Flowery Interlude

 

This month of August seems to have gone by so quickly.

I've been doing wonderful little escapades with family and now I'm off again 

for a few days.

I have no time to organize my holiday photos, so I'm doing a flowery interlude 

of some of the beautiful flowers I encountered during this month of August.

There will be lots of dahlias, like this deep pink beauty above!

Pink and yellow look great together.

This one is almost fully opened.

This simple bloom with the marvellous centre was the darling of the bees!

Deep pink and luscious

Long, slim petals

Delicate shades of pink

Deep,  velvety red.

A collage to enjoy my favourites

Bees just love Zinnias

Now a selection from my morning and evening walks in my neighbourhood.

A pretty pink Anemone sometimes called Wind Flower.

A luminous Morning Glory and pink Bindweed climbing the fence.

A Red Admiral Butterfly enjoying a Zinnia.

I love the two little blue and black markings at the bottom of the wings

They make me think of eyes with white eyebrows!

A beautiful deep pink rose discovered on my walk yesterday.

Some gorgeous red roses that my son brought me when he visited with his wife.

Some Black-Eyed-Susan, or Rudbeckia

Growing in the grassy patch right near where I live.

Such sunny flowers.

A walk along the lake one day showed these beautiful hanging baskets of geraniums.

I have four strawberry plants growing on my balcony garden.

One day, I counted eighteen strawberries ripe at the same time.

I served them with fresh figs bought at the market and accompanied them

with triple thickness Gruyère cream.

The cream is not whipped, but a teaspoon holds upright in the delicious richness and thickness!

On this tasty note, I wish you happy days until next time!

Interlaken, Brienz and Rothorn, Part 3

The last day of our stay was the most beautiful weather-wise.

We started out with a boat trip on Lake Brienz.

Here's our boat waiting for us to go aboard.

We both liked this blue and white painted house overlooking the lake

Here's that wonderful turquoise water again.

The Swiss flag hangs loosely down so that we can see the surrounding mountains!

We approach the port of Giessbach Falls.

There was a wedding party about to come on the boat.

"The Giessbach brook has its source in the high valleys and basins of the Faulhorn-Sägis Valley and feeds the world famous Giessbach Falls, 

which tumble into Lake Brienz near the landing stage.

 Since the 19th century, there has been a footpath that leads to and under the waterfall. Since that time the 14 steps of the Giessbach Falls have been named after Bernese heroes."

The rushing water from the falls reaches the lake.

Taken from the moving boat,

We get off the boat and take our places in the open panorama carriage of the Rothorn Steam-train.

It takes about an hour for the small steam locomotive to reach the Brienzer Rothorn

which is at an altitude of 2350 metres.

This rail service has been running since 1892!

We start our ascent alongside this farmhouse with Lake Brienz below.

Here's another train coming down the mountainside which crosses us as we go up.

I leant out of the carriage to take the photo as we drew near.

We go through stunning landscapes with mountain chalets and cows in their alpine pastures.

The cows are very tiny, but we can just see them on the lower left 

and just above the chalets.

The mountain landscapes are impressive and beautiful.

Now we are high enough to see the lake below and the train tracks on the lower left.

There were still small patches of snow.

Amazing mountain formation jutting out with the lake below.

Just a little higher up

Higher still and we were higher than the clouds!

Lovely to see this little train go down the mountain as we sat in a restaurant at the top

to have our lunch.

This train is puffing up the last part and we'll be taking it to go down to Lake Brienz again.

Then we took the regular train back to Interlaken instead of the boat.

What a wonderful view greeted us in Interlaken of the beautiful Jungfrau Mountain,

This blog entry concludes the three lovely days we spent in this beautiful area

of the Bernese Oberland.

If you would like to read more about this area,

you can click on the link HERE