Category: Chilly.

August was a shitty month but today it’s September.

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Yesterday morning. Today there will be a mix of photos from today and yesterday.

I’m sorry about not writing anything these last days but I’ve been a bit under the weather so to speak. No not in pain the medication really did its job but they also gave me a slight fever and a very wobbly stomach. I’ve been so tired that beside walks with my dogs I’v mostly been either napping or watching tv. So since I can’t have this anti inflammatory medicine I’m not sure there is any left that I can use, August has really been a shitty month this year 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Today however is September and it started sunny with only 2C (35,6F) outside. I must admit that I loved it when we were out walking in the village. It was a bit tricky to figure out what clothes one should wear since it would be really cold in the shadows but as soon as the sun hit it would start to boil inside. Very little shadow when walking there so I just wore a hoodie and normal trousers. I’m glad that I decided to close all windows yesterday because that night it was just slightly warmer and I woke up freezing in the middle of night. I really didn’t want to get up to close all windows so instead I called for the dogs so they could warm me up 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

They’re guessing that it’ll be really warm the coming week and so high temperatures at night that the risk of frost will be zero percent. Some places in this area did have frost during the night but for once it didn’t happen here, I sure hope it takes a long while because only two of my tomatoes are half ripe, the rest are still green. I also hope that I get them before the dogs do because I already had two ripe tomatoes but one morning when I went out to get them most of them were eaten by the dogs 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I’ve also started to cut down my Aronia bush, I really can’t stand the berries (the dogs and birds love them though) because too many berries and a couple of winters with lots of snow have bent down the branches so much that they were laying on the ground. It was a bit tricky to remove each branch because they were all entwined with each other. I still have some to cut off but there’s no hurry to do that. It will grow up again so already next summer it will become a new little bush. However I was thinking of planting one of my Red mulberry trees there, if it grows fast enough it will soon be higher than the Aronia and I hope they’ll co exists well together.

At least two different varieties of apples hanging on this apple tree.

   

It is time to make some dinner, I haven’t had that much of an appetite lately 🙂 but I think I can have some pancakes, if not I can have them as dinner at work tomorrow. Just bring some jam and since they are just as tasty cold as warm it’ll be fine 🙂

The biggest of my five seed sown Giant Sequoias, they’ll spend the winter in the cool cellar.
I do hope the flowers open up on this Butterfly bush before the frost comes, won’t be many butterflies around though.
The white flowers on the Woodland tobacco really shines when it’s getting dark around it and the smell is amazing.
My Christmas cactus loves staying outdoors all summer.

Have a great day!

       

I didn’t expect that after 17 in the same work place.

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I’ve been a bit distant lately and that’s because after working for 17 years at my work place I’ll have to quit my job. Not because I’ve done something wrong in any way but because my employer decided that I should start working four days a week (Monday till Thursday) from 4:25 pm to 03:00 am the next day. I told them I can’t do that for several reasons, I normally sleep from 9 pm to around 4:am and can’t just change my sleeping habits like that. They did this to me last autumn and I still have problems from that. I also can’t have my dogs in the dog yard because they bark like crazy as soon as any animal passes by.

     

The badger walks along my garden every night now days, deer pass by, our fox comes for visits and not forgetting all the cats that live here. If they bark they’ll wake up my neighbors and both the adults and the kids need their sleep and it’s illegal to have the dogs locked up in the cottage for so many hours without contact with humans plus I would have to clean up the entire cottage every morning when i come home every morning because they do need to do their business and I can’t let them out to do it. Unfortunately employers here can treat their employees just as bad as they want to without the union doing anything when it comes to at least my union.

