Category: Flowers.

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Today my neighbours oldest daughter (I think she’s six years old or perhaps five) gave me three eggs from their chickens and for a second or two I was thinking if I should by one of those cheap incubators to let the eggs hatch. Then I realised that I in that case had to fix a hen house and net so I could make a yard for them to all around in. They are a mix of a rather rare Swedish breed and a Japanese silk hen so they aren’t big but still. Also how would I do during winter if it gets really cold? I know some people actually have them in big cages but those are nasty expensive and does hen small? 🙂 🙂 🙂

So I’ll probably use them when I’ll make pancakes next time but it was a fun thought for a while 🙂 Here in Sweden, well in the entire Europe, the rules says if You want to call Yourself an organic farmer (we call it ecological farmer) hen must go outside and always have a rooster amongst them. So they say that seven out of ten eggs from those hen is fertilised and if one put them in an incubator they’ll hatch. Perhaps better to buy those eggs the day I feel I can take care of them properly.

It’s a bit warmer today and between the sunshine and clouds we had a huge shower passing by. Gave me a little more water in my rainwater barrels but didn’t do much for nature and my garden. I have a few flies flying around in the cottage. They are big ones and really don’t want to be here so I tries to let them outside without getting the annoying other flies inside. Not easy because every Tim I try to help them outside they fly the opposite direction and the annoying ones then can come indoors. Not that there are many hanging around anyway but one annoying fly in the cottage is many to many 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I brought it with me to the computer and I absolutely forgot about it 🙂 I’ll get my new mattress pad next Tuesday and I do hope it is as good as I think it is. Now when I’m not working staying at home waiting for it it won’t be as annoying as it usually is, I mean it will be delivered some tome between 8 am and 5 pm and when working that’s just so irritating, if it comes early should I ten go to work after? Well I wouldn’t but anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

I can hear the storm roaring through the forest.

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I woke up in the middle of night hearing strong winds blowing and heavy rain falling and wondered if the storm had arrived early but it calmed down pretty soon so I guess this was something else. I woke up a few hours later and the world was totally quiet, no wind or anything and since we all had woken up, I don’t know how they do it but both dogs and cats always know when we do wake up 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I let them outside for a while and it was quite nice outside.

The storm did arrive before noon and it came from a direction that made it touch my garden and cottage and the wind was pretty bad. My Chinese catalpa even bend to the wind and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. The wind now comes from southwest and stays away from my home but I have a window open so I can hear the roar when it passes through the forest. I like that sound but I like it even better when it doesn’t reach my cottage 🙂

We’ve had a few heavy showers today and I guess more will come because the winds will continue to blow all night and all day tomorrow and they bring showers with them. Thankfully we had our morning walk before it started but I doubt we’ll have one tomorrow, walking in the forest with winds like these can be rather dangerous. Trees might not fall but pines easily will have big branches break off and it isn’t nice to get one of those in the head 🙂 🙂 🙂

So we have done very little today, I’ve done some laundry and picked some berries in the garden and put them in the freezer, I even watered my Himalayan Cedar because it stands on a mount of dirt that easily dries out when the wind blows and the sun shines which it actually has done a lot today, from next year it will have to survive without any help from me because by then it should have roots going deep enough or wide enough to manage it anyway.

The Leeks are coming fine despite that I sowed them too late, forgot about them so almost all dies and then they were covered by potato leafs 🙂
This year the butterfly bush will flower before most butterflies die 🙂 Last year it survived a frosty night and didn’t flower until October 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and I’m thinking of frying a couple of sausages. I don’t have anything else to have with it so I might cut them and put them on a sandwich with a strong cheese 🙂

Have a great day!

A storm will pay us a visit tomorrow.

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I saved this photo yesterday so I could show it today 🙂

Grey and dull most of the day and just enough warm so it has been a rather nice day. It had rained during the night, not much just enough to make the vegetation wet so the dogs were rather wet when they came in from the garden just after we had woken up. we did get a couple of showers during the day as well but they looked worse than they were to be honest, the water barrels didn’t get any bigger addition of water.

My Easter cactus loves it outside and it has been in bloom for quite some time.

