Category: Cold.

Snowstorm and new car.

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Bjurums Castle.

The snowstorm Pia passed by yesterday evening and all night long. I had borrowed my neighbors car and if there’s one thing one doesn’t want to do is to wreck their car because one was driving careless πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ So even though I went home half an hour earlier I still came home a few minutes later than I normally would have done πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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As You can see this photo wasn’t taken today but was taken last spring (with my Agfa Flexilette) but it shows the only big building, besides the castle, that still stands in what once was a thriving village.
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This is just beside the previous building.

The car dealer and I had agreed to meet around 1pm and I was going to get there by bus. The bus would leave my bus station at 12:05 and on a sunny and nice day in spring or summer it takes around 45 minutes to walk there,so since the world now once again is filled with that white crap (and the fact that it rained a lot before the snow fell and it went cold) I decided to start early, I’m so glad I have studded boots because the snow didn’t stick well to the ice covered road. Today it took almost exactly one hour.

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This is the creek where it flows out in to the lake.

I think I would have thought the world was beautiful if I hadn’t had to walk in this mess πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ I only brought my phone so only a few photos today. The wind was still blowing pretty hard and it was bitterly cold. Well walking and wearing really good winter clothes did help but standing and waiting for the bus still made me pretty cold inside.

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The road leading to the castle. Big oaks grown on each side of it.

I managed to get there in time and went to the grocery store on my way home. They usually like when I tell them about my car problems πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ So we had a good laugh before I finally drove home again. I haven’t had much sleep to be honest but I think the short nap I had in my recliner will help me to stay awake until at least 9 pm πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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There once was a big yellow house standing behind those Birches. I guess it was the rectory but now days priests usually don’t live beside the churches they work in.

Only one previous owner and it has a new cam belt, that was the thing that made me want to have it without even seeing it in a photo πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ It has six gears, something I need to get used to. The only things I really made sure to know about before I drove home was to know how to open the fuel filler flap, something I didn’t understand with the borrowed car, I had to phone them to know how πŸ™‚ how to handle the different lights and how to control the heat in the car, it took me over a day before I understood it in the borrowed car πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ Cruise control and how to manage to radio can be learned later πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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This is at the bus stop in a village called Ljung. I like how they decorated the tree like that. Back in the days before they brought in spruces at christmas they often brought in a young crab apple tree, dressed it and if they were lucky it had green leafs and perhaps even small flowers when christmas arrived.

Winter vacation started today so no more work until January 8 πŸ™‚

Have a great day!

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My new car and a very happy Alma πŸ™‚

More snow.

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It’s usually tricky to capture snow flakes when taking photos but it worked in this photo, don’t know why though πŸ™‚

I was waiting for the last package for the dogs and the dog yard to arrive, like always it saidΒ  some time between eight am and five pm and with the roads looking like they do after all snow, we had more again yesterday, I didn’t expect it to arrive until late. So I didn’t think much of it and went to the toilet and just as I did what I had to do the van with my package arrived πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ Thankfully the guy who drove it here understood that I was at home and did his job a bit slower and I panicking indoors tried to hurry outside πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ It all went well and now the two lamps are charging under my kitchen lamp πŸ™‚

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It was foggy enough to hide the mountain but not sort of close up foggy like I like it.
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The Ipad has also arrived and a moment ago I desperately tried to find where to put in the sim card, I was thinking of using my phones sim card just to download the app where I can read a book, thinking of the Harry Potter books, so that Alma can hear my voice while I’m away. I watched videos on Youtube and they all showed where the little hole to release the little plate for the sim car was and I still couldn’t find it!! So out on the net again, turns out that I can’t put a sim card in this one, I’ll have to use wifi to down load anything I want in it. The problem is that my wifi isn’t known for willingly recognize that there’s another computer that I want to use for the internet!! Neither as something belonging in the cottage nor as a guest. Worst case scenario is that I’ll have to ask my neighbors to see if their wifi will help me πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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So until that works do You know a good app where I can download me reading a book and then have it working on loop, it will take way too long to read all those books at the same time, no matter how much I like them πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ I’m on my way though and that’s a good sign πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ I’ll start my new hours next week so it would be great if I could have this thing working by then. Besides feeling like going insane because of the Ipad the day has been pretty nice. It snowed yesterday, way too much but it has turned towards slightly less cold weather, Just below 0C (32F) all day. It will not be as warm as they guessed earlier but for a few days it’ll be just barely above 0C (32F), after that they’re guessing that it will turn slightly colder again for a few days and then they’re guessing again that it’ll be way much warmer. I’ll believe it if it would happen πŸ™‚