     

If I come to work in the morning instead to work I won’t be paid and if I don’t come in the afternoon when they say I must work I will be charged (is that the right word?) with unauthorized absence and when that has happened too many times I’ll be charged with refusal to work and then they’ll fire me and I will never be able to find a new job with that hanging over me. So my last day will be on September 16, the day after I’ve had my sixtieth birthday. Anyway this is all I really can write about it now because I will still work there for a few more weeks. I must admit though that I’m feeling just fine, no worries at all and since I’m willing to take any job as long as I don’t have to work at night I’m pretty sure I’ll find a new job fairly quick, I at least hope so 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

The rain has poured down here today so for the first time in a long time I didn’t have to water anything when I came home after work 🙂 The Ice cream lorry passed by but since I now need to keep an eye on my finances I never went out to buy any ice cream, it felt a bit sad but better start now than when it is too late. On the other side I now I have two more Red mulberry trees 🙂 🙂 🙂 To my defence I bought those before I knew about this 🙂 🙂 🙂 These two will stay in my cool cellar during winter and then I’ll find a place for them in the garden next spring 🙂 The one I already have will be planted this weekend I think, I wonder where 🙂 🙂

The Rowan trees gives loads of berries this year. One can make the most delicious jelly from them even though the berries themselves are pretty tart.

This is a Jerusalem artichoke called Bianca. Normally it starts to flower at the end of September so it’s around a month early. I guess it’s because we had that long heatwave in May.

Time for a last cup of tea and then snooze in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

An unusual sight.

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WE were lucky to have sunshine this morning and I could see morning mist in the village when looking out the window. I knew we wouldn’t get out in time to catch it with the camera so I took a couple of photos from my window. It was so chilly outside so I could see my breath when breathing 🙂 🙂

                  

It was much warmer just a few minutes later when the sun started to heat up the air. Nova has had a really good day today, so we walked down to the creek and followed it up-stream for a while. I didn’t spray the anti tick spray on any of us otherwise we would have walked down-stream instead. I saw an owl flying away from us, a rather big one but I know very little about owls so I have no idea what kind it was. But we met some other animals that I did catch with the camera, Red deer. For You Americans they are as big as the Elk/ Wapiti.

I rarely see Red deer here, sometimes a couple of does but today I also saw a youngling and a bull, a very young one because the antlers are really small.

   

They are usually really shy here but today they were in no rush at all even though they knew we were there, Alma made it impossible not to know where we were 🙂 🙂 🙂 I thought that we also would meet wild hogs, due to how Alma behaved but I guess they weren’t that interested in meeting us 🙂 No flies while we were walking but the mosquitoes were quite active. It must be other species flying around this time because suddenly those bites itch again. Yesterday my feet itched so badly that I had to use a cortisol ointment 🙂 🙂

Looks quite good with the pink flowers and silvery leafs but the silvery colors is unfortunately mildew, we have unusually much of that this year.

   

It didn’t take that long after our walk that the rain arrived, heavy showers and a strong wind so the dogs refused to go outside unless they really needed to 🙂 So now the dogs are quite restless and I can see in their eyes that they accuse me of the rainy weather and oddly enough it isn’t better if I open the other door 🙂 Less rain tomorrow they’re guessing but Sunday will be nice they say. I’ll believe it if it happens 🙂

     

Nothing on tv tonight. Back in the days when I was young Fridays were the big family tv day in the weeks. Families gathered in front of the tv to watch something fun for all. These days they seems to have given up totally since so many stream programs and can see anything any time. I don’t stream anything and only have the free channels and now during summer they all show reruns that we already have seen loads of times 🙂 🙂 We have one channel called the Knowledge channel, my favorite channel that shows science programs but even that channel only show reruns now.

     

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and perhaps have some more of that cortisol ointment all over my feet 🙂 🙂

   

Have a great day!

It’s raining, it’s pouring.

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Yesterday morning we all woke up pretty early and I thought why not stay up so I could have a really long and calm breakfast before going to work. I had just eaten breakfast and went to brush my teeth when I heard a loud crash. Malkolm had decided he should push down the glass plate I had my sandwiches on to the floor. So instead of having a nice calm morning I instead had a quite stressful morning going to work quite late instead 🙂

 

The cattle is in the pasture behind the Beekeepers cottage so that means we can’t walk along the creek because the path home is blocked with electric wires.
Can You guess what flower this is? I know You all know about it but perhaps never seen the actual flower. I’ll put the answer at the bottom 🙂

Now it’s Novas turn to have a bad stomach so I decided to boil more rice. I always put the pot on the stove and just barely let it start to boil before shutting down the stove, then put two handkerchiefs over the lid and just let it stay on the stove for twenty minutes, I made pancakes at the same time and put another glass plate beside the frying pan. The water just started to boil so I shut of that part and continued with my pancakes. Suddenly I could smell smoke and wondered what house was on fire when I realized that the handkerchiefs managed to reach down to the heat and had started to burn. The odd thing was that the water just kept on boiling harder and harder. That’s when I realized I hadn’t turned it off, instead I had started the stove top under the glass plate.

