Category: Flowers.

Presummer is here.

May 20, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I’ve always been like this but I still feel it’s wrong to wake up earlier on a weekend than on the days I need to go to work 🙂 🙂 🙂 I woke up just as the sun slowly should have risen but there were a few clouds at the horizon that blocked it for a while. The rest of the day however has been sunny without even a single cloud.

View from behind my gate yesterday when the sun was slowly setting.

We all had something to eat before we went out on our morning walk. It was still a bit chilly so I was stupid enough to wear a sweater, ok it was one with a zipper in the front but it didn’t take long before I started to boil. Walking with Alma does that to me but also the sun started to heat up the air and there was no wind at all. The first thing we did was of course to see a roe deer cross the road and Alma went from just stressed to quite insane. She did calm down a bit though but she gets so excited when she see wildlife that she can be impossible to walk around with.

The first deer we met. She must have seen us since long becausee the forest is cut down on the left side. She was in no hurry at all.

A crab apple tree on the right side of the gravel road. It gives red and rather nice apples.

Of course just when she finally had calmed down properly we went out on a field and what do we see? Another roe deer. So I was prepared for the worst but then she almost didn’t care at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will never be able to figure out how she will react to anything to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that she and Albin never saw the badger strolling along some bushes when we were almost at home. when we came home I finally baked those breads that I should have baked yesterday 🙂 🙂 and they turned out quite ok. I think I had a bit too much flour though so the loafs didn’t rise as much as I had hoped. To be honest though, the taste is the only thing that matters as long as it is edible 🙂

The rest of the day has been nice and calm. Alma has been over to the neighbors and played with their daughter. Alma is apparently great with kids. Not so great with Albin because she goes too far and never stops in time. Today I sprayed water on her since I was watering the vegetable patch and that calmed her down considerable 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve sowed two kinds of Asian cabbage, one edible flower and then lots of draught resistent flowers, mostly those we have as spices like Thyme. I was going to sow Oregano (the Swedish name for it is Kings Mint) but I just can’t remember where I put those seeds 🙂 🙂 🙂 Plus I’ve sown all kinds of poppies, morning glories, canary nasturtiums, normal nasturtiums and Black-eyed Susan vine. If they all would grow I’m pretty sure it will look amazing and sort of a mess at the same time 🙂 🙂 🙂

The second one and he too took it a bit to calm for my liking. It’s a miracle if these deer survives the wolf pack we now have here because they react slower than cold molasses 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for something, I’m thinking yogurt and perhaps corn flakes or some kind of gluten free granola. I must say that gluten free granola is a bit sad when comparing to the normal one but one takes what one can eat 🙂

Have a great day!

So we won.

May 14, 2023 · 6 Comments ·

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It is raining. We weren’t supposed to get rain today but this comes from thunderstorms nearby and it is very dry in the ground so I doubt that anyone is complaining about it. It isn’t dry in my garden though, like in winter when the cold temperatures flow down through my garden so does the water that still is in the ground until there’s none left. It does help a lot to live beside a huge bog too, there’s still water in the swamp behind my garage so the ground water is just two meters (much the same in yards) down.

My little Red oak is opening up its leafs. I can’t say that it grows especially fast but it is at least alive 🙂 I’ve always wanted a North American oak since I was a kid and noticed that the leafs looked different than our oak leafs when I watched Chip and Dale at Christmas 🙂

DSC_0004 (2) — The oaks are getting green in the forest as well.

I slept until 5 am today (and so did the dogs) because I watched the finale in the Eurovision Song contest. Our song won because it got almost twice as many votes from the juries around Europe. The peoples votes however went to Finland so he ended up as the silver medalist. So like in the US elections a president can win the popular vote but still lose the election 🙂 For me it didn’t matter who won of those two because I didn’t get the Finnish one and I still couldn’t hear what our singer sang 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hoped for France to wind and like always my favorite ended up somewhere in the middle to last 🙂 🙂 🙂 So here’s a link to YouTube to the french song: Evidemment It should open up in a new tab.

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I could hear cranes trumpeting when we went out on our morning walk today and when we reached the open fields they stood not far from the gravel road we were walking on. They didn’t care much about us (and both Albin and Alma behaved really well). They were communicating with other cranes so i didn’t think more about it. Just as we were about to cross the creek two more landed in front of us. They too trumpeted a lot and to my very big surprise three big flocks of cranes then flew towards us, circled a bit and landed in a neighboring field 🙂 Must have been around 40 cranes in total. I think those are the ones that still doesn’t have a place of their ow since they arrived in couples. If they were nesting only one would have come while the other one wrmed and defended the eggs in the nest.

