Category: Autumn.

It will get colder they’re guessing.

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Two nice days in a row, yesterday started out sunny and it wasn’t until pretty late in the afternoon the rain arrived, today started with deep dark clouds and rain but later in the afternoon the sun showed itself. From no on they’re guessing that we’ll have sunshine all day long for a couple of days but the temperature will drop rather a lot.

So today I started to bring down the smaller citrus trees and the hardy hibiscus I have outside plus one little tree called Date-plum (Diospyrus lotus, a Persimmon relative). I bought it late in the season since it was for sale and affordable so I felt it was too late to try and plant it since this is on the border to what it can take climate-wise. I do hope that if any mouse would go down there that it doesn’t like to eat the little tree 🙂 🙂 🙂 I know they don’t like any kind of citrus so those will be safe. Then again the monsterkitten is a great mouse hunter and so far I haven’t heard any mice running inside the walls 🙂

The dogs and I went out to the bog yesterday morning so I could pick the mushrooms I found. It looks like I now days am the only one picking mushrooms so I don’t have to worry about anyone else taking them before me 🙂 I fried them with butter until all water had evaporated from the frying pan and then I tossed them in the freezer. I think we’ll be taking that road again tomorrow 🙂 After we had come home I got the idea that I should preserve apples in sugar syrup. It is easy to be honest if one has the right kind of apple, I didn’t 🙂 🙂 🙂 I can however tell You that I might have made the best applesauce I’ve ever tasted 🙂 🙂

After I had drained off most of the sugar syrup I poured it down in to jars, so do anyone know what one could do with lots of rather good tasting sugar syrup 🙂 🙂 🙂 I also baked a big loaf of bread with lots of cheese in it (at the same time I did the laundry) and I must say it is really tasty 🙂 Since I did so so much yesterday I’ve done almost nothing today (except for bringing down those trees to the cellar) , not even napped. I did however since the morning was so dull make some rice porridge,. It’s really a winter porridge but it sort of fitted to the mood both I and the dogs had.

Still getting strawberries but they don’t taste especially much now.
I need to clean the table for some cacti I have but otherwise it looks pretty good. I also have a new led-light ramp beside the old plant light ramp.
Soon I’ll also place five bigger citrus trees here (not so big nowadays since that frost we had early in spring) and a tea tree.

The only thing I still need to do today is to go out to the garden before letting the dogs out for the last time today to make sure there’s no badger out there 🙂 🙂 I have to do that until it gets so cold at night so the badgers decides to just sleep until it’s nice outside again 🙂 I’m just about to have my last cup of tea for the day and perhaps I’ll have a sandwich or two as well. I don’t have much in the fridge but I’ll always have cheese and milk, so tomorrow I’ll have a trip to the grocery store again, So many colds going around at the moment so I’ll drive away as early as possible.

Have a great day!

I sort of miss those days.

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I really like my birthday present I got from my eldest brother 🙂

A sort of meh weather today, mostly cloudy with the sun peeking through the clouds every now and again. It has been warm though so I really shouldn’t complain. Our morning walk was rather late today just because I hoped the sun would show itself more later in the day.

Instead I drove to the big grocery store in Falköping to get what I need for the weekend, nothing much really but cat food was a must 🙂  It’s not that I don’t have any at home but more because she demands the cheapest brand there is, for some reason she loves that wet food and who am I to complain that it is cheap 🙂 🙂 🙂 I had to stop at the grocery store in Gudhem on my way home because I had two parcels waiting to be picked up. The small one was a camera I’ve bought myself as a birthday present (Nikon D5200), nothing special with that camera more that I can turn the little screen at the back in almost any direction I want. So much easier to photograph something on the ground when I don’t have to lie down to get a nice photograph. I just turn have the camera close to the ground, turn the screen so that I can see what I’m photographing and take the photo 🙂

The blueberries are getting autumn colours.