The oak refused to break when bigger trees fell over it, now it’ll always have that bend 🙂

   

I was just about to remove the plate when it suddenly exploded 🙂 🙂 Thankfully this plate was of a more good quality so the pieces mostly stayed on the stove but some dropped down on the floor. So I had to pour out the pancake batter, clean the floor (vacuuming it) clean out the frying pan, all the dog bowls and restart with making a new batch with pancake batter 🙂 🙂 I’m glad I had enough with eggs because for some reason I decided yesterday not to buy any on my way home from work 🙂 🙂 Besides that we’ve had a calm day. We managed to take a morning walk even though the sun they said would show before the rain never did.

the first blueberries growing by the bog 🙂

   

It is pouring down outside right now and thunder is on the way, I’m not sure if it will hit this village or if the mountain will push it to the other side. Tomorrow will most likely be rainy as well and we’ll have an almost storm passing by as well. We’ve also had a long nap today 🙂 Nice to know I can have that the coming four weeks 🙂 and since the weather seems to stay like this I might even have the chance to have two naps each day 🙂 🙂

     

It’s time for a pot of tea and then perhaps watch the Eurovision Championship in football (soccer for You Americans :- )

 

Have a great day!

The flowers is a wild carrot 🙂

Finally :-)

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Something worried the geese and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. Lots of sound and running around.

The morning was quite nice with sunshine and just above 10C (50F) degrees. I stopped by the lake on my way to work, there isn’t much to see now but I did see some geese. I would most likely have seen plenty if I just had had more time but work was waiting and a work friend who I was going to pick up on my way.

Suddenly lots more came running from behind me (to the right). I guess it could be a fox hunting but geese are nasty so it must have been an inexperienced one 🙂

Then they all came flying.

It didn’t take long though until the rain arrived, mostly short but fierce showers and it has continued like that all the day but in between we had lots of sunshine as well. Despite it being the last day before vacation the day passed fairly quick. Could be because we had cake twice today 🙂 Firstly a work friend have his 29th birthday today and thankfully he bought an ice cream cake so that I could have some as well 🙂 After that the company had cake as well, unfortunately not gluten free but I did at least have coffee and an extra break 🙂

The sky when I had arrived after work.
I haven’t planted or sown anything in this pot but there are lots of plants in it 🙂 Looks like some kind of Nepeta, possibly Canadian Goldenrod and also an Aaron’s’ rod. plus something small with white flowers.
My tomatoes are coming fine 🙂
My little Mango tree. It stopped growing when it went colder unfortunately.

Yesterday we had lots of pastry because a work friend will retire next week 🙂  so it’s been a good week 🙂 🙂  The weather was nice all the way home but as soon as I stopped by the mailbox the sky opened up again 🙂 Tomorrow will be really rainy, if they’ve guessed it right but it looks like we’ll be able to have a morning walk with some sunshine before the rain arrives. The entire first week will have weather like this but I don’t mind as long as we can have a morning walk without getting soaked from above 🙂 After all vacation is meant for us to charge the batteries so we can manage to work until Christmas since we don’t have a single holiday before then.

Musk Mallow, grows everywhere in this area, I have the pink one as well.
My pees are now all entwined 🙂 Plus I saw that a few bean vines still are alive and grows well.

I think it’s time to go to bed even though I really don’t have to think about getting up early tomorrow but I always wake up early and it’s nicer to do so if I actually have slept enough hours 🙂 I can start changing the hours tomorrow instead.

