July 22nd High of 60

Jeans and sweatshirt today. High of 60 F (16 C, low of 53/12).

The postman really does ring twice here, by the way. (That was a non sequitur, and sounds like a nasty book from the summary I just found.)

Made a Granny Smith apple tart last night with Emily (she did at least half the work). Glad to note that in Switzerland the prepared pie crust dough is once again round. In England it was rectangular, which meant a lot of trimming and wasted dough if I was making a round pie (like all my pies). In France it was round I believe, like in the U.S.

Remember yesterday I wrote about ordering salmon at the fish counter in the grocery store? You may be amused to know that the word for salmon here is "lachs" (it sounds similar to "lax") - as in bagels and lox (only it's not smoked unless you have the word Räucher before it (as in "Rauchen verboten" - no smoking!).

Here you have
a) the hibiscus tree as viewed from our bedroom window
b) an example of beflowered balconies very common in Switzerland (usually a lot of geraniums)
c) a forested streamside path we can take to walk from our house to our village, e.g. to the bakery
d) a sleeping swan by the lake in downtown Zürich (we explored a little after trying a downtown church on Sunday)