So last night was cold, the temperature dropped down to a bit lower than 19C (2,2F). The sky was clear so there was nothing stopping what was left of the heat from going straight out to space. Tonight will be even colder they say and it is already -16.4C (2,48F). The weather sites says it’s only -13C (8,6F) at the moment and won’t fall that much more 🙂 🙂 🙂
We did go out for a morning walk when it was slightly less cold but the dogs changed their minds after a while. Malkolm refused to walk where there was less snow for some reason so his paws got really cold and I did warm them up but that did only help for a short while. Thankfully my neighbours had to buy food so they helped me with a few things because I had no wish what so ever to be out driving when it was that cold 🙂 🙂 🙂
They say that it will be much warmer the coming week and even above 0C (32F) from Wednesday and for the rest of the week but since they can’t get what temperature we have now right why would I believe them about what might happen later in the week 🙂 🙂 🙂
So it has been a lot of tea drinking most of the day, so I have already had that last cup because what goes in must come out 🙂 and so far not all has come out 🙂 I think I’ll make myself some warm sandwiches and try to stay close to the radiators for the rest of the day 🙂 🙂 I truly hate winter!
I’ve slept bad for a few days now and the closer I came to today the worse it got. I haven’t had especially many hours of sleep to be honest and the reason? The annual vehicle inspection 🙂 🙂 🙂 It doesn’t matter how new my car has been and also knowing there’s absolutely no wrong with it, I still have a slight panic when it comes closer 🙂 🙂
These are taken through my kitchen window so they are a bit blurry.
I had the appointment at 7 am today and my first thought when I woke up was, why didn’t I take one later in the day 🙂 🙂 🙂 Don’t get me wrong, I really think we do need this since I want my car and the ones with me in the traffic as good as possible but I just can’t stand it 🙂 🙂 🙂 I knew it wouldn’t pass this year because there’s a clonk sound when I drive over bumps or potholes, I didn’t know why though. Turns out the spring to the front right tire had broken. At the bottom and just a little so it is still safe to drive it. I was also tole that the Lamda value, something to do with the exhaust fumes) was a bit too high. 1,03 is ok but my car had 1,05. My car had that problem last year as well but and it takes a few minutes to fix so no bigger deal.
They build “tipis” several years ago and it looks like they still use them, It’s for the grandkids to the forest owner.
So now it’s over for this time and I know I’ll sleep like a baby tonight 🙂 🙂 Well below 0C (32F) this morning but there was no ice on the car! I had it on the inside instead 🙂 The humidity here is almost always high so it creeps in to the car and when one doesn’t drive every day it builds up inside and I’ll have to dry it off as soon as the motor works and heats up the ice. I drive perhaps once a week now so I’ve just accepted it 🙂 The weeks before when I drove to pick up parcels however I had no such problems at all.
The horrible wind we had yesterday was even more so today, not even the forest managed to keep it away. So I’m now for the first time this winter wearing my winter jacket. The wind will calm down towards Friday but instead we’ll get snow!!! I had hoped we had seen the last of that white garbage this winter 🙂 I know it was stupid because if we’re unlucky winter can continue here until early May but it was a long time ago that happened.
If I had known if we would have an early spring this coming year I would have started the sowing now. Some I think I need to sow now, perennials, bushes and trees that needs a period with cold temperatures to be able to germinate. I also have some things that needs a long growth period before they start to flower, like tomatoes for instance, but it is way too early to sow them now, too warm indoors and too little daylight so they grow slow enough. Not even having a greenhouse now will help a lot with that.
There’s a newly dug hole in the old tree stump, I wonder what animal lives there. Could be a water vole, Ratty in the Wind in the willows are a water vole, I only see them as big aggressive monsters 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I baked two loafs of bread earlier today. I’ve already had a couple of slices but one can never have too many when they are absolutely fresh 🙂 I haven’t caught a mouse in two days now. I know there’s at least one still here, I could hear it earlier today. I hope they haven’t learned that they’ll get caught in the box trap 🙂 🙂 The monsterkitten has been down in the cool cellar so I’m pretty sure she’s after it and hopefully successful in taking it.
