Wednesday, July 1

The hot days are coming, but today was still just fine. A bit warm, probably 85 or so but low humidity and a breeze most of the time. 

We walked over to the other side of town called Soest Zuid for South Soest because Linda was looking for a top to go with her new skirt. It only took about 30 minutes through the fields of corn and wheat and past the restored windmill to get to the shops. I did my regular thing of sitting out by the street and drinking an espresso while Linda shopped down the street. We keep finding new things in what we usually call a "little town". But, the longer we're here, we are discovering its not so little.

Per plan, we caught the bus home. But, after checking the schedule, it looked like we would need to wait 20 minutes for the next #74 bus, so we decided to see where the #70 went. Well, it goes to Soest Noord, but we didn't know exactly where that was. Turns out its a multiple bus stop just a couple of blocks from the ice cream store that's at the end of our main street. We decided to get off and just then a #74 bus came by. We asked the driver if he was going to Soestdijk and he said no, but a young lady passenger said yes he was. And it turned out he really was. 

Back to the house and a small snack and we drove over to Baarn to buy the curtains we had seen a week earlier. 

They were going to need alterations, so we wanted to give them plenty of time to do the job. That was a good idea because when we got there, they told us they go on vacation on July 27. That should have not come as a surprise to us since we're well aware that most of Europe shuts down for the month of August.

After some discussion about how we would be hanging them in our Washington, DC condo and a helpful suggestion by the woman who was helping us (Jose, I think she may be the owner with her husband) we had a plan. She didn't ask for any money. This is a custom alteration job ordered by foreigners and no money changed hands. God bless the Dutch.

From there we headed over to the garden shop to ask about growing trees around forms so they are straight and thin or form a canopy. Heidi had seen these around the neighborhood and needed to know what kind of trees are used for that and how do you do it.

The supports for these braces are bamboo strapped together.

Instead of a straight line which is probably what Heidi wants to line part of her driveway, you can make a canopy.

Linda conferring with the "expert" who we found very quickly. And, he seemed to know exactly what we wanted to do. Turns out you can use apple trees or other fruit trees or olive trees. If you start them early enough while the limbs are small, you can use almost any tree. Or, that's what we think he told us.

After this, we headed home for dinner. We finished our "cock". Linda made a soup and I made come funky tacos with that meat and spinach and watercress. I'm getting very flexible about what I call a taco. 

Liesbeth invited us to come over for a glass of wine after dinner. It had cooled off some and the evening was just right for sitting out in their yard, drinking wine and chatting, and talking to the kids. At one point, Duco and Noor played the piano for us. 

He and Noor are giving a concert in a few days but we won't be there, so we needed a preview. The piece he played is the music from the computer game - Mario. New generation of pianists.