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Today it showed that the air would become slightly warmer because we had a rather nice fog. Warm air and cold ground usually creates nice fog. Could have been a bit thicker according to my taste but I’ll take what I get since the sun won’t show itself anyway. Lots of tracks in the new snow, a fox, probably the one coming to visit my garden, had followed the road down to the creek and somewhere half way there it had followed a hare. The most surprising track though was that a moose had passed a few meters away from the beekeepers cottage. No wolf tracks but I think i saw some from a lynx but since Alma is everywhere at the same time I only had a second or two to try and figure out what it could be πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I guess that the rest of the evening and night will be spent here by my computer and wifi to try to get the wifi to cooperate and then download the best app I can find, wish me luck πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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Turns out that this unfortunately isn’t a Wood Grouse but instead a melanistic pheasant. If it had been a rooster it would have been almost black with a metallic green tinge when the sun had shone on it. Still long time since we had any pheasants here either so I’m just as happy πŸ™‚
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Bathing time in the snow πŸ™‚

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Have a great day!

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My orchid now has two flower stems and a third is on its way πŸ™‚

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The hunters were out until just after noon so we could have a walk in the forest while there was daylight. Thankfully we have no wind now because it fell down to -15C (5F) last night, much less cold during the day though but the temperature will drop just as low tonight again.

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We went out to the bog and even though we didn’t see any animals we could hear what I think was a complaining wild hog while it ran away from us. No small birds or any birds to be honest. I guess the bigger ones stay close to the roads to eat what has been killed by traffic during the night and the smaller ones seems to be at my feeders πŸ™‚

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The Wood Grouse might not be a Wood Grouse after all. People knowing birds better than I do says the coloring is wrong. It has the size of one though so until they can tell me what it actually is I’ll still call it a Wood Grouse. It can be a crossing with the Black Grouse though, they do look different in their colors. It is still around every day though and I’ve noticed that it hasn’t any tail feathers, a close call with a lynx perhaps?

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A female Bullfinch, the bright red dot above and behind it is a male.
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The female have a more dusty mauve color.
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The Blue tit rather stays close to the peanut feeder
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and so does the Great tit.

We also had a visit from our local fox last night, I had the camera up for three days and as long as it snowed it stayed away, cold weather doesn’t seem to disturb it though.

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Alma is usually the one most caught by the wildcam but usually she’s so blurry that it’s hard to see what she is, that dog runs all the time πŸ™‚
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One photo with the fox in three days.

Have a great day!

Lots of snow.

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We have lots of snow now, I can’t pretend to like it but the dogs are at least clean when they come in from being in the garden. we’ve had two really cold nights, -15C (5F) but mostly it has been between -4C to -8C (24,8F to 17,6F).

