I really can’t complain about the sunrise this morning. Minutes after and the sky went bland grey.
We’ve had quite a lovely day here today. It started a bit cloudy but was warm enough for me to only have a sweater when walking with the dogs. That would have been enough even when it was as coldest here as well since it at least was impossible not to boil while walking with Alma 🙂 🙂 She has however calmed down considerable even though she still pulls the leash quite a lot.
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I haven’t been lazy today though. I’ve done the laundry, like I do every Sunday. I’m baking a bread right now actually and I’ve started to clean my cottage. Well I have at least started to carry out all cardboard boxes out to my car, I’ve also tossed away loads of things that I for a reason I don’t remember had saved. I did also start to saw down a corner of my garden mostly containing old thorny wild roses, thorny blackthorn bushes and false spiraea (Sorbaria sorbifolia). The last one is fairly easy to remove because the roots lay just beneath the surface but it spreads like crazy. I do like it though because pollinating insects love it.
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I can’t say that I overdid anything but I did work with a bent back, so now I have huge problems unbending it. It’s the rheumatism that argues with me but I’ll have my sack of rice in the micro later on and put it between my back and the recliner. I would have loved to be able to do the entire place but the batteries needed to be charged and I could for my life not find the charger. Not especially strange to be honest because there’s no charger, just an electric cord put straight in to the battery 🙂 🙂 🙂
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When I’m done cutting down it all I’ll push the the lawnmower over it so that no shoots will get a chance of growing up there again. I would have loved to be able to plant there immediately but most of what I cut down now (except for a birch that unfortunately grew up where it shouldn’t) spread via roots and I’m really tired of not being able to walk barefoot in my garden during summers. Well to be honest I’m hesitant to do that anyway because of the dogs using it as a toilet 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It is time to go downstairs and check the bread. I still haven’t come up with anything that even remotely could work as french rolls and the scones I make tend to be very brittle. They usually falls to pieces as soon as I come close with a knife to cut them in half 🙂 🙂 🙂
Just after I went upstairs to the computer Albin barked by the entrance door and then ran up to me. A little while after I heard something hitting or something lie that the kitchen door. I do hope it is the neighbors cats jumping after moths 🙂 🙂 🙂 Could be a fox too but I haven’t seen any in quite some time.
My little Red (?) oak. It never get more color than this. It’s very sheltered so it might never get hit by frost until after it has changed colors in autumn...
I didn’t win the one billion one hundred and ninety five million kronor jackpot on the lottery last Friday so I’m aiming on the one billion two hundred and ninety five million kronor jackpot tomorrow 🙂 Since I’ve promised that if I win that much I would give everyone at work (those working at the factory floor, not the ones with their own offices) a lot of money I’ve realized that I most likely would have to move from here. It would be impossible to not be known as the rich one. The risk of waking up one day looking straight in to the face of someone wanting my money would be rather big since no one would know what would be going on in a little cottage at the outskirts of the world 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I thin it would be better to just win the one hundred and fifty million kronor jackpot in the other big lottery we’re having because I’ve never promised them anything if I would win that 🙂 🙂 🙂 (divide with twelve and You’ll have the $ US)
..Sweet pea still in bloom.My cabbage never grew to anything more than this 🙂 🙂 🙂 The red leafs behind it is red leafed chard.
Nothing much has happened here besides we’re now back to standard time again. So naturally I woke up when it was supposed to be 4:40 am but in the real it was 3:30 am. We are supposed to get rid of this time changing but the pandemic delayed it all, most governments were more occupied by other things that to write down their approval on that change. I When they finally do they will have to decide if we’ll keep the standard time or change to summer time all year round and sine we all know how politicians are this can take a decade or two before they can decide that 🙂 🙂 🙂
My squash is big as a pumpkin now 🙂.Still have some small iceberg lettuce.
