We had a lovely hot and sunny week last week. As we sat melting in the 28 degree heat, sun blazing down on our faces, it was pretty hard to imagine how we had shivered in temperatures fifty degrees lower just a couple of months ago.
The trees and plants took this heat as a sign that there was going to be no more nasty surprise snow showers and started to to grow and blossom at a rate of knots. One evening we noticed the trees outside the sitting room window were in bud and by the next morning the buds had transformed into sizeable leaves.
We have been making good use of the barbecue, and I am having to recall to mind the recipes I used to cook in Sevilla in the summertime, when it was far too hot to have the oven on or even things boiling on the hob inside the house - every meal was either cooked on the barbecue or was a salad. The usual suspects of sausages, homemade beef burgers, fish and vegetable kebabs were interspersed with tin-foil parcels of various concoctions, stuffed peppers, and pizza. Hopefully we will have a long sunny summer and be able to recreate these recipes we had to put aside when living in Munich.
We are incredibly lucky and have a balcony at both the front and back of the apartment. The front one gets the sun first thing in the morning, and the back one gets the sun from late morning through to evening. The back balcony is not as pleasing on the eye, with it's rusty metal surfaces (which we are in the process of trying to hide) but as it: a) has the sun most of the day and b) you don't have to access it through our bedroom as you do with the front one; the barbecue is here. (Actually, I have a feeling there would be a law in Outremont preventing you from having the barbecue out the front anyway - it seems to be a borough full of rules.)
We only own one set of chairs and tables at the moment too, so we put them out the back. We need to go and get another set, but this is the third one we have had to buy in as many years - we left the first one in Sevilla as we knew the apartment we were moving into in Munich didn't have any outside space, but then we had to move into another apartment in Munich which did have a balcony so we then had to go and buy outside chairs and a table again. On moving out here we were trying our best to minimize what we bought over so we left it in Munich.
Foolish.
The chair/table set was the cheapest available in that well-known Swedish furniture store, but when you have bought it three times it isn't all that cheap...
We are incredibly lucky and have a balcony at both the front and back of the apartment. The front one gets the sun first thing in the morning, and the back one gets the sun from late morning through to evening. The back balcony is not as pleasing on the eye, with it's rusty metal surfaces (which we are in the process of trying to hide) but as it: a) has the sun most of the day and b) you don't have to access it through our bedroom as you do with the front one; the barbecue is here. (Actually, I have a feeling there would be a law in Outremont preventing you from having the barbecue out the front anyway - it seems to be a borough full of rules.)
We only own one set of chairs and tables at the moment too, so we put them out the back. We need to go and get another set, but this is the third one we have had to buy in as many years - we left the first one in Sevilla as we knew the apartment we were moving into in Munich didn't have any outside space, but then we had to move into another apartment in Munich which did have a balcony so we then had to go and buy outside chairs and a table again. On moving out here we were trying our best to minimize what we bought over so we left it in Munich.
Foolish.
The chair/table set was the cheapest available in that well-known Swedish furniture store, but when you have bought it three times it isn't all that cheap...
As we have enjoyed being outdoors without needing to wrap ourselves up in layers of clothes, Albitron has continued his adventures outside the back door. He is not the bravest of animals...
We are quite pleased about this fact, as it has been two weeks and he still hasn't ventured much further than where we park our car. This wimpish behaviour does mean he is always entertained though: whenever someone comes out of their back door in any of the apartments around us, he runs inside, tail resembling a bottle brush, and hides in the bathroom. It doesn't seem to matter that there is a road in between them and us and therefore there's a huge space in between them and him. It is all scary.
The wind blew the back door shut and he was stranded outside for a whole five minutes. When I opened the door he shot back indoors and wouldn't leave my side for the next ten minutes.
We are quite pleased about this fact, as it has been two weeks and he still hasn't ventured much further than where we park our car. This wimpish behaviour does mean he is always entertained though: whenever someone comes out of their back door in any of the apartments around us, he runs inside, tail resembling a bottle brush, and hides in the bathroom. It doesn't seem to matter that there is a road in between them and us and therefore there's a huge space in between them and him. It is all scary.
The wind blew the back door shut and he was stranded outside for a whole five minutes. When I opened the door he shot back indoors and wouldn't leave my side for the next ten minutes.
In brave moments, he can find his way down both flights of stairs to the ground, but then only remembers how to climb back up the first flight, so stands wailing - embarrassingly loudly - outside the downstairs neighbour's back door until we go and pick him up.
The boy has also experienced two huge excitements in the past week:
The first was when he came face to face with a squirrel. He wasn't too sure of it, and the squirrel wasn't to sure of him, so they sat staring at each other, each one not daring to move; before eventually the squirrel became aware of my presence and decided to head back down the stairs.
The first was when he came face to face with a squirrel. He wasn't too sure of it, and the squirrel wasn't to sure of him, so they sat staring at each other, each one not daring to move; before eventually the squirrel became aware of my presence and decided to head back down the stairs.
The second was when he met a dog for the first time...Hmm, that sounds as if he said hello, so maybe I should say...he got chased by a dog for the first time. Our neighbours from the apartment next to us (the ones with the balcony which Albie prefers) came outside with their dog, who said hello to us and then promptly walked through our open back door and found an Albie in the kitchen... Needless to say there followed the sound of claws on a wooden floor and a bit of a furor but luckily for Albie, the dog was not the most sprightly of canines, and also M was inside so Albie could be rescued by his uncle-M-in-shining-armour.
I am not sure if it is linked to the heat, but he hasn't been desperate to get outside like we thought he would. He goes and has a potter on the balcony, but that's mostly limited to when I am sat outside, and is quite happy there rather than going downstairs to the alleyway. Given the absence of cars on our balcony, we are more than happy with this! Not sure how long it will continue though before explorer Albie really kicks in...