Category: Cool.

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It looks like all but one of my sown Petunias will have this color.

We’ve had unusually much sunshine today  since we weren’t supposed to have any 🙂 Still mostly cloudy anyway and it has been just enough warm so it has been rather nice, we even had a nice walk later in the day because the flies in the forest really didn’t care much about us. Well there was this one horse fly that insisted on paying me a visit and I can happily say that she will visit no more.

This time it is evening fog I show.

   

Yesterday I went to a pet store rather far away, a work friend lives just beside it so I had a cup of coffee first. He has one of those really modern and I guess rather expensive coffee makers so I think it is impossible not to make a really good cup of coffee 🙂 The pet shop is rather big and it turns out they sell snakes, spider, turtles, scorpions and aquarium fish. I have nothing against snakes so I took a look at them, I think it was mostly boas and pythons of different sizes but I skipped to look at the spiders and scorpions 🙂 🙂 🙂 I bought myself some fish and went home again. Took a bit longer than it should since I got a bit lost, I also was a bit lost on my way there too so now I’ve seen places in this county I never would have otherwise 🙂 🙂

Lots of Rowan berries this year.

 

I’ve never seen this butterfly before so I’ve asked the knowledgeable people on FB what it can be.

We had our nap, so so far I’ve still only missed to have one during this vacation 🙂 It was a bit too noisy today though, I have a neighbor with five horses and they are making hay bales and that tractor of theirs have been working quite a lot lately 🙂 I think I snoozed for twenty minutes and today I wished it could have been more because Alma woke me up at 3:10 this morning and it took some time to fall back to sleep again. No stomach problems though, just needed to go an hour earlier than usual.

     

I went to the grocery store in the village where I work today and they had cheap strawberries and cherries as well, so when I’m done here and have had something to eat I’ll make some jam. It is hard to find cherry jam here and if one would it costs a small fortune and since strawberry jam works for anything that needs jam I thought I might as well do some of that as a well. The few cherries I get from my sand cherry trees won’t go far and they are still unripe, just like the three plums I’ll get 🙂 🙂 and my strawberries gives the odd berry but they tend to start producing berries now, really odd since all other strawberry plants give berries in spring and early summer 🙂 🙂

     

I better stop writing here and go downstairs to clean those berries and the jars so I can start making that jam. Also the dogs are waiting for me to have a couple of sandwiches so they can get a slice of cheese each 🙂

Have a great day!

A bit too close :-)

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100% humidity, no wind but towards the cool side should still make a rather nice day but both the dogs and I thought the humidity was just too much and that it made it feel much warmer than it actually was. We walked down to the creek in the morning when it still felt a bit cool but the flies were nasty and there were a few horse flies that tried to bite me. Oddly slow so now there are fewer horse flies to worry about 🙂

   

Winter food for the cattle. Lots of beans in it this year, they’ll cut it down and make silage from it.

I think we were close to wild hogs because Alma became a bit excited and looked straight at the point where we met one last week. We didn’t see or hear anyone though, I guess they too thought it felt a it nasty with the humidity and kept as still as they could to avoid the attention of the flies. We did see a Roe deer though but now Alma rarely cares about it. She has become so much better on our walks now and I do hope it continues that way 🙂

Roe deer don’t eat the beans, they only eat the most delicious herbs, that’s why they have problems surviving the old fashioned winters when the ground used to be covered with snow.

   

I got warnings from the lightning app when we had our nap but since the sun shone I really didn’t think much of it. Not even when the rain started to pour down because I really couldn’t hear any thunder. The dogs wanted to go outside so I opened the door so they could see how the rain was pouring down it was even too much for Malkolm. Just as I was about to close the kitchen door the lightning hit. I was close to peeing in my pants if I should be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I saw how it came from the mountain and passed my neighbors cottage rather close and hit the ground around 100 meters (much the same in yards) behind out cottages 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that I had almost closed the door because it is amazing how much it sounds 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

No rain tomorrow they’re guessing but the humidity will stay at 100% or close to it. Almost no wind but a bit of sunshine so I guess it will feel like living in a steam bath tomorrow. Well I’ll go to the pet shop tomorrow and will be closer to the big lake so I hope that helps some.