The Corona virus has hit my work place so several people are at home right now. I do have a sour throat but that could just as well be a common cold. Well as long as I don’t have any fever I’ll go to work. It is time for a cup of warm cocoa and a couple of digestives 🙂
The weekend has been rather nice. Fog a big part of yesterday morning and sunshine in the afternoon. Today chilly and sunny in the early morning with just a tad of morning mist and this afternoon is just enough warm with a light but cool breeze. High humidity though and that sort of brings down it all a bit.
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The hunting season has started, they start with Roe deer bucks and it’s usually over after a couple of days. Here the hunters counts how many bucks there are and after that they decide how many they think can be hunted and usually the older and bigger ones are protected, just to make sure the most fit stays so the coming generation of deer benefits from it. No bigger animals are allowed to hunt yet except for wild hogs, they can be hunted all year long as long as it isn’t a sow with piglets.
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So we’ve mostly been out in the early morning. I hoped that we would see the wolf that walks around here but I didn’t have that luck I’m afraid. I haven’t seen or heard any hog since they saw the wolf so I think it still is in the area. Yesterday when I went to bed I also hoped that I would hear it howl, the sky was clear and the moon shone but it stayed quiet all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do have a camera in the car and I’ll have it ready just in case the wolf shows up on my way to work 🙂
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I did one big load of laundry yesterday and another one today. I also have the dinner for the coming week cooking in the slow cooker at the moment. It will be some kind of pasta sauce, well not quite because I’ll also have green curry, bamboo shoots, corn, haricots verts (from my own vegetable patch, squash also from my own vegetable patch and chard that also is growing there 🙂 and I’ll have it with pasta so I guess I can call it a pasta sauce 🙂 🙂 🙂
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WE had pancakes (thin European ones) for dinner and IU must say that my apricot and banana jam actually tastes better now. After this I’ll make an apple pie (well it will most likely be an apple crisp since I’m a bit lazy 🙂 🙂 🙂 and I’ll have both cardamom and cinnamon in it. and I’ll have custard poured all over it 🙂 I’ll either sleep like a baby tonight or my stomach will give me so much trouble that I won’t sleep at all 🙂 🙂 🙂
My new coffee maker. Finally I can get a decent cup (well two if I count my tea cup or eight if I count coffee cups 🙂 ) of tea...
Have a great day!
One of Albins absolute favorite spots in the garden, close to the gate on the north side of the cottage.
It is relatively hot here today so we didn’t take any walk after work. The dogs played some while I was watering the vegetables but as soon as they came indoors they just started to sleep where they were and they’ve only changed location because I went upstairs to the computer. It’ll be even hotter tomorrow and the weekend will be nasty.
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Work has been good, I haven’t had to be in my old work department today, it is horribly hot there. I had to paint there for an hour or so and that destroyed the entire day 🙂 🙂 🙂 We now have so much work that they’ve opened up a third shift, so we’ll be painting 24 hours a day for four days in a row and Fridays we’ll just be working during the day time shift. The ventilation is crap in there so I wouldn’t want to work there at the end of the week because no heat gets out and no cool air (during nights) can get in 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Tomorrow will be my last go home early Friday and I will miss it. I’ve also told the owners I’ll be missing it and that I really don’t like this but the things I do early on Friday mornings must now be done after work on Fridays. That’s not going to happen if I’m going to do it, it will be pure torture to go inside a hot washing machine when it also is hot outside it. Normally one can take the heat and humidity while working in the washing machine because one knows it will be cooler and nicer when one comes out from it. Now it might even be worse outside it 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It is time for something to eat and then most likely fall asleep in my recliner. First though I might buy a coffee maker called Don Pedro (well I’ll use it for tea) online. They are really hard to find in stores. It’s difficult to describe it so if You’re wondering what it looks like just search on google for Don Pedro Bodum. There are a few varieties of it so I’ll see which one I want.