The other parcel was more interesting, it was actually another camera that my eldest brother gave me as a birthday gift 🙂 It is the camera shown in the first photo 🙂 It is a TLR camera (for film) As You can see there are two lenses on the camera. The upper one is the one you look through and the lower one is the one taking the photo. A bit expensive as a gift but I would be an idiot if I didn’t accept it :-):-) 🙂 As You can see there’s also a second lens pair beside it and that’s a telephoto lens. not too common for these old cameras to have that. It weighs a ton so It is perhaps nothing one just hang over the shoulder when going out for a walk, the shoulder would be needed to be adjusted after that 🙂 🙂 🙂

This is a really nice mushroom to fry and perhaps make a stew. Or just fry them and put them on a sandwich with cheese and other things 🙂
This and the next ones are even better 🙂 I’ll think I’ll bring a bag so I can pick them all tomorrow on our morning walk 🙂
By the way, almost all photos today are taken with the “new” camera (I always buy second hand and when it is cheap 🙂 ). It takes a few days until we know each other well enough so I can get photos to look like I want them to look 🙂

It hasn’t rained today and the grass was surprisingly dry so after the walk I cut down those trunks from the plum trees, they really don’t look that big but they were so heavy that I almost wasn’t able to move them away 🙂 🙂 If I’ve been handy and known how to carve I would have had plenty to work with when they have dried up 🙂

I had to take this and the next photo through the kitchen door window so they look a bit off I’m afraid.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll also have an ice cream at the same time.There’s absolutely nothing to watch on tv tonight. I remember when I was a kid, You know back in the Stone Age, that Friday and Saturday night were family tv nights. When everyone in the family gathered in front of the tv, perhaps having sodas/coffee and something nice to eat. Not so any more and I sort of miss it even if it only be me and my dogs sitting there. The monster would perhaps join us but she would only sleep in the sofa anyway 🙂 🙂

I really hope we don’t get frost next week because this is the only squash (I think it is squash, have actually no idea because I used seeds I had saved from something I harvested years ago and can’t remember what it was, could be a pumpkin as well 🙂 🙂 ). The plants only gave male flowers until now.

Have a great day!

First sunshine, then rain and repeat all day.

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We had a beautiful sunrise today and I think that have might been the only beautiful thing happening today 🙂 🙂 The rest of the day we’ve been in and out of the cottage. The sun shone and we went out and suddenly rain arrived and we went indoors again 🙂 We’ve also had a strong wind blowing so even if we were outside while we could see the sun up there in the sky it still wasn’t especially nice.

I had hoped I cut take down the trunks of those plum trees but I really didn’t want to be caught outside with an electric chainsaw with a cord if it rained. So since most machines and tools I own is just the same I really couldn’t do much else either 🙂  So I have mostly, in between going in and out again, sort of half napped in front of the tv 🙂

Edible and really tasty mushroom.
Don’t eat, You’ll get really sick.

It won’t do much to You but they don’t taste a thing 🙂

I’m starting planning to bring down some plants down to the cool cellar already, mostly my Peruvian ground cherries, they have lots of small fruits but are far from being ripe and their relatives Tomatillos for the same reason. By the way I’ve never grown or eaten tomatillos but understand that they should be cooked, what do they taste like? 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m getting lots of them so it would be sad if the frost takes them before they are ripe.

Never ever eat this one!

Or this one, the Swedish name for it is forest salad or lettuce might be a better word. I doubt You’ll die but …

It’s time for that last cup of tea for the day and I think I’ll eat an ice cream cone with chocolate ice cream. They sell gluten free ones from the ice cream lorry so I bought a package yesterday 🙂

They are beautiful though!

Have a great day!

Just as it dried up it started to rain again :-)

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I have no idea why but today I slept until six thirty am. Just in time to see the sun rising. So the dogs had their breakfast and I a cup of coffee and out we went. Lots of birds tweeting, a few song swans flew by and we even saw a Roe deer. Alma behaved so good today that I was really surprised, we passed the new neighbours but soon to be moved away neighbours she actually didn’t scream or whine at all. Isn’t that nice, just as they will move she has become calm about them being here 🙂 🙂 🙂