The three tomato shoots I removed a couple of days ago now have roots. If we hadn’t loved tomatoes so much we would call it a weed 🙂
The Hardy Fuchsia cuttings I’ve taken are now planted in three pots. The yellow in the leafs indicate that they lack nutrients of some kind and that’s most likely because all the rain that has washed through the soil, there’s simply nothing left for the plants to use.
Don’t know the name on this one. It is a climbing vine and I think it once belonged to the Corydalis family but now have been moved to the Fumaria family, my favorite weed family 🙂

I hope All of You Americans had a great 4th of July!

Have a great day!

Only one more day :-)

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I always save photos for days when I can’t take any and put them in a folder called “For a rainy day”. All photos today comes from that folder. They can be taken earlier this year or some time during last year. The only important thing is that it doesn’t show snow 🙂

The weather is what I would call rather unstable right now, heavy showers coming and going. Pretty chilly here as well and it’ll be like this over the weekend they guess. No use in looking at what they are guessing for the coming week they change those predictions more or less every hour. Everything from sunny and warm all week to quite the opposite 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Lots of things to do at work and due to bad planning they asked if people wanted to work overtime, they never come to me even if they are desperate since they know I’ll just laugh at them 🙂 To be honest only three people wanted to work, most of us will after all start our vacation now.

     

Only Malkolm liked to be outside in the rain so we haven’t had any walk. Not good for any of us so it’s nice that vacation starts now because it is very rare that it rains all day, so in between showers we’ll be able to go out and get rid of some of all that energy that is building up in the dogs now. Normally during weekends and vacations we’re out on walks at least three times a day but the weather lately has really stopped us to do that. In winter time, before Alma, we usually had walks in the empty cow pastures and normally we walked a bit more than 9km (5,6 miles) but Alma being like she is and after tearing my shoulder twice we haven’t been able to do that last winter. I am hoping that she will have calmed down enough until next winter. They say hope is the last thing to leave us 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Tomorrow is the last working day before vacation starts and at first they said we would stop working with the painting early, then a bit later than they thought and today that we most likely will continue as normal 🙂 🙂 🙂 It doesn’t really matter because I won’t be back in four weeks anyway 🙂

     

Have a great day!

A persistent but nice summer rain.

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They were very unsure about how much rain we would get today, they guessed on from nothing up to two inches. They came somewhere in between I would say. It only drizzled when we woke up but by the time we all had had our breakfast the more steady but nice summer rain started and it has kept on falling all day.  I could hear hunting dogs in (specially trained to only follow wild hogs and never care about other animals but I guess all other animals still will be really stressed having barking dogs running around in the forest) the forest barking, it is still legal to hunt wild hogs as long as the sow don’t have any piglets. Those dogs must have been soaked just minutes after they were released 🙂

The peas likes this weather.
The tiny wisteria that I moved to the Laburnum looked really sad yesterday but since I pruned the Laburnum rain and eventually sunshine can reach it. I still haven’t seen any new shoots where it grew before but I’m pretty sure they’ll show next year because it is almost impossible to get rid of it 🙂 🙂
Have no idea what this is but it looks much like a giant Yarrow but smells and becomes just as high as a Tansy.

So we’ve mostly stayed indoors today, only Malkolm have stayed outside for any longer period of time while Alma and Nova only been outside when they really had to. On days like these I used to read books or draw or paint but now days I don’t have the patience to do that, I’m lucky if I can read a book for twenty minutes before I can’t do it any more. I guess that can be a side effect from the Corona virus. I have however no problems just sitting in my recliner having the tv on but not really watching what’s going on 🙂 I also have no problems taking long naps in it either 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have started reading a new book though so I’ll see if I manage to keep on reading it later today and force myself to do it next weekend when my vacation starts.

I think I’ll need to prune the apple tree that stop almost all sunshine down to the surviving Pawpaw tree. Not much, just enough so that at least some sunshine will reach it, it grows really slowly and I think it will have to stop growing soon so it can survive the winter.
This and the next photos shows the ones I bought this spring. One is seed sow and the other is a garden variety. 

