And now back home ready to unpack, more updates later this week!

Today’s unhappy smiley face is dedicated on the 41 year old woman who got buried today in our little town…

You guess it right, she died from cancer and has been going in and out of remission for years…

It started with a stomach cancer and seems that one spread no matter all the chemotherapy she underwent…

But 41 really is no age to leave this planet.

How many people need to die still before any government starts tackling healthy food, healthy water and healthy air?

Cancer are just cells that get bizerk and the easiest way to go bizerk is coming in touch with poison or call it:

• pesticides
• herbicides
• preservatives
• medicine
• …

If people start dying around my age, that’s frightening to say the least, so if people have to go around 40… that’s a clear reason for an unhappy smiley face for the rest of today…

What happened? I got a phone call yesterday asking me if I want to teach unemployed people "what life is all about in the corporate world".

Now I do love teaching since knowledge is power.

On the other hand: I do love being retired, as I still have 1001 things to do.

And on top of that: since I am retired, I don’t live by the clock… Being on time??? I have all the time in the world… Well, not exactly but it feels good not to have a watch nor deadlines to follow.

So for the time being I decline. Maybe 1 day if I am bored or need some extra cash… or both!

Well, my kids aren’t nor some of my friends, so for them it’s the only time they have to pay a visit.

So I bought a nice espresso machine as soon as I was retired and I have the impression people are getting used to it

Anyway, it’s great to offer people a drink, especially when it is healthy and quite delicious. Especially Sunday at lunch with fresh goodies from the bakery: yummies!

A big nuisance are the eyes: carrying around 2 pairs of glasses is quite troublesome.

Yet the main problem is arthritis: the "oil" between my joints is unfortunately not replaceable, unlike the oil in the engine of my car. Especially my little finger (which I broke ages ago) sounds as if there is sand inside…

Turns out I still have the perfect skills to read instructions and operate machines

The real thing is that drinking coffee and eating cakes (my wife loves making cakes) and waffles (my wife makes the dough, and I love to bake)… I am gaining weight without noticing it.

Well, my trousers were trying to tell me something, and now my scale confirmed: retirement can make me fat

• taking my alarm-clock
• removing the battery
• putting all deep down in the closet…

So these days I wake up when I hear my chicken making "a hell of a noise". Which in chicken language means: I have just laid an egg!

Brilliant I must say! Just have to put on my clothes and get myself the most fresh egg ever.

I love breakfast with egg in the morning. Seems I do have a tight schedule even being retired, as it took me 3 days to write this post… Oh well, I am not at all complaining!

According to my wife I have to stop thinking I am superman.

Well, it’s just a mild flu the doctor said and in the mean time I am testing out how my health insurance is treating me after retirement. It should be cheaper… which is quite illogical as the older you get, the more health issues could come up.

Anyway, just make sure we eat healthy food from the garden, eat our own organic eggs and next year I will set up my own roosters. They do sell organic meat at one of our butchers, so that’s already better than nothing. But we do have the space and the chickens, so roosters is the next logical step.

Meanwhile our cat is having kittens again, so that will keep the mice out of the corn we feed our organic chickens with.

As you can see, blogging these days is going a bit slow. Something went wrong with uploading the pictures, and my young niece isn’t around to help.

And without smileys, this blog really looks a bit dull, so I hope having it all fixed soonest. yet when you are retired, things are not as urgent anymore as long as life goes on

Every August people ask me what strawberries to plant and every March, people ask me what tomatoes to grow…

Well: you grow the tomatoes you prefer of course!

The next best answer is: you grow the seeds you can find in the shops… Some shops have really limited choices, so … that’s why you have no choice…

Myself I just take a day to drive around all the seed and garden shops nearby to see what’s on offer. If there is a new tomato variety, I buy and try.

I also try to harvest seeds from the tomatoes I grow, but when it comes to seeds of Hybrid tomatoes: it mostly doesn’t give good results the next crop.

Because my garden is big, I love to have variety: the Italian tomatoes, yellow tomatoes and the dwarf tomatoes: those that give tomatoes when the plant doesn’t even reach your knee! Ideal for under glass:

Cherry Tomato "greenhouse"

Then there are people that love to pick tomatoes with the stalk… personally I cannot be bothered because I eat the tomato, not the little stalk attached to it!

In my greenhouse I use "indeterminate varieties" that keep on growing until it freezes, which due to very mild winters can go deep until December. The opposite are the determinate tomatoes: they grow more or less as high as a 10 year old child, so you don’t have to invent big constructions to support the plant.

And of course there are tomatoes in between the 2 mentioned above: they grow a bit higher than myself but do stop growing eventually. Read the tomato seed package before buying.

Anyway, back to work, oops… gardening fun