I noticed that in one of the plastic buckets where I put the spruts that fell off from the potatoes I was planting the leafs suddenly had gotten small black spots and that’s a sign that they are infected with potato blight. No bigger problem as long as one remove all green above surface before it spreads down to the potatoes. The problem was that these plants hadn’t flowered yet so the potatoes were going to be pretty small.
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So I went over to my neighbors so we could harvest them. There were potatoes and most were tiny 🙂 They had put some potatoes in the ground as well so they dug up some of those as well, they were almost as tiny as mine were 🙂 🙂 🙂 They do taste delicious though, I tried two of each today, so I’ll have them with my dinner at work tomorrow. I also got some onions, so I braided them together and now they hang to dry in my cool cellar. They won’t dry for long because I will continue to make my dinners for work. The food from the new restaurant is delicious but the price is way too high since we all know that the electricity will be nasty high this comming winter.
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It stayed on the chilly side today, it barely reached 16C (60,8F). I tried to stay outdoors but the flies were nasty. I know we’ll get rain later and that it will be the start of warmer weather arriving so perhaps we’ll have some thunder as well, it would explain why the flies were so nasty. People are saying that there are very few insects flying around where they live, it’s the contrary here. I guess that means nature still works pretty well here and I should of course be happy about that and I most likely would have been if it wasn’t for all those nasty flies that always wants to get in to my bears and nostrils 🙂 🙂 🙂
Mostly male flowers on the squash plants.But suddenly I noticed the first squash 🙂The beans are in bloom and the first bean pods are growing as well 🙂The walnut tree I got hasn’t grown especially much but I hope that it instead had concentrated its energy to grow roots.
I really need to buy new sofas or a sofa and perhaps an armchair. The dogs have gotten the old sofa and I really doesn’t like to sit in it any more 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really like rattan furniture and have seen some ads. The one I liked the most didn’t have pillows and I really wonder why, of course it should be sold with pillows. One I liked had a more Indian style to it and it had pillows 🙂 Even if I really don’t have any special kind of style in my home an Indian style still would look rather odd in my home 🙂 There was also rattan recliners and i do like them a lot but they were also a bit pricy. The delivery home was free though. I’ll continue to see what I can find. The good thing with rattan furniture is that it is easy to vacuum and scrub the floor beneath them, that’s impossible with the furniture I have now.
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It is time for something to eat and later on watch the British Antique Road Show.
So today is the last day of my vacation, tomorrow is just an ordinary weekend. One could say that the vacation actually goes on until Sunday but I prefer to feel that Sunday’s just another Sunday and the day after is a work day, feels less dramatic that way 🙂
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Still I could win the big winning in the lottery but I would still work that month that we are supposed to just so that they’ll get a chance to get someone else to continue after I’ve left. It is very easy to be generous as long as that winning actually hasn’t happened 🙂 🙂 We were supposed to have a sunny day here with a temperature around 20C (68F). They have actually gotten the temperature right but the sun has been absent most of the day. It showed itself a short while in the morning but very little after that.
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Yesterday was very different though, we had sunshine now and again and the temperature was nasty high as also the humidity was. Rather unpleasant to be honest. Then the rain and thunder arrived. I have to say that it was a magnificent thunderstorm and it continued from around 5pm way in to the night. Strong winds created havoc in some places in this region and what the wind didn’t destroy the hail did. The wind didn’t do anything here but the hail perforated all bigger leafs it hit. I looked at my lightning app and it showed that at one point we had more than 500 lightning hits between Skara and Falköping, I live exactly in the middle of those towns. I can tell You that there’s no need to water anything today, on the contrary, I’ve needed to empty almost all pots I have 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I really should mow the lawn before I get back to work. It isn’t particularly high yet but with all this rain falling I can already see how it is growing. I’ll use all that cut off grass to cover the ground in the vegetable patch. It will keep the sand moist at the same time the mouldering grass will fertilize the ground, a win win situation 🙂 Also after doing like that a couple of years I’ll have more real soil than sand in there. I still only have male flowers on my squash plants, a bit annoying but there’s still plenty of time to get some squashes before autumn arrives. The beans are flowering and I have plenty of lettuce and chard growing. The cabbage is struggling though, I do remove any eggs and caterpillars I find but something is still eating those cabbage leafs. I also think we now can start to pick up potatoes 🙂
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It is time to give the dogs something to eat, no rush really because they’ve all had one pancake each already 🙂 🙂 Yesterday, when it still was nasty hot but the thunder was on its way I made some jam. I had some apricots that were too old but not really enough to make jam from it, so I tossed in a couple of mashed bananas too plus a pinch of cardamom. To my very big surprise it turned out really well 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s actually quite tasty so I had that on my pancakes today 🙂 I should perhaps have put in an apple or two from my crab apple tree because those apples contains lots of pectins that will stop the jam from being a bit runny. Still it runs very slow so it’ll work on toast as well 🙂
Nothing much has happened here. Yesterday morning started out much like the previous one, cold and sunny, so the morning mist was just starting to build up when some clouds came and destroyed it all. They prevented the heat from the sun to evaporate the cold morning dew so no morning mist.
