A day off...

It was about time.
So I decided to take a day off...

All preparations made:
Tell boss you need a day off.
Drive hubby to the station to make a business trip for several days abroad.
Set son on the way to go to school.
Skies are blue and the sun is shining.
Off we go!

I drove off to pick up my best female friend Anke to spend a wonderful morning in the old town of Seligenstadt (sorry, Link is only in German). We had breakfast in a nice little café at the market place. It was gorgeous! I wonder why we don't do that more often?

Then, we strolled over to the basilica. It was built by Einhard, chancellor to Charlemagne, starting in the year 830; it is said that the relics of two Roman martyrs, Marcellinus und Petrus, repose in a shrine at the main altar.
It was a monastery to the benedictines until the 19th century.
The basilica was rebuilt in the 11th and 14th century; this is what it looks like today.

There are a lot of statues in the garden; and there's a huge wonderful herb garden we longed to see, as we are both interested in herbal lore and simply love the fragrances...

As you may have spotted in the first picture, the garden also contains roses (and fruits, there are a lot of old sorts of apples and pears growing there)...


This is the actual colour of the rose. It's fragrance is superb... Sweet, the essence of any rose that ever bloomed... Aaaah...
What a bless they wrote the names of the roses (as well as of the herbs and fruits) on signs near the plants. Gotta have that rose.

Its like a bush on a single stem, looks like a little rose tree. What's that called in English? Anyone?

And they have figs and oranges, lemons and olives, too...

And this should be a kind of sorrel, it looks so weird but beautiful with it's colours...

An olive tree...

And everywhere, there were such lovely sights to see, from within the area of the basilica, and from outside in...

When we were still within the area, we spotted this idyll...
...like a peasant's garden, except for the statues...

Actually, there were not peasants living here, but... (can you see them?)

Some sparrows hid between the sandstone folds of the statue:

And all of this before noon! It was a wonderful morning, worth a whole day of recreation!

---

After I had seen Anke home I wondered what to do with the rest of my day?

I spent quite some money at Ikea, rummaging their accessories...
To buy some folding chairs and fitting cushions to invite my theatre friends on Thursday (it was quite chaotic when everyone came in last time). A plant. A cushion for the sofa. Some fabrics for pillowcases (I was quite amazed at the low prices for remnants). Glasses. Candles.
Yeah, the usual stuff... no regrets, no guilty conscience. It was meant to be ;-)

At home, the housework yelled at me.
I ignored it. Shut up, yo, I've got a day off, see?!
Aaaah, that's good! The yelling stopped instantaneously. Haha!

Shaking off my sense of duty.
Being myself again.
THIS is what I call my re-creation.
(Wanna do it all over and over and over again...).