   

I took a look outside my bedroom window and realized that almost the entire eastern top half of the apple tree is covered in white bryony (Bryonia alba). It’s a poisonous vine that when it’s older can cover entire trees. It’s something I never would bring to my garden and it isn’t native here but back in the days people thought it was a great vine to cover big areas. It spreads easily with birds since they eat the berries. I did taste one berry when I was a kid and it tastes horrible 🙂 🙂 🙂 So even if one can die from eating the berries one need 40 of them and I’m pretty sure that no one can come even close to do that 🙂 🙂 This one is a young plant and only had three vines growing up from its root, still it managed to cover so much of the tree. They always grow where it is the hardest to get rid of them.

    

So we haven’t done much today, even before the rain the dogs preferred to stay indoors. Sunshine at the moment but still a chance/ risk of more thunder. I don’t mind thunder as long as I’m not caught outside when it arrives. I have had to chose between being the highest point in the fields or hiding beneath tress, a sort of choice between having plague or cholera 🙂 🙂

Ten seconds after I took this photo the lightning struck 🙂

The smell from the Woodland tobacco is wonderful but it only smells in late evenings and nights.

I took a photo from below on the bryonia, we call them dog turnips 🙂

It is time to have a last cup of tea for the day and perhaps I’ll have a couple of oatmeal cookies 🙂

Have a great day!

A morning I liked.

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The morning was almost perfect here today, only almost because as usual the vegetation was so wet that Malkolm was soaking wet when we came home even though he barely walked in the high grass today. It was cool, morning mist and the sun slowly rising. We skipped having breakfast before going outside hoping to be in the fog as much as possible. The mist actually stayed our entire walk so I was more than happy 🙂

I went up to the mail box before we went out on our walk, back in the days I would have had all dogs with me, unleashed, because they would stay close to me. If I tried that today Alma would be all over the place, most likely chasing cats at the farm, Malkolm would follow her and Nova would have turned back home again 🙂

   

I did hope that we would see some bigger animals since the sun just had started to rise but we only saw one and that was a wild hog down by the creek. It was passing the gravel road perhaps twenty meters ahead of us (much the same in yards). At first it stood still just watching us but decided to pass since we had stopped only looking at it. The thing is that wild hogs never comes alone and I had no idea if this was the first or last of them I decided to turn around and walk back home instead.

     

It is getting more tricky to have our walks now days. Nova is old and I’ve noticed how much slower she is compared to just a year ago. So it is a bit tricky to understand what speed we should walk in. First we have Alma who most likely would love to run around as fast as she can, last is Nova who now days mostly enjoys to just walk really slow sniffing on everything she can find on the ground and Malkolm in the middle 🙂 Malkolm is more like Nova, more interesting in smells than speed so it is Alma who has to adapt the most and adapt is not her strong side 🙂 🙂 She too can find smells interesting but can’t concentrate for more than fifteen seconds, I’ve actually measured the time and it’s rare that she can be interested in anything for up to twenty seconds 🙂 🙂

     

She did behave pretty well when we met the hog though, I must give her that! The weather after that was rather nice, lots of sunshine and just a weak wind blowing. the rest of the walks she behaved really well. I thought of mowing the lawn but even though it was fairly warm and the sun shone the grass was still soaking wet, no mowing tomorrow either because it has just started to rain again and it will most likely last until early morning tomorrow. One newspaper shouted out that after this rain we’ll get higher temperatures again and lots of sunshine so I checked the weather sites. Yes we’ll get one day with high temperatures and then it’ll drop down to 20C (68F) again 🙂 🙂 They always do like that when they know most people are desperate to at least get some sunshine before work starts again 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and then bed I think. I guess it’s stupid to hope for another morning like we had today but I’ll be happy if it is cool and with some sunshine 🙂

     

Have a great day!

     

The morning was really nice anyway :-)

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The weather has been really mixed today. The morning was cool and nice with the sun warming up the air rather quickly, later on the clouds arrived and with it heavy showers but lots of sunshine in between. Now we have sunshine and rain at the same time 🙂 Thunder was heading towards us but went north on the other side of the mountain.

