How's your weather? Or, don't move that snow drift; it may be my car.

Well, today was another day of terrible weather here in Switzerland.  It was sunny, about 10 C, and we toured a botanical garden to see what spring flowers might be open (bear paw hellebores, hardy cyclamens, snowdrops, forsythia, Iris japonica).  You do understand that TPP is being sympathetic about the severe winter weather gripping the eastern half of the USA (Yes, the Great White North has this weather too, but then this weather is their number one export!).  Why here in Zurich the weather is so severe that only cafes with outside tables on their south side were full of people.  However, the Phactors expect payback.  If all goes well, and that's asking a lot for international air travel these days, especially when the itinerary includes a flight change in Heathrow, we shall be back to Chi-town tomorrow afternoon, and somewhere out in remote parking lot WX, near location pole QQV489, sits a not very large snow drift, and inside is our white Subaru. So if anyone is around those parking coordinates, stop by and help us dig it out! There's some cheese in it for you.

A very Swiss day

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the accompanying image could possibly exist in Lincolnland.  Yes, there's a big lake, a great lake in fact, but it isn't this cute, nor is the city next to it in any way, shape, or form cute.  Ah, Luzern (Lucerne, if your prefer) is definitely cute, and old, hugging the shore of it's picturesque lake with all kinds of neat architecture and covered bridges and the like, and then there's the back drop of the snow-covered Alps.  Although it is a ways off, the most prominent peak to the left looks like the Eiger. This is of course what us great plains people travel for: mountains, lakes, and beaches (and for TPP - rainforest), just they don't all come altogether, but anytime you get two out of four, well, that's special.  So this was just great, in fact it was just so damned inspiring the Phactors bought a bunch of Swiss alpine cheeses in addition to the ones eaten for a

lunch and washed down with Swiss wine and beer. Luzern is about 1400 feet above sea level and some of those peaks are 12000 or more feet tall so no wonder they look so big. No trips are planned for way up in the mountains, and climbing to the city wall was quite strenuous enough for any intrepid flat-land hiker who needed some sustenance. This was as good as a day of tourist travel can get and the F1 who had to leave for home on Saturday is still stuck in a motel near the Dallas airport.  How lucky is that?  Some people just know how to travel; some don't.

Friday Fabulous Flower - White Butterbur

The white butterbur (Petasites albus - Asteraceae) is a not a really spectacular wildflower, but it is an early spring flower often found blooming right at the edge of snow fields at over 1000 metres in altitude here in Linconland. The scenery is the view in the opposite direction from where this spring flower was photographed. Now that's spectacular! Who would have expected that? Oh, wait, that's actually Switzerland. Sorry, it's easy to get confused what with all the similar places around like Lake Zurich, Lake Geneva, the mountains, and all.