Despite all the rain we’ve had lately I still continue to water the more dry sensitive and newly planted plants in the garden. One can see that the water has started to sink down in to the ground but only perhaps 30 cm (12 inches) ad that’s not enough. The sun kept on shining so I placed my garden shoes, meaning old shoes that no longer can be used while being out walking, to dry in the sunshine. They are full with soil and sand and now days constantly wet so my feet are packed in with that mud as soon as I have worn them 🙂 🙂 Suddenly we had two rather heavy showers passing by so now they’re more wet than before 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’ve been looking at my aquarium for a while now, I emptied it to one third oaf how much water it can hold because I worked evenings one week a month and had to have the dogs in the cottage because they bark at anything moving when it is dark outside. So after some thinking I said to my self why not making it to a sort of aquaterrarium? A third of water and two thirds of open air where one can plant small plants and so on. No I won’t have any replies or frogs in it just a sort of land part. So I checked the water quality and most parts were ok but not the nitrate levels, that means there’s too much waist after the fish I had and decaying plants.

So I think I have around 35 litres of water in it at the moment. So I thought I have plenty of rainwater now so why not use that? The water I have to drink has a lot of lime and most fish and plants don’t like that. I think I’ve changed over 60 litres (15.9 gallons US) and finally I can see the water getting a bit better 🙂 🙂  I really cleaned the sand while getting the water out but it is clear I have to do more 🙂  So now I know what I’ll do tomorrow 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and today I’ll have an ice cream as well. the ice cream lorry drove down on our road  for the first time this season, turns out the driver had been hit by a brick wall hitting one of his legs and had been on sick leave until now. The one replacing him never cared to come to us on my little gravel road. We are very pleased to see him again 🙂

Have a great day!

So much rain.

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Most of the plum tree is gone now. All I need now is a day or two with weather that dries up the ground so I can cut the rest with my chainsaw. After that I need to start thinking about what else can grow there instead 🙂

Lots of rain has been falling here today, from before I woke up until now at almost seven pm. I don’t mind the rain but it has stayed on the chilly side all the time.

One of four piles with twigs and branches from my two plum trees. I’ve started to cut them in smaller pieces so the wood chipper (compost grinder) will have an easier job.

I dug up the hardy hibiscus and thought the buds would fall off but here’s the flower. It was filled with petals before but now it looks like this to my great joy 🙂

So we haven’t done anything really, napped a short while and watched tv. All of us is a bit bored now because rain makes the dogs stay indoors  🙂 They only run out for a few minutes to do what they must and then indoors again.  Yesterday evening, around eight pm it was anything but boring here. I let the dogs outside and then Malkolm came running back to the front door and Alma started to bark.

One of the five pawpaw seedlings. If winter doesn’t kill it I’m afraid the dogs will 🙂 🙂 They run fast and wild when they play and don’t even see trees in their way 🙂 🙂

I walked around the cottage to see if I could find out what it was she barked at. She stared towards a bush and growled so I told her to go back indoors and I pointed my headlight towards the bush and there it was, a rather big badger hiding behind it. Poor thing, it must have been so scared. European badgers has a reputation of being aggressive and dangerous but that’s just nonsense. If they can they rather run away than have to meet dogs and humans.  The reason they are believed to be dangerous is because hunters. I think I also would become pretty aggressive if someone tossed down aggressive dogs in to my home and I too would attack the one doing it.

So tonight I’ll take a walk in the garden before I let out the dogs so it can be alone when it visits us. Badgers eat all those snails and slugs we hate plus a lot of other bugs and larvae we don’t want close to us. I think they also might eat apples from the ground and to me that’s positive since I have so many 🙂 It’s time for that last cup of tea and later tonight they show Elsbeth again 🙂

Have a great day!

Both fog and morning mist.

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The morning was really perfect today. It started with rather thick fog but moved in to morning mist when the sun rose just to turn back to fog when the rising fog made clouds so it blocked the sun again 🙂 Also chilly enough to even keep the moose flies calm. What made it even better was that Alma actually behaved almost the entire walk 🙂

The sun stayed until just after noon I think it was so I decided I would cut down the other plum tree as well, it never gives more than six or seven plums and always get hit by some kind of disease. I did de-bark in in early spring but it has stayed green all summer so I thought it best to do something about it. I know I now will have lots of root shoots but I’ll deal with them when they arrive. No thorns on this one thankfully 🙂 There was some damages on those other things living in that area but I think they’ll survive. It was where that plum tree is growing I had my old pond but since the ground now is filled with loads of roots I won’t be able to use it for that any more, I really don’t want to hire a digger to get those out 🙂 🙂