DSC_0038 (1) — Parts of the three flocks that came after.

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I’ve sown iceberg lettuce, chard and salsify in the vegetable patch today. I’ll sow much more later but these are quite safe to sown now since they can manage a chilly morning and we might have just that on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. The temperatures will drop considerable for two days and then go back up when our long holiday starts. Ascension Day is on Thursday and I took Friday off as well. Not all at work could do that unfortunately but since no one actually celebrates holiday like they did back in the days they’ll instead work on Thursday and take Friday off instead. I think that if they had done that when I was a kid they would have been flogged 🙂 🙂 🙂 Not that we Swedes were especially religious back then (and even less now days) but one just simply didn’t do anything like that then.

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The dogs have had their dinner and now I’ll go down to the kitchen and make dinner for work tomorrow. After that I too will have something but I haven’t figured out what I want to eat 🙂

Have a great day!

Buzy morning.

May 13, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I woke up pretty early (4:20 am), well I was woken up pretty early by the dogs. With my bedroom window open they now hear everything that happens outside and obviously they then need to go outside to check it out 🙂 🙂 If the window had been closed they would hear something and then they obviously would have to go outside and check what it was anyway so there’s no way I can win from now on 🙂 🙂

We had our breakfast and then we went out on our morning walk. Alma did behave pretty well even if two hares around 200 meters (much the same in yards) away ran around some and made her a bit crazy 🙂 Also there was this squirrel that caught her interest but she could just hear it so she lost interest quite fast. When we had come home again I brought out all the seed potatoes. I have bought two different ones, the most disease resistent I could find, and one kilo ( around two pound) of each. I also had a few that were green last autumn so I had saved those as well.

There were some old garden tools left when I moved here 23 years ago. I think this one was a sort of multi tool with a rake on one side but smooth on the two other. I use it for when planting potatoes.

One net was already in the ground when I remembered to take this photo. The ones in the egg carton are green potatoes from last year.

This is the “harvest” 🙂 of sprouts that broke off and a couple from the green ones as well and two tiny from last year that had way too long sprouts to be easily planted in the ground.

I don’t have much soil at home so I had to plant too many sprouts in each pot/ bucket. I’ll show the result in the autumn 🙂

When one buy seed potatoes, at least over here, they always comes in a net bag. Since they always arrive (if one buy them online as I did) too early the sprouts then start to grow through the net and many will of course break off from the potato. So when I had put down all the potatoes in the ground I then had lots of sprouts that had broken off. So I fixed a bucket and three pots and planted the sprouts there. It’ll take a bit longer time to get potatoes but there will be potatoes. Last year I harvested enough of them in one bucket to last for an entire weeks dinners.

After that I mowed the lawn. I can’t say that it had grown an awful lot but some spots were worse than others. There was actually very little grass growing at the place where all the thorny bushes and roses grew but instead shoots had started to popping up from the ground instead. I really can’t skip mowing there because otherwise all those thorny bushes will grow up again. Yesterday I realized that stack ants had a nest in my compost so I had to poison them. Stack ants and all kinds of red ants are really aggressive and their sting is pretty nasty so if I hadn’t done that it would have been impossible to be in my garden at all. Looks like I managed to do the job because I can’t find a single ant there now. I’m sorry about the ants but it was them or us this time.

Tonight is the big finale in the Eurovision Song Contest and as I’ve told You our song is the huge favorite. Finland is the second favorite and then France. I’ve heard the Finnish one and I can’t understand why it is so popular, I guess I’m getting old 🙂

Have a great day!

This year might become a great berry and fruit year.

May 12, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

a (2) — My plum tree (Czar) is in bloom. The risk of frost at night is minimal so I think it’ll actually give plums this year 🙂

We’ve had a rather nice weather this week. Pretty warm, up to and over 25C (77F). The wind has been rather persistent but lukewarm most of the time but now it seems to have calmed down a bit. I’ve mostly been able to see the sun this week but yesterday and today I’ve been “forced” to work inside the factory. Yesterday was quite awful but today I had an apprentice when I learned her what to do with the big washing machine before the weekend starts. She did most of the work and I said great work 🙂

a (6) — The Sloe, which I’m trying to get rid of flowers too.