The cattle have now moved on to the pasture beside the one behind the beekeepers cottage and that means the road still is blocked with electric wires so therefore much more difficult to walk along the creek.
We saw this deer buck on our way to the bog. Well I can see that it is more or less impossible to see it in this photos 🙂 🙂 🙂

Besides the morning walk I’ve spent most of my first day of vacation with having a long nap 🙂 I’ve had a cold for quite some time now, it has spread all over the country it seems, so I’ve been unusually tired this summer. I’m hit much less hard than most who have had it but instead had it for a longer time. I didn’t miss much while I, well we, were asleep. Every time it stops raining I’ve had the kitchen door open but the dogs have refused to go outside, they were caught in a shower early in the morning that not even Malkolm liked 🙂 🙂 and they wouldn’t do that mistake again 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Both the big weather sites are guessing we’ll have a rain free day tomorrow but loads of rain on Wednesday. I’ll have to go to a grocery store as well, I should have done that today but I looked in the fridge and decided I have enough at home to last until tomorrow 🙂 My neighbors did the same but decided to go today so they don’t need to go for the rest of the week instead 🙂 We all started our vacation today and none of us want to do anything unnecessary during these weeks.

     

I already have three composts but I ordered a new one today, a kind of tumbler. It is black and is supposed to stand in sunshine so it becomes a hot compost. One puts in the material, could be grass or what ever comes from the garden or kitchen, turns it around a couple of times and leave it until next time. This will make compost much faster than the other warm/ hot composts. I bought it mostly because I have a family of mice in one of the old ones and lots of ants in the second old one. I’ve tried to make them move by pouring lots of water through it but they refuse, plus it is hard to open up so I can use what’s in it 🙂 🙂 🙂

This is most likely not a Creeping bluebell because the flower grow out from the stalk n several sides of it.
This is a Creeping bluebell because the flowers all grow out from the same side of the stalk. Almost impossible to see the difference otherwise but my guess is that they both spread just as happily 🙂

I better start writing a list of what I need to buy tomorrow and put it in my wallet already today so I won’t leave it at home as I so often do 🙂 It is so much more expensive to forget that list because I keep guessing what I might need and come home with so much more and most of it is something I really don’t need 🙂 🙂

The peas are in bloom and have started to grow over to their neighbors 🙂 🙂
Malkolm is now almost as high as Nova is 🙂   

Have a great day!

I’m rarely nostalgic and Malkolm is much better.

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So Malkolm is much better already 🙂 I went to work an hour later this morning just so I could see if the food would stay or not. My biggest worry was if he possibly had eaten something that blocked the food. He ate and had no problems at all 🙂

The sky on my way home today.

   

We have lots to do at work but the things I do had all been done just after lunch today, so I left work a couple of hours early 🙂 I went to the grocery store in the village where I work and was going to buy some frozen fish for Malkolm. When I was a kid fish was poor mans food, so we ate a lot of fish. Today fish is rich mans food because those prices really make one need an income on the top 1% to be able to buy it 🙂 🙂 🙂 Instead I bought frozen chicken and that also works really well for an upset stomach. I made the rice this morning before going to work and boiled the chicken as soon as I had come home. Now days Nova only eat any food made from chicken and the smell made even her want to eat so of course both she and Alma had some too 🙂

     

The food stayed where it should be and now Malkolm have more energy that I think he should have 🙂 🙂 He and Alma were playing here on the upper floor and when both finally fell off my bed and it to what sounded as the radiator I had to shout to make them stop 🙂 🙂 All three are now sleeping on the floor here beside me 🙂 For once no one is snoring 🙂

     

It was supposed to rain this afternoon and the sky sure looked like it when I drove home but one drop hit my head and that was it 🙂 They are now guessing that it will rain more or less all day tomorrow and Friday and Saturday but I’ll believe it if it happens. They are also guessing that my first vacation week will be sunny and just enough warm, I’ll believe that when it happens as well. Some times they don’t even get it right when they show what weather we’ve had during the day. I remember one winter when they said that we had had cloudy weather and -18C (-0,4F) when in fact we had had sunny weather all day long and minus 28C (-18,4F) 🙂 🙂 🙂 WE haven’t had such low temperatures since then so it must be well over 15 years ago but unfortunately the weather sites haven’t become much better since then 🙂 🙂 🙂

I think these are Creeping bell-flowers.
I have two Hardy Hibiscus in my garden but so far no signs of buds.

