Tourists in our own country

In case you were wondering....I'm fine ;-) We are all fine. And the horses are home again. We're happy! And I truly hope that you are all fine too. Why haven't I been online the last couple of weeks? I have been enjoying the sunshine. Or, to be precise: I have been standing 'upside down' in the neighbour's field, removing a weed that is poisonous for the horses. They are smart enough not to eat it, but still....better safe than sorry. So for the last four weeks (yep!) I have been working on tanning my back. Just a small section of my back actually. The piece that unveils itself when you bend over and your shirt creeps up just a little while your pants go southwards. You know, the piece of flesh that's been made famous by builders, although their pants often go further southwards than mine. That small strip of flesh has a beautiful tan now while the rest of my back still is lillywhite. Makes a difference from blue/green/purple legs. I will not bore you with pictures of my brown/white back. Instead, I will lighten up your life with pictures of two beautiful little villages in our part of the Netherlands, the North Eastern part called Groningen. Yesterday I took some time off from partly tanning and played 'tourists' with hubs. The villages are called Niehove and Ezinge and they date from before Christ. Both villages are built on a 'wierde', which is a manmade hill. Before the Dutch built dikes (in the 11th century they built the first dikes to keep the land from being flooded by the sea), people used manure from their cattle and soil (in Groningen that would be clay) to construct a hill high enough to keep their feet dry. On top of that hill they built their houses and churches. This is Niehove: The church in Niehove dates from the early part of the 13th Century. And then we went to Ezinge which dates from around 600 B.C., also a very charming village with a church dating from the early part of the 13th century with a very imposing white gate.

So, without leaving the comforts of your home (or office), you have now visited a tiny part of the Netherlands. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as we did.

I will not be around much, the weather is far too nice and there still are so many weeds to remove. But I will pop in now and again to see how you all are doing.

A very big virtual hug for you all ;-)