Palm Sunday and start of daylight saving time

It's Palm Sunday today, and Easter begins. We have a big Easter lunch party today, and we have a ten day holiday before us - not that we will be going away to any exotic locations, we will slave away in our garden, spring clean a bit indoors and air out everything.

The best thing today: Daylight saving time starts, yaay! And most Danes wake up, trying to remember the clever little rule about the garden furniture (it's hard to translate, but it is this little memorizing trick: when spring comes, you move the garden furniture 'forwards', from the garden shed. Just like the clock - see? And in Autumn you move the furniture back. I find it totally smart, before I learned that little trick my mind was always at a loss).

I love palms. I have have yet to visit Los Angeles, but to me, these palm lined boulevards are so iconic. I have seen palms here and there, and the way they silhouette against the sky is so beautiful, and plays so well with all kinds of architecture. The wonderful sensation of picking up fresh coconuts from the sidewalk (as we did in Miami) and fallen leaves as big as yourself. It is just magic, to this Scandinavian, anyway!

Here are some black and white versions (to illustrate the my point about the silhouettes better) of palms in Marrakech (top), Addis Abeba (middle) and Miami. Addis Abeba is actually much more about eucalyptus trees, but the street we stayed in, had these lush gardens behind all kinds of ramshackle fences, and the graceful palms sort of hovered over all the dense greenery. In Marrakech, as in Miami, palms are just everywhere, and the great thing is when you see the whole, slender trunk. In the image beneath taken in front of the Koutoubia Mosque, they are painted white at the base, so pretty.

Everytime I see this book from Taschen (Taschen always make me wish I had endless book shelves, funds and hours of leisure), I think about getting it. It's a bit pricey, and having an extremely nerdy book of botanical illustrations of palms is not my highest priority, but I will probably end up giving in to it, some day.

The last image is my son running towards a pink sunset on what almost looks like a beach in paradise. It was actually in Key Largo, and not paradise at all, but when you faced the ocean and the little palm grove, it was glorious. 

Here's to longer, sunnier days!