Happy Easter!

This morning I woke up at around ten o'clock, roused in part by the tolling of church bells (they also tolled at half past eleven yesterday evening, I think, for no apparent reason). T. was already awake, watching episodes of Poirot on YouTube; so were Mama and Papa. I hid chocolate Easter eggs in the corner room (which we also refer to as the living room or, rarely, the library), mostly in the bookshelves. Then, slowly, everyone else woke up; J. entered the library while I was still at work, closely wrapped in his blanket-toga, then curled up with a crime novel (by Agatha Christie, I think). Mama prepared yeast dough into hot cross buns (minus the candied lemon peel and raisins and pudding cross on top and sugar glaze . . . (c: ) as well as a stately Easter wreath (this time with raisins).

At last we had the usual Easter breakfast. I thought it was more fun when we were little, when we were eager to wake up for Easter, and we (or I, at least) would scrupulously avoid looking at the decorated table until we were all awake and present. Once everyone was awake and assembled at the foot of the stairs in our old house, Mama would start to play our Messiah record as our cue to festively enter the kitchen to partake of the breakfast. Anyway, this year the breakfast consisted of croissants, the hot cross buns, hard-boiled eggs, chocolate eggs and minuscule candy eggs, Ovaltine or coffee, and jam or honey or Schinkenspeck or Lachsschinken ("salmon ham") to go with the buns. For once we had no chocolate Easter bunnies, but I might buy them belatedly, or perhaps no one really missed them that much.

Then T., Ge., and J. hunted for the Easter eggs in the corner room, a very quick affair, where they only overlooked three of the eggs. Afterwards I went on a short walk to the Kleistpark. There were few cars on the road, and it was unusually peaceful. In the Kleistpark itself there were small groups of people scattered about, mostly still in black winter clothing. The second colonnade in the park has been entirely renovated now; the scaffolding and plastic sheeting are gone. But the bushes that used to grow around the statue of Cupid(?) in front of them has gone, which I think is a pity, because the juniper and laurel bushes that grew there were so nice and Italian, in perfect keeping with the architectural style of the colonnades and of the Kammergericht. Also, but this probably happened a while ago, a thicket of juniper or hemlock trees had been hewn down. Perhaps they went in order to permit a clear view from the colonnades out onto the Kammergericht, but they were not directly in the way, and (to me, at least) it looks more like they were put out of the way for the passage of a tank. I don't particularly like the severity of gardening in the classical style anyway; having lived in a place where trees grow freely and densely and naturally to impressive heights, sheltering and shadowy, with an untamed junglish tangle of salalberry or moss and swordfern at their bases, I will of course not be so taken by gardens where large empty spaces predominate.

Anyway, there were many flowers out already; starry yellow forsythias, the fringed Oregon grape blossoms that I also saw in the graveyard, light blue squills (whose German name, "Blaustern," or "blue star," is somewhat nicer), voluminous and frilly deep yellow flowers on a bush, red tulips, purple and white Grecian windflowers with their beautiful soft purplish-green leaves, some very pale blue grape hyacinths that did not appeal to me at all, and white and pink blossoms of two members of the plum or cherry families. The hazel has sent out its leaves already, but most of the trees and bushes were still barren. Birds, including a pretty, plump pair of speckled, dark-brown ones, were foraging for food here and there.