I’m not the one to be nostalgic or think back on memories form the good old days that weren’t particularly good to be honest but today lots of memories came back when a smell I really can’t say whet it was brought back a lot of memories, mostly about our summer cottage up in the mountains just outside my home town. Suddenly I saw myself sitting in the glassed veranda with place for two people eating two sandwiches and I could feel the smell of newly brewed coffee. The cottage were placed at the top of the mountain and there was no running water, an outhouse painted screaming green, a gas cooker and showers were taken outside with cold water that we brought with us in big plastic jerricans.

     

I started going there by myself when I was around 13 years old. I lived on the other side of the city so I think it was around 40 km (25 miles) to our cottage. The only heating we had was a kerosene  heater so i rarely went there when winter had arrived. From early spring to late autumn however I want there quite often, the rest of the family didn’t care especially much then. Normally I biked there so I didn’t bring a lot of water but enough for a cup of coffee in the morning and to be able to wash myself if there wasn’t any water in the rain water barrel (well this is Sweden so naturally there was water in the barrel 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) The best thing, I think, was that I passed my mormor (grandmother on my mothers side) so I usually had a pit stop there bunkering up with a couple of sodas and cinnamon buns 🙂 and of course I had some while visiting her as well 🙂

     

I was quite young so if something walked outside the cottage it could be a bit scary but it was always a moose or deer that passed by 🙂 I loved that place and I think I mostly just read books or listened to my radio, back then they often played the Radio theater shows and those were really good. I don’t think they do that any more. Nothing would grow there except for grass, moss, daffodils and some Irises, we tried to grow potatoes there once but the potatoes were tiny and so hard that it didn’t help that we boiled them for hours, they just kept on being like little round rocks 🙂

Have a great day!

Sick puppy.

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One can make a really good tea substitute from the leafs and flowers from the Fire weed. I realized that I only have two left in my garden and I’ll leave those alone but found another place at the edge of the forest, I think I’ll pick some of those tomorrow if the weather allows.

I became a bit worried after I had come home and Malkolm suddenly threw up all what he just had eaten. I waited a little time and gave him a small treat and it didn’t take long before he threw up that too. Naturally I then started making scenarios in my head that he had eaten something that had gotten stuck and that he would need surgery tomorrow. Just to be sure that it isn’t anything stuck I then boiled some rice and poured in lots of water and gave it to him. He started to eat and then looked at me and I understood what he meat, so I crushed four pieces of his regular food in my mortar and poured out the powder in the rice.

     

It still inside him well over an hour and a half after he ate it 🙂 I now also know he has a case of really bad stomach because he wanted to go outside and I said to him that if You’re going to throw up I really need to know it so stay indoors, no it wasn’t throwing up he wanted to do and the small after he had the runners on m,y floor is pretty bad 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve already sent a notice to my team leader that I’ll come in later tomorrow, if the boiled rice and fish I’ll give him stays I’ll come to work, otherwise we’ll go to the vet.

     

I am however not that worried any more because he has been playing just as wild with Alma for quite some time now and I realized that he also had thrown up in the garden when I saw him eat what was left 🙂 🙂 That’s really gross but that food has stayed down as well 🙂 The thing with Malkolm is that he doesn’t make that awful sound when being sick, it just comes out, so no warning what so ever. Besides all this I must say that the day has been rather good. A bit on the cool side and mostly cloudy but the hours at work passed fairly quickly.

I was sure that last winter had killed my Eastern redbud but then I saw new lafs 🙂 It never grows bigger than this though.

I know it’s hard to see but here are a few of my seed sown apricots.

Alma is sleeping on the floor to my right, Nova is sleeping on the floor to my left and Malkolm is sitting on the stairs half way down to the kitchen 🙂 He does that quite often and it’s like he’s bored but still don’t want to be downstairs all by himself 🙂 Well it is time to go to watch the news and then most likely fall asleep in the recliner 🙂

And here are the two seed sown peaches.
Here are the cuttings (the second round) I took from the Hardy fuchsia, all fuchsias tend to produce flower buds really early and there’s no use in removing them, all that happens is that it will continue to produce even more flower buds and that takes more energy than to just let them stay.

   

Have a great day!

Such a nice day.

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The Beekeeper has really managed to make beautiful meadow flower patches.