Also I think that the Ginkgo needs more sunlight than it gets.

I haven’t been too lazy today though, I’ve done the laundry, made dinner for at least three days at work and also made pancakes for me and my dogs 🙂 I only had very little jam left so I mashed a banana and mixed it with the strawberry jam, I must say it was quite good but a little too runny, I now have that jam in several places on my clothes 🙂 I will also bake some rolls because I only have hard bread at home. I really like hard bread but it is nice to change to something else every now and again.

 

We have several different Aaron’s rod species growing here and I always let them stay, this big one is Verbascum thapsus.
The last of the Yellow flags.

Alma and Malkolm have a lot of energy now because they aren’t outside playing because of the rain, so instead they’ve been in my bedroom and I could hear from downstairs that they jumped up and down from my bed 🙂 🙂 I haven’t dared to take a look on what it looks like in there yet 🙂 At the moment though they’re right beside me and by the looks of it they are both now trying to chew of at least one leg of each other 🙂 It also looks like Alma is trying to chew off Malkolms bot ears 🙂 he’s no better though but he still can’t reach that high on Alma so he’s aiming to her throat 🙂 🙂

I took these three shoots from one of my tomato vines and just put them down in to wet soil, they start to create new roots as soon as they stand in the soil.
I bought a potted Dahlia a few weeks ago and naturally I had to break hard while driving home so it broke just above the soil, so I just took the twigs and put them in a pot and now it’s time to plant them somewhere.

Moss and lichen growing on the lilacs.

Well I guess I better start baking those rolls if I want to have any. This time I’ll freeze those I won’t eat today or tomorrow because the last ones I made started to mould really fast due to the high humidity we’ve had for so long.

Have a great day!

Really nice day.

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I really hope the birds don't find my Sand cherries. They are really delicious and I rarely get a chance to get any myself.
I’ve found several Sand cherries this year 🙂

I slept late, for me this morning. I didn’t wake up until after five am. The weather was just as grey as they had guessed and it was actually pretty chilly when we finally came out for our walk. So instead of wearing my mosquito hat I just wore a hoodie and it was enough to keep the flies away from my face. Also I did spray the entire hoodie with that anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray that works for both animals and humans and that could have helped more that I thought it would. So today both my dogs and I smell like an old lady in the sixties that didn’t understand when to stop spraying her perfume 🙂

I do like ferns!      The Grape Elder is early this year.

We have actually had much more sunshine than they guessed that we would so the kitchen door has been open most of the day but I really need to buy a new mosquito net for that door, I’ve taped it together in some places 🙂 🙂 Dogs never walk though slow and carefully, they run through ripping of the magnets keeping it together but every time I’m out on the internet I tend to forget to order any. From now on they’re guessing that we’ll have sunshine and hot weather for the rest of the week so I didn’t mow the lawn today as I had planed because the grass is still very wet since it has grown so high. I’ll start doing it tomorrow after work and just take small areas each day until it is done. So I won’t write anything here tomorrow.

I've never seen either a toad or frog here so I guess the Källrå might stay in the lake itself :-)
No unusually big toads or frogs here so I guess there isn’t any Källrå living here.
Lots of Lingonberries this year, I might even go out and pick some myself this year.

  Squirrel berries in bloom still.

Two more weeks until the vacation starts 🙂 Those two weeks will feel like years because when it is hot outside it’s even hotter in the factory. The one standing at the paint ox it can quite often reach 44 C (111,2 F) and no matter how much waster one drinks it’s not enough. Hopefully the painter working there will work every day, otherwise it might be me they think should do that job and after 16 years of it I truly hate it. So cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs for good luck so he’s healthy both weeks 🙂 🙂

Japanese climbing rose in bloom, lots of flowers this year.
I can’t remember that I’ve seen as many flowers on the Japanese climbing rose as I have this summer. These are above my head now making a roof together with the apple tree and a grape elder.
I think the flowers are quite beautiful and these have no thorns 🙂
Red leafed rose, self sown.
The self sown Red leafed rose has been planted and grows really fast now.