...The Chamomile still flowers.
This morning had no clouds but it was too warm (over 10C (50F) ) so no mist today either. I really didn’t want to take a walk because of the constant war between me and Alma but I had noticed yesterday that the new harness actually does make a difference. I can attach the leash on the front and since it’s fairly low every time she pulls the leash she turns around because the leash moves towards her front leg and disturbs her balance. So far she hasn’t figured out a countermove but I can see that she’s trying 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It was warm enough for flies to fly around but not especially many did. I’m not sure if the fly season now is over, which I hope, or if they were busy elsewhere. It could be that they all are in my garden though because there’s no lack of them here 🙂 🙂 🙂 There’s absolutely no lack of ticks though. After we came home I combed Nova and took two from her. None was caught from Albin or Alma but then suddenly I saw plenty walking around on Almas head and also one on Albins. I don’t know where the one on Albin hid because he has plenty of white on him so it’s hard for a tick to hide. All in all I picked seven more from those two.
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I had hoped the pet store would be open today but during summer he tends to have Saturdays closed. He sells a anti tick spray that is made only with scents ticks hate and it works pretty well. Albin is allergic to it but I can use it on the other two. It is after all so much easier to have to go through only one dog with extremely short fur 🙂 🙂 I can also spray it on my trousers. Pretty expensive though but it is well worth it. I’ll go there first thing on Monday morning instead. They even get them here in the garden and that’s because a deer seems to be visiting us when it knows we’re all asleep. I do like deers but I wish they could wait to visit us until the tick season is over 🙂 🙂
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I think it is time for a cup of tea and after that perhaps a nap. We’ve been up since before the sun rose and since I still am on vacation a nap sounds pretty nice 🙂 I do have some ice cream in the freezer and I think that would go nicely with a nice tea 🙂 Today I’ll only do one thing, every now and again I’ll go out to the vegetable patch to check the cabbage for butterfly eggs and caterpillars. It is amazing how fast even the tiniest caterpillar can eat those leafs!
The new harness, it is called “Military harness”. I have no idea if they used something like this in the army anywhere but it sort of looks like it. The leash can be attached at her back but also in the front which the next photo almost shows 🙂..
We’ve had a rather nice day here. According to the weather sites it should have started sunny and pretty early on slowly turn towards cloudy, so I wasn’t the least surprised when it started cloudy but then slowly turned towards sunny 🙂 🙂 🙂 We had a few hours of sunshine and the temperature rose to around 20C (68F) quite perfect really 🙂
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I didn’t need to water anything today because yesterday night we had some rain falling and since it was as cool as it was the ground still was pretty wet. I do however need to check anything cabbage because now is the time that both the Cabbage butterfly and Cabbage moth lays their eggs on anything that is cabbage or in that family. I just scrape off the eggs laid on the undersides of the leafs and I also spray water mixed with soap so that any egg that I might miss will be covered and therefore will suffocate because the soap won’t let any oxygen through.