It has been such a nice day here, mostly sunny and just below 20C (68F) as warmest. The wind was blowing pretty hard in the early morning so I skipped the mosquito hat when we went out on our morning walk and it was cool enough to wear a hoodie. I sprayed us all with the anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray but I can’t say it was because of that I only found two ticks in total on the dogs and no insects bit us either, the insects bit could be because of the wind though because the only place we came close to them was down by the creek.

     

Later in the morning my neighbors texted me asking if I needed an office chair because he was going to toss some away because they had ordered new ones at his work place and since there were nothing wrong with the ones they would toss away he thought of not only his family but also on me 🙂 So now I finally have a really good chair when I sit in front of the computer 🙂 I can’t remember when I didn’t have any pain in my back or legs while sitting here.

     

I’ve finally planted the last Mulberry tree I ordered but I still have four Sea buckthorn bushes to plant. I have also pruned the Laburnum so that the, so far, little Wisteria gets some sunshine and also the area behind the tree. I once had a rather nice flowerbed there but it went too dark when the tree got bigger. I also pruned the Japanese quince and a Ginnala maple, the Japanese quince because it has become too big and threatening the little new white mulberry tree and the maple because it gives too much shadow towards the root zone. I’ve decided to remove that maple just because it gives too much shadow and Ginnala maples tend to spread like weeds. I have another one that also needs to be pruned just because no sunlight can reach the ground where it grows.

     

I found the first tiny tomatoes on one of the tomato vines 🙂 I was fastening a string towards the cottage wall so that it has something to keep it in place and while I was doing that Alma decided that she would give me a visit. Alma has this habit where she must press her face towards mine and it isn’t a gentle touch, she press her face really hard towards mine 🙂 🙂 So while I tried to tie the string around the tomato vine she stood there pressing so I couldn’t see anything and managed to break off all the other flowers 🙂 🙂 Well I have more plants with more flowers so I’ll get my tomatoes 🙂 I also tore off the new shoots and planted them too. I will not get any tomatoes from them but I can save them till next summer. If they’ve become too long and thin I’ll just cut them down in large enough pieces and plant those in new pots.

     

The weather guessing on the weather sites are galloping right now 🙂 🙂 🙂 The big Swedish one says rain all day and around one fifth of an inch with rain. The Norwegian one that I trust most of all those sites says rain all day and two inches of rain!! Well in which case I think we’ll be able to have our morning walk but two inches is a bit much 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I have things I must do indoors anyway so I won’t get bored 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!

The first Gooseberries are turning red 🙂
Red currants but I won’t get a chance to get any, the dogs and Magpies are there as soon as they ripe 🙂
This tomato variety is called Tigerella, I guess one could translate that to Tiger Ella 🙂
I’ll get lots of Blueberries this year.

Lots of rain and thunder.

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So I guess I can’t say that the weather service we have got it right this time but at the same time not too wrong either 🙂 🙂 Early this morning it did say, on the net, that we wouldn’t get any rain at all but   and that the temperature only would drop a degree or two. Earlier in the week though they did guess that we would get an inch of rain and the temperature would drop down below 20C (68F).

     

We have gotten bucket-loads of rain, lots of thunder and the temperature dropped to just above 20C (68F) 🙂 It didn’t help much with the heat at work though because the wind blew in the wrong direction so even if we had two big gates open none of it would reach us in the factory. Now in the evening however I have the wind blowing from the kitchen door, up to the upper floor bringing in the cool air through the bedroom so now I think we all will get a good nights sleep. It will be nice not having the feeling being boiled the first in the morning 🙂 🙂 🙂

Troll grapes.
We call this plant Troll grapes. It is a native plant many of us have in our gardens and the berries are quite poisonous for us humans. Actaea spicata, it only thrives in dark shadow and good soil. I do have the shadow but apparently it also likes to grow in sand 🙂 The fun thing is that the seeds this one comes from were bought from a Canadian seed business that unfortunately doesn’t exist any more.
I sowed some Borage this spring and some have pink flowers
while others have deep blue 🙂
I sowed the Campanula rapunculus, the Rapunzel, last summer. It is a biennial flower so it flowers before it dies. This one is edible and can give rather big roots that can be sued like radishes. Very closely related to the Creeping bellflower but not even close to as bad since it dies its second year. The Creeping bellflower is also edible in the same way.

