-
Trip to Lhota – Part 1
Winter has been enormously persistent here this year, here as well as in many other parts of the world as I can see from my fellow blogger friends. I find it increasingly harder to manage my duties at home, let alone all the challenges I face, I’ve been longingly waiting for warmer and sunnier days. I know, whining doesn’t improve anything… it even doesn’t bring any relief. It’s necessary to be looking for a source of energy. Sometimes it comes from unexpected directions and I found one when our former colleague visited us at work a few weeks ago. I was dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue sweater…
-
Making up a story
Two years ago I made a decision to take an exam in English and in its “Writing” part there were several options one could choose from. One of them was writing a story which must have begun or ended with a specified sentence and was limited by certain number of words. While preparing for the exam I tried to make up a few of those stories but as much as I liked it, it was quite challenging to me. One thing is to come up with a story and another thing is to confine it to defined space. Have you ever tried that? You might end up finding out it…
-
Overcast desperation
This winter I haven’t seen much of blue sky. The sky is either light or dark grey, causes energy shortage and brings abundance of tiredness. Hence the title of this post. A few moments ago my husband was reading me weather forecast for the arriving March and it was like this: first ten-day period – cloudy and overcastsecond ten-day period – cloudy and rainythird ten-day period – cloudy, overcast and rainy I know that March is much worse for me than February. Spring is already expected but winter persists. Not that frosty shiny winter. The muddy overcast one. So when we got a new portion of snow last week, I…
-
Meeting llamas
My father-in-law has a brother who owns a company producing agricultural machinery. His factory is situated at the edge of a city and to promote his products he built a small restaurant facing the factory right across the road. He presents the products on the restaurant’s premises and to attract customer’s attention he started to breed a pack of llamas there. He visited Peru some time ago so perhaps that’s where his inspiration came from. My mother-in-law feeds them and every time we come to visit her, we don’t want to miss out on helping her. The llamas always notice immediately that we’re coming with buckets full of fruit and…
-
Stepping twice into the same river
Have you ever heard that you cannot step twice into the same river? I have met this saying for the first time probably when attending a high school and learning about ancient Greek philosophers and their teachings. I was taught that it means the following: Everything changes and nothing stays the same. When you step into the same river for the second time, the water is not the same anymore and you are not the same either. At least your cells got older but you may also be more experienced, see life from a different perspective. I liked it and used the saying many times, emphasizing that when you do…
-
More snowy sceneries
As I was looking through my archived photos when preparing the previous post, I came across photos I took in December 2010. They were taken in the village I live in on a frosty day of that month and I’ve already posted some of them in my posts Winter scenes and Second chance and also in my PF 2012 and PF 2013. To put it simply, that single day was wondrous, and I’d like to share more of it. The branches and grass were covered not only with snow but also with hoarfrost and it made them look quite special, especially against the blue sky. As if there were icicles…
-
Snow here and there
We enjoyed snow during the last few weeks but now it’s definitely gone. And I wasn’t able to take any photo as I was ill. It made me browse through my older photos and I found a few which I’d like to share with you, I’ve chosen them for various reasons. All of the shots were taken in or near the village I’ve lived in. No. 1: I like the greenish tinge of the scene and also the wooden cart. I’m used to seeing such a cart as just a much smaller toy sold in shops specialised in handicraft. No. 2: Another tinge, rust-coloured now. I find the branches in…
-
(Un)Important trivialities
A few weeks ago I asked my older son to hang the washing. It’s usually my job to do but I was ill and needed help. Later, when I came to the room where the clothes were hanged, I was taken by surprise to see that all T-shirts and sweatshirts were hanging upside down. I mean upside down from my point of view, clothespins attached to the shoulder parts instead of to the bottom parts as I do that. My first reaction was to go and redo that immediately but I remember too well how I hated when my mother told me to make beds and when I made them,…
-
Javorník
When we were leaving the camp, we were staying at in Šumava last summer, our clothes as well as boots were cold and wet, and we were looking forward to returning home. We even weren’t quite sure whether to make one last trip on our way back. Then we found a location on a map which was situated along the way home and looked interesting. It was Javorník, both a town and hill with an observation tower, and eventually we decided to stop there. We parked our car in the town and followed a marked trail. After climbing a part of the hill, we came to a chapel of St.…
-
Springs of Vltava river
Vltava is the longest river of the Czech Republic, its length is 433 km. On its way it flows also through Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Bedřich Smetana, the Czech composer who lived from 1824 to 1884, was inspired by the river so much that he included it in his cycle of six symphonic poems “My Country”. I love the piece. It’s playful music and one can really hear the flow of a river in its tunes. Vltava rises in Šumava and we decided to visit its spring during our last stay there. In spite of a rainy morning we set off early, got on a bus and…
