Having a Heat Wave, a Tropical Heat Wave

Hello folks, it's hot outside - and I love it. Statement jewellery has had to be put aside for a short while to extract every ounce of pleasure from the sun while we can get it. We spent a long weekend in Germany, by the Baltic Sea - and anyone would have thought it was the Caribbean, it was so warm.

 My friend Margrit loved the little cubist inspired brooch I made for her, as I hoped she would, and found an outfit to wear it with almost immediately. She has a lovely, airy, Scandinavian-style country cottage, and the most beautiful garden, full of the most fabulous and lush flowers, bigger and better than anything I have seen in England.
Equally, the slugs and snails (Schnecke - pronounced shnake as if spoken by Sean Connery) in her garden are bigger and eat more than any English slug I have met - she goes out every night with a torch to catch them in flagrante and drown them in a bucket of soap suds, and the deer (she calls them Bambi - aah! ) come in after she retires indoors for the night and chomp their way through anything the slugs haven't had yet - so it's a running battle to keep the garden going.  Margrit needs to be vigilant indeed to keep her garden looking as lush as it does - I love my garden very much, but cannot imagine working quite so hard to keep it.

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All the plants are cordoned off with invisible chicken wire

The back yard - 'Bambi' comes leaping over the hedge at night!

The garden grows indoors too!

Cosy in the candlelight with a glass of brandy

And the pièce de résistance.................drumroll................

The Baltic Sea at the bottom of the garden!!

Unpacking her second 'living room'

I don't need a tan, so was the most overdressed woman on the beach

I said to Margrit, I don't need a tan, I'm brown already - and, in an aside, thinking I was being humorous I added 'and, I have no white bits', to which she replied, quick as a flash, 'neither have I' - sure enough, I looked around and there were loads of people in various states of undress, sunning themselves into a 'no white bits' situation.

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All except Amelie, Margrit's young granddaughter, who stayed determinedly pale as a little starfish, and was even more overdressed than I was, which is saying something!

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Sleeping off a large, healthy breakfast of muesli!

A snooze in the beach basket

So that's all I did all week long, folks,  roast myself gently on the sands along the Baltic coast. I had no time to make anything, and I've shown you the reason why. 
I trust you are all enjoying the summer too, and I will have something for  you next week - I've had a few ideas whilst on my travels.
Catch you next week, same time, same place
xx