The dogs are running in and out through the open door and then to my bed where all the rain water drops off, I can only hope it doesn’t get too wet to sleep in. Tomorrow will stay cool and for the rest of the coming week they’re guessing that the temperature will stay just above or below 20C, that works great with me 🙂 It isn’t supposed to rain or thunder any more but the sky is dark grey, I need to have the lights on indoors, so I guess it isn’t really over yet. Nothing clears the air like a good old thunderstorm and it feels like we need some more clearing of the air before I’m happy 🙂

Aaron’s’ rod. Grows wild here and always have yellow flowers.
They mix with our garden varieties so every now and again one with a different color turns up.
Iris hollandica isn’t the hardiest of bulbs but two survived the winter here and one was destroyed by the dogs and the second one pressed to the ground but survived 🙂
Sorry can’t remember the name for this one 🙂 Some kind of Nepeta though.

No walk today because of the thunder but I do hope tomorrow morning will be sunny as they’re guessing it will be so we can have a long nice walk while it is rather cool. No watering in the garden either so no more mosquito or hose fly bites to scratch today. I was outside for a few minutes to gather some Iceberg lettuce though. I need to thin them out as much as possible and it is nice to have on sandwiches together with some ham, tomato and cheese plus today I had something we call Skagenröra, it sort of is like shrimp salad with lots of mayo but with more things in it 🙂 Unfortunately I only had hard bread and one never knows how hard bread breaks, so now I need to find a clean t-shirt 🙂

These photos were taken yesterday.     

It is time to stop for the day and go to bed, the heat has really made us all really tired. Only one more work week until vacation 🙂

Have a great day!

Mösakäringa.

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Foxglove to the right.

We’ve had everything from cloudy weather to sunshine to rain and thunder today.It rained when I came home from work and after that we had so dark clouds that I though more thunder was on the way so we stayed at home and in the garden. I and my dogs once got caught in a thunderstorm where I had to chose from being the highest point in the fields or standing between the trees in the forest 🙂 🙂 It was one of those fierce storms so the lightning flew all over the sky above us but none hit the ground here in the village.

Grape vines grow like weeds.
I apparently still have two grapevines in my garden 🙂 I thought I had removed this one several years ago but here it is 🙂

The broken old wheelbarrow. I always sow different poppies and morning glories in it.

The poppies will soon open up, the Californian poppies however is far behind.
I sowed this Mock orange around 20 years ago and it flowers nicely every year and has become pretty big.
I sowed this Mock orange well over twenty years ago. It is now huge and flowers nicely every year.

They are guessing that the weather will stabilize towards Midsummers eve and after that become warmer and more sunny but You all know by now that they aren’t too good at their work when it comes to guessing what the weather will be like here 🙂 🙂 🙂  I know that in some folklore the beings doesn’t like to be out and about in daylight but very few is like that here in our tales. Like the Skogsrå, a forest nymph. She has lots of local names and I think that when people talk about here in this area they call her Mösakäringa (would be something like the Bog hag, personally I call her the Bog Lady just in case I ever should meet her 🙂 ). Everyone knows that when the fog rolls in over the fields from the forests it’s the Bog hags that has poured water over their nightly fires.

I have more roses than I can remember and I really can't say I like roses :-)
Found another rose that I remember I brought home after a plant swapping day. It has had a tough life fighting with wild roses I now have removed.Turns out it was lying flat on the ground so I’ve now helped it up again.
Persimmon shoots.
New shoots from the roots of the dead Persimmon hybrid. I’ve read that it is easy to make those shoots grew new roots so I’ll try that with some of them.

