Becomingagardener

LIfe is a garden, what are you going to plant in yours?

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Photo only Friday

Fall color in Forchheim

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A New Direction

Hello to all my dear readers, I know it’s been a long time. I have decided to switch platforms and begun a new writing project over on Substack called The Updrafts. The name is a nod to the warm air currents that birds use to save energy, fly very high and cover long distances. It’s become clear to me that when we identify the Updrafts in our own lives, we fly more efficiently and experience…

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2nd Grade in Bavaria

2nd Grade in Bavaria

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The Great American Ice Cream Tour Strikes again!

The Great American Ice Cream Tour Strikes again!

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What does love look like? 8 Years In

What does love look like? 8 Years In

In this, our 8th year of marriage, Thorsten and I invested in an Italian espresso machine. It was the dead of winter and we wanted a little taste of Italy. The machine arrived, shiny and silver, all metal and dials and levers. After a few days of admiring it on the counter, it was clear that in order to enjoy good espresso, we needed to learn how to work it. For a novice like me, making a good…

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For all

It took me a while to compose my thoughts this 4th of July. I hope what I've come up with will be an encouragement as you sift through what it means to be patriotic these days.

Hello! It’s been quite a long time. When I last wrote, first grade had just begun–now we are in the homestretch. So many unknowns have been uncovered- Verbs and nouns, pages of reading, addition and subtraction. The kids in the neighbourhood walk to school and back without adults and without fear or trepidation. Lucky for me though, Big Sister still gets excited when I offer to meet her half…

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First Grade

This month we celebrated our first born going to first grade. I know that it’s a right of passage and I remember the changes that came with being a first grader but I don’t remember it being such a big deal. In Bavaria most elementary schools are walking distance to the communities they serve. Some students, who live further away, take the public bus to school, but in general, students are…

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4 Seasons of color

In the year or so that it took to capture these four shots, we weathered multiple lock downs. We finished with diapers, and someone lost a tooth. We looked for ways to love each other better. To be slower to anger and quicker to laugh. We made ice cream (a lot). We learned to listen to the rhythm of the earth. To breath deeper. The drumming of our feet on the ground with this tree as melody and…

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The Great American Ice Cream Tour Part 2

The Great American Ice Cream Tour Part 2

From Ohio, we headed south toward Kentucky with a few stops for the person in the car who thought maybe I said whiskey trail and not ice cream tour…well on a road trip I guess there should be something for everyone. Having had such good luck finding Algamesis Bros in Cincinnati, I decided to make a point of reading up on the local ice creameries in each city and making a game out of it for the…

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Back to School

I have been familiarizing myself with The German language since I first met Thorsten. However, once we moved to Germany it became priority number one. To that end, a few times I have spent an afternoon playing with the children of Thorsten’s friends because talking to a four or a six year old is good practice and sometimes easier than talking to an adult. I know if doesn’t look like learning…

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Sporting events

At the end of August we attended a Bayern München Fußball game at what Thorsten likes to call, “The Cathedral of Soccer.” The game was in Munich and each time the team plays there, the whole stadium is lit in red.  Kind of like the flag that flies when the Queen is in residence at Buckingham palace. Bayern München is Thorsten’s absolute favorite team.  He has a very compelling story about…

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Funny random sightings

Last night we went to Erlangen to visit some friends who have become very dear to me since moving here. Erlangen is a city about 2 exits away on the autobahn from us. It is the one the headquarters for the Siemens company. It is not a huge city by any means but does have a relatively large and lively downtown for shopping, farmers markets, bars and restaurants. It’s lovely to note that it also…

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The great American ice cream tour

In 2021 parts of the world began to re-open. We kept our eyes peeled and once it seemed safe enough to travel we hopped a flight from Munich to DC. I love writing it so casually– it as if one can just “hop” on a flight with two kids and a foreign husband during a pandemic when Europeans are banned from entering the USA. We prepped the kids for the 8 hours of mask wearing with short, television…

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A day

In our family we have established a rhythm. Every week day I am like a goalie from 5-7am. Thorsten has his quiet time. If the girls are up, I snuggle with them or let them play until 7. At 7 we get everyone ready for school–dressed, fed, hair and teeth brushed. I pack their snacks and he drives them. Getting them out of the house on time is a bit of a circus so I always breath a sigh of relief…

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The first meeting

It was my very first visit to Germany and there was a lot on the agenda. One item seemed small if I didn’t think to much about it. It was a meeting at a little pub maybe a mile away from Thorsten’s apartment. It didn’t require a flight, a hotel or a border crossing. It was planned for early one evening and we were just going to make a quick stop. The magic of our relationship at that time came…

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Cooking without Jola

The last time Jola and I cooked together was Christmas Eve. We cooked a goose with all the Franconian trimmings. In November and December we had made some time to cook together too, while the girls were in preschool, and we were both so excited to be getting back to it after a long hiatus because of diapers and nursing, working and just no time. Those of you who have been reading along since the…

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A Quarantine Christmas

As an American expat in Germany, Christmas is usually my favorite time of year. Cue 2020 with its social distancing and myriad of other health precautions and this year we have a German Christmas season that is pretty unrecognizable. To get us all in the spirit though, I’ll describe what one would normally expect this time of year. Christmas time begins with St. Nick (Nikolaus) on December 6.…

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