I drove to the super market rather early in the morning so I didn’t have to deal with lots of people who never knows what they want to have and no long lines at the cashier. I had written a long list of what I most possibly needed and put question marks after those I just wanted 🙂 Well the list is still on the living room table so I didn’t get some things I possibly wanted but I did get one or two things I never thought Wanted 🙂 Like a branch cutter, looks like a big secateur and this one also had telescope arms so I could reach higher up in the trees. I’ve already tried it and removed dead branches on one of my apple trees and several on the Hungarian lilac.

I dug out an area in from of the big box to plants my rhubarb seedlings. Not too smart I think since I now will have problems reaching in to the box 🙂 🙂 🙂
Finally the beans are showing 🙂 Only four plants have survived but I’ll at least have some this autumn 🙂
I’ll have more peas than I can eat in a year I think 🙂 🙂 🙂

I do like most of my trees and bushes (except for the common lilac) but sometimes they grow so dense that neither light nor rain can reach the ground and that’s why I bought this cutter. It’ll also come in handy when I need to cut down my wild roses because trying a secateur on those is most likely the closest I’ll ever come to try and kill myself, those thorns are big and horrible 🙂 🙂 🙂 The wind outside is getting stronger and tomorrow we will be hit by a storm. Thankfully the worst of it will hit Norway but some will come here too. I do hope we also get some of the rain but one never knows.

It is time for that last cup of tea and today I was baking French rolls but they flattened out instead and became really good teacakes instead 🙂

The Kankakee mallow is now much higher than I am 🙂 🙂 🙂

The Jerusalem artichokes are even higher and shows buds, that usually doesn’t happen until late August.

Have a great day!

Potato tomatoes :-)

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We’ve had all kinds of weather today, cool and cloudy morning, sunny and hot on and off during the day and even some rain plus thunder passing by both south and north of the village. not even close to what they had guessed when it comes to the rain but they did actually tell us not to trust that part of their guessing since one never knows where the showers would end up falling.

I haven’t done much today except for watering the plants outside and put the two Pawpaw seedlings I found in the cool cellar outside. A good day to do that since the sun now mostly has been covered by clouds. If You want to put potted plants or any plant that hasn’t met sunshine yet never put it in directly sunlight because it will burn just like us when we stay in the sunshine without any protection. Let it stay in the shadows for a week. That is still a bit problematic here since there at the moment only one spot around the cottage that won’t get hit by the sun some time of the day. The one place I do have also have most of the slugs that still is alive in this drought so that’s not a good idea 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is so dry here now that the little rain we’ve had only helps the grass to stay green but not grow 🙂 There’s always an upside to everything 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve bought both vegetable seeds and flower seeds on sale now because I have no idea what kind of economy I’ll have next year. They were on sale because they are soon to expire date wise. Seeds usually are viable many years after the date that’s printed on them and these costed half of what the other companies sell their seeds for during sales so I thought it best to buy while I know I can. I think however I need to make my little vegetable patch bigger and perhaps try to revive one or two of the old flowerbeds 🙂 🙂 I’ll also empty a big wooden box I now mostly use as a huge trashcan, fill it with soil and compost and grow vegetables in that one too.

Two male Bullfinches. The two females hid in the vegetation beside the road.

I’ve found some, what some call, a few potatoes tomatoes 🙂 (very poisonous so don’t try and eat them). Most modern varieties of potatoes don’t give seeds, they’ve managed to select that part away somehow. Good thing they have to be honest because if those seeds germinate and one of them aren’t resistant towards the potato wart disease, or black scab, one is in big trouble. Over here one need to report it to the authorities and after that one can’t grow potatoes in that soul or even nearby for well over twenty years. One can however sow them in a bucket. One can get the most odd varieties, some blue or red and I’ve read about a man who got one big black potato. If they would get the disease one can just seal the bucket and let the authorities destroy the soil.

The Monsterkitten found something really interesting today.

