Category: Gardening.

The sunshine is really hot.

May 21, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

a (4) — Clematis *Propertius’. It has a weak but pleasant scent.

We were supposed to have a gray and dull day here with little to no sunshine so is anyone surprised when I say that we’ve mostly had sunshine all day? 🙂 🙂 🙂 21C (69,8F) but really hot in the sunshine. I even hesitated to take the dogs for a walk because of how hot it was. Albins fur is so short that I doubt it can regulate heat especially well, Nova is old and Alma starts panting as soon as I open the door before the walk 🙂 🙂 🙂 But we did take a short one i the forest where it’s mostly shadowy. Still they are now all sleeping on the floor beside me here on the upper floor. The windows are open and there’s a wind blowing so it feel almost chilly here now.

a (1) — 35 meters (much the same in yards) of this and I’m not happy about it but also too lazy to do anything about it 🙂

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c (6) — I got this one from my friend who owns a garden center. They didn’t have time enough to take care of it and bring it back to what it once was and was going to toss it away. I have the time and now new leafs are on the way. This is by the way a Calamodin. The fruits can be used for jam but aren’t that wonderful to eat as they are.

I’ve never seen as many flowers on my lilac hedge as there is this year. It’ll be horrible when they all open up but even worse when they wither away. It is too much work to remove it though so here I am complaining every spring when they open up 🙂 🙂 It will rain tonight they say, anything from light drizzle to heavy rain. They are guessing that we’ll get nothing up to 25 mm (an inch) of it during the night and early morning. They are also guessing that the warm weather will stay but one day or two the temperature might not reach 20C (68F). I can live with that 🙂

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I’m continuing to sow seeds and today it was mostly for flowers but I do have some more vegetables to sow but I want to see what of the seeds I’ve already sown will come up before I continue. Any bare spot will be filled with something new. I’m also pretty sure I won’t get any walnuts this year either, not a sign of “flowers” on my black walnut and the one I just planted barely has any branches or twigs at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 My Pawpaws looked fine until that rain/ hail and snowstorm passed by but now they look dead. There will be new leafs some time during the summer but it is annoying and that will make it harder for them to survive next winter if it is a tougher one.

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So back to work tomorrow since I didn’t even get one number right on the lottery ticket 🙂 🙂 🙂 The laundry is done and so is dinner at work for next week. I’ll only have to add baked beans and fried eggs. I I didn’t want to fry eggs today for something that won’t be eaten until next Friday and I don’t know how fried eggs make it if they are frozen.

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Have a great day!

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.

It’s greening up :-)

May 5, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

The week has been mostly sunny but with a nasty cold wind from north. Also well below 0C (32F) every morning. Most days though the sun has melted away most of the ice on the car so it was only this morning I had to use the ice scraper again.I was a bit worried when the dogs and I was going out on our walk after work because the last two ones Alma has been horrible. Mostly because hares run out in front of us and instead of running out in to the forest continued in front of us for quite some time. I really wouldn’t feel sad if all hares just died out 🙂 🙂 🙂

Today however, despite some other hares, she behaved really well again. I don’t know it it was what I told her yesterday that helped, that I would let a hunter shoot her to oblivion 🙂 🙂 🙂 She’s smart but I’m not sure if she’s so smart that she would have understood what I told her but I think she could understand how tired I was after those walks 🙂 🙂 🙂 So today she’s forgiven again. It’s so fun because my neighbors like when she jumps over the fence to them because she’s so calm when she plays with their oldest daughter, sometime I wonder if we’re talking about the same dog 🙂 🙂 🙂

The road association meeting is next week so I have put out notices about it in the mailboxes here in the village. The village road is more or less a circle so if I would do it all by car before going to work I would have to pass my mailbox twice and if I did that the dogs would have thought I was on my way home again and would have started to bark like crazy. Not a good thing at six am, so I decided I would walk to the four closest. I haven’t been able to walk there in a long time since both Albin and Alma behaves like they do when seeing wild animals, they would wake up the entire village. So I brought my camera and took a few photos since it was not just sunny but also so cold that we had morning mist. I realized how much I miss walking there but I just can’t reach those two when they start behaving like that and those times are the times I miss my old dogs the most 🙂 🙂 🙂

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More and more flowers are in bloom in my garden now. I hadn’t checked that this week so I was surprised to see so many flowers 🙂 I also found a flower I tried to plant in my garden when I moved here, 23 years ago. They survived a winter or two but suddenly they were gone. Now I found a lump of them in my hedge and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see them there last year. I have no idea how they managed to get there but who cares 🙂 Also I now have six apricot trees growing from kernels I saved from last autumn and it looks like three nectarines are on the way too 🙂 I have no space for them really but who cares, I’ll make space for them when that day comes 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

Yellow wood anemone and the now everywhere growing Nuns worth and Scilla of course.

I still have a Trillium but since first Albin and then Alma arrived they’ve slowly died away, those two run over them and dig everywhere.

This is the one I thought I had died out in my garden, the Pilewort.

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!

The wind was a bit too chilly.

April 29, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

a (1)

I can’t say that the day has been pleasant because that wouldn’t be entirely true. The day has mostly been cloudy and light grey but there was no wind in the morning so it was quite ok anyway. Then the wind arrived and it went from quite ok to rather unpleasant. Then the sun started to shine between the gaps in the clouds and the wind calmed down so suddenly it was quite nice again 🙂 🙂 Now there’s an evenly grey sky again but I’m indoors and I really don’t care about what it is like outside 🙂 🙂

a (2) — There’s already flower buds on the wild gooseberries.

a (5)

My home is a mess and has been for quite a while now 🙂 But I decided that I wold clean up a little at a time so that’s what I’ve been doing today, plus I’ve baked two breads and I also made french fries for the dogs and me (and sausages and meatballs for me 🙂 ). Still I don’t think I’ve done especially much at all. Time has flied away though but I can’t expect it to do otherwise since it after all is a weekend. We’re having a long weekend because it’s a holiday on Monday the first of May here (and I think in the entire of Europe). May first is the workers day and back in the days everyone were out demonstrating for workers rights. Nowdays most of us might have a picnic or barbecue if the weather is nice 🙂

a (8)

A couple of days ago I planted the inner seeds from red skinned apricots, I had removed the thick and hard shells and placed the seeds in damp paper towels in a plastic bag and then tossed them in to the fridge. I planted them in one of those see through plastic boxes one can buy grapes and other fruits in and today I could see that the roots had grown down to the bottom of the boxes. I really have no need for more apricot trees but I could do it so why not 🙂 🙂 I have plenty more in the fridge plus some from peaches. Well I can always give them away when they’re a couple of years old 🙂

a (12)

I did also, a couple of days ago, lay a bid on a camera, an Agfa Flexilette. An odd camera because it’s a twin lens reflex camera but in the shape of an SLR. I did not expect to win it and wouldn’t have been especially sorry but of course I did 🙂 🙂 🙂 Ok it’s not a lot of money but I could have bought some plants for that money instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 They’re guessing that we’ll get really nice weather tomorrow so I hope they’re right for once. I guess I better check if some shoots from the sloe and rose bushes have started to grow and if I need to mow that area again already tomorrow. Then again it’s been so cold at nights that I doubt anything shows yet but I guess all those roots are preparing to make my life a bit miserable for a couple of years before they finally gives up 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (16)

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 ·

a (1)

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.

a (6)

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!