The day started rather nice even though it was -6C (21,2F) but there was no wind so it didn’t feel that bad when I let the dogs out after we’d woken up. The sun rose and it felt even better until the wind started to blow. A bitter cold wind that made its way in to the bones in my body.
Today the wind blew from north-east and it’s the only time it actually reach my cottage and garden (well it reaches from east as well). We were mostly in the forest while having our walks so in there it was quite a lot better. Still not an animal moved and not birds made any sound, not even the Jays.
So we’ve done very little today just because of the wind. The most exiting thing I did was to make pancakes 🙂 🙂 Also I ate the last of the christmas food and that’s always a relief to be honest. Holiday food is always great the first two days but after that it’s just annoying to have to continue eating it 🙂
No mice in the box trap today so perhaps I’ve now thinned most of them out 🙂 I will not shout hi before I crossed the creek though (old Swedish saying). It might just be that they now learned that no matter how tasty coconut flakes are it still isn’t worth trying to reach them 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I think I’ll read a book or perhaps surf the net. To be honest, how often do You get out on the internet without having something already planned? I rarely do because no matter how much info there is about frogs in Africa or monkeys in Asia or what ever I rarely just go out and search for anything unless I really need to know about something special. I could do like that back in the days we had dictionaries, just open a book and read the first subject on a random page and then just keep on following references in that text 🙂 🙂 It was actually quite fun and I did learn a lot by doing so 🙂
They said the chance/ risk, depending on how one look at it, that we in southern Sweden would get a white christmas was slim to none, so I wasn’t especially surprised when I let the dogs out this morning that we had snow on the ground 🙂 🙂 🙂 Also it continued to snow for quite some time and the temperature has dropped so we will have a white Christmas here this year.
I had a parcel waiting for me at the grocery store in Gudhem so I decided that it was best to pick it up before we went out on our morning walk. I had ordered an aquarium book from 1942 so that I would have something to read this christmas plus the fact it is so old that I would be able to read about cold water fish people since long has forgotten about 🙂 I had hoped to find shredded coconut as well because I had forgotten to buy some when I went to the store yesterday. There’s nothing mice seems to like more than shredded coconut. Unfortunately they didn’t have any but it did remind me of potatoes when I saw the last two bags they had 🙂
A sort of a second flowering 🙂It is actually quite hard to see these huge animals as long as they stand totally still.
This morning the box had trapped three mice! This time a definitely recognised one of them. Some time in its life it had lost a part of its tail so it was easily recognisable. I went out with them before I drove to the store. We went out on our morning walk as soon as I came home and walked much the same way as when I released the mice. We passed the last little field before entering the forest and something caught my attention. I didn’t see them at first but then I saw them, three moose! One big cow, one calf and the third too small to be an adult moose but still too big to be a calf. I’ve seen them before a couple of times and felt happy that they’ve survived the hunting season so far.
The dogs didn’t see them but they understood they were somewhere near 🙂 I must say that Alma has come a long way, just a few months earlier and she would have gone berserk 🙂 🙂 For once she actually started to follow the scents on the ground instead of screaming like obsessed and whining like she has gone crazy 🙂 🙂 We didn’t see any more big animals but both Alma and Malkolm kept their noses to the ground for the entire walk 🙂
I have actually been rather active today because when we came home again the first thing I saw when I went down in the cool cellar was that the trap had another prisoner. Well if that mouse with the short tail come here again I just as well get a cage and have it as a pet 🙂 🙂 🙂 It wasn’t the least stressed to see me, rather the opposite to be honest 🙂 🙂 It had taken it slightly more than two hours to find its way home again 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I just took the trap and walked even further away before I released it again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was worried for a while that I for some reason had all forest mice and yellow necked mice in the entire area but I think I’ve just caught the same ones all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂
After that I made the gingerbread dough. The recipe said that I should have agave syrup and coconut fat but since I’m not a millionaire I used normal syrup and butter. The dough will rest until tomorrow morning before I make the cookies. I will however not be without anything nice to eat today because my neighbours daughters (six and three years old I think) wanted me to have something as a christmas gift, so they made me some fudge and butterscotch to have during christmas, well it won’t last that long because it was delicious 🙂
After that I baked two loafs of Vörtbröd, they came out rather nice, I and the dogs have already tried a couple of slices with a christmas cheese 🙂 So tomorrow I’ll bake the gingerbreads and also grill the christmas ham. I bought a small already cooked one because now days we really don’t use the water it was cooked in as they did back in the days when every calorie one could get was important. They used to heat it up and dip stale bread in it the get up all the fat still in the rather salty water. It has never been a favourite of mine so I buy ready cooked instead.