The Juneberry trees/bushes are opening up as well.

We had the annual road association meeting on Wednesday and a few new people actually came!! and all behaved really well. The meeting itself didn’t take long, it was the coffee drinking, cookie eating and chatting after that made the meeting quite long 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hadn’t told anyone that I can’t eat gluten but since the one bringing cookies to the meeting have a work friend, who also just recently discovered that she can’t eat gluten, she thought it would be best to bring something gluten free to the meeting, just in case 🙂 It was of course something I’m not especially fond of but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her that so I ate two of them just because 🙂 🙂 🙂 and she also brought pear juice just in case someone couldn’t drink coffee, which I hadn’t told anyone either 🙂 🙂 I do like pear juice though 🙂

Old variety of tulip. Today one mostly see tulips as annuals since they are so hard driven that they usually don’t survive till next year. These however comes back every year.

I’m planning on putting down the potatoes in the ground tomorrow and perhaps sow some lettuce and other vegetables that like and cane take cooler weather. The temperatures will drop some next week and we might even get some rain they say. At the meeting everyone was complaining about how dry it is now, everyone but me 🙂 I told them that I just had planted a walnut tree and a cherry bush and the ground wasn’t dry at all. All water in the ground runs down via my garden so I’m the last one that actually will notice if we’re having a drought 🙂

a (15) — This one will, believe it or not, become really beautiful. Suddenly it will be totally filled.

a (16) — Like this one, a filled Yellow wood anemone.

a (17) — We call this one Sulphur anemone, a natural hybrid between the white and yellow wood anemone. I have both so it’s no surprise this one popped up 🙂

a (18) — This is the Yellow wood anemone, quite much deeper in color.

It is time for a cup of tea even though it is after 4 pm, The dogs have woken me up before 4 am every morning so I’m pretty sure that no ammount of tea will be able to keep me awake tonight 🙂 🙂 I’ll also have the bedroom windo open all night for the first time this year 🙂

Nanking cherry. I unfortunately only had one bush and this needs two different ones to give berries. So I’ve bought another one but that one won’t flower until next spring.

a (20) — I have a suspicion this flower grows on a ground stem that survived when my old plum tree died, that is called St Julien. Gives small oval yellow plums that are quite tasty.

Eight pots with at least six new Apricot trees 🙂 I had the kernels (well the seed inside) in the fridge during winter and they are growing quite fast now. These kernels came from a red skinned variety of apricots.

Have a great day!

Finally some warm weather.

May 7, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

a (1) — The bog more or less starts just behind my garage, at the moment it is more like a swamp and sometimes ducks swim around there 🙂

My body aches after all the work in the vegetable patch and potato patch yesterday 🙂 🙂 It was of course as worst this morning but I can feel the muscle pain after every time I’ve sat down for a while. I’ll survive and since I’m walking all the time while painting at work this will most likely be gone by tomorrow. The day has been truly wonderful, sunshine all day and 0C (32F) as coldest in the early morning. Then the temperature rose to 17C (62,6F) and the wind that was was lukewarm. I was thinking I should mow the lawn but my muscles said no 🙂 Instead I planted that English walnut I’ve had in the cool cellar all winter. It had new fine white roots so it will at least survive this summer as long as I remember to support water it until autumn comes an all leafs fall off.

a (3) — Alma saw several deer at our walk but behaved unusually well even when they walked (or ran) away.

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I’ve also replanted eight apricot seedlings, six that shows above the surface and two that might make it. When the apricot seed starts to germinate it always splits in two, don’t know why, sometimes one half just sort of falls off and sometimes it gives a root that sometimes give a new plant. Lots of sometimes there but why not plant it and see what happens?

Quite often when we buy, for instance, grapes they are packed in these plastic containers. They work perfect as mini green houses.

I’ve also done the laundry and dinner for next week at work so now all I have to do today is to bake two breads because I’m out of normal bread and down to a minimum when it comes to hard bread. It is quite easy to bake gluten free bread because there is no kneading involved. It is so sticky that it would be impossible 🙂 🙂 It isn’t as runny as what You get when baking a sponge cake though. Thankfully easy to wash away. I’ve managed to get a bread that is quite close to a gluten bread so I’m quite happy with that but I still haven’t figured out how to come close to a french roll 🙂

This one was a bit hard to just let it run away without getting a bit hysteric 🙂 🙂

a (19) — This is some kind of plum tree, I don’t think it is a Cherry plum but the fruits are pretty small but not round as cherries. Bright yellow and tastes really nice. It flowers too early most of the time so the flower freeze and won’t give any plums at all. If it does this this year I’ll cut it down.

