*Between floodings and flowers

Just the moment when I collected some herbs for my tea, three swans were flying over the house. I have never seen them here so closely. What a wonderful start into the morning!

It has been a while since my last blog post, my summer seems so far like an endless concatenation of stressful events and in between a sea of flowers to rest my ruffled mind. As I often stated, we had almost no rain this summer and in the middle of August we suddenly had the most heavy thunderstorm with hail and heavy rain I ever experienced here. Within a moment the street in front of our house turned into a river, first I filmed a bit, but when a hill behind the house slipped off and created a mud flow that started to block the trench that usually should drain the water away from our house, things got out of control. In the heavy rains we tried to release the blockage, wading knee deep in the mud, but only more mud came our way and it was like fighting windmills, the powers of nature were too intense. We had to be witness how the flooding came into our garden and basement entrance and it was one of that kind of moments when everything seems so surreal and you feel like a tiny piece in a puzzle that has no other power than to be part of it all, no matter what happens.

Fortunately the rain suddenly got less, the mud flow did not get into the house, but water was pressed through roof, windows and cellar walls. The street towards our house was blocked and when the phones started to work again, we heard that our village was completely flooded, the water went up to over a meter high, very quickly our area had been declared as disaster area. Because mud gets hard as stone as soon as it dries, people and fire brigades started immediately to shovel and clean up as soon as the rain calmed down. It was a sleepless night and I got fever from the shock. On the next day the fire brigade and an excavator was here to help making the street passable again, it was so strange, it had immediately 35 degrees again. And in the evening another storm came and created new damage very quickly, because the ground was not able to take in any more water.

The coming days were full of cleanup and clearing work. We sorted out the cellar and repaired the terrace which was also affected. I cleaned the vegetable garden and Ronald worked up the two huge branches of our big apricot tree that had broken down. It will surely take some time until all the damage is repaired in our village again. It was a big shock for everyone I can tell. 

But there are lots of nicer things to tell also. Before the flooding came, I had collected quite some video material for new movies and we collected water from a healing spring, because tap water gets really bad here over summer. I burnt my recent clay pieces, glazed them and was able to get the finished pieces out of the kiln on Saturday. First time I tried black clay, it is a bit tricky to work with, it gets easily fissures and can make bumps while burning. I made plum jam and finished reading a book, my dear friend Marie, borrowed to me. It is called "We are okay", written by Nina LaCour and it is about a girl dealing with the loss of her grandfather who raised her.

I have seen how wonderfully collaboration works, if something drastic happens like the flooding. It shows me that humans are still humans in this strange world we live in.

Enjoy the last days of August and hopefully until soon again!

☙