New Hometree

Had one of those interesting thunderstorms yesterday as the sky lit up like it were new years eve but you could not hear a sound!

Are we being invaded by aliens again?

If I look around me - yeah, probably.

Saw something like that in my vacation - there were some hills a bit away and the whole sky behind them was flickering and shining from flashes for several minutes without a break.

I wish we would have three good days of real rain.

We have short rains here, nothing real that really soak into the ground. And because of that, we have a lot of small forest fires around.

It actually rained a bit the day before yesterday (aka Vorgestern) and yesterday. I hope for more today.

Mmmmhm - I seem to live somewhere else. My flower pots on the balcony look more than a swamp than anything else.

It also rained today. This is good news, really. It was all so dry.

Well - I think the distance (and the more mountaineous area you live in ) really makes a difference there. Also you're more to the west than we are. It was always on the dryer side of things during the summer here. Fires are quite common (luckly mostly small ones) too - you know it is summer when you find big piles of sand on the fields - in case the cereal catches fire.

Cold, windy and rather wet weather for about 5 to 6 months a year, poor soil and drought with high temperatures in the summer always made this part of the country 'unfit' for most grains. It is really good we got potatoes now - they complain much less.
I guess this is also the reason why this area has been poor for most part of it's history (except maybe for the time of the Hanse).
No important resources in the ground and bad farming conditions only left fishery and this can be really tricky on the baltic sea as well (as many shipwrecks proove). So you won't find great dynasties of lords and counts here either. Even the 'castles' we got are just as big as the kennels of the manors you got over there (really - most are pretty small).

We finally got the rain we've been waiting for with the thunderstorm of the year... in the middle of the night

Snow!

Finally a real winter! It's been years since we had one!! Over 30cm of snow!!!

Whoa.


Well - not here.

Not here either. But, between where I am now and my hometown, there is some 55 km ride. On top of the mountain, there was like 10cm of snow, and we expect it here as well. Amazing thing, we live in the city centre, and here it was just below zero. However, on the outskirts of town, it was much colder, at least 3 to 5 degrees lower.

But that#s absolutely normal due to inner-city microclimate.

Ah, I know it's normal, so that is why I am happy to be at the city centre right now