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Have a great day!

White wood anemone.

I’m ready for the vegetable season.

May 6, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

Flowering Bog myrtle (Sweet gale). Smells really nice.

We’ve had a really nice day here, it would have been wonderful if it hadn’t been for the pretty cold night and sometimes the wind being a bit too chilly. To be honest it was warm enough to have the kitchen door open all day and the little wind that actually reached the garden helped when I worked in the vegetable patch and potato patch. The vegetable patch mostly only had grass that I needed to remove but the potato patch also had dandelions, greater celandine, a few small elder bushes, wild raspberry bushes and that red leafed oxalis one can buy as a potted plant, usually have yellow flowers and really is a spreader. Many oxalis can be used in food but this one isn’t one of those but I musty admit that amongst weeds it’s quite beautiful.

I checked so that there were no bees visiting the dandelions before I removed them. There are plenty more dandelions in the lawn anyway so bees of all kinds won’t be hungry 🙂

The vegetable patch were much easier to clean out even though it’s almost twice the size.

The box is almost falling apart and I think I won’t have another there next summer.

I’m happy to say that today was one of those days when Alma behaved pretty good even though two Roe deer ran in front of her eyes and she even noticed a hare in a field without going insane. She did however almost fall of the entrance stairs and pulling me with her when we went out for our afternoon walk. I wonder if I should put on her harness when we’re not taking any walks because as soon as I put that one on she starts to tremble, panting and whining a lot. If I open the door and she doesn’t have it on she behaves like any other dog. When we start walking and I can keep her reasonable calm the first two hundred meters the rest of the walk usually works rather well. If not it’s horrible for both of us. She has become much better though, now days I can actually hear the birds sing, I couldn’t do that from the day she arrived until some time in the middle of the winter that just passed 🙂 🙂 🙂

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They are finally putting more gravel on the road outside our cottages 🙂 The “big” road in the village belongs to the village and all of us are responsible for it but the roads leading from it are private roads and are supposed to be taken care of us who live along them. The problem is that it is timber lorries that destroys it so therefore it’s the forest owners responsibility to keep it in good shape. This winter was warm and the road was soft so now we have huge holes in it and the forest owners have been no where to find but finally one of them said he’s taking care of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve done what I have been able to to fix the holes outside my cottage but that doesn’t help when a new lorry arrives and just makes it worse again, also I live at the lowest point of the road so all water runs down to me and sometimes I have to wade in water when I’m trying to go out from my garden (well wading is a bit much but there’s at least 5 cm (2 inches of standing water there, five meters (much the same in yards) wide) 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It’s the finale in the Eurovision Song Contest next Saturday. To be honest they have been really quiet about it so I didn’t know until a few days ago. Our song is the absolute favorite an it is Loreen, who already have won this with the song Euforia, who sings for us. The music isn’t that much different than when she won the last time but I can’t for my life hear what she’s singing 🙂 🙂 I’m not sure if anyone actually can hear that but she’s like always very dramatic in her performance so I guess that’s what they fall for. I must admit that even if I can’t hear what she sings it still was the only song that should win, the rest were actually total crap and probably the worst I’ve heard in years 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

A15398_008 — One from the Agfa Ambiflex.

This could have been such a nice day.

April 30, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

Today should really have been a wonderful day. The sun has been shining all the time and the temperature rose to 10C (50F) but there has been a nasty and bitterly cold wind blowing and that has sort of destroyed the entire day. I couldn’t even have the kitchen door open because the wind came from the only direction where it actually can hit my cottage and it chilled down the entire cottage. Still when we were walking in the forest where the wind had troubles reaching us it felt quite ok.

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Everything comes in cardboard boxes and everything in those cardboard boxes are wrapped in enormously much plastic, usually bubble wrap and I have finally got my thumbs out of my a..e and started to break it all down in smaller pieces. It is insanely boring in the long run to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 It doesn’t take especially much space when I’ve packed it all in the car though. I also vacuumed the entire cottage and by entire I also mean the ceilings 🙂 I thought I had removed all spider webs from the ceilings a couple of weeks ago but the spiders are either really fast in making new ones or I was half blind when I did it the first time 🙂 🙂 I realized that I had missed one place so I’ll get a stick and remove the rest later today.

