#weeklyreview 18/2025
herbs herbs herbs
Sunday we’ve attended an organised walk through our nearby fields, meadows and forest. The intention was to learn about local herbs and their use. We had these kind of walks last year already in autumn. Good to learn about some new stuff that’s around our place.
Swimming
First time this year I’ve crossed the lake. Water temperature is around 12ºC. Much warmer at the surface and in the shallow water near the beach. Probably around 16ºC there. But when it’s deeper or you let your feet hang down, it’s still quite chilly. Was a good swim though. About 17 minutes across and back and I didn’t feel freezing afterwards.
Water damage
I a large city like Berlin, there is always somewhere a failure of old infrastructure. This time a main freshwater pipe broke and flooded the streets. When I passed by in the morning the water was already stopped and the road still blocked. One can see that the mud and clay on the street is several centimetres thicks. That was some serious flooding and erosion.
Spring cleaning and new traditions
On May 1st, which was a public holiday our village community gather to do the spring cleanup of our beach and lakefront. That’s always fun and quickly done with so many helping hands.
In the afternoon we started a hopefully new tradition of raising a “Maibaum” (maypole). Thats some old german(?) tradition where either a real tree (usually birch) or just a decorated large beam with a colourful wrath at the top is raised to mark the end of winter and greet the spring and summer. Good opportunity to catch up with the neighbours and have some food and drinks together.
E-Truck no more
Near our village was a large test track for electrified trucks that would get their electricity from overhead power lines. Very similar to electric streetcars in the city. But the project from SIEMENS seems finished and they removed all their installation from the site and it now just looks like a strip of autobahn in the middle of the forest again 
Nature finds its way
We have a well in the countryside where a pump is buried about 3m under ground in a concrete well. We also use that to store some plant bulbs over winter as it doesn’t freeze that deep down in the ground. When I tried to get those bulbs out for the new season I saw that one brave bulb already grew a stem about 40cm longs with some leaves. All white as there is no light at all in the well when the lid is closed.
Nature finds a way … as Jeff Goldblum used to say…
