Roger's rock on wheels

roger_holland · July 17, 2026, 8:18am

Nooo Come on Rick @stitch … coincidence doesn’t exist , this weekend I saw for the 2nd time in my life (the 1st was 2 years ago for 10 seconds) and my wife for the first time a Queen Page butterfly (Papilio machaon )flying, and even here in the garden. I’ll ask if she can post a photo from the weekend, but well, they weren’t good… what a busy little creature… but present in my garden for almost 3 minutes…

And that caterpillar is really amazing to see.

Thanks for this Rick

and Michael too for dropping by @sequences

What a last 4 weeks and some months of not playing … haven’t played since the beginning of February (7 days with severe pain)… last week played 4 times briefly, 3 times in one day… without joint pain

Computer died a slow death, but because the misery was that it was still only 5.5 years old (850 euros), I didn’t want to give up yet, even though I get them really cheap through my wife’s work since she uses one at home from time to time… stupid me. So this is the first day with a new laptop… and I don’t like these kinds of changes, but some things are already better…

My mom had a car accident on the way to Italy 2 weeks ago, but after a few nights in Wiesbaden with a minor bad bruise, she’s back home (I almost could have been able to visit some of our forum friends there since Thomann also lives nearby )

And some more stuff …pffff

Oke for now just going to quietly read a bit, see that I’m a bit… ahem… behind.

First guitar playing now … Canon in D needs to get back in my head ( did not play it since my last post about it, but still I thought I would remember more of it ), after practicing for 3 days it’s shocking that I’m not even close to halfway there… working hard now with my lazy … love practising again

Greetings

AvalonJ · July 17, 2026, 10:13am

Rogier’s back! @roger_holland Helloooo

Sorry you haven’t been feeling great and things haven’t been going so well.
I hope your mum is ok and things improve soon

stitch · July 17, 2026, 1:32pm

Good to hear your back playing, hopefully you continue to be pain free. I’ve been getting acupuncture on my shoulder to relieve some tendon pain that won’t go away from a previous injury.
Good to hear your mom won’t seriously injured in the car.accident.

Looked up that Queen Page butterfly I’ve never seen one. They don’t like our cooler weather and this spring was really cold and rained a lot which is not normal here.
Europe is getting blasted buy heat and we’re were getting northern Scotland weather. So who knows what normal is going to be with this changing weather patterns.

sairfingers · July 17, 2026, 3:06pm

@stitch @roger_holland
Hi guys. My wife and I are in France again with the caravan. At the moment it’s 39C where we are, was 40C earlier this week . Dont know why you’re worried about getting Scottish weather Rick, apparently they’ve got a heat wave back home. It’s a very comfortable 20ish C.

Sorry to hear about your recent health issues Rogier and I hope things improve for you soon and you can get back strumming. Pleased your mum is ok.

stitch · July 17, 2026, 3:31pm

We had a very wet and cold spring and its just turned nice in the last few week. 27c yesterday same today and 30c on Saturday 25c for Sunday.

June is our wettest month with and average rain fall of around 112mm, this June we got 110mm in two days and it was cloudy and rainy most of the month. Lots of flooded farm fields the bright side is when the sun finally showed up everything grow supper fast. They are cutting hay already around where we live.

You’ll have to post some more picture

brianlarsen · July 17, 2026, 4:04pm

I had in mind to extend my AWOL spell till at least next week, and probably till the second half of August after our family holiday in France, but @stitch poked the sleeping dog and now all my old buddies are piling in, filling me with FOMO, as well as envy for the attention our lovely Dutch friend receives when absent
Welcome back, my friend
Caterpillars are my nemesis.
Here’s something to cheer you up

Prof_Thunder · July 18, 2026, 5:34am

@roger_holland @stitch

I didn’t know that there were butterfly fans on this forum!

I split my time between Switzerland and Vaucluse (Provence, France). In Provence we live in a butterfly hotspot (147 different butterfly species just in the valleys around our house) of which I’ve seen about 45 (although I’m not nerdy enough the make a list).

I made a small garden here in France with a very high plant diversity particularly with the aim of attracting different insects. So far we have had a lot of different butterfly species (I didn’t count them) visiting but the diversity of bees and wasps is incredible. I should start taking some photos as we have quite a number of rare species.

