Tent

This afternoon, in the midst of winter, a butterfly came by on the balcony.

After a week of grey and wet weather, we had 4 days of blue sky without it being really cold. Since yesterday, the cold North wind is blowing hard and at night we have light frost.

Nothing to complain about compared to many parts of the world where nature disasters are chasing people from their homes.

Zakaria and I had a wonderful time in the garden, cleaning up dead leaves and getting rid of small weeds that came upon the surface together with the onions, garlic and peas.

He is either “helping” out or racing around on his bike. When he is helping out, I tell him about the bees and the insects that we come across and try to teach him the difference between the plants that have to stay and the ones that have to go. He always listens very carefully and some time later he will come back and tell me everything he processed. He is a good teacher, because he will not stop the lesson until I repeat correctly what he is trying to explain.

To my surprise, we have still campers coming by. Not many, but still… Most of them come with a house on wheels (campervan), a few are still sleeping in a tent. These are the camper fanatics. They don’t want to fly and avoid hotel rooms.

Here is a fine example : A middle aged Italian couple drove in 2 weeks ago announcing they were on a 2 weeks leave. They had driven 2 days from Italy to Syria, had 10 days to visit both Syria and Jordan and 2 days to drive back to Italy. They were sleeping in a small tent.

10 days later they were back with sparkling eyes, enthusiastic about what they had seen and experienced, although they had had a week of rain and frost at night in Damascus. They were very pleased to stay the night at our campsite again, in their small tent, and the next day they headed towards home after having reconfirmed that there is no way they would travel otherwise.