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I found a dead kitten in my garden a week ago. I noticed that Albin was licking on something and realized it was a small cat. I called my neighbors and asked if they had all their cats but they weren’t at home so they sent me a photo of their cats and thankfully it wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t find any injuries on the kitten (can’t have been more than half a year old) so I don’t think Albin has killed it. He is a cat hater and have tried to take the beekeepers cats, I must admit that I’m afraid. He did (nor Alma) not show any signs of interest when I removed the kitten and not the place where it was lying so I don’t think he did anything to it. Anyway, it hadn’t been in that spot a couple of hours earlier so what ever has happened it must have happened almost just before I noticed it. I have a tradition that when one of my cats has died I bury it and plant something above it.

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Cosmos the kat is buried beneath some Irises, beside a big rose (rosa rugosa), Bertil i buried beneath a small cherry tree and Teodor beneath a rose that first gives orange flowers that then fades to almost white. This little unknown kitten is now buried beneath a Nanking cherry. Cosmos the Cat will have something else this summer because I plan to reduce the size of that rose, or remove it totally and the Irises never liked that place to be honest. Perhaps that’s the place where I’ll plant the Walnut, it is rather protected from the wind by the neighbors cottage and it will get sunshine all day.

We’ve had our pancake Sunday and I checked on the box what the mix is made from. Turns out it’s mostly corn flour! Had no idea. I have now also learned that the brand of oat flour I’ve bought lately can contain gluten so that’s the explanation to why my stomach is so upset again 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I better keep my eyes open the next time I go grocery shopping. I might come back tomorrow since it’s a holiday here, otherwise I’ll see You next Friday.

A15398_028 — These four ate taken with the Agfa Ambiflex.

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Have a great day!

Still nasty cold nights.

April 28, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

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We’ve had rather nice weather here this week, a bit cold perhaps and with both snowfall and hail but the sun has been shining quite a lot as well. Today was even better because finally it became a bit warmer again, that is after a nasty cold morning though.Thick and hard ice covered the car, so thick that the rising sun didn’t have a chance to soften it up before I had to go to work. We also hade a rather thick fog so I brought the camera with me and stopped by the lake for a few seconds.

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Alma has behaved unusually well on our walks this week! She’s extremely stressed about having to walk in the same pace as the rest of us but I can see that she’s really trying. Every now and again she flips out though but I will not complain or get angry at her those times. Compared to how she has behaved these last two years this last week has been wonderful 🙂 So I’ve started to think that she actually might not come from hell just to make my life miserable after all 🙂 🙂 🙂 She even stopped screaming like insane after just a few minutes after she saw a hare running in front of us, before she kept on screaming like insane for the rest of the walk which could be as long as two hours 🙂

DSC_0014 (7) — Very few cranes by the lake this morning.

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Now when my closest neighbors have gotten a second child they’ve been talking about moving to a bigger house or make this one bigger. It looked like they finally had decided to move and I wasn’t happy about it, they are amazing neighbors! but when they sat down and started to write down things about the cottage to a realtor they suddenly felt that they weren’t ready to move after all so guess if I’m happy 🙂 I can never get that good neighbors again, I just don’t have that kind of luck to be honest 🙂 So now can Alma continue to jump over to the neighbor to play with their eldest daughter 🙂

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I know that I don’t have space for any more trees in my garden so I guess that’s why I ordered a new one 🙂 🙂 This time it’s a Persimmon hybrid (crossed with its relative Kaki Persimmon). It isn’t as hardy as the American one though but I can’t find any “real” Persimmons for sale over here in Europe. I already have a few smaller trees in pots waiting to be planted but I’ll prioritize this one and the Pawpaw that also is waiting for a place to live 🙂 🙂 🙂 (plus I have seeds for more trees so I guess I really need to win the lottery so that I can buy lots of land so I can plant all the trees I already have plus all the ones I know I’ll be buying in the future 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

A15264_026A — One from the Voigtländer Bessamatic, taken around a year ago.

The last of the nice days, for now.

