Primavera

Sotto casa

Keeping myself away from the rain

Finding the right moment to get out for a bicycle ride in this season is like betting. According to the spartan weather forecasts coming from all the available on-line meteorological services, this month is going to be very wet. But forecasts don't say it all. Accuracy is not their best feature.

This is the reason why I'm constantly keeping one eye outside the window and the other one on the precipitations radar tracks, taking notes of the movement of storms and predicting the right time to put the nose out. Sometimes, it's a matter of few kilometres. In a valley you're dry, in the next one you'd get a shower.

Beside your own weigh, you have to account for some extra for a wind jacket and a helmet cap. And as you climb the steep roads of a mount, your sight stretches farther and farther, till you can spot the wall of water coming down from a single cloud, right in the valley you opted not to go.

Slowly

Slowly, the long days are coming.

Call it Spring

You wouldn't say it's 21st of March, right?

Schloss Eggenberg Garden

Schloss Eggenberg Garden

Awakenings

Eventually, I had to drive southbound, over the Italian border, to find signs of change. It was sufficient to cross the mountain pass called Packsattel, between Steiermark and Carinthia, to appreciate a real change of season.

Last Saturday, I drove my family to Udine, where they got on a fast train to Rome, to reach our families for some days before Easter. On my way back to Graz, I stopped one day in Tolmezzo, to meet with friends and fill up my car with goods I'm not able to find few kilometers north, crossed the national border. So, on Sunday morning, having one hour to roam around, I headed to a medieval tower standing on a rock, one hundred meters over the small town, along a steep path through the wood. And there I discovered the first sings of awakenings.

Call it Spring

A colorful invasion at the door

One after one, every pot on my balcony is starting to blossom. I think I have taken thousands of pictures like this. Still, when a small masterpiece of nature peeps through the foliage the instinct to take my camera is hard to keep quiet. Behind the archival usefulness (it's nice to leaf thru our pictures folders and see how our small "urban garden" has changed with time) I have always the hope that the new pictures I take could be better than those I took in the previous years.

In the coming days roses, lilies and some more samples will bloom. I'll take care to post some pictures of them.

Fifty Shades of Pink

A gentle wind of a Japanese Spring has come into my apartment.

It was there

Spring, slowly comes in, one day after the other, without asking for permission, without notice. One day, sipping your coffe you cast your sight over the wall and realise it was already there, patiently waiting on the shelf of your kitchen.

It was about time ...

The Spring that's about to finish has been, to my memory (as well as to the official recorders'), the most windy, rainy and cold ever lived. In previous years beginning of June had already given us the thrill of the first drops of sweat running down our neck after a short run to catch a train or the underground. This evening in my hometown north winds are still sweeping the roofs and carrying a good sleep to the people. There's still some time before getting completely undressed and refreshing with a cold shower before laying to bed.

Yet the weather is slowly changing. The lavender bush that grows down in my courtyard is ready to blossom. It's a matter of days ...