Urracá – all nine lives

But not quite in chronological order…
I buried him under his favourite spot in the garden.
There are three galleries under each other here – The two first are pictures I have posted previously on this blog (or it’s earlier incarnations) – The third galleri are new pictures of Urracá.
I tried to edit the order of photos… but gave up.

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  Chaos completed

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  Dreaming of chaoses to complete

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  sunbeamz absorber

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  haaah! I just discovered captions!!

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  March – sunbeamz absorbing

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  December – Urracá prepares for christmas

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  October – Urracá helps me tidy up

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  whut iz it??

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  sunbeamz

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  Blob, seen from the side when pupil contracted.

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  Urracá says its better to stay in yer basket and catch some sunbeamz

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  Stripospheric challenges

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  snoring

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  Iz not enough boxes, I tells ya!

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  pleez to stop the vacuuming

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Between the devil and the deep blue sea

– Title is apropos of nothing, I just like the expression

But now, since you’re here, make yourself at home… you could even read the post if you feel like it. It’s not a long one. I wanted to save a few of those little odd moments that happens along my way, so here’s one:

The other day I was out harvesting food-weeds for Rusla my tortoise-sister.
I take my old (t)rusty bike and line the basket with a plastic bag so I can just chuck the food in as I pick it. There’s a bit of wilderness near where I live – a former landfill, now overgrown, that has plenty of yummy plants. There are some sheep kept there and a few alpacas, the kids ride their bikes or ponies on the path and people walk their dogs there.

So, there I am, absorbed in pulling handfuls of greenery out of the ground and sorting the yummy plants from the icky ones, when two Shetland ponies with kids on their backs see me and my basket full of already sorted yummy greens. There were adults walking with the ponies and kids… but none of us humans realised what was about to happen before the first very determined little pony dove head first into my bike basket stash of yummy fuds.

We managed to get the shaggy Shetland pony wrestled out of my bike-basket again and back onto the path. Cheeky little bugger looked quite proud of his rotund self as he strutted off into the sunset, bouncing kid on his back. They promised to feed him when he got home and I saved most of Rusla’s food, so it was all good in the end.

Rusla speed-nomming time lapse video  (can’t we imbed videos here?) 
I time-lapse film her sometimes, because I do not have the patience to sit and wait for her mind to process what plants I have offered, and choose which to actually eat…  and I was curious to know what was the yummiest/ickiest of what I offered. 
So here’s a photo since the video can’t embed – from a day in May when she had just moved outside for the summer.

Rusla’s summer camp life

Stuffed grape leaves – or what I did in my summer holiday, part the first!

It was a cold and rainy summer, so the grape vine was growing like a complete nutter… the way grape vines apparently do. I cut it down and thought the leaves looked super yummy, so I googled and lo. Turns out it is SUPER easy to make stuffed grape leaves.

Leaf blanching

You take about 70 good sized fresh leafs (remove stems) and blanch them briefly in boiling water till the colour turns. I did a few at a time so’s I could fish them out before they were boiled to bits.

Ingredients

Then it was time for the stuffing:

• 4 dl of uncooked rice – that’s probably about two cups for you cup-people. I soaked mine while blanching leafs.
• 4 dl of minced/ground lamb, (or other meat or vegan replacement)
• 1 can/half a bottle of tomato.
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• A good handful of the best herbs the garden can provide (mint according to recipe… but anything you fancy), also chopped finely
• half a chili… or more depending on how strong it is and how strongly you feel about it. chopped finely.
• salt and pepper.

Season the stuffing more than you’d think you should…
I guess the rice and the boiling ends up taking a lot of the taste.

stuffing 1

Mix all ingredients well in a bowl, and the stuffing can begin.

Prepare a pot by putting a few leaves in the bottom (they stick otherwise).
Then place a small finger sized roll of stuffing on a leaf, fold the sides and roll it over.

new stuffing 1

Place the stuffed leaves tight together in the pot. Put a few leaves between layers and a few leaves on top – to avoid stickage.

Cover it all with water, and place a plate with something heavy on top to keep everything under the water.

Boil at low for one hour, drain and serve.

Eat warm or cold, dip in yoghurt with garlic & salt or whatever takes your fancy.
They were delicious both warm, and cold the next day.

Urracá just went to bed. He’s not been feeling so well lately.

The first Qin emperor’s soldiers were in town.

So, these dudes from ca 200 bc were in town, and I had to go see them.
They  (with about 8000 colleagues) were buried with the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, and finally found again in the 1970’s.

They are amazing! They are life sized.

Over 2000 year-old handsome dudes, and you can almost shake their hands. Every face is different.

Of course, I was super fascinated by the animals they had with them.
There’s a funny change from super fine details around the horse’s eye and mouth to more stylised jawline, mane and neck.

