I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope it rains.

This morning A and I spent a few hours at her best friend's house, and while the girls ran around the apartment keeping each other gloriously busy and happy, I got to talk with L's father. And have coffee. There is very little not to love about your 3 year old kid having a best friend, when the friend's parents are also good fun to hang out with.

I told L's father about our balcony garden that I've been slowly buying plants and pots for. Lots of toddler parents have the same first goal for their balconies - kid-proof the railings. Mine is a 15 foot long stretch of what could be a seating space for guests, edged with a tiny, 10" high rod, and then 6 stories of empty space down to the hard concrete. Not good for kids, dogs, or even slightly physically uncoordinated guests. So there are now 10 plastic IKEA pots up there, filled with soil, low and wide, and really not going anywhere soon.

There is, however, no faucet on the balcony.

This means that when I went to fill the pots with dehydrated IKEA soil, I had to make 50 trips to the kitchen faucet and back. This doesn't bode well for the trees and bushes I'm hoping to put in soon.

Sure, the roof of the balcony is open, and that will water things when it rains (except, actually, those 10 IKEA pots which have a overhang above them which just manages to keep the water out of them. Great.

And my experiment in harvesting water was a good reminder that it is all about surface area. Put a small garbage can out on your balcony and if it rains 3cm, you get about 2 cups of water at the end of the day. I need to collect rain from more of the balcony area. But how? The roof doesn't leak into our balcony - and it really should if the the architects weren't going to put in a tap. Upside-down umbrellas over buckets, with a hold poked in the middle to funnel the water? Kind of clunky.

Which is when it hit me - a table that is slightly concave, that funnels water into a middle column or pot. And chairs or ottomans that also do that. Fill the seating and eating space with furniture that harvests rainwater! I was going to be rich. Or at least well known in the eco-community.

But it is times like this I've learned that if I've thought of it, so has someone else. Turns out, not too many people, though. And there is still room to make it look different.

The not so sunny Italian part of Switzerland

Never mind that, though. It was different. A getaway. A chance to sleep and eat somewhere other than Zurich, which meant I didn't constantly see things that still needed to be finished in the apartment, or laundry, or dishes, or mail. We had another spectacular meal at Il Tartufo, with N and L (and A) who came with us to Locarno. In essence, it was a meal catered by a private chef for us. In a cozy little restaurant with a fireplace and space for the girls to play on the floor. We were the only ones there. It was very very nice.

And the babies had a great time chasing each other in the great apartment we found at a B&B on the hill near the monastery. We went on a boat ride to the other side of the lake where pretty much nothing was open and it was also chilly and damp. Baby A went back to crawling part time in order to chase the other Baby A around the kitchen table and down the hallways. They even learned to actually play together on something a few times. Not just near each other or stealing each others' toys.

Finally, there is a huge round loaf of Ticino bread in our kitchen waiting for us for breakfast, from the bakery near the train station. And a new app for buying train tickets, sitting on my phone. The conductor scanned the barcode on my phone screen. Crazy technology. And some moments of sunlight on the train trip home through the snowy alps.