It is time to have that last cup of tea for the day and of course some of the christmas candy my neighbours gave me 🙂 Tomorrow is our big day of christmas and if I get some time over I’ll write something here 🙂
I knew it was going to get colder but I didn’t know it would be that cold. the temperature dropped down to -7C (19,4F) this morning. The fog was gone though and the sky clear so I forgave the cold weather since it would mean sunshine 🙂
One funny thing with fog and below freezing point temperatures is that the ice created on the windshields on the car is just as good protecting against bullets like kevlar is 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really don’t like the motor running so the heat will soften the ice in but even that heat had problems thawing that ice, so I removed as much as I could and drove to the edge of the village. There I stopped and removed most of what was left but it still wasn’t easy 🙂 🙂
So I guessed right, there was almost no traffic on the roads, the big ones were ice free but the smaller ones in the forest was anything but. I wasn’t in any hurry though so I just drove as fast as it was possible and still have a chance to stop if any animals would jump out on the road. Usually they stay calm when it is this cold though but one never knows. The only wildlife I did see today was the two tiny mice I caught in the box trap 🙂 🙂 I’ve decided to move the peanut bird feeder from the kitchen window because I know they will climb up to it and eat the peanuts and that’s ok as long as they don’t walk inside again like they just had bought some takeout 🙂 🙂 🙂
I had written down a list what to buy in the grocery store and even remembered touring it with me but I still wasn’t prepared for how much it was or the price to be honest 🙂 🙂 I bought big packets of most things because it will most likely cost even more in the long run if I buy the smaller packages. Plus I would have to drive many more times to get what I need so I’ll have to add the petrol price as well and even though the petrol price is really low here right now it still costs a lot to drive shorter distances since the car barely gets warm enough to work effective. I will at least not starve during christmas and new years eve 🙂 🙂 🙂
So I wished every one in the store a merry christmas (or as we say a good yule) and continued to my old working place and wished those who worked a merry christmas as well. There were more people working today than I thought it would be but I think everyone has taken tomorrow off and most likely till after new years eve. I don’t think I’ve ever worked during christmas time ever. Normally I have stopped working at December 22 and not come back to work until after the 6th of January. I always saved a week of vacation and the rest of the time I used the hours I’ve saved during the year.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I had planned to bake a couple of loafs of bread today but it takes such a long time so I wouldn’t be in bed until midnight and that’s way too late for me so I’ll bake them tomorrow and I’ll make some rice porridge in the slow cooker at the same time, it is after all our christmas porridge (and also the porridge we give to the yule gnome at christmas 🙂
We woke up to a cold and foggy world today which, despite the cold, is one of my favourite weathers 🙂 So as soon as it was light enough the dogs and I walked out to the bog. If I had known the fog would stay all day we would have had a longer walk down to the creek and out on the bog there. Days like these are quiet days, not only does the fog dampen sounds from the big road but also no birds make any sounds at all. Well there was these two ravens flying above us who made their metallic sounds a couple of times but that was it.
Alma behaved so well so if there had been any animals out on the fields we would have been able to see them, at least if they were close enough because the fog was so thick sometimes that the camera couldn’t find places to focus on 🙂 we walked out on the peninsula and when we stood there looking out over the bog we could hear something moving around but it never came close enough for us to see it. It was most likely one or two wild hogs because if they know we are around they really don’t care if they can be seen 🙂 and really doesn’t care if we hear them. I always thought the wolves would hunt them but I’ve learned that wolves aren’t especially interested in wild hogs and I guess that’s why they don’t care about being heard or seen.