I also cut of the top of the thorny wild plum, the strong wind we’ve had today helped me to bring it down 🙂 I really don’t like cutting dow my trees but there are other trees I can plant there next year instead.  As long as I keep fertilise the ground all summer, for quite a lot of years, because there will be nothing left when it comes to nutritions for another tree and it can’t be another tree in the same family since diseases easily can stay in the ground and attack the new tree.  It didn’t take long after that when the rain arrived. Mostly a nice autumn rain but also a couple of heavy showers.

The sun came back after five so I planted the two remaining pawpaw seedlings just behind the Laburnum. It has been very dry there for quite some time but I’ve thinned out the branches a lot so now when it rains it actually reach the ground as well. So cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs so they survive the coming winter, all five of them 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that I’ll watch a science program on tv. I think I’ll actually have some ice cream with that tea, orange ice cream with chocolate strings in it 🙂

Have a great day!

Thunder and rain.

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The morning started out much the same as they have been lately, a bit chilly and sunny. We walked out to the bog even though the grass was pretty wet with dew. No ticks on us today but I had to kill quite a lot of moose flies instead. I had hoped it would be a bit too cool for those flies but unfortunately not.

I hadn’t planned to do much in the garden today, just watering the dry sensitive plants I’ve kept on watering all summer and those I’ve just planted but found a few dead branches in the big apple tree that I used the new saw to remove. I also trimmed the Golden rain, Laburnum, and then I got the idea to start cutting down the wild plum tree. Its branches are full with big thorns and I have been a bit worried that those would injure us badly if one of those branches hit us so I had to plan every branch I would cut down so it wouldn’t fall the wrong way.

It almost went as I had planned except for one big branch that fell down over the strawberries and rhubarbs. No big damage but it made me even more careful with the rest of the branches. I guess it was just before 1 pm and I only had the top left to cut off when the thunder and rain arrived. So at the moment I have a rather long and thin and very thorny tree standing there looking really sad 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll use the chain saw to remove the rest as soon as the grass dries up.

I also planted the last Perennials I had in pots, well I hope they were but one never knows what is hidden in the flowerbed close to the entrance because there are so many self sown flowers there now that they can be hiding some pots I’ve forgotten about 🙂 🙂 🙂  So now all I have to dig down are two pawpaw seedlings and two quince trees, I think I know where the pawpaws will go but still can’t figure out where I should plant the quinces, I’m not even sure if they will survive the winter here.

It is still raining here, it’s so much that it looks like they have fog on the other side of the village, we need it so I’ll not complain. We might get a foggy morning and then towards the evening we might get more rain. In between we even might get some sunshine. I have that last cup of tea by my side and at the moment I’m waiting for the loaf of bread in the oven to get ready and so do the dogs 🙂 They always get a piece with cheese on it when the bread still is warm 🙂

Have a great day!

I’ve started to use those wood chips I’ve made.

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I was expecting a sunny morning and I hoped for morning mist again. We had sunshine but the mist wasn’t here but closer to the mountain.  It was a bit chilly when we walked down to the creek and my shoes got drenched in the morning dew and Malkolm who always wants to walk in the grass and follow tracks was even worse 🙂 He had no ticks walking around on him though so that was a good thing 🙂

Lots of small birds tweeting and Jays arguing but there were now bigger animals around. Once I saw a pure white wild hog and I have to admit that it was really beautiful. I didn’t manage to get a photo of it and have always hoped to see another one. Turns out that they are quite common, perhaps not pure white but with spot or markings of other colours on them. Since we don’t have white moose in this area I really think I deserve to see a white wild hog again 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’ve put up the new LED light ramp in the cellar so this morning I started to clean up down there. Lots of soil and sea leafs and twigs on that floor so it took its time. I knew that the monster pooped down there when she had sucked in when I didn’t notice it and therefore locked her in for hours sometimes 🙂 I did however not know how much until I had that light put up, on the plus side though is that I didn’t find any moose droppings which I see as positive 🙂 🙂 🙂

I took some photos to show what my garden looks like at the moment. This shows the south side east corner.
South side western corner.
North side towards east where the cottage stands.
North side towards west.
And the north side towards west corner where my Pawpaws grows.