Today I’ll write about a slightly more nasty being, the Mara. She’s the one that gives us nightmares But also from how I interpret it anxiety attacks at night. She crawls up on a humans chest at night and squeeze out all air and will to live. If she has been visiting You Yo’ll know it since You will wake up cold sweating and have the feeling of being suffocated. She cab squeeze through any crack she can find so it is more or less impossible to keep her out of any place. Thankfully the Mara suffers from obsessive thoughts so it is fairly easy to occupied until it is morning. One can for instance put a bible with lots of hair in between the pages because she must count them all before she can do anything else. Another way is to spread lots of tiny seeds around the beds because she must count them as well.  I guess that not cleaning the floors if one has dogs could help a lot as well because of course she would have to clean before doing anything else. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been around my place for ages because my floors are just as dirty as they were the night before 🙂 🙂

Old Nova, 18 years old and still going strong :-)
She’s hanging on the old lady 🙂

   

No one really knows where the Mara comes from but it is usually a female and some think it is the soul of dead unmarried women who tries to get the warmth from the living. It could also be as simple as a curse is put upon her because their mothers, trying to not have as much pain giving birth and therefore used black magic by crawling through amniotic membrane from a new born foal. If the woman would give birth to a boy that boy would later on become a werewolf. Now our werewolfs  are slightly different than the ones we have seen on films or read about but more on that another day 🙂 🙂

I asked Malkolm what he was doing and then he covered the hole and looked so innocent 🙂

 

This beetle doesn't seem to do any harm in the garden so it is a favorite of mine.
This is a favorite beetle of mine.

It is time to prepare something to eat at work tomorrow, I really don’t have anything at home so I’ll just make a couple of sandwiches and bring some yogurt too.

Have a great day!

A flower on the tomato plant.

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Fuchsia Magellanica, Hardy Fuchsia.
Do You remember all the cuttings I took from the Hardy Fuchsia? These ones are not any of those because they all died 🙂 Turns out that the peat free soil I bought turns in to concrete after a while, perhaps works better for big plants but really bad for cuttings 🙂

Another chilly day here, some sunshine but rain as well. The clouds covering the sun brings out the mosquitoes and I have quite a lot of them because of all the vegetation I have in my garden. It doesn’t itch that much after a bite though so it won’t take long until the itching is over for this year. It can still hurt while the mosquito bites though.

Despite the cold weather the first tomato flower has opened up.
This tomato plant grows in the ground beside my cottage and now it flowers 🙂
I’m not fond of roses and still have plenty of them 🙂 So since I don’t like roses that much I naturally bought a new one 🙂
Camellia sinensis, Tea bush.
The tea bush (Camellia sinensis) looks pretty healthy.
These gooseberries will soon turn red.
The gooseberries are slowly going bigger.

Nothing much has happened today, just as I like it 🙂 but even if I had to do a lot at work time passed really slowly. It’s strange that the same amount of time at home pass so much faster 🙂 🙂 Time started to fly as soon as I left the factory and besides re-potting one of my Jacaranda trees I only had a walk in the garden while being attacked by both mosquitoes and flies and get slightly wet from rain I have no idea what I’ve been doing 🙂

Four photos of Alma and Malkolm playing.
Sometimes a sort of failed photo still look pretty good. This one is too bright but by being that we also can see Malkolms face so much better.

   

They had a sale in one of my favorite seed businesses, it was dirt cheap, and I had forgotten about it so I was really surprised when a thick envelope came in the mail today 🙂 I have forgotten most of what I had ordered but too a quick look and there are some perennials, some annuals and some vegetables waiting until next year. They have quite a good expiration date as well so the results should not be bad because of that 🙂

I have no name for this rose I'm afraid.
This rose has been growing in this garden for almost a hundred years I’ve been told. It has changed places where it has been growing though. I moved it here a couple of years ago and after fighting with wild roses for years it now has its own place.
Smells nice and it also grows in the beekeepers garden, a shoot from the roots of this one.
I do have a lot of roses for someone who doesn’t like them 🙂 🙂 This is one bush from the ground up to the top of the photo 🙂
We call this violet for Stepmother violet.
Lots of Heartsease growing in my garden.

