18 Years Ago: May 9th--Due date!

Blogspot, May 9, 2015

When I confirmed that I was pregnant early in September 1996 (and I can't say "found out" because we were "trying"), the "first day of your last period" became an all-important data point. Sheila Kitzinger's Pregnancy Day By Day (which I have found in a 2001 edition as a used title on Amazon) provides a chart that pairs the start of your last menstrual cycle with a date exactly 40 weeks later. My pairing was August 2 and May 9. "Remember this date is only a guide," she says, "since babies are usually born between 37 and 42 weeks." The day I had a positive pregnancy test was the day before my Granny died at the age of 96. I didn't get to tell her, but I instinctively connect her lovely soul with Simon's.

Kitzinger's advice about the inexactitude of the due date, along with with other information such as both my mother and sister had given birth "late", convinced me to focus my energies on not expecting my baby to arrive on this date rather than gearing myself up for the event. Un-raised expectations cannot be dashed. I remember being cautious in my assumptions throughout this time. I don't want to use pain medications during birth (but if I can't bear it, I'll consider options). My baby is clearly a boy based on ultrasound (but what if this baby is actually a girl?). My baby appears to be healthy and so am I (but what if the pre-natal testing was wrong, what if we have a difficult situation ahead?). And so on. What I don't see in my notes is anxiety of this sort: what if I can't handle the birth, what if I can't be a good mother? All in all, I believe I was calmly awaiting whatever would come.

May 9, 1997 Due Date! (a Friday): "155 lbs; 40 laps" All I can say about that is you go, girl.

Elderberry-apple Schorle
and Rhubarb Schorle

May 9, 2015 (a Saturday): In breezy spring weather, I biked with Miriam from Flein into Heilbronn. We rode across the fields (grassy early wheat and rye, emerging potato plants and maybe some sugar beets) and down a big hill into Sontheim. From there we joined the path along the Neckar River and rode all the way to town. (Markus uses this route to bike to and from work every day. It's about 6 kilometers one way.) We had lunch at a pleasant restaurant called Pier 58 that serves Flammkuchen (Alsatian pizza). Next we hit Stein und Duftparadies (stone and scent paradise--needs no further description). In general, the area along the Neckar downtown has spiffed up considerably since we arrived five years ago (although the stone and crystal place has been there longer than that).

We ran a bunch of other errands, trying not to step on toes in the crowds at the unnamed international festival in the pedestrian zone. Back home, I took some photos in the garden and set myself up for blogging on the back terrace. The real benefit of writing in daylight hours will be getting to bed earlier than I've managed for the last several nights. I love the serial writing (it's also kicking my butt).

(Almost) ready to bloom: peony, clematis, rose.

Ants, doing whatever they love to do on peony buds.

Windy Sunday afternoon ride (flash post)

I was back on my bike this afternoon, and I took Markus along on a jaunt through the vineyards and fields southeast of Flein. Grapes are a-growing: bushy plants and small, hard-looking fruit. We saw fields of rapeseed (some harvested), corn, wheat, rye, strawberries, and raspberries.

Up along the southern edge of the vineyards, we passed the big red frame, Flein's outdoor "movie theater." The color has faded considerably since we first encountered the frame in 2010. The photo shows Miriam and me with both sets of grandparents. A lot has changed. For one thing, Miriam's several inches taller than me now.

Open Air Cinema of Flein, where we are encouraged
to stop, rest and watch the world go by (October 2010)

Markus and I found the "Ausschank" open. It's a hut out in the fields that serves wine and snacks on Sunday afternoons in the summertime. We stopped for a glass of Sekt and a cheese sandwich and chatted with our across-the-street neighbors. We learned a lot about the history of Flein. They came in 1958 when the population was 3,000. We came in 2010 at 6,500. Now it's 7,000 and growing. (The three of us weren't the only new arrivals.)

On the downhill straightaways toward home, I coasted through the wind with my loose linen top flapping against my back and sides like a fabulous torso massage. More than enough reward for the bramble scrape on the back of my hand and the dead-ends, gravel sections, and pant-inducing uphills.

Now we look with all of Germany toward tonight's action in Brazil. I'm glad (after the USA left the World Cup) to have a decent back-up team to cheer for. We're already drinking more Sekt.

[Sekt is sparkling wine that's made like champagne, but it's illegal to call it champagne because that's a protected name. Our bottle tonight is rosé, from grapes grown around about where we were biking today.]

Out through the fields near Flein (flash post)

For a chance to move my legs and breathe and look around me, I got on my bike and rode with Miriam across the fields to Sontheim, the next town over. She was on her way to the gym to work out on the elliptical machine. I looped around from there and followed a no car/no motorcycle sign onto a path that soon became a grassy, unpaved groove.

From there I popped back out onto a familiar asphalt path, where I could curve around the Deinenbach creek, the newly growing fields, the fruit trees dotted here and there, the expanses of yellow rapeseed, the bursts of lilac spearing the sky. I believe it was Goethe’s Farbenlehre (color theory) that dictates proportions for complementary colors: half red : half green; one-third orange : two-thirds blue; one-quarter yellow : three-quarters purple. Things seem to be the other way around at the moment, with yellow everywhere and dots of purple now and then.