Lots of smaller lorries have been driving up and down to where the latest neighbours live, looks like they’re moving out today. Too bad I liked them but I fully understand them, the owner of the place is just too greedy. So now we’re waiting for new tenants or perhaps someone from a big city buys it, they usually have no idea. what places like that costs here, anything is cheaper here than I the big cities. I’m not even sure if they could buy a two bedroom apartment in a big city for what they want for this place but it is still too much. Lets hope that who ever comes here are just as nice as the ones moving out.

This is one the other side of the cottage, the northern side looking towards west.
And this is the opposite side towards east. Big and thorny roses on both sides of the entrance 🙂

I’vedecided to plant those five Pawpaw seedlings I have, I can’t trust the cat wanting to go down in to the cellar so I think it is best that they’ll stay outside and I’ll cover them as good as I can instead. The biggest threat to their lives are the dogs running around playing with each other 🙂 🙂 So I’ve put up sticks so the dogs can avoid running in to them. Oddly enough the dogs actually tends to avoid those sticks but can happily run in to smaller trees so hard that they break them 🙂 🙂  According to our folklore the winter will be harsh if the Rowan trees have lots of berries, this year they have almost no berries so it should be warm, almost hot here 🙂 🙂 🙂 Unfortunately it doesn’t show anything more that if they have lots of berries the spring was absolutely perfect for them.

I’ve started to fill up the area around the English walnut with the wood chipping I made from what I’ve been cutting down. The layer is around 20 cm (eight inches) thick. Just remember when using fresh chips they will when slowly decaying steal a lot of nitrogen from the ground. No bigger problem with a walnut though since they have taproots.
The Pawpaws are small and while living in a pot they were eaten by slugs. So far I’ve never seen a slug in this part of the garden, there’s just too little to eat for them I guess.

It is time for that last cup of tea and perhaps a bowl with corn flakes.  Nothing on tv at all so I have no idea what to do for the rest of the evening 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Now I can see the mess :-)

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We were supposed to have rain all day today, not much though, so I’m not the least surprised that we until 5:50 pm had sunshine all day long 🙂 A strong wind has been blowing and that kept the flies away and it has been warm as well. 

I didn’t look outside the window when we went up this morning and since I do have a rather high lilac hedge around big parts of the cottage I missed that we had morning mist. I did notice it before it evaporated though so there was still some left when we had our morning walk. A walk in a sunny, misty and cool morning is better than most things in life to be honest. Small birds were flying around everywhere, Jays argued somewhere in the tree tops and I could hear some animals trotting away from us.

The ground is drying up again so I still need to water the most vulnerable trees and perennials and I do that either just before we’re out on our walk or just after. Today I once again had to pick up a parcel, this time it was a LED light bar. The old fluorescent lamp I have down there is long gone, I’m not even sure if one can get parts to it any more. During winter I always have plant lights on but now one of those broke as well. I’ve put the new one up and almost regretted it because now I can see the mess 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll need to clean it all up before I start taking down the trees I must have indoors during winter.

I haven’t done much after that, we did take a long nap though but I’m not sure that can count as doing something 🙂 🙂 🙂 Isn’t it strange that the phone can be quiet all day but as soon one is falling asleep the entire world wants to reach You 🙂 🙂 🙂 and then as soon as the nap is over the phone gets quiet again 🙂 🙂 🙂 Mostly it’s telemarketers so I’m happy to say that they now are discussing a new law that forbids telemarketers to call privet persons unless we specifically have allowed them to 🙂 This is a law I’m really looking forward to!

The Dahlias I sowed had only bright yellow flowers in the beginning.

Then some showed some orange as well.

Yesterday morning I found this bud.

 

And today it opened up bright red 🙂 Dahlias are supposed to have migraine-inducing colours according to my taste so this one I like 🙂

I is time for that last cup of tea for the day. To be honest I think I could drink an entire pot without having problems to fall asleep because I’m still just as tired as I was before the nap. 🙂

Have a great day!

One more nice day tomorrow, after that the rain comes.

