After clearing storm debris we took it easy. Our eldest had collected his girlfriend from the station in Wavre and later took her to the park in Tervuren. The missus made fishburgers for an early dinner before the youngsters left again for station and home. A lovely little Holly Blue butterfly paid a visit as well.
Holly Blue - Azuré des nerpruns - Boomblauwtje
The storm made me think of the tented camps at Waterloo, part of the annual reenactment scheduled for this weekend. I checked and read that due to the extreme heat this year's commemoration had been cancelled on safety grounds by the local council. So thankfully no camps either, to be destroyed by the storm - I'm sure the reenactors will have counted themselves lucky after all.
Since the bicentenary of the battle (which took place on 18 June 1815) the reenactments and camps are no longer free (I trust the participating reenactors get a share of ticket sales) but the show is more extensive than before. I do miss the conviviality and closeness of the smaller events of yesteryear but If you've never been it's very much recommended. Pictures here are from 2005, when it was also pretty warm (as can be seen in the photo of British infantry in their red woollen uniforms).
Cheerful English officer above to Belgian TV crew: "I'm the officer in charge of cheese! Fromage y'know?"
After days of tropical heat, a thunderstorm arrived in the middle of the night. A strong and impressive one. We got up to look at it for awhile - there was so much lightning it looked like a strobe light, the noise was loud and the house got pelted by branches and leaves broken off violently shaking trees. Which we found in the garden the next morning, plus a few small bits that got inside before we got the windows closed.
I think it looked worse than it was - it took me an hour to get debris off the roof while the missus made good progress in the garden. And it could have been worse - the electricity company was fixing power lines on the other side of the block when I went out for croissants, and there was a man on the chaussée piling up torn-off branches as thick as my arm. Not to mention the devastation shown on the evening news...
For father's day our eldest and self went bowling in Braine l'Alleud where they have a good alley with vital airco to boot. My son started off knocking down all 10 pins or none at all before settling into a haphazard performance like my own. The Bowling Factory charges per game per person (where we're used to paying by the hour) but that didn't stop us from playing five games at a fairly steady clip. Son beat father with three games to two and a large advantage in total points.
We had a reasonably decent burger in the restaurant which was also kitted out in a mock-industrial decor to fit the Factory name.
After running errands in the morning and the missus being energetic in the garden, we settled down once more in the heat. Where the neighbouring trees provide a blissful shade, augmented by our parasols.
Two magpies dropped in for a drink from the basin, one pursuing the other making strange squeaky noises I've never heard before. The first bird ignored them and slaked its thirst instead.
magpie - pie bavarde - ekster
Our eldest came round for a belated father's day visit, arriving early to avoid heatwave temperatures and congestion on the road. So we had breakfast together on the front terrace. The blackbird above was giving a beautiful concert, where he recognised the bird from the song. Which it turns out he learned from a good birdsong identifying app - Merlin Bird ID, free from Cornell - which I promptly installed on my phone as well. I recommended PlantNet in return which I use to identify plants.
Other than birds we spotted a squirrel running through the front lawn, and heard a couple of distant thundery rumbles which I thought to be cannon at Waterloo for this weekend's reenactment (more on that tomorrow), where an early start would make sense in this extreme heat.
blackbird - merle - merel
squirrel - écureuil - eekhoorn
Earlier in the year I was surprised to see Jeremy Clarkson driving a tractor on the box (a Lamborghini of course) while zapping through the numerous obscure and mostly useless stations we get on our TV cable. Turns out there's a niche flemish farming channel that airs this Amazon series once a week. Since we don't do Amazon or Netflix or any of the other streaming channels this was a welcome surprise. This evening another season ended but we hope they'll continue with the next one because we're very much enjoying his farming adventures.
Much like last year, a Red Admiral (Vanessa Atalanta in latin) has visited our garden a number of times. I got out the zoom lens and walked up to it, taking a snap after every step until I managed to fill the entire frame. Later in the day I was reading a book in the shade and it actually landed on my hand, twice. Where I wonder if it realised it had landed on another animal instead of a plant. It didn't mind me taking my phone from my pocket but took off when I raised the phone to try and document this occasion.
Out in the boondocks to the north-east of Brussels there's a British store where I hadn't been to in ages. We had some business in those same boondocks today so we stopped at the store as well. British readers may wonder what the fuss is about but this stuff isn't available anywhere else (even before brexit) and for us it's a treat. Tetleys ("make tea bags make tea!") won out over PG-Tips with an extra 50% free and will make a nice change over Liptons for awhile. A great disappointment was that their fresh cheese counter was
no longer there. I bought some prepacked cheese as a consolation. The crisps on offer where right before the tills so I added some typically British varieties that I remember marveling over as a youngster when all we knew in Holland at the time was plain salted and paprika and nothing else. We served them to our guests as well.
Seen along the way on our foray was a ruined farm covered in greenery that looked quite impressive in passing.
We usually drink fizzy water from a Soda Stream with various fruit-flavoured syrups. The missus has gone one better and has added real fruit which floats and sinks and rises again. Later in the day we had her sister and brother in law round and she used the same trick with white wine, this time using frozen berries which helped chill it down. Delicious and refreshing!
We've closed the shutters so our living room stays cool while we're outside or in the cool downstairs. Not closing them completely allows a bit of light through. And then once outside has cooled enough we open everything up again and hope for a bit of breeze.
We're in the middle of another heatwave so I retired to the coolness of the garage and sorted out another couple of boxes. Came across an open one with contents covered in dust, being a magic lantern and a boxed French film projector. Here the heat was an advantage because washing off the dust with water and washing up liquid outside meant the moisture evaporated in next to no time with no danger of causing further rust on the tinplate or stains on the fancy leather papering of the box.
I treated the odd spot of rust and wondered if the lighting fixture with the lovely antique plug found inside the lantern actually belongs with it for I don't see how it would fit. The projector was dust-free inside the box. Stored inside is a kind of chimney that fits on top and the strings inside the box still hold a handful of film loops. The one at the front has a simple cartoon animation of a man lifting his top hat, flipping it in the air and putting it back on his head.
The missus has told me to hang on to these things (I have a couple more) because she likes these best amongst all my 'junk' as she puts it. :)
My bank offered free online accounts at one time, where I got one to link to my PayPal account (as a precaution after hearing horror stories of blocked bank accounts in case of disputes). Somewhere along the line that account got turned into something no longer free, and that account suffered an overdraft due to banking fees now being applied. The bank sent me a warning about that so today that erstwhile free account cost me money to terminate (plus some hidden interest or other). They may have updated their conditions to allow themselves to add these charges but it's still a breach of promise pure and simple.
magpie - pie bavarde - ekster
Coming home from work I was now greeted with more yellow flowers at the front of the house. It's a larger but lower variety of the St Johns Wort mentioned earlier, and we have quite a few of them on the bank at the back of our garden as well.
St John's Wort - Millepertuis ou herbe de la Saint Jean - Hertshooi of St Jan's Kruid
This is some sort of salvia apparently, more specifically a kind of hummingbird sage.
Its flowers and pods are an impressive almost black. Apparently these are native to South America which makes it even more mysterious because we have no idea how it arrived in our garden..!
hummingbird sage - sauge guarani - anijssalie of kolibriesalie
I looked this up today: it's a Hypericum aka St John's Wort. Which produces these brilliant yellow flowers that then turn into bright red berries.
St John's Wort - Millepertuis ou herbe de la Saint Jean - Hertshooi of St Jan's Kruid