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We walked sown to the creek and a bit up stream but stayed away from the high grass and bushes because this is a tick year. Albin rarely have any but both Nova and Alma are tick magnets, so the first thing I do when we come home is to comb through their fur with a very dense comb almost like a louse comb. None today but there’s always one or two that I miss so I’ll do it again later today. Nova is back to normal again after the ear infection but I must admit that I was worried there for a while.
..They’ve now removed almost all branches and twigs after the deforestation.There’s still some logs left but the big pile will become pellets and briquettes fore fire heaters.
We’ll have a couple of days with below 20C (68F) temperatures and tomorrow we’ll also get lots of rain, if they are guessing it right but one never knows about that. They have risen the amount of rain for every update but right now they’re guessing we will get an inch of it. I don’t mind at all but I do hope it starts out gentle so that the ground gets moist first and therefore can let the rest of the rain actually sink down into the ground and not just run away in to creeks and ponds/ lakes (or in my case the bog/ swamp behind the garage).
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I ordered a new harness for Alma, she’s becoming too big for the one she has and I did it the 17/7. Normally it will take five days or so to get it delivered but this one takes its time. I can check the status of the order and it turns out that the one I buy it from buys it from Canada. They however order if from China. So I have now been following it as an order from Sweden to Canada, then the order went to Shanghai where it finally was packed. Now it looks like it’s shipped to Canada and after that to Sweden and hopefully me 🙂 🙂 🙂 It says something about it arriving in seven days 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest I thought that the seller at least had a couple of each size in stock but oh how wrong I was 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve found even more grapes to be 🙂.This is a kind of Lime tree where the fruits doesn’t give wedges but instead it looks like some green kind of caviar 🙂 I almost killed it last winter so I’m just happy that it has survived 🙂
The hot weather has not been kind to the flowers in the old wheel barrow 🙂 Not to self, don’t have too high flowers in it 🙂 🙂
Yesterday was horrible. We didn’t set a new heat record but it was still the hottest day in 73 years. Here in the village it reached 36C (96,8F) before it slowly, slowly started to get less hot. I really don’t want to go through that kind of heat again but most likely I will because of the climate change.
.The Creeping Bellflower is quite beautiful but seen as one of the worst weeds one can get in the garden. The roots grows so tight and it becomes too dense for anything else to survive with it. The roots are edible though so why not eat it to death 🙂.
One hot summer isn’t any proof of the climate change but when this happens frequently year after year, when it perhaps happened once every tenth year before it is one of the evidence of that the climate is changing. There were areas of rain and thunder all around this area but none reached us, the same today and I really wish it would come to us as well because the flies are soo annoying as they always are when thunder is about to arrive (well or at least it’s nearby). It is much cooler today though, 18C (64,4F) and hopefully dropping. This village is more or less in the eye of a low pressure so the rain just keep circling around us but it does at least cool us down.
Potato flowers are quite beautiful. I hope that these gives fruit, looks like small green tomatoes (rather poisonous so don’t eat them). One can sow those seeds and get all kinds of different potatoes from those seeds. Be aware of that those new potatoes might get all kinds of diseases they’ve managed to get rid of on those one took the seeds from. Best to grow in a big bucket if one tries...