Even Malkolm came to inspect what it was.
Turns out it was a frog who now lives safe from the cat 🙂

I’ve tried a few times to sow those seeds but it is really hard to know when they are ripe because the fruits stays green and if they fall to the ground it’s hard to find them. Also never have potatoes and tomatoes close to each other, they are so closely related thatchy give and take different diseases from each other. The sun is shining outside right now at the same time we’re having a light rain. We used to say that if the sun shone and the rain fell we would have rain the day after. Never checked if that’s true though 🙂

ow I have five smaller Pawpaws. Have no idea what I’ll do with them during winter

I now have five smaller Pawpaws and have no idea what I’ll do with them during winter since mice seems to love eating them.

I can try to let them stay outside beside the two bigger ones I already have in the garden. Lots of cover to protect them from the unpredictable winters we nowadays have.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then check what’s on tv. Probably re-runs on every channel I’m afraid.

Have You ever tried to eat the fruits from the Fuchsia? They are edible and most of them taste a bit like blueberries. I ate this one a bit too early so it was a bit watery.
Potato tomatoes 🙂

Have a great day!

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So I’m again unemployed and since I can’t write anything about what happened since I signed the paper that says I’m not allowed to write anything about the company that can show it in a bad way all I can say is that it wasn’t any fault from my side. I really liked all the employees and will miss them. I feel fine about it all though so now I’ll be searching for a new job, well I’ve done that for a while but now I’ll intensify the search.

I won’t be able to see the haunted tree next year when they’ll get green again.

So today was sort of my first vacation day for the summer and even though it mostly has been cold and a bit warm it still has been rather nice. We’ve had thunder passing by north of us but not especially close and for a few seconds the wind grew strong and some rain fell. Not as much as they had guessed but at least something. I had been out watering an hour before it arrived so the water from the sky should at least on those places have sunken down in to the ground. We might get more rain but the odds are low that it’ll fall around here.

I went to grocery shop at the store in the village where I used to work so now I think I won’t have to do it again until late next week, it depends on how much milk I use, I hate being without any milk in my home 🙂 🙂 On my way there I saw that they had sown corn in a big field, not especially common here since it needs more warm weather for a longer period of time than what we usually have here and it also needs way too much water, so I wonder how it could look as great as it did since we have had a drought here for quite some time.

These two bumblebees were sleeping on the thistle and when Malkolm came a bit too close one of them raised a leg as to say don’t come to close 🙂

Once again I was surprised about how little flies we have here now, I could walk the entire morning walk without being annoyed by any. At the same time I heard someone say that he wondered why they suddenly had so many flies since they didn’t have any before 🙂 🙂 So I guess that all our flies must have moved to them instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 I don’t mind though 🙂 🙂

I’ve bought seeds to this flower, Lythrum salicaria or purple-loosestrife, one doesn’t want seeds from the wild because it can be really invasive I’ve heard but the garden varieties should be calmer. I’m going to have it in the root zone if I’m successful with the germination.

It’s time to go downstairs because I have a bread baking in the machine. I’m already longing for that first slice with some cheese on 🙂 The dogs can smell that it is close to be done so as soon as I move my feet they’ll run to the stairs 🙂 🙂 They know they’ll get both a piece of bread and a slice of cheese like they always do and it is a good thing I already have a pot of tea waiting 🙂

My little Red oak (or so I believe anyway, could be some other kind of hardy north american oak).

Have a great day!

Finally a bit cooler.

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Sugar pea flower. Lots of peas to harvest now 🙂

Cloudy and much cooler here at the moment, of all the rain they guessed would fall nothing has fallen around here, now they’re guessing it will start to rain from Friday and over the weekend. I’ll believe it if it happens 🙂 🙂 🙂

Sand cherries. I need to be fast to pick them because birds and the dogs loves them too. Not many and they’re small so I think I’ll just eat them 🙂

I’ve been bitten by some insect today, I didn’t have the itching when I woke up but just before going to work.It doesn’t look like a mosquito bite because it has swollen up pretty much but horse fly bites and from other blood drinking flies usually hurts quite bad when it happens. We have so few mosquitoes this summer so I’m sort of surprised that the one we seem to have found me 🙂 🙂 🙂

Nothing much is happening here but even though the ground is extremely dry the plants seems to love it. Well they do look a bit sad when the sun is hitting them but as soon as they stand in the shadow again they go back to looking normal. I do water the most vulnerable of them all but that’s it but I need that rain so the water barrels fill up again because there’s not much water in them at the moment.