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Sunshine again this morning but it didn’t last for long, a meh fog arrived and after that it stayed cloudy for quite some time. It wasn’t really until late afternoon we had sunshine again but it was at least warm and nice.

So the kitchen door has stayed open most of the day and if I’ve said that we haven’t had especially many wasps (Yellowjackets) here I changed my view about that today. This is the time of year the new queens have left the nest and the workers therefore has nothing to do. That makes them confused and pretty angry and it doesn’t get better when they’ve eaten fermented apples on the ground. They can be pretty nasty and attack without any reason at all. This is the only time in the year I kill them if they start to be nasty towards me. They do so much good all summer but now they have no purpose since the queens are gone.

Since I hadn’t planned to do anything special today I finally used the chain saw. As I’ve mentioned earlier grape elder wood aren’t good for much after they’ve been cut down, not even in life the wood is especially tough, so even though they were quite thick it just too 15 seconds to cut those stumps off. I did go out on the net to see if it can be used to anything and it did say one could use it as fire wood but it wasn’t recommended since the wood (the entire plant actually) is poisonous.

The bog is yellow now, autumn is here.

Besides that I really haven’t done much today. I’ve planted one of the quince seedlings, there was sort of a space vacant when I had cut down the grape elder. Well I cut down two grape elders to be honest and should therefore be able to plant one more but the other one grew beside the huge rose I still am cutting down and also there grows an English walnut not far fro it so in the long run, if the walnut keeps on surviving it will be too much shade there. My black walnut on the other side of the garden is now higher than the cottage and grows way too close to it. I never thought it would survive here but oh how wrong I was 🙂 🙂 I will have to cut off the branches that soon will be long enough to slam hard on the roof when it is windy.

It will be nice weather tomorrow again but after that they say it will go downhill, lots of rain and lower temperatures. I really don’t need to go to the supermarket yet but if I go on Saturday as I’ve planned it will be a bit nasty weather to drive in. On the other side I’m waiting for a parcel with a LED light bar that I need to have down in the cool cellar and it might arrive tomorrow but on the opposite way to the supermarket 🙂 🙂 Well the lighter can wait until the weather gets a bit nicer again 🙂 I’m sitting here with my last cup of tea for the day and today I’ll watch Elsbeth on tv 🙂

My little meadow is still full of flowers.

My Black walnut. I wish that I had planted it just a meter (much the same as a yard) to the right but I guess in the long run that wouldn’t have helped anyway 🙂

Have a great day!

I’ve been working hard today :-)

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A rather grumpy little monster 🙂 She wanted to go outside but we weren’t at home. I don’t know how she does it but she managed to pass the mosquito net that is put up on the inside without breaking it 🙂

Another really nice day here. It started grey and dull though but still rather warm and no wind. I didn’t feel like doing much at the beginning but then the clouds left and the sun reached us so I thought that I really couldn’t sit indoors all day doing nothing, so instead I went outside and started to prune the last apple tree, the one I once sowed and that gives delicious apples. The problem is that most of the apples get bad already on the tree.

To keep potted plants low they tend to use hormones that stop them growing and this fuchsia is an example of that. It hasn’t grown all summer and almost no new growth of the roots either. These plants usually die after a short while unless one wash out all soil and replace them with new. Sometimes that’s not enough either.

It is the same with this coneflower but this one is also quite often run over by the dogs and that doesn’t help 🙂 🙂

Already from the beginning I shaped it as a fan, You know those we hold in our hands and not the electric ones 🙂 🙂 The reason I did this was because it is planted just beside the fence so half of it would be growing out in the cow pasture and most likely be eaten on by the cows. The problem is that I had done very little with it for a few years now so it was so dense that no air really could reach the apples growing behind the leafs and therefore were much easier hit by fungus.

My fan shaped apple tree. This should help a lot with fungus attacks.

Before I started to cut down the grape elder so now it’s much brighter under the big apple tree.

Lots of air and light will have a chance to get down to the ground under the summer apple tree.

and I hope that will benefit my Pawpaw trees.

