Hello and goodbye from Germany

I’m in Germany to help move my mother into a care home. Just as she’s been house-bound for many months, I’ve been house-bound, too, taking care of her while we’re waiting for her move-in date. In a very real sense, I’ve been living in her ever shrinking world, literally seeing only what there is to see within a few hundred meters of her house – the distance she can cover on her walker.

I don’t intend for this to be a sad post – more an exploration of what there is right in front of us when that’s all we get to see.

The village church is visible from the front stoop of my mother’s house:

On a sunny day

On a cloudy, misty day

This is the sight I’ve photographed more than any other: the neighbor’s 18th century farm house across the street. It’s the one constant in my mother’s life because she can see it from her living room and kitchen windows.

Late-blooming cosmos (left) and Jerusalem artichokes going to seed (right)

White cosmos

After dusk

Early evening, with sunflowers

Sunny day, with my mother’s Jerusalem artichokes

Sunflowers on sturdy stems

Food for the birds in the winter

Gloomy day

Sunflowers on the table cloth in the kitchen

One of several orchids in my mother’s kitchen window. An old friend of hers took this one home. The others are up for grabs, too, as are all her houseplants.

Hostas and sedums in front of the farm house across the street

Roses doing their best to hang on for a little while longer

Geraniums still going strong in the window boxes of another farm house nearby

Tree pollarded to within an inch of its life in the churchyard up the street

My favorite sight

The foliage of this grapevine is so red...

...it’s almost blinding

Succulent sightings have been few, beyond what’s in my mother’s living room window. Here’s my mother’s Consolea rubescens silhouetted against the gray sky:

Another Consolea rubescens and a Cleistocactus straussii:

Mammillaria sighting at the local Aldi supermarket:

The only outdoor cactus sighting:

I’ll be back in sunny California, among my succulents, in less than a week. It’ll be hard to say goodbye to my mother, but life has to go on.

© Gerhard Bock, 2023. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.