I did take a few photos while walking in the garden and most photos shows Alma and Malkolm playing 🙂 They weren’t out for especially long because of the weather but if they’re guessing it right we will have a sunny and cool morning before warmer weather and rain will arrive. We’ve gotten so much rain now that even if we should have a month long drought we would still have a ground water level so high that there wouldn’t be any risk of water shortage 🙂

Four more photos of Malkolm and Alma playing.     

Have a great day!

P.S. Alma just scared the shit out of me because she kept on walking to Nova who was sleeping beside my desk, she never does that, so I had to check on the old girl because for a moment there I thought she had passed on 🙂 🙂 🙂 She’s fine and looked just as surprised as I was 🙂 🙂 🙂

It isn’t the printer that doesn’t work as I want :-)

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I’ve been trying to print out some documents and it has been so annoying! It’s actually not the printer that makes me angry, it’s the Open office documents I at the moment put all my hate towards 🙂 🙂 I use an old laptop and don’t have a mouse to it, so I use the touch sensible thing on the laptop. As soon as I have managed to get it just like I want it and have saved it and by accident touches that area  it suddenly totally changes the look of the document, doesn’t matter that I’ve saved it. So then I need to go though it all again, fix all that has changed and ever so carefully try to print it out.

   

The Iceberg lettuce and also the Chard is growing fine.

It is quite often not enough to be ever so careful, so I’ve printed out three pages at least five times now 🙂 🙂 🙂 The last copies came out alright, not perfect but close enough to just give up and accept that the universe hates me 🙂 🙂 🙂 The strange thing is that the printer always works as it should!!?? Normally printers die just when one need it the most but not this one. I’ve started to call it the old faithful 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

My first strawberry 🙂

The weather has been really mixed, well the temperature hasn’t been mixed at all, 10C (50F) or just around that. Lots of sunshine but even more clouds, rain and thunder plus the addition of strong winds. I guess the relatively low temperature has kept the grass fairly calm and I haven’t had to water anything 🙂 Now I can start using the vegetables I’m thinning out on especially sandwiches 🙂 The tomato vines have stopped growing though, too chilly for them I’m afraid. Also I think me melon vines dies, it looks like they have though 🙂 🙂 🙂

My Pawpaw seedlings are a bit confused I guess because they never experienced winter but it was cool in the cellar and then were tossed out into hot summer just to be thrown in to chilly weather again 🙂 but they all live and only two of them refuse to let the old leafs drop 🙂
My Mango tree has just been re-potted.
Lupinus texensis. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed when the flowers became white instead of blue but now I at least have lupines here 🙂

I’ll get new working hours, again 🙂 , from next Tuesday but this time they’ve only changed it from 6:20 am- 3:20 pm to 7 am- 4 pm. I’ll be a resource person that they can put in anywhere in the painting department because I know it all. I would have preferred to leave the painting department for ever but for some reason they’ve decided that I’ll stay there till I die or retire 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I think my cold is calming down now, I’m really sure it isn’t pollen because after all this raining there can’t be any pollen left in the air. Lots of tea with sliced ginger in it and I think the ginger has helped but then again i really like the taste of fresh ginger so if it hasn’t helped it did at least make the tea delicious 🙂

Have a great day!

Winds, rain, thunder and cold.

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Too tired for ALT text today, this cold is slowly killing me I think :-) :-)
Good thing I still have lots of photos from earlier 🙂 So this is the same fox I showed yesterday.

I know I’ve said that I really liked that it had cooled down a lot but I didn’t mean it should cool down so much that I almost have to start the radiators again! 10C (50F) outside today, heavy showers on and off plus really strong winds really isn’t what I want in June. On the other side all these clouds that covers the sky does keep the night frost away and we normally have our last night with frost around June sixth. So nothing bad that doesn’t bring something good as well but to be honest we could have had the same weather but at least 20C (68F) so we at least could go outside in between showers 🙂 🙂

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Our National day and why.

