Saturday 7 July 2012

A bowl of cherries

Life doesn't get much more Heidi than today! We spent it up in the mountains at the family home of the grandfather of one of Bea's Kindergarten friends (Vincent) for a get together with a few other families to pick, eat, and collect as many ripe cherries from the orchard as we could stash away. Bea was in his element as we took his climbing harness, and the children took it in turns to swing around the cherry trees dropping down their rich pickings. And the cherries were awesome—we ended up with purple hands from the juice, and somehow papa's feet turned purple. It was eye-opening for me to see inside one of the traditional Swiss mountain houses (beautiful wood ceiling paneling, thick timber floors—you could smell the history). But it's not all mountain goats and cowbells—you're never that far away from modernity here, and sitting down having our BBQ lunch we could hear the cherry-picking machines further down the valley rattling the trees into submission and catching the crop enmass. We headed back, reluctantly, to Zürich for the Genossenschaft evening party (celebration 150 years of the cooperative). But the party was all good fun, minus the fact papa ended up at the children's A&E for the second time this month providing moral support for a friend who's child had a nasty fall at the party and needed stitches. Life's not always a bowl of cherries.

Ili with our cherries, collected near Steinerberg, central Switzerland.


Bea up a cherry tree.
The children's lunch table.

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