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There’s so much snow now that the forest birds have problems reaching their food so yesterday I saw the first Bullfinches. I didn’t get any good photos of them, the best is the one shown below. That is a male, the females are more towards mauve colored.Β  I also have a, in this area, very rare visitor and she comes by every day, a Wood Grouse. The roosters can weigh up to 7 kg (15,4 pound) but the hen usually around 3kg (6,6 pound). I’m not sure what she is eating here, they usually eat pine needles. So my guess is that she eats buds from the lilacs and some of the seeds on the ground. We haven’t had a wood grouse in these parts since long before I moved here 23 years ago so it’s kind of cool that when one comes it chose my garden πŸ™‚

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We went down to the creek this morning. The snow that the weather sites said wouldn’t fall started to fall already yesterday evening πŸ™‚ It didn’t stop falling until we were almost at home again πŸ™‚ Lots of tracks from animals in the snow, mostly from wild hogs, roe deer, hares, a fox (possibly the one visiting my garden every night and either a small mosse or a big red deer. Only one human had walked there since the dogs and I walked there last time and that was a couple of days ago. My guess is that it is the beekeeper who has made those tracks, very few other people walk there in winter.

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Alma was a bit impossible on our walk today so my back feels a bit sour. She has behaved so much better lately but today was a day when she just couldn’t.Β  Turns out that she isn’t especially quiet at nights when I am at work so now I have to figure out a way to either make her quiet down or dampen the sound from her barking. I’ve ordered two sun powered lights that will shine as soon as she’s outside in the dog yard, if that doesn’t help I’ll have to put up a wooden fence instead. Turns out that she sometimes is so loud that she wakes up my neighbors youngest daughter. They are the kindest and best neighbors one can wish for so I wish they would have told me when this started.Β  Well I’ll figure out something to make her at least not sound as much.

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I’ve baked a bread today, I checked recipes online and the recipes are either really complicated or they all use a ready mad mix. So I just checked how much flour/ mix they were using and tossed in what I had (in this case oat flour, sorghum flour and rice flour) in the same ammount πŸ™‚ I haven’t tried it yet because as soon as the bread was ready I put in french fries and meatballs in the oven. I’ll have a sandwich with meatballs, christmas ham and beetroot salad after writing this πŸ™‚ As worse it’ll just taste like the breads one can buy and they work if one toast them πŸ™‚

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Hunters out in the forest tomorrow and I hope they will hunt for wild hogs because we have so many of them now. They are now slowly destroying the forest roads I usually walk on and it is hard to see where they’ve been now when the snow covers everything. It is very surprising when there’s a deep hole beneath my foot when I can’t see it by looking at the snow πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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Have a great day!

Winter is here and I can’t stop it.

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-10C (14F) here last night but despite it being well below 0C (32F) all day it still was a pretty nice day. The sun was even so warm that all snow on the south side of the cottage roof melted away. It was the lack of wind that did the trick.

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I haven’t done a single thing of what I usually do on Sundays. No dinner for next week, no laundry done and no vacuuming either which is really needed now. Then again the dirt won’t go away and now when it is as cold as it is none of us will bring in any more dirt anyway. The only good thing with these temperatures, even the dust has frozen to the ground πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I have done rice porridge but I forgot to start it in the early morning, I did it however early enough so that I could have some after a later walk πŸ™‚ I was thinking, for a second, that I should decorate the tree as well but I’ll wait with that because the tree is nice enough with only the lights shining in it.Β  The advent candlestick will have to wait since the snow covers all moss and lichens I would be able to find if there wasn’t any snow on the ground. The sad thing is that we’ll get more snow later next week so it’ll be even harder to find anything.

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I better go down and launder at least some t-shirts so I have anything to wear at work. I have enough of the rest to last at least until Thursday πŸ™‚

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Have a great day!

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the best photo of the fox from last night.

That was a surprise.

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I must admit that I was quite surprised when I peeked out the window this morning, the world had gone very white! I can’t remember anything like that when I looked at the weather sites yesterday. Still it is beautiful and i didn’t have to drive around in it today so I dislikes it just a little. The annoying thing is that it’ll stay for quite some time because it will stay below 0C (32F) for at least ten days, according to the weather sites and I guess that just because I don’t like this weather they will for once be right πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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We had quite a lot of sunshine today but not while we were out walking and the wind that arrived with the sunshine was biting and nasty cold so I’m rather glad that we at least didn’t have that. No wolf around today because the dogs behaved normal, lots of tracks from other animals in the snow though, like hares, foxes, pigs and deer. I don’t know if the fox visited us last night because I forgot to place the wildcam and the dogs had been all over that part of the garden so no tracks were there by the time I was putting up the camera again.