Not everybody were terracotta, these four horses were bronze (and it’s a copy, the original doesn’t leave China)

The cow has had wooden horns and tail. All their weapons, musical instruments, and other organic bits have been gone for ages, but the terracotta and the metal still holds.

Pig, goat and dog… there were a whole bunch of geese too, but I guess I forgot to take pictures of them.

This is a stove shaped as a turtle (the head is the chimney), with a big rice-steam-pot and two smaller burners for sauces.

Some of these guys have really fancy hairdos – they must have had army hair dressers with them… or something.

Some of the figures are from later burials, and some are much smaller than life size, but the soldiers and one of the horses were the full size version.

Here are all the pictures as slide show – if you feel like seeing more of them:

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First World War

Today, we visited the first world war… it happened here: at Mosede Fort

Mosede Fort, built in 1914, to guard Copenhagen from all evil.

The fort is part of the defences around Copenhagen. Built after the terrible war of 1864, a national trauma, where we lost a very large chunk of the country to Germany.

Signal canons… or for shooting sparrows, maybe?

Denmark was actually neutral during the first world war, but armed to the teeth apparently!

The fort has lots of rusty old structures for machine guns and powder. It overlooks the bay to the south of Copenhagen.

Today, there were soldiers in uniform, explaining the history of the signal canons… only one of these was an original canon from a ship.. the rest were mini-replicas…

But they could shoot!!!

The little fat canon who COULD.

The kids had to solve problems… the parents got to try the trumpet

It was a bit chilly compared to Panama…

so afterwards we had tea and pancakes to get warm again.

We are still here!

Holy hopeless update-frequency batman!

We’re still here and all is well… most of the time. – So the short version of what happened since last is:

1) We packed up and moved may 20th! New flat is Great! New flat is not configured quite like old flat… although same size, it has one more room, and I am not satisfied with how I have fitted my old furnitures in here. Stuff must change! I am utterly stuck with my inability to take decisions… but eventually… I guess.. it will turn out right.

2) There was (is) remodelling going on – kitchen.. windows.. painting.. My cousin-carpenter has been doing most all of the work, and he’s doing a great job.
Do we really need lamps and curtains? Urracá and Rusla say no, fud and sunbeamz are all that really matters. Rusla has spent all summer in the garden, but is now inside for the winter. She approves of the garden. The garden has looked after itself mostly. Next year, there will be garden projects.

3) J&K visited from the Netherlands and we did many biologist-y things… zoo, walks in the woods, mammoth exhibition… exploring of the “tip”.

4) Behind new home is an area called the tip. It was/is a landfill site.. mainly building-materials it seems.. now it’s overgrown, and there are flocks of friendly sheep grazing it, and loads of wild animals and fruit-trees and berry bushes.. but surprisingly few people… given it is wild-ish nature and right by the coast in the middle of town. It’s LOVELY and unkempt.

5) My parents both had a stint in hospital (they’re both home again and well), so I also spent some time with my mom talking to the oncologists and with my dad talking to the geriatricians – and cleaning his flat… where the ick had been enjoying itself a little too much.

.. and now we’re having a break before next instalment of busy!

New home – WOOT

Papers are signed,

I bought an apartment closer to town.

It has a garden, and I can’t wait to move in there. 

There’s a password protected picture post below this, and If you don’t have the password, just ask me.

🙂   

Protected: New home!! With pictures (Voxpeeps, you know the password.)

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Whaling mapped

Here’s an interesting map showing 25 years worth of American whaling. It shows the rise and fall of whaling, and how the ships had to go further and further out to hunt the whales as they became fewer and farther apart.
Data from the ships’ log books were used for this.

Of course there were whaling ships from all the other countries of the world as well as these American ones… so from the whales’ perspective it was a bit busier than this map shows.

This is what it looks like when we use resources unsustainably.
We keep doing this today. Everywhere and with every imaginable resource out there.

I think we need more cheerful songs to go with it  –  like this one:

Windy day

This Monday we had a bit of windy weather.
I left work early because my faith in the train company is limited and they had warned of hurricane force winds.
That turned out to have been a really good idea…
Already on the train I could see the weather was going insane, and as I was walking home there were branches flying off the trees… and cyclists were giving up.

When I got home, I found out I had been on the last train that ran before the entire city train system died. Too many trees fallen on tracks, electrical wires and even a roof blowing off a station. People were stuck on trains or at work in the city overnight.

Urracá doesn’t like windy weather, so we spent the evening watching news and wondering about the noises from the roof and windows…

Next day there were fallen trees everywhere and stuff fallen from roofs and scaffolding that had pulled itself loose.

Thankfully, there was no damage to the house or anybody I know, and all the weird noises went away before bedtime, so we could even sleep calmly.