Gardens and Food

What goes better together than gardens and food?  We had a delicious dinner last night at Heinz and Lily Wanner's house just outside of Bern.  And they have a gorgeous garden that inspires me to do more with our rocks and clay in Flagstaff!  Heinz is the past director of PAGES (PAst Global changES) where Darrell is working while we are in Bern.  He and Lily are headed off to Greenland, Svalbard and Iceland on a cruise soon where Heinz will be one of the speakers giving talks about the geology and history of the areas they visit.

Heinz and Lily in their beautiful yard

Lily made a delicious appetizer of cheese-stuffed apricots surrounded by bacon and then broiled.  I really need to get this recipe from her!

This corner of the garden features well-trained grape vines creating an arbor.  Lily added roses to the table which was absolutely gorgeous.

Dinner was sausages on the grill, rosti (hashed browns) and grilled veggies.  Excellent... And I should have taken a picture of the dinner and especially the dessert.  The dessert was a Panna Cotta (an Italian custard) surrounded by three fruit purees; blackberry, plum and apple.  It was spectacular.

Sorry for my lack of umlauts and accent marks - I haven't figured out how to add those without writing this in Word first...

Heinz cooking sausages with Lily's supervision

Here is a picture of their garden as the evening light faded.

When we first arrived - almost three weeks ago now, I discovered some gardens by the river where people were sharing a large lot so they could each have a section and grow their own flowers and vegetables.  Some of them even had tiny cottages with stoves in them so they could spend the day there.  When Vera came for the INQUA meeting, I asked her about the gardens.  She said that when people started moving into apartments and didn't have space for their gardens, they would get a space in the country.  Here are a few examples of these gardens.

Some people like flowers even more than food!

Note the stove and little cottage in the far back.

A charming garden with a cottage in the back and some good Swiss pride.

Trolls, butterflies and flowers!

I'll leave the trolls for now - but you can expect a troll blog at some point in the future!