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The snow really motivated me to bring up the yule spruce from the cool cellar. I’ve put the lights in it, I’m glad I bought two because the length of the light chains always sounds longer than they actually are πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ Still I almost wish I had bought three but I’ll rearrange them tomorrow to see if I can make them look longer. I put them on the back side of the tree as well and perhaps that’s a bit unnecessary. I’ll dress it tomorrow I think, for now the lights do the work πŸ™‚

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I had planned to also decorate the advent candlestick today but the snow made it a bit difficult. Mosses and lichens are protected here so one isn’t supposed to pick any of it in nature. Well some moss can be picked with with the landowners permission and if lichens have fallen off the trees one can pick them as well but now snow covers it all. To be honest, I have lots of moss that has fallen off the roof so if I only can find it on the ground I can take that. It is still a week until the first of advent so I have time to fix it until then.

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We’ve had our pancake Saturday and I was thinking of making some rice porridge but I’ll wait until tomorrow. I can start the slow cooker when we go out on our morning walk and it’ll be ready an after after we’ve come home. the weather sites are saying that it’ll be just as or a even a bit colder than today and also that we’ll have sunshine so it’ll be nice to have some of that porridge after our walk.

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Have a great day!

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Sunshine all day long!!!

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Today has been sunny!! I can’t remember when that happened the last time. It didn’t look that we were going to have any sunshine when I woke up though but in only a few seconds all clouds went away and the sun appeared. I should have understood that we also had a rather strong wind blowing since the clouds moved away so fast. So even if i really enjoyed the sunshine it would have been so much nicer if we hadn’t had that wind. It also comes from the only direction where it can hit my cottage, so the kitchen and the room above are pretty cold but the rooms on the other sides are quite warm and comfortable πŸ™‚

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I was quite busy the first half of the day. We went out for our morning walk as soon as we all had woken up. After that we had our breakfast and then I drove to the grocery store in Gudhem to pick up a package. I stopped on my way back at the Abbey ruin, the wind was nasty and bitterly cold up there. As soon as I came home we went out for another walk out to the bog, Nova wanted to walk there and I liked it because the wind wasn’t that bad in there in the forest. I’m pretty sure we had a wolf nearby because suddenly Alma started to behave, Albin looked concerned and Nova was in a hurry to get back home. As always I never saw one though.

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I put some french fries and two wiener sausages in the oven when I came back home and after eating that (the dogs got their share of fries πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ ) I took a long nap in the recliner with an around 60 pond pitbull sleeping on my chest and stomach. I couldn’t feel my legs when I finally woke up after a couple of hours πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ I slept for too long because I’m still rather tired. I’ll make a pot of tea after this, with my working hours I really don’t have to worry about not falling asleep early in the evening πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ and after I get the new ones I definitely won’t have to worry about that πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I would love to have some cookies right now but I don’t have any so I might bake some or a sponge-cake, I made a sponge-cake a week ago and even though it takes much longer to make a gluten free one in the oven it turned out really well. I had cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cardamom as spices in it and yes I did get christmas feelings πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚Β  Β  πŸ™‚

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Have a great day!

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A lazy day.

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Blue tit. I’ve seen people asking where all the Blue tits have gone when looking on the net, it used to be one of the most common birds by the feeders. They’ve always been around here until this year. It wasn’t until yesterday I saw the first ones by my feeders so they are becoming more rare. I did read however that they are the tits that most common migrates during winter so I do hope that’s the reason we don’t see them as much now days.