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No ALT text today, it takes a long time and it's getting late.

Sorry about yesterday, first I visited my friend at the garden center and I can proudly tell You that I didn’t bring home and plants this time 🙂 I had been tired since the moment I woke up and when I came home I took a nap for well over an hour but was just as tired as before so I went to bed and slept all night long. I guess that I actually am having a cold because after our morning walk today I napped well over two hours but this time I’m not that tired again 🙂

     

So I was going to write something about our national day and why we celebrate it. There are two reasons for it, the first is that June sixth Gustav Vasa became king here in Sweden. Sweden was at that time occupied by Denmark and their king (we call him Christian the Tyrant 🙂 ) made a blood bath killing lots of the nobility in Sweden including Gustav’s father.  He wanted revenge and fled north to gather the support of the people in Dalarna (a region in Sweden that sort of have become the picture of what Sweden is when it comes to traditions). No one really did support him but he did eventually get their support and he of course promised them a lot in return. The Danish king was driven out and when the good people in Dalarna actually expected to get what he had promised he happily slaughtered them.

     

Before him the nobility here always chose the next king but after him it became an inherited title. He had three sons all more or less insane and all became king over Sweden and Finland (which was a part of Sweden for centuries). The first one I guess had schizophrenia, married his non nobility mistress which wasn’t liked at all so his brothers put him in prison and eventually poisoned him with arsenic. They spared his wife and children though but she had to move to Finland, promising never to claim the throne for her children and what I know they had a great life there.

     

The second reason is that we got a new constitution 1809 that removed most of the Kings power, that I see as a really good reason to celebrate though but very few know about it here. The king by the way was a French buddy to Napoleon which he then turned against and we helped to win over him. Denmark’s capital Copenhagen was heavily bombarded by the Brits so that Napoleon wouldn’t be able to use their harbors so they sided up with Napoleon instead. So after Napoleon lost Denmark was punished by giving Norway to Sweden. There was however a big problem with that because Norway had already declared they were now independent of Denmark. So they were pissed of by this (in my opinion they rightfully were so) but back in the days You really couldn’t do anything unless You were prepared to go to war with the big powers in the world. To be honest we really didn’t want Norway because we wanted to get Finland back from the Russians who had taken it from us by winning a war against us but Russia was also on the winning side so Norway it was. Lasted until 1905 when they finally became a free country. Not that the Swedish king wanted that but he was wise enough to not start a war. To be honest I don’t think we ever have won a war against Norway, the last time we tried our own troops finally shot our king with a big button. 

     

So anyway we haven’t had a national day for that long anyway, until 1983 it was the Swedish flag day (the next oldest country flag in the world, only the Danes have an older one) and it didn’t become a holiday until 2005. So since most people don’t know why we celebrate and to be honest Gustav Vasa was a horrible dictator, we never have sort of understood how to celebrate it (and to be honest they removed another holiday that we wanted to have much more so that sort of dampened the cheers 🙂 🙂 ) They do try to make it more festive but so far it is sort of a meh celebration we’re having 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

The morning walk was really pleasant, cool enough to keep flies and mosquitoes away but still sunny and no wind. We met two foxes and the deer doe was outside the garden once again, she doesn’t even react when we go out now days. Now however the rain is pouring down and it is quite chilly and we might get thunder later today. The weather will be much the same tomorrow, sunny morning and rainy before noon and with lots more rain. I don’t mind even though it would have been nice if we could have reached 20C (68F), we’re not even close today.

Magpie younglings photographed through mosquito net and window 🙂

 

Looks like it has rained over my car but it hasn’t, lots of morning dew here so this is normal every morning.

 

Remember I told about how easy it is to propagate tomatoes? Some tomato plants grow like a bush and others like vines. The vine ones are supposed to be pruneed by removing all shoots that grow out and those are easy to just put in soil.

 

Take those shoots and remove all but the to leafs and put them in a new pot.

 

They will create new roots along the stems and then You have new tomato plants. Normally our summers are too short to get any tomatoes on them but these had already flower buds so perhaps I’m lucky 🙂

Have a great day!