The warmer weather is really nice now and almost all snow and ice are gone, except for where my gate is 🙂 The water level is much lower today but it is still a bit tricky to pass and at the same time trying to avoid getting soaking wet shoes 🙂 🙂 Everything gets muddy as well but I rather take that and the floor mopping than getting back to cold again 🙂

The first Crane has been spotted at the lake 🙂 One week later than last year. Normally we’ll have at least one snow storm passing by after it has arrived but I hope it will take a couple of weeks before it does 🙂 I haven’t seen it but I did hear the first goose honking so that’s almost as good 🙂 We walked down to the creek and followed it up-stream for a while. I could see that the dogs felt uncomfortable as soon as we walked in on that road but couldn’t see anything at all. We walked it half way up and then turned back home, I guess the wolves might be close again.

I have had all my bigger citrus trees in the cool cellar like every winter and this year I had all small ones by the windows in the cottage. All small trees is now infected with scale insects so I have been cleaning most of them up with scraping off the scales and then wash them with soap water. The scale insects will most likely not be stopped by that but it will at least give them a hard time coming back. I took a look at the bigger ones in the cellar and they do have a few of them as well but the cold air down there keeps them pretty inactive, at least until I can go through those as well.

I was at the supermarket yesterday and on my way home I went to a sort of garden center, They mostly have potted plants but also a tiny surface outside the store with outdoor plants. They also have big bags of different soils and I wanted a big bag with peat. I’ll sow some rhododendrons this year and it is easiest to do it in pure peat. To be honest the rhododendron varieties are  actually one of the easiest to sow and get small plants from, the difficult part is to keep them alive until they are big enough to stay outside 🙂 🙂 Not dry, not wet, no sunshine but also not too dark and if the air around them is too dry it will not matter what You do, they will die 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is much easier when they are a few centimetres (an inch) high.

It is time to make a pot with tea. I had forgotten that the ice cream lorry is coming on Fridays now so I was pleasantly surprise when he started the jingle outside my gate 🙂 🙂 I think I’ll have some ice cream with that tea 🙂

Have a great day!