April 22, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

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Another rather wonderful day, the last one for a while they say. It does however look as that they now are guessing that it won’t be that cold as they first guessed so I guess they were right the first time they guessed 🙂 Even nights will be fairly nice the coming days so that means I don’t have to cover the potted plants I brought up from the cool cellar. They have been though and that saved them from as low temperatures as -6C (21,2F) several nights. The meat eating plants I bought last spring have also survived and are now moved outside. Anything that eat flies are friends of mine 🙂

a (4) — There was still frost on the ground when we were out on our morning walk.

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A week ago I started to cut down a part of the garden that mostly consisted of thorny wild roses and thorny sloe bushes. They spread way too fast and it was impossible to pass without getting caught by all those thorns. It was a paradise for birds and other small animals because no predator could ever reach them in there. Still they had to go but the birds and all other small animals can still enjoy the protection of the thorns because I placed all those thorny branches in a big pile beneath the apple tree. They’ll stay there until next year when I’ll put it all through my compost grinder. It really doesn’t work well with fresh branches so it’ll have to wait a year.

20230416_140402 — Two thirds of what I was cutting down left here.

20230416_140338 — The first pile of thorny branches.

20230422_121329 — Two more piles that were moved to the first one.

20230422_121341 — This is the result. One rose is left and I do hope I saved the right one, the one that doesn’t spread via the roots 🙂 To the right, beside the blue large pot, You can see sand cherry trees. They are actually quite long but tends to follow the ground instead up growing up towards the sky. Gives delicious berries 🙂

Now I’ll have to continue to mow that area no matter what weather we’re having so that no new shoots can grow up again. Either that or cover the area with a hug and rather costly tarpaulin. I used my the little hand chain saw I bought last year and even though it works well the batteries don’t last for long but takes hours to recharge. Now I’ll need to sharpen the chain because sloe is really hard and wears down the chain pretty quick. I have one more place I need to cut down, new bushes grew up in the middle of one of my gooseberry bushes so now there’s very little gooseberry bush but lots of other things instead 🙂 I also mowed the lawn for the first time today and I think I was first in the neighborhood. I’m not that keen to do it as often as the neighbors though 🙂 🙂

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Alma has now adopted my neighbors and is over there just as much as she is here. They thankfully like her a lot, especially since she’s so calm with their older daughter?! She’s never calm here but as soon as she jumps over that fence she the calmest dog in the world playing nicely with a 4 year old 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s good to know she’s welcome though, otherwise life would be so much more complicated.

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Have a great day!

A little toad came walking by.

April 21, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

Another quite wonderful day here, around 20C (68F) and almost no wind at all. Those are the days I hate to work 🙂 We really should have our vacation when spring has sprung because it is now when we enjoyes the nicer and warmer weather as most. Then again we’ll only have one more of these wonderful days before it changes and the temperatures will drop down to 10C (50F) and we’ll get rain as well. I guess I should be happy that I don’t live further north because they’ll get snow and snow fall in late April is just depressing 🙂 🙂

I don’t mind some rain though because I can see from day to day how much lower the water levels are in the creeks and ditches and this is not the time to have low water leves because now is the time frogs and other amphibians lay their eggs. When I moved here I hade a very shallow pond outside my cottage, in the cow pasture and in warm spring evenings I could hear hundreds of frogs quacking there. Then the farmer decided that he should drain that pond so all frogs disappeared. I miss that sound a lot. Talking about amphibians though, today at work when I were driving in materials to paint I saw something move on the floor. It was a toad 🙂 Toads really shouldn’t walk in there but they do a couple of times every year. One could think that all the powdered paint that lies on the floor would make it walk elsewhere but in they go.

So I jumped out of the fork lift, picked it up and carried it out to one of the forgotten gardens that belongs to the factory and placed in the shadows behind a small spruce. I do hope it doesn’t continue on its travel because roads are never far away and I really don’t want it to die. I pass a big pond or small lake on my way to work and this time of year I really have to slow down there because lots of amphibians pass that road to get to the pond/lake. I almost drove over two on my way home today. I usually have several toads in my garden every summer, they like to stay close to the root zone where there is some water but also lots of shade so they don’t dry out. Back in the days old Hector chewed on one of the smaller ones and all toads are poisonous so he started to drool something insanely.