Kirengeshoma koreana. Seems to survive anything and it gets just bigger and bigger.
To be honest, I like the bud better than the actual flower 🙂
Nepeta sibirica, The Swedish name for it is Big dragonflower.flowers like crazy and it will continue until the frost takes them.
A white and blue Cornflower.

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll see if there’s anything worth watching on tv.

Have a great day!

I’ve done my chores.

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I mowed the lawn in the garden yesterday and planned to mow the outside parts today. Turns out my neighbours had mowed most of that so I think it took ten minutes to do the rest 🙂 I also, like always did the laundry, dinner for the coming week and a bread in the machine.

Can You see the little lizard?

I did bake a bread yesterday as well but it was an almost total failure I’m afraid 🙂 🙂 I tried cheese again and also mostly used light flour plus a bit too much water. Well I toasted a few slices and then it turned out to taste pretty amazing. So for dinner I made warm sandwiches with mackerel in tomato sauce and covered it with a strong cheese. I haven’t checked how the bread turned out today but I played it safe with ingredients I know work in the machine 🙂 🙂

The man had made a huge compost with stones. Filling it wasn’t a problem but bringing up the compost must have been a horrible job 🙂 🙂
I would like a root cellar like that!

It has been a bit cooler today and we even had some rain drizzling down from the sky, not that it was noticeable on the ground but it did cool down the air a bit more. They’re guessing we’ll get plenty of rain the coming week but they did that last week as well and we barely had any 🙂 🙂 🙂 So we’ll know better next weekend I guess 🙂 🙂

For the rest of the day I’ve done very little. I’ve watered some plants in the garden and a few in the cottage. The almost white pawpaws are now slowly turning green and as soon as they are green I’ll place them in the shadow outside. I think I’ll have them in a window where There’s no radiator close during winter since they seem to be delicious for mice. I had some mice in the cool cellar last winter, that is until I let the monsterkitten play down there every now and again. After that no mice ate anything 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for a cup of tea and perhaps I’ll try a slice of the new bread as well just to be sure it’s ok 🙂

Have a great day!

A visit at an Arboretum and two found pots in the cool cellar :-)

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Hardy Fuchsia. In some countries around the world it is forbidden to plants since it can be really invasive. Not here in Sweden though where it freezes down during winter and only the roots survive and then it grows up again every summer.

Today I met a friend at a place called Alphems Arboretum, where a mailman around 1903 started to sow seeds of different and rare tree but also perennials since his wife loved flowers. Almost all perennials are gone but the trees still stands. He also loved oddly shaped stones so when he was out bringing letters to the area he also looked at stones with odd shapes. There’s actually tons of info on this on the net but only in Swedish I’m afraid.

We went to this cafe/ restaurant and the prices could scare an angry badger away but I have to say that the gluten free meatball sandwich with beetroot salad was truly yummy 🙂

He also walked around in all creeks and waters in the area barefooted so he could feel if any stones he walked on had odd shapes. Then in the evening he went out with his wheelbarrow and collected the stones, he never did this during the day so that people wouldn’t see him and call him crazy 🙂 🙂 :-)Even though he only went to school for a short while he later on learned to write in both English and German so he could order seeds from all over the world.

So this is the inspiration to the Dwarves house. Just remove the room to the far right and put athatched roof on and there it is.

In 1936 Disney employed a Swede as the Art Director and the first film was Snow white and the seven dwarfs. The Dwarves house is actually inspired by the house the mailman house that he slowly built from one kitchen only to a three room cottage. The cottage had its third room after the film was made though but it was the inspiration because  The Swede Gustav Tenngren grew up not far away from that place 🙂

I think this was called the dead road, all stones You can see in these photos were carried there by himself or sometimes given to him by others who didn’t think he was crazy 🙂

The tall trees was unfortunately impossible to photograph but there grew amongst all the other trees a pink flowered Snowdrop tree, didn’t even know they could have pink flowers 🙂 Just before I drove away tho the arboretum I went don’t to my cool cellar and looked at two pots I had left there because the Pawpaw seedling had been chewed off by a mouse during winter. At first I thought it was some kind of very pale mushroom that grew in the pot but then I saw it was the “dead” little tree in each pot that suddenly had started to grow and since there was no light on they were pale white 🙂 🙂 🙂

Had it not been for my friend I might have stepped on this bush, Cotoneaster dammeri.
Most names are gone from my brain but this is some kind of honeysuckle.

