Once every two or three weeks, I wake up feeling like I have been run over by a bus, and strangely weak. Whether that is one of the many potential side effects of the hormone blockers which it has been recommended I take for five years after the mastectomy, or just a getting-old thing that would happen anyway, it sometimes means a change of plans.

I had been signed up for a 17 km walk – with Empor Berlin, led by Fritz Heiber – in a loop from Kratzeburg, involving leaving home shortly before 8.00 in the morning, and going straight to an internations.org dinner in Alt-Moabit on the way home. I had been looking forward to it (and the destination will be added to my list of places to go to some other time) but it suddenly seemed insurmountable, and I granted myself a slow morning and instead visited the Isa Gentzken retrospective in Neue Nationalgalerie in the afternoon and took my camera on a slow amble through Tiergarten on the way to dinner in Indian vegetarian restaurant Agni in Moabit (with internations.org, organised by Rakesh Singh, and the food would turn out to be very good indeed).

Tiergarten is lush right now – probably having profited from the relatively heavy rainfalls, and although parks are not really my thing, I was wondering why I do not visit more often, given the size, diversity, and relative proximity to my home. My mind was also cast back to last summer, before everything went sideways, and we had some very hot days so I took Max there very early in the morning on his longer daily walks and we saw all kinds of wildlife which you do not see later in the morning. It is a nightmare on weekends, with all the bikes and e-rollers whizzing around all over the place, even on paths which should really only be for pedestrians, but during the day on a weekday, it is quite lovely.

In late winter/early spring I came across a bag of bio sunflower seeds for sowing and thought it might be interesting to try.

Bad idea. They are not suited for pots on balconies. They consume an inordinate amount of water – on sunny days three times a day – and definitely seem to need more soil under their strong roots. Most of them did not survive the unusually windy conditions on my sixth-floor balcony this year – it seems that about every four or five summers it is more windy, and the wind tends to come from an easterly direction directly on to the balcony rather than a more north-south direction which is not felt on this side of the building.

Five of them survived, and grew much taller than I had expected – I think the tallest one may be over 2 m tall.

In any case, they are finally blooming, and finally attracting some insects (and we finally have a blue sky again).

According to NABU, the swifts, of which there have been many around my building this year, headed south yesterday, so perhaps I will finally see more insects making their way all the way up here.

Short walk organised by Museen Tempelhof-Schöneberg, led by Uwe Sawitzki.

Read more about Freizeitpark Marienfelde here.

Most of the route on MapMyWalk here.

First some garbage, since we were on our way up a “mountain” created by garbage:

The view from the top:

A couple of insects – unfortunately an increasingly rare sight:

Passed through one of Berlin’s largest industrial areas on the way back:

And finally, the black and white photos of the day:

Mostly for bird- and other wildlife photography:

Must visit Angermünde and NABU Zentrum Blumberger Mühle – don’t forget to set aside a date, or perhaps two?

Same for Anklam, a couple of days to walk along the Peene river, in each direction.

And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelland_(district)#/media/File:Havelland_FHSW.gif

Loop from Kratzeburg – Pieverstorf, Wehrschloss Ankershagen, Schliemann Museum, Havelquelle, Dambeck – Kratzeburg.

Industrielehrpfad Kirchmöser

Döberitzer Heide