Always nice to see photos of animals snd plants.

TheMadman_tobyjenner · July 18, 2026, 11:04pm

39/40c in a caravan is surely a public health warning where are you this year young man ? We are finally back to mid 20s for a few days but still feels stonking. High 30s is just plain stupid for sure.

There’s no more normal only crazy !!

SteveL_G99 · July 18, 2026, 11:26pm

Rogier, happy to see that you are back to practicing guitar again. Sorry to hear about your health issues and what happened with your mom.

It is frustrating and a little painful learning something again like Canon in D after several months absence, Maybe you can gain a little Spacing Effect memory benefits from the time off

Silvia80 · July 19, 2026, 8:32am

I’m pretty sure it’ll happen…as it has happened to me lately, it took only a couple of sessions to find back an old tune in my ears and down my fingers. As Justin says it is really valuable practice to drag things from memory.

AvalonJ · July 19, 2026, 10:32am

Hey Rogier
I know this is kinda late , but I thought I’d share a couple of pictures of Bird of Paradise flower too
One from my yard

and one where I work

The colours in them aren’t quite as vibrant as they can sometimes be, but they’re still pretty
Hope you feel better soon

Gunhild · July 19, 2026, 1:02pm

Hello Rogier

Such a pleasure to find an update in your log.
I‘m very sorry to read about your health issues and your mum‘s accident and would like to wish both of you the very best.

Great that you enjoy practicing again, and I‘m sure that Canon in D will come back very soon.

Hopefully the butterflies in your garden can help and cheer you up a bit.
Just in case I‘m sending some more
… and a few of these little fellows

Wishing you the very best

Cheers
Gunhild

sairfingers · July 19, 2026, 3:31pm

Hi Toby. We are down near Poitiers this year. It was 40C last week and we just sat and did nothing! Too hot to cycle or walk anywhere. We went out in the car just for the sake of it to get the air conditioning on! Fortunately with a couple of fans on we could sleep at night so survived. Much more pleasant now, it’s high 20’s

Haven’t touched my travel guitar yet.

roger_holland · July 20, 2026, 6:36am

How great to find you all here! I’m about to make attempt number 2 to respond properly and dig up some photos from the past few days… Saturday morning I started typing full of good intentions, and after a seriously long story, the wifi went out, text gone Of course, I immediately thought the problem was on my end with a laptop that was less than 30 hours old… After a lot of frustration and ultimately relief, it turned out it was just a bunch of construction workers who, unfortunately, had destroyed the neighborhood internet cable behind our house… they started at 7 a.m. on a Saturday against the agreements and apparently they also couldn’t manage to stay fit for more than 2 hours…so before KPN ( provider(?)could fix it over the weekend, my girl took me outside, and today I’m starting fresh with renewed energy…

Oh, now first need to figure out how to get the photos from the phone onto this new computer here… definitely doesn’t happen automatically like on the old one,

Looks a little like this and and …

Greetings

(Edit: Apparently something has also changed with the phone for me to open my folders in the yellow icon called ‘Explorer’ ooo I hate/dislike very little, but all these changes with stuff like this are at the top )

roger_holland · July 21, 2026, 7:11am

Not exactly remembering what I just did to get photos on my phone to the point where i can put them here I will practice this a lot today and in the coming days…

curious if anyone reading this also exper iences a big (3 even at least) change when they plug their Android Samsung phone into their computer ?

So this is what we saw in the garden, well, grabbing a perfect photo from the internet looks better but this is obviously more fun

Swallowtail and in Dutch ‘Koninginnenpage’ …it doesn’t happen often that I find the Dutch name more fitting and beautiful than the English one, but this time it does

( After I thought I knew it, I still spent more than 15 minutes trying to get this little piece above with the photos here… good news for a lot you people is that I have a new translation machine …of course it works differently too, so I’ll soon be able to post weird sentences again, because I still type the long pieces in a translation machine, otherwise a sentence is totally impossible to figure out for non-English speakers i guess )

Jasmine @AvalonJ ,Just your name always puts a smile on my face…thank you for your words

This one is for you, a beautiful ‘Cornflower’ with some sun rays on it, standing in our garden among many herbs.