The Wisteria that I’ve tried to remove so many for years now but cut off a big piece of root is now growing in the Lathyrus, Golden shower. They have leafs looking very similar so if I’m lucky I’ll have both yellow and blue flowers in that tree 🙂

She’s the one that reigns over the forest /bog and all the animals and if she likes a human she will allow them to hunt in her area. In this region she’s always described as very beautiful and tries to lure men to follow her and, if she wants to, kill them or seduce them. Her backside looks different when it comes to where she lives, Here she looks like a hollow log on her back but further north she look just like a human but has a tail. In the Norse beliefs the god Odin hated her and often hunted her like an animal but she’s hard to kill, only a silver bullet could do that (and I guess that since there were no bullets back in Odins days he must have used something else made by silver. If one would meet any kind of beings when walking around in the forest it’s always a good idea to have  some pieces of silver, either as an apology if one has done something stupid or a way to become friends with them Preferable that silver should be begged while walking on a pilgrimage 🙂 To be honest I don’t think they are that picky now days since so few wear pieces of silver in their pockets while walking in the forest 🙂 🙂

Nepeta sibirica.
Rosa multiflora. Forbidden to have in many states in the US.
Rosa multiflora, Japanese climbing rose. It is still behaving nicely up here in Scandinavia but can spread fast and tends to push away other wild roses. Forbidden to have in many states in the US.

Have a great day!

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!

Cool and nice!

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Malkolm sitting in the middle of the garden doing nothing, very unusual :-)

The mornings was quite cool here today, so cool that no mosquitoes or flies were pestering us even though we went out to the bog. Nova wanted to go down to the creek but since she has been a bit off since the last walk there I’d rather have her walking a shorter distance but at least come out so she could sniff on every track she found. Good appetite though so she’s not ill. She did get grumpy though so she dragged her feet all the way until she realized we were on our way home again, then she suddenly could walk really fast 🙂 🙂

The village on the mountain bathing in sunshine but they too got this mixed weather after a while.  The haunted tree :-)  Not all photos will have an ALT text, this is a piece of the log from a pine that was cut down earlier this year.  Cool summer mornings has a special kind of light that I like a lot.

It has been less cool than what they were guessing in the weather sites and so far we’ve had a couple of small showers but that’s it. Lots of sunshine between the clouds as well. After we came home we had a little nap, well I tried to but Malkolm decided he would play with a nasty sounding plastic bottle so he woke me up every now and again. I guess the good thing was that I still just relaxed and most of the time even Alma stayed with me and Nova 🙂

Guelder rose in bloom. This one is unusually fine, they are almost always attacked by tiny pests.      There's still water in the tiny tjärn.

I only found three ticks crawling around on the dogs when we came home, cool mornings keep those calm as well 🙂 The deer was outside in the cow pasture again this morning, I still haven’t see her young one but I’m pretty sure it’s out there with her. My neighbor, the Beekeeper, saw a doe with two young ones a couple of days ago. I guess that Alma and I are just too loud so that they can hear us from a long distance, Alma shouting and whining like always and me scolding her for it like always as well 🙂 The thing with Alma is that if she can keep calm until we pass the Beekeepers she’ll stay reasonable calm for the rest of the walk as well, if not we’ll have a constant war between us all they way 🙂 🙂 🙂

  The first wheel shaped spider web for the year.    Now when the forest has been thinned lots more ferns grow big.

I’m thinking of buying some fish to have in my water barrels again, there are so many mosquito larvae in them and I can’t find the fishing net so that I can bring them to the fish i my aquarium. The problem is that they now have so tough rules for pet shops to be allowed to sell aquarium fish that most just don’t care to do it, I’ve heard that the license to be able to sell fish just costs too much. Good thing for the fish, annoying for us humans. Well I can always go down to the creek and see if I’m lucky fishing there 🙂 🙂 🙂

The first wheel shaped spider web for the year.    Now when the forest has been thinned lots more ferns grow big.

You don't want this one in Your garden, it can cover a big tree during a summer. The Swedish name foe it is Dog turnip :-) Its scientiffic name is Bryonia alba.
Bryonia alba is nothing You want in Your garden, it can cover a tree during one summer, smells nasty and I have had lots in my garden. Thankfully I’ve got rid of most of them.

Sorry but can't remember the name of this one at the moment :-) I have lots of our wild flowers in my garden, one can say that I'm lazy or say that I care for the pollinators :-) Chose the one You like most :-)
I have lots of wild flowers mixed with garden flowers in my garden. Some would say I’m lazy not weeding them out and some would say I think of the pollinators 🙂 🙂 🙂

Male flowers on Hardy Kiwi.
This is the male flowers on the Hardy Kiwi. My female plants are always freezing during winters (this one did in the beginning as well) so I’ve never seen those flowers but I think they look much the same.