I woke up way too early today, just before seven am but I’m still not tired so I do hope the tiredness doesn’t come too early because I need to stay up quite late since I’ll be working tomorrow. We had a rather nice morning here today, no wind, just below 0C (32F) and almost sunshine. We walked down to the creek and Alma behaved pretty well for most of the time.

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Nova on the other hand is still pretty annoyed because she’s leashed and she really don’t like that. I’ve told her that if she can’t behave and come when I call her (and sign for her to come, I’ve always learned my dogs signs for different things since many of them lost most of their hearing when going old) she will be leashed whether she likes it or not πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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It is winter so I thought I should make lots of rice porridge, so I put the ingredients in the slow cooker and it was ready to eat when we came back from our walk to the bog later on. It takes around three hours to do it in the slow cooker but the risk of the porridge being burned is almost none to nothing. It takes at least an hour if doing it on the stove and then it just takes one mistake and the porridge will burn πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ I made the porridge a bit sweeter today because I was also longing for cookies πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ To make it even sweeter I also put some jam in it just before eating it, no craving for cookies after eating that πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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The sun, so close but still so far away πŸ™‚

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I have however not done the laundry and no dinner for next week at work. I just didn’t want to to be honest. So I’ll do the laundry tomorrow before work and I’ll see what I can find in the freezer, I think I have meatballs and sausages in there and I can add an egg or two and perhaps some pasta or potatoes as well. It’ll be exciting to see how many that will turn up to work tomorrow, there are still a few people that weren’t sick last week so it might be their turn now.

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The fox came for several visits last night again. I did cheat and put out some dog food but it still moved a bit too fast so most photos were blurry. I’l see what I can do about that tonight, I’ve placed the camera a bit lower this time and I’ll place the dog food in one place and not just throw it out like I did yesterday. The reason I just threw it yesterday was because I had two dogs that would have loved to eat it and I had to do it while they were busy with other things πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I talked with a friend on the phone today and told him about my new hours. He has been a boss in several big grocery stores and he said those hours sounded horrible and only people one want to get rid of would get hours like that πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ Well at least I don’t have to work Fridays when it starts πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I’ve polished the lens on the camera today so I hope that will help with the blurriness.
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Nothing will help when it comes to Alma though πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

Have a great day!

New working hours, again.

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A bit difficult to see but there’s a Blackbird sitting on a branch in the photo.

The weather report on tv yesterday said sunshine over almost the entire south of Sweden today, so I wasn’t the least surprised that it snowed when I woke up πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ No big flakes, just tiny ones so it created a thin dusting on the ground. Just enough to make it feel a bit christmassy and not so much that it annoyed me enough to hate winter even more πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ It also made the hunters out in the forest to give up quite early in the day so that made it even better πŸ™‚

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I’ve been at home this week because I had fever and was tired all the time. Turns out that 21 more at work (I think we’re slightly more than 50 people working there) had the same thing, most likely the covid. Some had high fever, runny noses and lots of coughing and the rest of us were hit with milder symptoms. I didn’t have any fever yesterday and since I knew there weren’t lots of people working I thought I just as well would go to work. Good thing because without me there would only have been three people working πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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We did what we could with only four people but then we came to the things we need lots more people around (masking and de-masking things), when we normally would have to be at least seven people there we couldn’t continue and since there was nothing else to do we all took the rest of the day off πŸ™‚ So it wasn’t that bad to go to work when having the long Friday to work πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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A work friend called me the same morning and told me that seven people have to go after the new year has started and they’ll stop having a night shift as well. I still have a job and will be a resource person. Jumping in at any place if someone is sick or do jobs on the side of the line. Don’t mind that but I can’t say I’m happy about the new working hours, I’ll start working at 3:25 pm and continue to work until 1:55 am. I will not work a single Friday though so I guess that’s ok but I also know that if I don’t sleep for as long as I must I will sleep all Friday instead. I guess I’ll get used to that as well but it doesn’t sound fun. The dogs will be fine though since they most likely just will continue to sleep since it is dark and the world will be quiet.

