I've been making my own paper! 

shredded bits of paper and cardboard 

making pulp using a kitchen blender

a freshly scooped sheet of wet pulp

a neat stack of home-made paper!

This Speckled Wood kept coming back to get its picture taken... (Bont Zandoogje, mocht je het je afvragen)

 

I'm finishing the bee hotel I started on last year. A bee hotel is a nesting opportunity for solitary ('wild') bees, of which there are more than three hundred different species, ranging from ant-sized to larger than a honeybee.

I've been canning cooking pears (Gieser Wildeman). I put them in syrup with cinnamon and other spices, lemon peel and camomile infusion.

 Some weeks ago on a walk through the park I came across these enormous red beech trees that had been cut down. The growth rings on the trunks weren't clear enough to count, but they must have been at least a hundred years old. Next to the pile of logs was a great heap of cut off branches and twigs that were already bearing buds. I found it a bit sad to realize these would never blossom. So I took one twig home and put it on a vase (an old mustard jar really). I decided to at least make a drawing of it as a tribute. But I also hoped it would blossom, like an easter branch. My expectations weren't very high, but after a week or two one of the buds actually opened! As I write, more buds are opening and some are starting to burst small, hairy leaves.