Nova was the one taking the heat best of us all. She didn’t seem to care especially much and even slept in the sunshine on the kitchen stairs 🙂 🙂 Albin can’t take any heat at all, then again he can’t take any cold weather at all either, he truly is a lukewarm weather guy 🙂 🙂 🙂 Alma and I took it in much the same way, not as well as Nova but lots better than Albin. The night was horrible, the fan worked at maximum speed but I can’t say it felt much better. Also a fly had found my bedroom and did its best to annoy the heck out of us. The sticky fly paper has been full of flies so that was another thing I really needed to buy today. They didn’t have it in the big store I went to and the one I asked said Do You have flies? We all working here were just discussing about the lack of them! I said they all could come home to me but none seemed too interested to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂
Perennial sunflower.Finally big buds on the rose planted on Teodors resting place.It’ll look like this when opening up.Some “weeds” are quite beautiful and since they are easy to grow I’ve always wondered why they don’t try to grow these to give bigger flowers so we can have them in flower beds? Well I have them everywhere but I was thinking of those who are more meticulous about their flower beds than I am 🙂 🙂 🙂
I was out watering the vegetables and a few other plants and small trees already at 5 am 🙂 I went to the store quite early too since I wasn’t sure if it actually would calm down or not, one never knows with our weather services 🙂 🙂 🙂 I had almost nothing left to eat for breakfast and I also needed to renew my lottery tickets. I know the chances of winning the big lottery winning (today around 1,265 billion swedish kronor (around 126,5 million US dollars) is slim to none but it is a bigger chance to have a couple of tickets than to have none at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wonder if I would go insane if I won that much money, it’s so much that I really can’t understand how much it really is 🙂 🙂 🙂 I would never tell You if I did win but then again You would most likely notice that I had taken an early retirement 🙂 🙂 🙂
...The Chinese Catalpa really need some rain now.
The coming ten days they’re guessing that it’ll stay around 20C (68F), give or take a degree up or down and also some rain. I will not believe it until it happens but I do sure hope it’s right and that we’ll get even more rain than they are guessing 🙂 🙂 🙂
Not much walking in this heat but I did go up the the mail box yesterday morning.
I’m writing this early today because yesterday was so hot here that my computer had a slight heatstroke 🙂 🙂 Suddenly the fan inside it worked insanely hard, have never heard it working that hard before and then the computer froze and the fan stopped working at all. I quickly went down to the freezer and brought two cooling pads, placed one beneath the computer and one on top of it. I checked if it would start after a while and have had no problems at all after that.
.Lots of chicory growing in the field outside my cottage. I think we all know that it can be used as lettuce but back in the days it’s root was roasted and used as a coffee surrogate. One can still buy that but I haven’t tried it..
Today will be even hotter than yesterday and we might break our heat record if we’re unlucky. I think we had one of those rather rare tropical nights here, it was 20C (68F) outside when I went up at 4:25 this morning. Inside the cottage however it’s still 28C (82,4F). The fan worked all night and I like it but the dogs don’t seem to see the good with it 🙂 🙂 They actually avoid the bed when the fan works, can’t remember when I had that much space for myself 🙂 🙂 🙂
The piglets aren’t morning piglets at all 🙂 🙂.The last flower on the Dog rose.Still plenty on the big rose beside it.
I actually mowed the lawn yesterday morning when it still wasn’t that hot. Why You might ask? Well the grass on the north side has been growing fast so it was quite high and needed to be mowed before any rain will fall. Well we might not get that rain they had promised was on its way, still changes in their guessing about that but we do need it now. I also wanted to use that cut down grass to cover the ground in the potato and vegetable patches. The grass will keep the moisture in the ground for much longer at the same time grass is full of what plants need to grow so while it decomposes it’ll give that to the ground and plants growing there.
..My now three? year old date palm seedling. It takes quite some time until it finally starts growing those leafs we all know.My Chinese Catalpa is in bloom again 🙂
So the first thing I did after feeding the dogs was to water the vegetable and potato patches. Albin and Nova stayed indoors to sleep some more but Alma followed me outside. I’ve finally found out what she’s really good at (as long as Albin isn’t close though), she’s really good at fetch! She comes back with what ever it was I threw away and does so every time I throw it away!! If Albin’s close it’s just grab it and run away so that he will follow and chase her 🙂 🙂 🙂 Nova has never been good at it and now days she really doesn’t care at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 She prefers to mostly sleep on the sofa 🙂 🙂
.I still need more grass klippings to fill up the vegetable patch though.