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The new working hours will start at week 50 so I’ll start with one week before christmas vacation starts. I do hope this only lasts for a short while since inflation has sunk and the Riksbank will most likely not make the interest rates higher so most likely people will feel a bit of hope again and start building new homes and buy new things so that we soon will be needing those people who can’t stay. It’s a horrible world really when we need people to spend all their money so that other people can get jobs and by doing so also make the climate crisis even worse.

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I wanted to post a video here with the fox passing by but now days I can’t since I need to pay for Premium to be able to post videos so I say to WordPress Up Yours!

Lots of birds at the new feeder and I also got a few nice photos of the fox that visits us almost every night. I accidentally had made the camera take videos the first nights so there’s one video as well showing the fox. I also have some photos of Albin pooping and Alma running around like crazy mostly looking like a blurr πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ The fox looks healthy and I was thinking of placing some dog food in front of the camera so I could get more nice photos of the fox and possibly the badger if it comes again and hasn’t started its winter sleep. I’ve learned that badgers doesn’t hibernate but instead just sleeps, oh how I wish I was a badger πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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Greater Woodpecker.
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House sparrow.
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Field sparrow.
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The rest of them show Great tits.
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Have a great day!

They are actually pretty good.

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The rain is pouring down and sometimes sideways because of the strong gusts we have right now. The dogs refuse to go outside and I so understand them. Also they think I’ll have more of the gluten free gingerbreads I baked earlier today πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ The ones one can buy are an abomination towards any living thing, they are actually so awful that not even Albin and Alma wanted any and those two eat any kind of garbage they can find πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I found this recipe online and it is called “The best gingerbread recipe ever”. Well they are really good but I’ve had normal gingerbreads that have been slightly better. Still these are gluten free so I guess it is true for being gluten free cookies. I had to do some changes in the recipe though. It said agave syrup or maple syrup. This recipe is obviously made by a rather rich person because both those syrups cost close to what gold costs πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ It also said Coconut sugar? Didn’t even know that excisted so I used normal sugar instead.

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They do taste really good but it is really important that they stay the exact time in the oven because bring them out a bit early they will be kind of soft and really brittle but the exact time and they’re like any other home made gingerbread. Also the original recipe said 150 cookies and that’s insanely much for a first try, so I halved the recipe and I managed to get 24 cookies. I’m not sure what size they make their cookies in but they must be really tiny πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ Anyway, I’ve tried it and can now do these again closer to christmas.

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I found another walnut on the ground today but the weather wasn’t the nicest so to look up a tree to find one small green thing amongst the still green leafs made it hard to see if it was the one I’ve been looking at or if this was another one that came from elsewhere in the tree πŸ™‚ It’ll rain a lot these coming days so I’ll check the ground for walnuts instead of looking up the tree πŸ™‚

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The House sparrows had taken a bath and were cleaning and drying themselves before the rain arrived.
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The morning walk was really nice though, no wind and no rain. No sunshine either but that was to be expected. Well I almost saw the sun for half a minute when a thinner layer of clouds flew by. It looked really nice during that half minute and I guess that is what we’ll be able to see until after christmas, if we’re lucky πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ We might get fog though and that’s my second favorite weather but I don’t have high hopes for that either, the last time they said we would get fog what we got was what could best be called a thin haze. It is time to pack my dinners for the coming week at work. I bought some small pieces of chicken the other day, so I fried them just enough to get that fried surface, I also fried a big onion. After that I tossed it in the crockpot together with water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, potatoes and some kind of Asian cabbage, it tastes actually much better than I thought it would πŸ™‚

Have a great day!

They’ve changed it to rain.

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They’ve now changed the weather predictions from snow to rain and it’ll also be “much” warmer than they guessed yesterday. Instead we’ll get loads of rain and my neighbor and I wondered if that was better because we really don’t need more rain now and everything is just muddy when we go indoors again.