I sat in my recliner after we had come home and started to think about what time I was going to x-ray my hips tomorrow and after that see my doctor. I have experimental hip implants in my hips since I was too young to get hip prostheses since they would wear out way to fast. Turns out that these implants mostly were quite horrible to those getting them. They leaked lots of heavy metals in to the body and both the bones, muscles and tendon attachments could start to dissolve because of that. The doctor I had for my first surgery however is a snob 🙂 🙂 🙂 so he chose the most expensive kinds there was and therefore I have no such problems 🙂 My “new” doctor of course chose the same kind for my other hip 🙂 They do check my blood and take new x-rays every five years now (before it was every year) just in case something goes wrong. So if they can’t find any heavy metals in my blood I’ll do this again after five years 🙂
Anyway it turns out it was today I would go to the hospital 🙂 🙂 🙂 I still had lots of time going there so no panic 🙂 Normally I don’t mind driving around in fog unless it is dark outside or that it is colder then 0C (32F) since fog is water and when it hits the road it starts to freeze. Most of the way was fine though but it had started to freeze on my way home. No traffic at that time though so I could drive in the speed I felt safe, also it helps if one drives behind a tractor the last 500 meters before driving in on the village gravel road 🙂
It started to become dark again as soon as I had come home otherwise we would have had another walk to the forest but since we have hogs, moose and eventual wolves here I didn’t want to meet any of them when it was dark 🙂 🙂 🙂 I haven’t figured out what to have for dinner so I guess it’ll be warm sandwiches with meatballs and sausages and lots of cheese 🙂 Plus I*ll of course have that last cup of tea for the day 🙂
Have a great day!
So this is my Korean spruce. Its top was destroyed long ago and it took may years before a branch decided to become the new top 🙂 So it does have an odd shape.So the lights also have an odd shape 🙂 🙂 🙂
So another really nice and sunny day but rather cold. I could see the wind power plants up on the mountain moving with the wind but that wind didn’t reach us down on the ground. We walked down to the mostly frozen creek and when we walked out on the field there I saw two White tailed eagles fly up from the ground just 50 meters (much the same in yards) away from us 🙂 I guess they were eating something but I didn’t check what it was 🙂
Instead of following the creek all the way down to the forest we took a turn and crossed the field and walked in to the forest further away. There’s an old road there no one ever use (unless when they cut down the trees) and followed it till the end where we then walked in to the older forest and later to the creek up-streams instead. This is wild hog area but we didn’t see or hear any today. Well I think the dogs might have since they both stared towards a thicket of spruces but that was it.
White tailed eagles.
I thought the water level in the creek would be lower now when we didn’t have any rain or snow but it is actually much higher.
They say that it will turn to warmer weather again already tomorrow and I’ll believe it when it happens. I will miss the dry ground if it’s right but then again I will also feel happy about the warmer air even though it might mean less sunshine. As the saying goes, we can’t have it all unless we are rich enough to travel to where the weather is to our liking of course 🙂 🙂
I haven’t been walking g in this part of the forest in many years, mostly because this is a very swampy area but frozen water is really great to walk on 🙂
I’ve ordered a new wallet, my old one is falling to pieces and I haven’t found any in any store so when I found one on the net I bought it. Younger people now days don’t use wallets, they sort of combine the wallet with their phone case but I really don’t like that. Yes I know I’m old 🙂 🙂 🙂 but I don’t want to lose it all by losing just one thing, like the phone. If I lose the phone I still have my wallet with everything important in it and if I lose my wallet I still have the phone so I can make those calls to stop anyone from using my cards and get a new driving license 🙂
I’ve also ordered Christmas lights for my oddly shaped Korean spruce. If one looks at that spruce it looks like some kind of armchair made in the sixties 🙂 🙂 You know those laid back space inspired ones 🙂 🙂 Well it is the only one I have bog enough so this year I’ll have some outdoor lights. The lights is eleven meters long (much the same in yards) and battery driven. It can either shine all the time or shine for six hour and then start at the same time next day. No one here is outside at night anyway so that will be great. I will of course take a photo of it when the light chain has arrived and dressed around the spruce 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and later today I’ll watch the game show On the Tracks. My oldest brother and I send texts to each other when we think we know the answers, we are usually very wrong 🙂 🙂 🙂
Less cold today but we’ve had a nasty, bitterly cold wind blowing almost all day so it has been rather unpleasant to be outdoors. It was totally calm on our morning walk though so that was nice. I think I might have a fever now, I woke up last night felling awfully hot but my bedroom is anything but and today I’ve had a slight fever and sneezed a lot all day. I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself though but I do hope this isn’t the beginning of something worse like what my neighbours had last week.