I started using herbs myself when the pain got unbearable and I feared I wouldn’t be able to play anymore, a small amount specially made by and for me and then getting through the day without the buzz, I believe you English speakers, if I remember all the old comedy TV series correctly, call that ‘oregano’.

Keep a close eye on those rubs, then you’ll see one of them soon… and there were at least 2 of them with you there now anyway

Yes, definitely blood-curdling hot, but this also has many benefits. Our oleander, over 2.5 meters tall, has never had so many flowers for so long. Bring it on.

and

I’m still waiting for the scorpions from the south, good tasty olives from my own tree, and Christmas in the sun like our Australian friends have… ‘after me the deluge’ Song I used a lot in this context “Dansen Op De Vulkaan” (Dancing on the Volcano)

Hi Gorden @sairfingers
So nice to see you here, I’ve been thinking a lot about you the past few days and when busy in the garden ,but more when trying to do something about my snail "problem " . I’m working on building my own very small greenhouse, and a few weeks ago I tried again to capture something on video about the slugs that I talked to you about a year ago or so (copper tape)… didn’t succeed again, I’m going to look up the YouTube video I once saw…

Home …home ??? Okay… apparently ‘HOME’ is where you keep most of your guitars

I wish you all an amazing time together and 1000+ more holidays

I want to thank everyone for the good wishes , things have been progressing in big leaps the past few days and especially the improvement I notice while playing guitar gives a lot of positive energy and literally renewed strength…I look up some more photos for proof

roger_holland · July 21, 2026, 8:35am

Hi Gordon @sairfingers and interrested, yeah when I put them in the back, there’s too little sun because of the huge growth of my own bushes and trees, and being so close to the house here, hence a cart (well, most people who come here find there are a lot of trees and bushes in a garden of 5.40 by 17.50 …tsssss )

I mixed 2 greenhouses together into a perfect little greenhouse… I also can’t wait to start my kitchen herbs early next year (March)

and with this happy news unfortunately also comes really bad news for our living pleasure here, for us and especially for where I sit all day with an amazing view, it’s going to change in a few days, then the ugly concrete blocks above my veranda/gate will start to come out of the bushes, 4 super tall houses (10.60 meters high) with a direct view into my room from 40 meters away…last days in paradise

Oh well… 11 years ago we could never have imagined or even dreamed of a house with a garden and a view like how it will look in a few weeks when it’s all finished… that’s the thought we comfort ourselves with now, and it even helps a little bit

Yesterdays shoot

And as I said, we went out early this weekend because of a forced (cable break), me with my renewed energy, 22 days away and one lap over slightly hilly terrain and not all paths paved, 2.5 kilometers… and one mega big lap (about 45 minutes) through a park in my own city, never been there before,
![IMG-20260720-WA0001|375x500, 50%]

Somewhere in Ermelo 2+ hours walkriding

but since then things have gone downhill fast with my wife.

And I also practiced some guitar outside

And all of this became a lot easier and much safer… especially when I go to the village here, my wife is much less worried… because last week I asked for and got new, bigger front wheels, it makes more than ‘a small difference,’ no more falling or nearly falling over a half-centimeter sticking-out stone… so keep that in mind if you have to deal with this here (even temporarily)… a bit more resistance from the front wheels but so much more secure on the street…

Cool shiny … well ,a little less allready

Big Wheels Keep on Turning

Greetings , take a tea and “see” you in moment

Ps: Brian @brianlarsen ,Can I already say here ( and post a pic) what you’ve been doing the past few months with making a new movie?

roger_holland · July 22, 2026, 5:36am

So ,I started something this morning before 6 o’clock , let’s see if I can get through all my backlog here and in the PM today

Started where I left off yesterday, with my way too long unspoken vriend Brian @brianlarsen , and I still had some questions or at least one a week or two, but for that I first need to dive into another area…for now, you didn’t answer my last question, does that mean a ‘Yes’? Or is that not polite nowadays? …

I thought it was a sweet post that stirred something in me .
a new song from you …nice that it ‘pops’ up like that because I’m constantly working from the bottom to the top, sometimes clicking on the suggestions at the bottom of the forum system, I’ll come across your song eventually, I’m looking forward to it …well, it better be good because I don’t want to deal with any more disappointments for now

O wait … Before I forget… Here’s a photo towards the window where I usually sit … nice just for fun and otherwise totally useless hydrangeas because in our cultivated varieties there’s little to no pollen at all… but they do look nice

An unusually dark day recently with very light drizzly rain, just like today …

Hi Ian @Prof_Thunder

Nice to read

??? What did you think then? That we would get together in the hot afternoon and crush butterflies together with our feet and hands?

