Today I really enjoyed the first real summer day. Plenty of sun, nice and warm, even in the evening, so we spent a long time outside. My favorite time of the day is after 6 PM, when the heat is over but the last rays of the sun are still pleasantly warm. Since a year and a half we have a wooden veranda with a roof that we have already enjoyed a lot. The heat lingers under it longer and we can also just sit outside during a rain shower. Bine made it himself, like almost everything here :). This is also the case with the swing bench, which I have wanted for a long time. I finally got it for my birthday last year. It hangs on the beams of the veranda and recently it also has beautiful cushions in it.

I also hung some lanterns and there are various plants and flowers on the veranda. It has become a wonderful place to be. Not in the least because of the view. Almost every night we see a deer grazing down in the field and the past week we enjoyed young birds sitting in one of the nest boxes, one of which apparently did not feel like getting out. I spent hours watching it, peering through the binoculars. Very funny!

In the fall from last year, I also made a flower garden that I look out on from the veranda. Our garden consists mainly of grass and a few years ago we had made a small strip of garden at the bottom of the veranda. That looked nice but the disadvantage was that you did not see that garden from when sitting on the veranda.

I also wanted to see flowers when sitting ón the veranda. Hence the new piece of garden :). I put all kinds of plants in all kinds of colors together and especially low stuff and creepers so that the view remains. They still need to grow, of course, but every time it gets a bit more beautiful, piece by piece. Bine has also built a low wall along the roadside on which we will later place a mini “kozolec”.

The Slovenians are not very into »flower gardens«. For them, a garden is a vegetable garden. So when I started clearing weeds from my patch of garden, everyone immediately thought I was going to grow vegetables on it. When I said that it was going to be a flower garden you could see them thinking ….. «what’s the use of that?« So they also don’t really understand the beautiful, newly landscaped floral garden of my parents :). Of course, they do have some flowers in their gardens, but not to the extent that we know in the Netherlands. What you see a lot here are window boxes on balconies (almost all houses have them) and on the windowsills, on the outside of the house.

I really enjoy the little things in life, fortunately! A beautiful flower, a butterfly flying by, watching the lights in the garden on the porch swing at night, and listening to the crickets. I never get tired of it. What I enjoy less are the cockchafers. Jesus, they really freak me out. I also have absolutely no idea what those things are good for. They emerge when dusk sets in, fly by the dozen around trees and shrubs, seemingly blind as they just fly up to you and in your hair, and when it’s dark, after about half an hour, they suddenly disappear. And all that for only a week or two a year. Once every 4 years, they seem to be by the many. What the hell is that?? I have a little bit of trauma from those things since I was on vacation in Slovenia as a teenager and hiking with a bunch of friends on a country lane just outside of Bled. There was a hedge along the road, and when it started to get dark those squinting beasts came out of nowhere, hundreds of them at a time. It must have been that fourth year…… They flew at us from all sides and I completely panicked. I got home hiding behind the back of a friend and from that moment on I am terrified when I see them flying around. And yes, I know they are totally harmless and if I see one during the day sitting there all dumb, they’re not that scary at all. But still ….. I wouldn’t mind if they would go instinct ;). I still enjoy sitting outside on the veranda, except that I sit a little less relaxed between dusk and dark at the moment…….