Nothing special is happening here at the moment. I have been thinking on Christmas decorations for some reason. I haven’t had a lot of that because cats and having rather big dogs that picked anything in their reach and chewed on them if they liked the taste 🙂 🙂 I do have a nice plastic Christmas tree and I’ve used it for two years but now I have a cat again 🙂 🙂 I do remember having a nativity set back in the days that I liked a lot but then one day I couldn’t find it, turns out my mother had given it away without asking me, quite common behaviour from her I’m sorry to say.
So I went online to see what they had there. Lots of different ones and they cost a fortune! Some I think I would be able to do better myself to be honest. I did find one I liked meant to be hanging on a wall I guess but it is oddly enough supposed to be filled with water?? Is it a kind of snow globe perhaps and every time one shakes it snow will fall down over the people? 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest, I have seen worse and I think that one would be the one working best because it would hang like a painting on the wall and the monster wouldn’t care about it. I’ll better check it once again 🙂
I took an extra look at it and no there’s no snow in it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s called a lantern with LED lights in it but why the water? Also rather expensive to be honest. Well I’ll keep on looking or perhaps I should try to make one myself even though making the humans and animals will be very tricky 🙂 🙂 I do of course have the advent candlestick I made from clay last year. It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen but I did it myself, perhaps I should order some clay again and make the nativity set 🙂 🙂 I will at least have lots of fun making it 🙂 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then go out on the net to see whether I’ll buy some clay 🙂 🙂
Still waiting for that snow to arrive. Well to be honest we have actually had some but so little that it’s hard to find 🙂 🙂 They are threatening us with more later on though so I guess we’ll get it sooner or later. There has been snow chaos in other places though and I’m so glad it never came to us.
We have had fog though, so thick in the early morning that it was hard to see anything and then it slowly started to thin out just to come back again later. I do like fog so I didn’t complain but it did make the day a bit dark to be honest. The eyes didn’t notice it that much but the camera did 🙂
I had prepared for a snowy day so I made lots of rice porridge and learned that it worked just as well on a foggy day 🙂 Rice porridge is not something one make unless it is cold and snowy because it takes a long time to make, easily gets burned and if it is burned one has to toss it away because it tastes awful. Making it on a stove is hot and boring since one must stir it around pretty often. I however make it in the slow cooker so even though it takes almost three hours to make one only have to stir it a few times.
I put on a new collar on the monsterkitten yesterday and she wore it for almost half a day before she lost it 🙂 🙂 This time I wrote my phone number on the collar so I got a call just minutes ago, she had lost it at the farm just up the slope 🙂 So I’ll get it tomorrow when I’ll check if I’ve gotten any mail. I guess that’s the place she mostly walks to because she does tend to smell like a cow now days. I’m pretty sure her mother was one of the feral cats living there and that’s where the cat looking almost identical to her lives at as well 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. It is pitch black outside and the temperatures will drop considerable so tomorrow morning might be the coldest morning so far this winter.
We might get up to two decimeters (eight inches) of snow from tonight and until Friday afternoon so I decided to go to the store already today so I don’t have to drive in that garbage weather on Friday. I know, snow is pretty but I truly dislikes it. The only time I actually liked it was rather many years ago when I spent Christmas in a cottage even more remote than where I live now.