So I had to drive to the vet almost 50 km away. Hector drooled so much that he had to have his head outside the window and the entire car was covered with dog drool when we arrived. People outside the vet laughed like crazy 🙂 🙂 Hector got a shot of something and finally stopped to drool so back home again where he naturally found what was left of the toad so back to the vet we went 🙂 🙂 🙂 Toads are actually so poisonous that animals who eat them can die, had I known that back then I wouldn’t have driven to the vet so calm and carefully as I did 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m tired as always so I’ll risk a nights sleep by having at least one more cup of tea even if it is after 4pm 🙂 It just isn’t the same to have a cup of cocoa 🙂

A15397_003 — I’ve bought another old camera called Meopta Milona. It’s a viewfinder camera from the same company as the Flexaret. The problem was that the lens were unscrewed and i had no idea how far I should screw it back 🙂 🙂 A couple of photos were just too blurry, the joy of having an Alma in the family but the rest turned out quite well. I must have done something to make a light leak because only the last photos have it at the bottom of the photo. I must buy one of those tiny little lamps again so I can check where it is.

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Have a great day!

The tick season has started, yay.

April 15, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

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Well we have to take the good with the bad I’m afraid and yesterday I found a tick on Alma. So I brought the tick repellent spray (it is supposed to help towards the biting flies too but that’s harder to check) from the cupboard. It smells like one of those cheap perfumes one can buy when going to (in our case) either the Canary Islands or somewhere along the mediterranean coast. They might smell nice there because You actually think more of the surroundings than what it actually smells but way too much here at home 🙂 🙂

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Alma has a very well made harness when we’re out walking and it has two attachments for the leash. Well today Alma tore off the one in the front so now there’s only one place. I’m amazed that it lasted this long to be honest but surprised at the same time since she has calmed down considerable. I guess that seeing two deer was one too many 🙂 🙂 She behaved much better on our second walk. Thankfully the attachment that still is there looks like that if she managed to break that one she would rip the entire harness apart 🙂 🙂 🙂

The beekeeper seem to have lost one hive this winter.

I might have to buy a new spray because I just picked a tiny tick from Alma, it walked on her where her fur is lighter colored and the tick was black, the tick is no longer. It is rather nice outside even though we have a rather feisty wind. The morning was dark and cloudy but the cloudy sky has more cracks in it now so we do see the sun every now and again. Tomorrow will be all sun though according to their guessing. They have already started to lower the temperatures they’re guessing we’ll have around next weekend so I’ll have a few work friends who planned to fill up their outdoors bathtubs feel rather sad 🙂 Ever never believe what Swedish weather sites and meteorologists say if it is longer than twenty minutes into the future, sometimes they don’t even get the weather we just had right 🙂 🙂 🙂

This is the only bush with flower buds I could find unless one counts the willow we passed on our walk today.

a (19) — We call this one Porcelain Hyacinth (Pushkinia scilloides).

Have a great day!

a (3) — The swamp behind my garage. There was a really beautiful duck swimming around there this morning but Alma refused to stand still so all photos I tried to take were so fuzzy it was hard to see anything.

The crocus are in bloom.

April 10, 2023 · 8 Comments ·

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Well all I could find out about beings and easter is this. It is said that gods power over this world was as weakest between god Friday and easter Sunday and during that time the evil trolls and witches moved around and created problems. That isn’t much, compared to any other big holiday here that’s nothing, there are loads of info about what all the beings would and could do when they had a chance otherwise 🙂 🙂

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We’ve had another rather nice day here, it would have been a wonderful day if it hadn’t been for the chilly and rather strong wind that just keeps on blowing. Still we had our mostly had our walks where the wind couldn’t reach us and I have to admit that the laundry dried up really quickly. It was however a bit chilly in the cottage because i had the kitchen door open most of the time so that the dogs could run in and out as they pleased. Now the sun is on the other side of the cottage so I have closed the door for the day.

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It’s just not the last of the laundry I’ve done today. I’ve emptied pots and poured the old soil in to my compost, I’ve moved out two more trees/ bushes from the cool cellar, a hazelnut bush and a Ginkgo. I really have no idea where I should place them and the problem is that I have already ordered a few more trees and bushes 🙂 🙂 🙂 Plus the only place I’ve found where I could plant the walnut (so it has a sporting chance to survive) is where my Laburnum (well call them Golden rain) grows. I have also baked a bread that now is put in the oven and will be ready to bring out after I’ve written this.

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I think I’ll make this a weekend blog so I’ll see You all here next Friday.

Have a great day!