I went against all the recommendations I have when it comes to pruning apple trees (or any trees for that matter). Normally I say that when pruning apple trees only cut of a third of what You really want to cut and do it in autumn, preferable when the tree is about to lose its leafs. I The tree is then preparing to slow down and really doesn’t care about losing the leafs because it would anyway. By doing this it will not grow as many new branches as it would if You prune it in spring. The next year take half of what is left for the same reason and the third year the rest. After that there’s really not much to cut away. Today however it felt like I cut away half the tree 🙂 🙂 I realised that some branches now were so big that I would get a much harder job next year if I only took a third of what I wanted but I did at least do the job now when it is autumn 🙂 🙂

The Kankakee mallow is really high now 🙂 Taller than I am as well 🙂 I still have a few potted ones that needs to be planted before it gets too cold.

I do hope the frost will wait a long time because if it does I might have ripe tomatillos 🙂

After that I collected all of what I had cut off from all the trees and started up the compost grinder. This took almost half a day to do but it was well worth it. Now there’s lot of open space in and under the trees so air (well wind) can dry up the air as much as possible and funguses get harder to destroy so much fruit. I also cut down the grape elder bush that are the fence just under the biggest apple tree. There’s still much of the trunk left but I’ll take that with the chain saw later on. It has been fighting for space with a Japanese climbing rose and none of them would give up, The rose has also been prunes by the cows in the pasture outside for a long time 🙂 🙂  I’ll cut it dow as well and then let it grow back up again. I’ll try to keep it low though because it isn’t called climbing rose for nothing 🙂 🙂 It has one advantage though, it has almost no thorns 🙂

They are guessing we’ll have the same kind of weather for a few more days and then it will be cooler and I guess autumn will get a grip on us. Not looking forward to it but then again back in the days today had most likely been the day when we had our first frost. It always happened around September sixth. Normally I liked that because that killed off the last annoying flies but since we almost have none of those (still lots of other flies but they really don’t care about annoying either humans nor animals) I think frost can wait for a month or so to arrive 🙂 On another note, today they had the annual dachshund parade in our capital and 900 had said they would be there 🙂 Also the heavy rains we were supposed to have happened further north. Roads have been flushed away, a train derailed and people were warned no to drive anywhere. So I guess I really shouldn’t be annoyed over the fact it didn’t fall here 🙂

Have a great day!

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Morning mist again this morning but we came out a bit late so it wasn’t much left when we had our morning walk. Still the one still left was rather nice. 

 

The rain prediction they first guessed should fall today were changed to showers and then changed to just cloudy so I wasn’t surprised that we mostly have had sunshine today with the occasional cloud passing in front of the sun. It has been rather warm as well so I did some sawing in the old apple trees. I bought one of those on a long stick so I could cut off dead branches higher up in the trees, Now I realise that I should have bought one of those telescope sticks because there’s lot of dead branches pretty high up in the trees. 

I also by mistake cut of a big branch that still was alive but to be honest it opened up the tree a lot so now air will flow more easily through the tree and hopefully it will keep apples from rotting and perhaps it will help to keep the different fungi infections the trees can get since they’ll dry up faster after rain and high humidity. There are still lots I can cut off and I do have the time to do it without feeling stressed about it, I’ll have lots of tea and coffee breaks that is 🙂 

The paper shredder has arrived at the grocery store in Gudhem but I’m waiting for another parcel coming via another shipping company to the same grocery store. I don’t know when it arrives though otherwise I would get it at the same time, I really don’t like to drive around unnecessarily even though it just a ten minute drive away. So I guess I’ll pick it up on Monday when I’m going to a bigger grocery store anyway and pick it up on my way home. You might think that I should buy my groceries in the smaller one but they don’t have especially much to be honest, I will however buy more ice cream there to make sure it doesn’t melt on the way home 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I think I’ll have the last of the ice cream I bought the other day. Also it is time to give the dogs their dinner as well. My headlamp is now charged so if we need to get up in the middle of night to do our businesses I’ll go outside first to check so there isn’t any badger walking around there again 🙂 🙂

The Jerusalem artichoke, a perennial sunflower, already flowers, almost a month early.

Have a great day!

Another perennial sunflower, they are quite popular amongst pollinators.
They needed to have a long rest after my hard work with the apple trees 🙂