It’s the Saturday before Easter, sunny and pleasantly cool. The paths are popular. We each thread our own particular way through the space. Most of us live nearby, with our own particular reasons for being out there. Many walk. With dogs and without. Singly, in pairs, in larger groups. A few march along with Nordic walking sticks. Bicycles. Baby carriages. Scooters. Roller blades. Now and then there’s a car or a tractor crowding the rest of us briefly off the path. They’re only supposed to be there if they have official business. I’m often skeptical.

Overhead, birds (mostly crows) course through the sky carving paths that don’t follow the lines cut through the fields for human traffic. I’ve been lucky enough to see an owl and a heron a time or two picking their way along the fields under the cover of dusk.

Welcome spring! A few weeks ago my legs grew tired, my breathing hard as I pumped my bike up the hills. Today’s ride was gentler, but I felt readier for the rises, for the up and down shifting, for the pleasure of working my way forward on a bike.

Fields deeply furrowed, probably for carrots (photo March 2014).

Short grass-like plants in tidy rows will be wheat or rye
by harvest time (photo May 2013).

Looking toward Flein and grocery discounter Lidl with the red roof
from the Talheim side (photo May 2013).

Strawberry fields getting ready
(photo May 2013, but this year's plants are close).

Another sunny Sunday

If you can call twice in a row a habit, then a Sunday afternoon bike ride in the hilly vineyards at the edge of Flein is my new one. Much like last week, I enjoyed the solitude of following the paths that climb and wind through the tidy rows of grape vines.

Waxing crescent moon straight overhead in a blue sky. Gentle breeze. Temperature right around 70 F (20 C). I saw horses in their grassy pens, a family of hairy goats (including a tiny black one), and two jack rabbits in the middle of a meadow, chasing each other in circles. Up near the edge of the woods I looked for the dark brown butterflies again. I saw only two, which supports last week's theory that their lives are particularly brief. (The German wikipedia link offers a picture of about what these butterflies look like. As far as I can tell, they live a full season, rather than mere days. If you've never tried this trick before: click on another language in the languages list, e.g., English, to be switched instantly to the same article in the other language. Braunscheckauge is apparently a Northern Wall Brown.)

Between the vineyards I spotted several fields of rapeseed in nearly full flower. Here are some photos I took last May of rapeseed in full fluorescent bloom. Note, today is April 6th, and last year's photos were a good five weeks later.

Rapeseed field near Flein (photo May 2013)

From a vineyard hill, looking down at the fields
beyond the newest homes in town (photo May 2013)

Other signs of an advanced spring: the strawberries in nearby fields are in flower already, too. The fruit trees at the edges of the agricultural fields, alongside the vineyards, and next to many buildings are also blooming gloriously. Most of them are loaded with simple white blossoms clustered like half a large popcorn ball. (There I go using popcorn imagery again.) Since most of the fruit trees around here are apple trees and since most of the blooming trees have these flowers, my conclusion is that these are indeed apple trees. (If you know better, please correct me.)

Future apples 

A wonder in form and simplicity

The grape vines still appear to be holding back. A few have released the beginnings of leaves at their budding eyes. But most have a sort of pent-up, held-breath containment. They must be waiting for rain. The earth in our gardens and out in the fields is drawn with cracks from the lack of rain. If I were a grape vine, I'd be waiting, too, until several good dowsings of rain convinced me to let forth for another season.

Sunday afternoon bike ride

I took a sunny bike ride around the vineyards at the east end of Flein. If you look at the map, you can see how the L1100 splits into a Y in the middle of the village of Flein (population 7,000). We live at the northwest edge, where the village meets open agricultural fields (wheat, rye, corn, potatoes, rapeseed). East of Flein you can see a small blue lake. Around there the vineyards spread over rolling hills. My route took me to the wooded edge (the green strip).



Up near the woods on the winding paths, I encountered signs of spring. Some creatures inspire me to speak a friendly greeting, like butterflies and birds (and dragonflies, when I see them). Other buzzing creatures remind me to bike with my mouth closed.

Butterflies flew near me, and I had glimpses of their chestnut brown bodies and wings warmed with orange. They were too dark to be monarchs, but they reminded me of them. As I rode, suddenly certain "wood chips" on the asphalt roused to life and took flight. I believe they were out there to catch the sun. In pairs they flew amorous, playful dances in the sky. If they're like the monarch, they have precious little time.

The vineyards stand ready. Above gnarled stems, the plants are reduced two naked branches each, bent or bowed sideways on the wire trellis along each row, ready to sprout this year's new growth. The vintner's winter tasks involve pruning back to the two best-looking vines emerging from the stalk. Bending them takes careful molding in the hands to avoid breakage. I tried it one year, and I felt a few snap despite my effort.

Two main branches kept from last year.

Rows of bent vines.

The grape vines seem skeptical of this very early spring. You can't tell they're growing until you get close and see new growth budding out like tiny white bits of popcorn.

Beginning of new growth.

Spring outside the vineyards is fully here. Flowering fruit trees and magnolias stretch white and pink blossoms toward the sky, forsythia paints hedges yellow, daffodils and hyacinth are giving way to tulips, and—my favorite sighting yesterday—a lobelia-like flower pours like purple pillows from stone walls.

And, because I can't resist, here is my favorite willow tree tucked between the creek and the open fields where I walk near our apartment (about a week ago).

[Returning readers may notice the slight update to the design of this blog. What do you think? And also my attempt to "keep at it" with the shorter posts! The new photo of Alexanderturm (instead of the grapes, remember?) is part of a forthcoming slide show about visiting Berlin.]