Along Ritterstraße and Reichenberger Straße, and a visit to Galerie Kwadrat, to, and back along, Landwehrkanal.
A Stroll in the neighbourhood
Chili sauce made with red and orange chilis from the freezer
(Home grown, on my south-east facing balcony, the summers 2018 and 2019).
Chilis really do freeze well. Strength and flavour remain unchanged but, as can be seen in the photo, they turn a bit soggy when thawed, so they cannot be used for anything that requires the crunch of fresh chilies.
PLEASE REMEMBER TO WASH YOUR HANDS EXTREMELY THOROUGHLY AFTER HANDLING THE FRESH CHILIS AND BEFORE TOUCHING YOUR EYES – OR ANY OTHER ORIFICE FOR THAT MATTER – BE IT YOUR OWN OR THAT OF SOMEONE NEAR AND DEAR TO YOU. ‘Nuff said,
About 300 g assorted red and orange chilis (after removal of stems and – most – seeds
2 large red onions
8 cloves garlic
1 red pepper
1 large knob of fresh ginger
4 tblsp rice vinegar
Run in food processor till it has the texture you want.
Heat a generous amount of olive oil and add the mixture. Then add
1 tblsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tblsp tomato paste
2 tso shrimp paste.
Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20-30 minutes.
Things I can photograph without leaving home
(Continued from “My Corona Diary”).
25 October
The pandemic now pervades all of our lives to an extent that a sequel to the first Corona diary is in order, and therefore, this will be continued in “Corona Diary II“.
21 October
Autumn colours
17 October 2020
15 October 2020
Another grey and rainy day.
8 October 2020
Covid19 numbers are back to what they were during lock-down in early spring. And so is the weather, so this feels like “back to sqare one”. Looking out the window, mainly for splashes of colour.
The containers in the backyard of the neighbouring construction site about to be overgrown, and a bottle left from New Year’s Eve 2019/20.
6 October 2020
Between two buildings in the morning.
8 September 2020
28 August
With or without the tree?
22 August
It finally rained, and the construction site was quiet. Bliss.
14 August
Not exactly from home, but I am not at home a lot these days. This is not a good time of year to have to keep all windows and doors closed due to ear-splitting noise and clouds of dust (see “Neighbours from Hell”).
So on one of my getaways, I missed a train and therefore had time to photograph the starlings which reside on Bahnhof Alexanderplatz. Tiny but cute, with beautiful plumage.
31 July early morning
27 July
26 July
Beautiful rain. I could not resist putting some of my plants back on the balcony. I usually scoff at people who spray water on flowers before taking photos of them. So I wait till it rains. A concept possibly better known as a form of hypocrisy.
15 July
14 July
Swallows (I think – correct me if I’m wrong). The acrobats of ornithology. They fly so damn quickly that I’ll never be able to get a sharp photo, even if they come quite close to our balconies. They are probably also the reason why insects never really make it as far the flowers on our balconies. Both a blessing and a curse.
13 July
12 July
10 July
9 July
My balcony on a rainy day.
7 July
I have tried to make my balcony insect friendly by sowing some wild flowers, and also counting on the herbs that eventually bloom, such as oregano and thyme.
So when there is finally a suitable macro photography model on my balcony, is it thanks to those efforts? No. It is because of a mint plant which I bought in a supermarket earlier today.
6 July
Splashes of yellow.
And some experimenting.
5 July
A crane disappeared and revealed a tower I did not know I could see. Now I have to go and see what it is. Sigma 150-600 at 600 mm.
28 June
27 June
It was just a tiny little thing, about ten mm long. And don’t worry, no animal was harmed in the making of this photo. It is safe and sound, back in the coriander plant where I found it. I love my Canon 35 mm Macro lense.
The underside 
24 June
A small section of my early morning coffee view, with a little bit of exposure tweaking in Lightroom.
23 June
And in the early evening, I played with Mr Sigma 150-600
22 June
Enjoying the sunrise (very early morning). I do hate pigeons, but they sure make better models than, say, swallows.
Sigma 150-600 mm, at 600 mm, heavily cropped:
20 June
Thistles.
19 June
It was just a tiny little moth, not much bigger than a mosquito.
Now it looks like this
The wall has been looking like this since some time between 22 and 25 September when I came home from a trip. I wonder how long I will have to look at that.
This time, everything is covered in sawdust which I assume will not be too difficult to remove, but I had not planned on having to clean the balcony once more this side of winter.
Volkspark Blankenfelde 30 September 2020
Getaway to Wismar 22-25 September
Documentation 19 September
This afternoon, I spent (wasted?) about an hour cleaning my balcony – again (see https://www.hellemoller.eu/2020/09/14/i-cant-believe-this-is-actually-happening/) (that was probably stupid, but I could no longer stand looking at the mess). It currently looks like in the photo above. I have not washed anything, and my gut instinct tells me it would be asking for trouble to put the furniture back once again. But at least I can sit on my balcony now.
This time, there was too much rubble to carry to their doorstep in one go, so I just threw their “gifts” onto the scaffolding. A lot of it was stuck, so it took quite a bit of hacking and scraping. Washing the floor and the marble shelves (which were brand new from February last year) would probably reveal some damage done, and that would ruin my mood which for some strange reason is relatively good right now. Perhaps because I have just been out of town, and am going away again next week, and for another two weeks after that will be relocating to house- and catsit elsewhere in Berlin.
I do appreciate the fact that I am able to get away most of the time, and that I live in a (for me) new country with a good train service and an endless supply of places to visit (although when during the winter I decided to sell my parking space, that was not what I planning on spending the money on :-)).
However, truth be told, given the lovely weather this month, not to mention Covid19 and my age, I would have preferred to be able to spend most of the time on my balcony and sometimes have one or two visitors over for brunch/lunch/coffee/drinks.
Cottbus 17-18 September 2020
Please stop calling it “Europe’s Migrant Crisis”
No, CNN and BBC World, it is – still – not “Europe’s migrant crisis”. It is certainly a crisis, to put it mildly, for the migrants. But for Europe, it is a crisis of xenophobia, bloody-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, inhumanity, and lack of empathy and solidarity, as well as of political will to solve an issue which ought to be a piece of cake for an area as large, wealthy, and some even say enlightened (yeah, well, just keep thinking that and it may come true one day) as Europe.
At least they have not dumped anything on my balcony for the last 48 hours ….
(but to be on the safe side, I will not clean it for another few days).
However, this drilling has been going on for weeks: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1073953174.