Geum urbanum, much smaller and sort of shy comparing to all the garden varieties there are.
This is a Geum urbanum, grows everywhere here and beside it a wild pink Geranium.

The reasn this old flowerbed look so wild is that it actually grows a Sand cherry tree there, it is impossible to mow that area or keep in well maintained :-)
It grows a Sand cherry tree is that old flower bed so I can’t mow the area or remove all flowers we tend to call weeds 🙂

Another shower is just passing by and when they do the temperature drops a lot, then again it gets really hot when the sun shines instead so it evens out during the day 🙂 I forgot to write about our National day and what we are celebrating (most people doesn’t know why to be honest. So most just take this day as a day free from work and if the weather is nice they’ll barbecue something and just relax. I’ll try to remember to write about it tomorrow instead!

     

Have a great day!

Long weekend.

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The clouds have come and gone since noon today but it was mostly sunny after I came home.

It rained in the village where I work but I could see no signs of any rain here in the village. The creek was really full though so the rain must have been heavy there. It was also slightly warmer today than they guessed yesterday but it still didn’t rise above 16C (60,8F) and it sounds as if we all love it at the moment 🙂

Buttercups. Can't remember the name on this one but I think it grows in North America as well.

I’m not a fan of spruces in our forests butt they do look great when the new growth comes.

I noticed that the dogs loves it as well, even old Nova had much more energy today and isn’t as badly bitten by mosquitoes as she was yesterday. We have also had a really strong wind blowing and that if anything helped a lot with those biting little nasties, they aren’t strong enough to fly around in such a strong wind 🙂 I noticed that they still sell annual lupine seeds (in this case the Texas lupine) here so I ordered some yesterday before they forbid those as well. I sowed some early this spring directly in the ground and they do germinate but rather unevenly. The biggest I have now will son open up the flowers but the latest showing is barely 10 cm (4 inches) high.

  I was hoping that I would see damselflies down by the creek today because I've seen planty of dragonflies in the air now but had no such luck,    The little Forest star thrives down by the creek.

We walked down to the creek after I had come home after work, as I wrote the creek was really full of water but the ground barely damp, They’re guessing that we’ll have much the same weather for at least ten more days and even though I feel sorry for those having vacation and wants warmer weather and sunshine I really have nothing against cooler weather even if it also means more rain. Then again I don’t have to water anything during that time 🙂 🙂 I do need to continue to water those trees I’ve planted though and will have to do that all summer because it takes so long for the roots to grow out into the soil. The first thing that will dry out is the old soil that was in the pot the tree came in so it is important to help those trees until the roots have started to spread underground.

This is what curled leaf disease looks like. Normally if it is this bad the tree will die rather soon but I did spray it with sulfur like last year and new leafs without the fungus are showing.

Sally and Salmiak sitting at the end of the road.   

This is a weed extraordinaire :-) I thought I had managed to remove it but four years after the last I saw it came back again :-) Beautiful but invasive and the berries are either crap or taste nothing :-)
Flowering raspberry.

Malkolm is sleeping by my side and so deep that he doesn’t react when I scratch him, Nova is snoring so loudly that it actually should wake her up 🙂 Good for her that she’s almost deaf 🙂 🙂 Alma is almost never sleeping especially deep, thew slightest sound will make her run up from where she is and then she’ll run down the stairs 🙂 🙂

Yellow flag growing in the root zone.

It’s still hard to get photos of the tiny new leafs of the old Pawpaw 🙂

I used tto have lots of Foxglows in my garden when I moved here, suddenly they were gone so I sowed seeds last year to get them back :-)
Foxglove.

I’m not sure the dogs like the new toys I bought 🙂 I bought two “tennis balls”, They aren’t but they look like them but are bigger and there’s a kind of rubber guard around them. They play with them but as soon as the squeaky thing in them gives out a squeak the dogs get scared and leaves it alone 🙂 I also bought a ball looking like a small orange american football. There are places all around it where one is supposed to put treats in and then the dogs are supposed to chew on the ball so the treats sort of falls out. The problem is that Malkolm has figured it out but he isn’t strong enough to chew out the treats and Alma still can’t figure it out so she doesn’t tough it 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a cup of cocoa and then to bed, they day has felt twice as long as it has been and I’m so glad that I now have a four day weekend 🙂

Have a great day!