Trees along the river

Last Sunday was the Dusseldorf Marathon and, as I did last year, I helped out with the Irish Business Network's participation. So on Saturday I cooked pasta for 30 or so people and then on Sunday I helped a bit in setting up the tent, hung around all day and had a good time and then helped take everything down again and lug it all back up to the pub it came from. I thought I had posted these photos last year but it seems that I didn't so now I can just go ahead and post the two sets to show how different two years can be when it comes to weather and the growing season.

Last year, the weekend of the marathon was gorgeous, weatherwise. Sunny but not too hot, blue skies with not too many wispy white clouds and dry. This year, it rained. Well, it did clear up by lunchtime so that it was no longer raining but it remained grey and overcast (not that that stopped me getting a touch of sunburn). So this year, instead of this:

We had this:

I didn't think to look at last year's photos before going this year so I didn't get quite the same view but you can get the idea. The really big difference, though, is seeing how the long, cold winter in 2012/2013 influenced the growth of the trees compared to the very mild, nearly non-existent winter and early spring of 2013/2014. I had to zoom the camera in to nearly its full extent to capture a bit of green last year:

But this year? Whole other story.