Okay …you can also look at it differently because actually they’re just ‘Airborn worms’

Are you maybe looking for a son for adoption?? because then

No really! I can be really sweet, you know

I sometimes go to places where butterflies (or other creatures) are that I or we have never seen live before, but I don’t keep a list… back when I was fishing, I did note it in my book with species by the way… oh, so I am a nerd after all

still waiting … …

Hi Toby @TheMadman_tobyjenner

Very good to see you arround When I make a joke about my wife going downhill (on the cable car), I immediately think of you and others who have a partner things are really bad or difficult with… I realize very well that it’s always worse for the partner (in a healthy relationship), and so I’m glad that I’m on the good side… or something, or well, you know what I mean, but I just wanted to say this…

Says the Madman … so does the opposite work here for us regular people

You are right

Hi Steve @SteveL_G99

Thank you and i always liked it when I see something from you:grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

Yes, I’m really happy with it too… and that’s an understatement of my life. It’s still been two steps forward and one (sometimes three) back, but it’s fantastic to have played for half an hour yesterday and then again a little later in the day, and afterwards with some reasonably sensitive joints.

Unfortunately… maybe next time

Hi Silvia @Silvia80

This has never been a problem for me (more like too much/too often in my head)

Somewhere between ear and finger there’s a big ugly leak that should be patched up someday …

Hey Jasmine @AvalonJ … you again

nope, it’s really early, I started here before 8am …
It’s always time for such special flowers and plants to be shown , for me it’s still special to see that such plants just grow everywhere and nowhere in the ‘wild’ outside…super cool
And thank you , ~~ ~~ I give you 1 real … bad to see but all around it are bright blue spots, too bad it doesn’t pop like it does in real life…

and

Hi Gunhild @Gunhild
Thank you, and when I saw your post three days ago, I paid extra attention in the garden to take a nice photo of a ladybug or its larval stage, but it is astonishingly bad with these little creatures after a hopeful spring when there were quite a lot of them…

After almost half a year …wtfff not playing guitar, I’m still doing okay with some things… but that CanonD is tricky, but there’s now more than half of it in my walnut again, and if timing wasn’t important I’d play it again…

Today with great pleasure continuing to learn

They do

Yes thank you … you see I need those

I enjoy shopping at the supermarket… I recently even wrote a guided tour report about it… maybe I’ll take the trouble to post it here sometime, but first I have many other things to do,

Owww This is becoming more attractive every year… Nicole @JokuMuu
, any idea about renting out your house to sweaty Southerners in the summer?

Greetings all and have a lot of fun playing or otherwise

AvalonJ · July 22, 2026, 9:58am

Hi Rogier (me again )
Thank you for the photos! They are beautiful, I love the markings on the butterfly and the cornflower is gorgeous! What a great picture too, they’re all beautiful, and much better than random internet pictures.

Sorry to hear about the development that will block the view from your house! that’s very sad

But congratulations on your new wheels

sairfingers · July 22, 2026, 9:06pm

@roger_holland
Well I didn’t see any butterflies today but we spent the day with our grandkids at the Zooparc de Beauval. Wow, absolutely amazing an unforgettable experience.

roger_holland · July 23, 2026, 6:06am

Goodmorning (well, it is here now )

Thank you ,thank you and thank you Jasmine @AvalonJ

Ow Gordon @sairfingers what a fun stuff you all do and now also with the grandchildren here waiting until those big gray impressive wonderful animals start making Giraffes-satay sticks (bad thought roger bad thoughts)
Thank you for the pics

Greetings and have a great day … or evening