Such a Summerly Day and the Rape Weed was in Bloom

They have a saying in Danish which directly translates to, "all green is good for the eye" [alt grønt er godt for øjet].

What is meant is that it is good to eat leafy vegetables, but also that it is good to be where you can see green things around you, like the grass and the trees.

The sky was blue and high, the birds were in song and the air was thick with spring and summerly smells. We saw out over the fields, the small forests and rolling hills of the Danish countryside. The rape weed* in full flower was releasing their almost cloyingly sweet smell, their bright mustard yellow contrasted delightfully with the green of the fields wheat, barley, and other farmers' crops.

It is indeed a blessing to bicycle out of town on a day like yesterday when we went with Mette out to her little colony garden about two miles from where we live.

Yesterday was the tail end of Big Prayer Day Weekend here in Denmark, the last of the family left to return to Copenhagen Sunday morning and our old friend had invited us to have lunch at her colony garden.

"Colony garden" is a direct translation of "kolonihave". They are a special Danish institution which began in the first half of the 1900's as a social movement. The idea was to enable ordinary working folk and their families to get out of their dark and crowded apartments in the cities and towns and spend quality time in the open during the spring, summer and early fall.

Colony gardens are small green areas usually not far from a city or town. They are divided up into a number of small garden plots where people put up a cabin or shelter of some sort where they can spend the night or stay if the weather turns inclement. Otherwise, they will be outside, enjoying themselves, eating, drinking coffee, talking with friends, or just puttering in their gardens.

We spent our afternoon there, eating lunch, enjoying a few glasses of cold Italian frascati.

It was a lovely day and now I will turn on my sourpuss and Cassandra mode and pour some malurt in the cup, as they say in Danish.

On our way home, it was 80 F in the shade.

April was the warmest and driest on record, as were March, February and January this year (January was an almost record for rain, though). The same holds true for the last four months of 2006. May looks to be warm also. This spring when we've had a cold front, the weather has been like a "normal" summer day in Denmark. A cold front came in last night, for example, and when I got to work at 7:30 AM it was 55 F and clear skies...

Moon of Alabama had a nice, concise post about methane and global warming/climate change and the comments and links in the comments are recommended if you are not up to date on the subject of the effects of cow farts and melting permafrost...

Meanwhile, as Rome burns and the polar caps melt, Americans we treated with a mind numbing spectacle at the much ballyhooed debate with 10 participants bidding for the Republican nomination in 2008. Imagine -- people who are ostensibly jockeying for a chance at the most powerful executive office the world has ever known were asked to raise their hands if "they believe in evolution".

Jeeze, they should give them guys some coloring books and a box of crayons!

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* "Rape weed" -- Brassica napus : a plant of the cabbage family grown for the oil which can be extracted fom its seeds.