So I brought them up and placed them light but not in the sunshine. The soil was a bit damp in one pot but more or less bone dry in the other. The thing is that we tend to think a plant that hasn’t had water in the long run will love to be drenched but they don’t because that’s when we kill most of our plants, so I’m now slowly, slowly watering the pots so that they’ll have a chance to start functioning again before I can water themm like usual. That can take a few days before that happens. The problem is that they now are out of sync with how and when they should have started to grow but that’s a later problem 🙂

There are a few more photos that might be shown tomorrow or when I remember it 🙂

Have a great day!

The two pots I noticed in the cool cellar. They are now slowly turning green like they should be 🙂

It missed us totally.

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A Nanking cherry soon to be ripe, I do hope I’ll get it instead of the birds 🙂

We were supposed to have lots of raining thunder today and there was lots of it but not in my village. It passed to the north and south but here the sun shone and it reached 28C (82,4F). I was hoping for the rain so I am a bit disappointed to be honest. I had planned on mowing the lawn today but since the thunder thundered nearby I never started 🙂 🙂 So that’s a funny chore I’ll have to do tomorrow or on Sunday instead but it will new a bit cooler instead so I’m not complaining too much 🙂

Nothing much has happened here lately but the monsterkitten came in one morning sort of looking defeated, only went to the water bowl and then upstairs falling asleep in old Nova’s favourite spot. The dogs and I had heard some cats fighting the evening before so I thought that perhaps that’s why she behaved like she did but there’s not a single scratch on her but then again fleeing from an attacker would be very stressful as well. Today she was back to her normal self again so it seems there’s nothing to worry about but I’ll keep my eye on her.

The rest of the photos shows what I can see sitting on my kitchen stairs.

There is this new cat the newest neighbours brought home and it has been terrorising the neighbours next door for a while now. Alma and Malkolm don’t like it but it is big and scary so they growl at it but won’t go close. So now I’ll be prepared with a bucket of water if it should feel to come to my home, perhaps even buy one of those strong water pistols so it knows who rules in this garden.

Normally it’s time for that last cup of tea for the day but it’s just too hot, both outdoors and indoors. I’ve bought some Elderflower Ade so that and some ice will be perfect instead and why now have Alice or two of the bread I baked the other day 🙂

Have a great day!

One cool day is what we’ll get :-)

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The Kankakee mallow is in bloom.It was so dry where it lived before (and several new plants are growing there now 🙂 ) That instead of being 2 feet high they’re now 6 feet high 🙂 🙂 🙂

Finally a cool day but the heat will come back already tomorrow. We were supposed to have lots of rain and thunder today but both missed the village. I could hear the thunder from a distance and we did get some rain to be honest, a light summer rain for about ten minutes 🙂 Didn’t do much good. Now they’re guessing the heavy rain will come on Friday instead. The one who lives will see as we say over here 🙂

Hard to see it since the background also is green 🙂

Nothing much has happened here, it has been too warm for that 🙂 Not even now when it is cooler anyone of us have any energy to do anything. I’ve watered the tree planted this year and some of the older I know grows in the driest parts of my garden. Plus the leeks and beans in the vegetable patch but that’s it. The forest doves have now moved, I could hear the parents in the trees behind the dog yard yesterday evening and now the younglings have moved too. So now I don’t have to worry that the monsterkitten will find and eat them.

It is quiet in the village, no birds are singing, no cars are driving and I can’t hear a single human or dog either. I guess the birds either think we’ll have more rain and thunder or that they all now are preparing for autumn. No more eggs laid but instead fattening up for the move south. All the other sounds I think depends on that lots of people eat their dinner now and are indoors 🙂 🙂

Much better meadow this year 🙂 Lots of different flowers growing there now and the bumblebees loves it.

