer fruit has made its grand return to the supermarket. Nothing says summer like a box of mangoes, preferably purchased from a tiny stall on the side of the road. I am yet to track one down in Weiden, but when I do, you can mark my words, it will enjoy repeat custom. I am biding my time, waiting for the supermarket mangoes to ripen, so as not to repeat a recent nasty run-in with a rock-like avocado that did not yield to any amount of mashing for guacamole. In the mean time, the fruit bowl is filled with and the dining room consequently smells like, peaches and nectarines and sitting prominently next to the bowl, proud and perfectly shaped, is this afternoon’s snack: a lovely big watermelon.
Yes, it is beginning to feel a lot like summer.
davidstrachan611
26 May, 2012 at 11:43 amThat peach is just waiting to be eaten!
davidstrachan611
26 May, 2012 at 11:44 amHey! Who took a bite out of it?
Liv
26 May, 2012 at 11:46 amPeach thief!
Valentine Logar
26 May, 2012 at 12:10 pmLike you, I gauge summers entry by the amount of fresh fruit available. My other measurement is the opening of our local farmers markets! Though our winters are very short here in Texas, growing seasons still follow traditional patterns and we have to wait like everyone else.
Wonderful pictures as always!
Liv
26 May, 2012 at 12:38 pmSummer fruit – can’t beat it. Have given myself a stomach ache with the unripe nectarines though, I think I got a bit ahead of myself.
jo
26 May, 2012 at 12:29 pmnot here its not!!
Liv
26 May, 2012 at 12:31 pmAhhhhh the smugness I feel, after enduring -20 degree temps, seeing Australia plunge into winter as I shake out my cotton frocks.
Peter
28 May, 2012 at 12:27 pmLiv, here in Darwin at the Top End of Australia we are rushing headlong towards winter. Daytime temp down to 29, overnight a shivery 18. Lots of people are already wearing their woollies, although I have yet to see the first ugg boot of the season. I like cool but your -20 is a bit over the top ;-).
MegsFitness
26 May, 2012 at 12:42 pmThis is the kind of entry that needs a “love” button <3
Your writing is charming and really paints the reasons to love summer. It just made me smile 🙂
Liv
26 May, 2012 at 3:57 pmI am so pleased – I am pretty happy myself. Think I might do a spot of sunbathing tomorrow!
dianasschwenk
26 May, 2012 at 2:05 pmI too, love natural light! It energizes me!
agirlcalledemily
27 May, 2012 at 2:01 pmHi Liv! I think your blog is really great, and your photos are lovely too, so I have nominated you for the Beautiful Blogger Award. Head on over to my post http://agirlcalledemily.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/appreciation-of-a-different-sort-this-time/ about it to find out more about accepting! x
Liv
29 May, 2012 at 3:53 pmThank you so much – shall be accepting in a new post soon!
maesprose
28 May, 2012 at 4:12 amLove all the teeth marks!
cassmob
28 May, 2012 at 11:51 amDoes all that summer stone fruit also make you think of Christmas?
Liv
28 May, 2012 at 11:56 amHaha yes! It really does – smelling nectarines and peaches and watermelon is Christmas and my birthday … not May/June!
Thank You « A Big Life
24 July, 2012 at 11:45 am[…] Remember how much I struggled with homesickness? Those times it would hit, suddenly, like a cold or a stomach cramp, then crawl away, back to where it came from, to wait a while before it struck afresh. You weren’t there, but in the black cab that pulled away from my parents, that time I visited them in London, I cried like a baby the whole way to the station. I missed my home, horribly. I missed its space and skies, my Mum, my dog, my friends. I missed not being a foreigner, not having to try so hard to do the smallest of things. I felt like things were happening back home that I should have been there for. I compared you, then, Germany, I compared you unfavourably to Australia and I resented you. It sounds so stupid, I was the one who chose you, I was the one who came to you. And I’m sorry. But I was tired. I wasn’t seeing clearly. I needed someone to blame for the grey skies and the loneliness and you were there. But we found our way back again. Spring helped. Sunshine always does. […]