The German's love their Gardens

Last week, we had some of the best weather here in Kassel. The sun was shining, it was about 75 degrees and I could not get enough of it. We decided that we couldn't pass up the beautiful skies and went for a walk in our local community gardens. These little paradise gardens (called "Kleingartens" in German) allow people to escape from their asphalt front drive or their third story apartment (wish we had a plot in a garden!) and give them a piece of land to grow beautiful flowers and vegetables. Just about every patch also has a small building for gardening supplies and some even come stocked with lawn chairs and kiddie pools.


They make for the perfect escape from city-living.Everything was perfectly in its place in each plot. Green thumbs are apparently abundant here in Germany, so it was nice to enjoy all the lush landscaping. We had a great time just wondering through the maze of gardens.




There were pumpkins as big as three heads everywhere! I think there must be some kind of chemical in the ground water because everything was at least twice as big as you would normally see. Maybe its just the combination of the right temperature, good soil, and lots of German TLC....nah, there has got to be something in the ground :)




I made him stand next to the sunflowers to get an idea of how big they really were...they were huge! He really wasn't as unenthusiastic as he looks. Oh, and every single man we saw there had his shirt off, so of course Alex couldn't stand out....Although all the other men were about 65 years old and working hard on their plots in the hot sun.




The best part about the Kleingartens is that each one of them have a Bierstübe, which are little beer gardens. Unfortunately our little Bierstübe (literally means a beer lounge or room) was closed. But, they have live music every Saturday, I believe, so we might have to come back for a cold one then.



Who could resist a giant zip-line swing?! Not us. We climbed up and zipped down and thankfully didn't get kicked out of the garden for being way to old to be doing such childish things. It was too much fun :)