The Garden of Isolde | Winter

I follow the dirt road along yet abandoned shacks and just before frozen fosses. To the right hand side, behind the field and the trees, there nestles another shack. It's Isolde's modest little house surrounded by her garden. The middle of the world. My heart jump for joy. Because of snowfall, I impromtu have taken a half day of vacation, catched my camera and driven to Isolde's garden. Well, "snow"... But, it's worth a try to photograph this place in Winter... here the last Winter.

The farmers leased a part of land parcel to people who wants to till the ground and allowed about 20 people to build little houses from wood (without water and energy). But after the City of Hamburg bought it from the farmers, the days are numbered and the people who had gardened pull down their shacks. 

I know this place for about 14 years now and this process lasts the last five years. Bevor my inner eye I still see the wooden little houses, coloured with soft green, yellow, dark red or white, see the blossoming gardens of the old, gardening Ladies from Russia between peas, runner beans and gladiolas, roses... Now, the birch trees and the blackberries overgrow all of it. All of it?

Noho! Not yet! Isolde's place, her space, is still free of them.
We shall have some tea in Springtime and will listen to the bird song.

As I spy the mirroring screen for a nice image, I hear a gaggle of geese. So I 'run' for a better view and see how they just start from the paddock. Some look like snow geese, with their pure white plumage. So beautiful. (Alas I haven't got a better pic, 'cause the way to this spot has been boggy, snowy and slippery*.)

But now, I have to reach the bus, which comes only once an hour. 

Back to work.

*Because of walking those kind of unpaved ways, I feel like after a marathon when I've sat in the bus (and still in the train). Next time I don't wear my high heels here! 


You wanna see more photos? You'll find them on my flickr
and here at Rose:

Im Garten der Isolde (02.10.2010)
Im Garten der Isolde | Frühling (14.03.2011)
Gütiger Himmel | Ostern (25.04.2011)
Drawing challenge #54: GARDEN (24.03.2012)
Achtern Diek (05.11.2012) 
Sammlung (03.11.2013) 
Isoldes Garten {Move} (08.06.2015)
DC #177: POT (03.10.2015)
Märchenhaft (11.09.2016)
Dezember 2017 (31.12.2017)

In the garden of Isolde | Summer (03.07.2018)
Isolde's Garden | a (long) good bye | Fall (08.10.2018)

I am afraid that my analogue photos from our living in the garden were destroyed by the fire in 2014. If somebody of you, my dear family and friends, have old photographs by me, especially of the Summer 2006, please contact me.

For now, bye-bye! Hope you are doing well.
Love, Ariane. Rose

Spirit

My dear friends have survived cancer blessedly. Together with my friend Azalee and her friend from Kartoum I've met a lovely woman, who will given half a year to live, maybe more, maybe less. And a friend died at Christmas and the memorial has been last Friday. Her wish? Celebrate life! LOVE! 

So I've brought in some fresh flowers and vegetables from the market, because this reminds me on her project with the cookbook by refugees, where I have been one of the photographer. 

Sometimes I put something on the shelve. Not very often anymore (since the fire here on the Castle at the Eisenbach I've learned to make short work), but it's quite difficult to reform bad behavior... ah, you know.

This photo by Sarah Moon was a commercial in France for the perfume LouLou at the Eighties. For me it is a reminiscent of the first taste of freedom: Summer, I had my first reflex camera and took some black and white photos at the Bretagne: the sea, big rocks and hydrangea high like trees, the open space, heaven! (the cries of the seagulls).

I've found this page from a magazine at ebay and the wooden, black frame here at the flea market. It fits! And I've sold something for my daughter last week for the first time. It feels good. More spirit, please!

Just what the exhibition of Alice Neel in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg has been to me. "Just do it! Who cares?", I can hear. Followed by happy laughter.


How you doing, dear friends?
Love, Ariane.Rose