I rented a cottage back then in a region called Dalsland, close to the Norwegian border, and I had the best Christmas ever (I think that I have written about it here in my blog a year or two or perhaps even more years ago 🙂 ). Over half a meter of snow (much the same in yards), -28C (-18,4F), no electricity but a fire stove and my then two dogs and one cat. There’s no light pollution at all there so even if I can see lots of stars here it’s nothing compared to there. I spent an entire week there and as I said it’s the only time I actually have liked snow 🙂
This and the rest of the photos are taken with analog cameras and if I remember it right it’s an Agfa Ambiflex I took these six first ones, then two with a Nikon F90 and the four last ones with an Agfa Colorflex (can be wrong with that last one though).
Back then mobile phones just started to become popular so to hope for any kind of signal there was to hope for a miracle 🙂 🙂 🙂 I would have loved to live there but I think there’s a bigger chance to find a job on the planet Mars than in that region 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I’ll have to endure the snow here no matter what but I do think that if I ever won the lottery I would buy something small in southern France so I could stay there during winter and move back here when spring arrives 🙂
I didn’t bring any digital camera with me on our walks today but it looks much the same as it did a few days back and I also have some wintery photos taken with film cameras last winter so perhaps I’ll put in a few of those. I think it is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I will not bake a mug cake today no matter how yummy it was so I’ll just have that tea and perhaps watch some tv even if I doubt that there’s anything I want to watch, there rarely is.
Pretty chilly here and even though I ‘m not that fond of cold weather I still have to admit that it is nice to walk on ground that isn’t muddy and as long as we have almost no wind it’s quite nice. Ok no wind means higher price on electricity but I guess that’s something we need to take wether we like it or not.
Nothing has happened here so I have very little to write about. We did have the first real snow this morning but it was so little that I only could see it lying on my entrance stairs. If I knew we won’t have any more I would even say that I liked it 🙂 🙂
I was planning on having a little nap every day now when I am at home but so far I’ve had none. The morning just flies by and when I think of having one it’s too late, at least if I want to have any more daylight hitting my eyes. The sun sets already at 3:43 pm now and it is a long time left until it turns again. I really should have been born so much further south where the sun stay up longer during winter and the temperatures never drops 🙂 Then again I would miss our summers here when it never gets especially dark, just a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
I made a mug cake today. I can’t remember if I ever have done that before. I wasn’t hungry but wanted something so I went out on the net to see what I could find. The recipe said to use cocoa but I put in a piece of mashed banana and some cinnamon instead and it turned out really yummy. I would have made one more if I hadn’t eaten my last banana 🙂 Well now I know what I can do if I feel that way again 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I really wish I had made that mug cake now instead 🙂
It was a bit colder this morning than I thought it would be, it had dropped down to -9,4C (15,08F) as coldest. No wind and sunshine all day made our walks really nice though. I wore my studded boats because it is no fun sliding on ice and breaking something while being out at the bog where it would be very hard to find me 🙂 🙂 🙂 That however made it impossible to walk silent, those studs against the gravel road sounds like I’m crushing the stones 🙂 So instead of seeing them we could hear them run away in panic in all directions 🙂 🙂
It is much the same when I have them while shopping, people don’t run away but everyone looks around to see what it is breaking down 🙂 but it’s only in the beginning of winter that happens because after that most people use studs in either ones that can be removed from the shoes (no one will because they are horrible to try and get back when going outside again) or shoes with studs already in them. Even teenagers use them now days, might be nice to not have to go to school but no fun not being able to go anywhere anyway 🙂
Lots of hunting dogs moving around us while we were at the bog, not from this area but dogs doesn’t know any borders, especially not if they follow what ever it is they’re hunting. So we didn’t walk as far as I wanted to. Not that those dogs actually would care about us but because Alma would go nuts and start to screaming like crazy and I really didn’t want the hunters believe that their dogs was mauled by wolves 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hope there are less out hunting tomorrow 🙂
Despite it being so cold now I haven’t heard a single mouse in the cottage walls, it looks like the monster is doing a good job 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea for the day.
Have a great day!
I took lots more photos today so perhaps I’ll save them for another day 🙂
The Cottage by the crane lake. 