It is time for something liquid, don’t think tea but most likely lots of water or milk. Also I have a bread baking in the machine and it will be ready in an hour I think. A slice or two with cheese sounds like a good idea 🙂

I don’t think my Chinese Catalpa has started to flower this early ever! Perhaps I’ll get viable seeds this year?
It is the same with one of my perennial sunflowers. They normally flower in late August.

Soon I’ll have plenty of strawberries 🙂

Have a great day!

Just as hot today but with a cool wind blowing.

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I can hear thunder in the distance but I’m not sure if it will come our way or not. I wouldn’t mind if it did. It’s just as hot here today as it was yesterday and the dogs only wants to stay outside for short moments before they give up. Today my neighbours little dog decided to take a walk by himself so I was about to go out and help searching for him but just as I was on my way out a villager had found him and called my neighbours 🙂 He had just walked the same way they always walk in the village 🙂 🙂

We were out on our morning walk the same time as we were yesterday and it was slightly cooler today, still no flies oddly enough. I don’t miss them but they are important for all the birds so I do wonder what has happened to them. I wish this was a sign of the coming maps fly season but I’m pretty sure those nasties will be as many or more than usual 🙂 🙂 🙂 It was so cool and nice but like yesterday the heat arrived before we reached the cottage, the difference today is that a cool but weak wind is blowing and it helps a lot. Even if the ground still is slightly wet after the thunder day I still watered the plants I planted this spring plus I gave a little extra to those I planted last year.  Almost all plants that were damaged by the last frost now have new leafs, all but one red mulberry tree. It’s alive and well but just refuse to grow new leafs and I have no idea why.

I’ve also started to look at seeds now for next year. Some businesses have already started with the sales but the ones selling the seeds I want haven’t 🙂 They might be offering free shipment but that isn’t much. Then again if I wait for too long the seeds I want might be sold out before I can order them 🙂 Damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation 🙂 🙂 🙂 I also picked up my first potatoes today, quite a few but mostly small, those are on the other hand the best and I like frying them hole. I had some for dinner today and the rest for dinner at work during next week.

So I’ve done the dinners and also the laundry, like always but I really should have vacuumed upstairs as well but it is so hot now that I really need to put a limit to how much I should do in the heat so I skipped the vacuuming 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

The younglings have left the nest. I hope the doves comes back again next spring.

This time it worked.

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It was much cooler this morning when we woke up, so we had our breakfast and at 6 am we went out for our morning walk. I wore a hoodie again because flies usually fly around even in the early morning if it isn’t 10C (50F) or cooler and it wasn’t that cool unfortunately.

We walked down to the creek since the grass now is too high and still wet after the thunderstorm that it has become a tick paradise. I did rub Yarrow all over the dogs, it is said that ticks dislike the smell of yarrow, just to at least improve the odds 🙂 To my very big surprise we had almost no flies flying around us even though we walked down to their favourite spots at the creek?! I’m not sure where they were but I doubt they will be gone for long, I’m not lucky enough that they’ve all died away 🙂 🙂 plus the birds need them still.

A few birds are still singing here, normally most of them would have stopped by now because it shouldn’t be enough time left to get more babies. Things have changed though and now it’s rather warm way in to November and perhaps some birds have noticed that and try for it one more time. By the way I only found two ticks on Alma after the walk so perhaps the Yarrow really works? It had become pretty warm by the time we arrived at home and it got worse the longer the day passed. We reached 30C (86F) before it finally slowly turned towards cooler. Call it cooler feels like a joke it has only dropped down 1 degree centigrade yet 🙂 🙂 🙂

This is unfortunately one of the few Bluebells that isn’t invasive 🙂

The bread I baked yesterday should have stayed in the machine a bit longer, I guess the cheese in it was a bit too much for the machine, it tasted really good though. So to check if it was the cheese I’ve now baked a loaf again today, the loafs are rather small so I’m not drowning in bread 🙂 🙂 and this time it worked perfect! So if I want cheese in the bread from now on I’ll use a bit less and also let the loaf stay in the machine a bit longer since it takes its time to cool down.

Even though we’ve had a long nap, well all the animals have had several long naps, I feel too tired to do anything so I think I’ll make myself a cup of tea. I doubt it will keep me awake since I’m pretty sure the heat will instead 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!