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I was thinking of what I might buy myself as a christmas present this year. It shouldn’t be anything I really need because that I should buy anyway. So my first thought was a telescope to watch the stars at night. The problem with that is that it’s usually cloudy almost all winter when it is dark enough to actually watch the stars and in summer when the sky is clear it’s never really dark here at all, just a couple of hours in the middle of the night because even when the sun has set or before it rise again it’s really quite bright here.

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So no telescope, that would just be a waste of money. Then I’ve been thinking of one of those terrariums, You know where one quarter is like an aquarium and three quarters are for plants. The problem is that my cottage is rather small so I don’t have the space for one except if I built it myself to fit upstairs but then again I’m as handy as a drunk badger so that’s not going to happen πŸ™‚

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So I guess it’ll be a big tin box with Quality Street chocolates, 2,5 kilos (slightly more than 5 pound), I’ll most likely have two weeks vacation then and if the weather is nice I could walk all that chocolate off πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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It is still hanging there, the last walnut πŸ™‚
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Have a great day!

Winter is on its way I’m afraid.

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Two peaches,three Guavas and a mango tree. The mango tree still looks fine, better than any of the old ones that died ever did and it now have two top branches.

The weather is rather meh but it is at least not windy. We can’t expect any nicer weather except for tomorrow when we might get to see some sunshine. Around two hours of it they’re guessing and then it’ll turn to meh again and on Sunday it will start to snow. Apparently we’ll also get lots of rain in it and mostly it’ll stay just above 0C (32F) but since we’ll get up to almost 8 inches of it it might stay for a while anyway.

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The only track we saw today was this kind, we have lots of horses in the village now.

They change how much snow we’ll get every hour or so and they’ve confessed on tv that they actually don’t know how far south the snow will be so they’re just guessing more than normal πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ The morning walk was really nice though, since there was no wind. Birds were tweeting, we saw a deer in the distance and Alma almost behaved the entire walk πŸ™‚ Nova however does as she please when we’re walking homewards. Today I wanted to leash her the last three hundred meters (much the same in yards) but she figured out why I called her so she just turned around and walked away even fasterΒ  than before πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

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I really don’t like planting bulbs or tubers, I can’t say I know why but I just don’t. Still every autumn I do buy bulbs and tubers πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ So today I planted 20 wild tulip bulbs, ten Dutch Iris bulbs (close to not being hardy enough but they are beautiful if they survive the winter) and 15 Croci, yellow ones. I planted them at the back of my garden because almost all spring flowering bulbs and tubers in my garden grows in the little space around my cottage and in to the woodland. I thought it could be nice to see something in spring when I look out the kitchen window and door.

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I’ve also baked some bread today. I sort of half failed because they didn’t really rise especially much but they are still soft and tastes really good, only they are half the size I thought they should be. I’ve failed much worse with other breads, like eating concrete so I only call this half failed πŸ™‚

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Mostly however I’ve felt tired today. I have a cold that won’t break out, instead I’m constantly tired. Of course it’d nice not top be sick with fever but the colds that doesn’t break out are almost more tiresome πŸ™‚ If not for anything else because they tend to stay for longer instead. The last (from what I can see when looking up the tree) walnut is still hanging on but I have now sown the first one I took out. If it germinates it will be slightly hardier than its mother tree and would be more adapted to what the climate is like around here. Now I must say that the tree I have is very well adapted to this area as it is, it has after all survived fifteen years here now (well twelve I had it in the cool cellar its first three winters). So I do hope it’ll start to grow, one way or another I will find a place for it to live either in my garden or close to it πŸ™‚

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My Japanese quince still believes it’s spring πŸ™‚
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One frozen strawberry proves it isn’t πŸ™‚
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Edible but the dogs pee everywhere in the garden πŸ™‚

I think it is time to make another sandwich and then check if there’s anything worth watching on tv tonight, I doubt that though πŸ™‚

Have a great day!