Can’t remember the name of this flower but it should be growing in sunshine and fairly wet to like life, so I’m wondering why it thrives here when it grows really dry and mostly in the shadows 🙂 🙂
It is time to go downstairs and make another cup of tea and perhaps something to eat.
We were supposed to have sunshine from the moment the sun rose but it tok quite some time before the clouds thinned out. It was so dark actually that I needed the camera to be set on ISO 1000 (One only need to use ISO 100 on a sunny day so it’s a big difference).
It has been hot here today, Scandinavian hot that is, 28C (82,4F) and it isn’t nice at all. No problem at the beginning of it though because we had a strong and cool wind blowing but when the wind died out so did our energy 🙂 Alma tried to be full of energy for as long as she could but even she had to give up in the end 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tomorrow we’ll most likely reach 34C (93,2F) so I’m not looking forward to that at all. It’ll only last for three days, on Friday it’ll get much cooler and we’ll have loads of rain if they are guessing it right.
.They are now gathering all twigs and branches in big piles, they’ll make pellets from it all so that we can buy that and use in our heating systems..
Like on me Novas joints don’t like the hot weather at all, she has problems walking up the stairs now, while she in the cool and early morning had no problems at all. She has been a bit spoiled now when she has been feeling bad because of her ear so I’ve added something she likes (well both the others likes it too), Tuna 🙂 Now she refuses to eat at all unless I put in tuna or something else she really likes 🙂 🙂 🙂 So this morning when there wasn’t anything extra in the food she just sniffed at it and walked away, she ate almost twice as much as she usually do when I had added tuna to the food this afternoon. Hot temperatures really didn’t affect her appetite for something she likes 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Fewer and fewer birds sing during the days now, they are doing what they can to secure the future for the younglings they have now rather than prepare for another batch of them, instead katydids have started playing, and loud as well especially in the evening. I do like to fall asleep to the sound of playing katydids. Especially hot days like this one can pretend that they are rather quiet cikadas 🙂 🙂 🙂 We don’t have cikadas here so it’s easy to let the imagination fly free 🙂 🙂
This one used to belong to the Corydalis family but they split that family up. No idea what it is called now though. I think it is annual and really grows as much as the weed it is. It is a favorite of mine in my garden.Lots of blueberries in the one bush I still have left.Perennial sunflower.The Sweet William grows here and there in my garden.
22 new species are added to the list of invasive and forbidden species here in the EU. From the previous forbidden species we already had around half of them growing in the wild but so I’m not sure if forbidding them actually will help anything. My guess is that since we have problem enough as it is, like the drought most likely will reduce the harvesting to around half of what they normally can harvest and the war in Ukraine will reduce that perhaps even more, the will of killing of plants and animals that shouldn’t be here might be a bit low. I was surprised that the The African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) actually is seen as a threat here, our winters are after all still quite chilly in periods.
.It is hard to see any apples in my Aroma apple tree but it doesn’t look as a successful year for that tree.However it’s a totally different thing when it comes to the tree I once sowed from an Aroma apple kernel. The apples on this tree are delicious but they tend to be hit by rot and fungus easily.Lots of small fruits on my Japanese quince bush too. I’ve never made jelly or jam from these but I have from it’s relative the real Quince and it was delicious. It is said these will be just as good to use but they aren’t even a quarter of the size from the real quince.
Lots of garden plants are also forbidden now, even though we seems to be allowed to still have them in our gardens but they are not allowed to be sold or spread by humans. Last year they tried to have a “Kill all Lupins” day here in Sweden and I think zero people cared about it 🙂 🙂 🙂 We love our lupins and really don’t care what authorities says about them. Do You know why they are seen like a problem? It’s because they start growing in places where very few other plants will grow due to really bad soil. When they start to grow someplace they actually make the ground much better and plants that can’t compete with other plants where the ground is good will then die instead.
..This is now the first thing I see when I start my mobile. He does look a bit grumpy, doesn’t he 🙂
I’ve baked another bread in the slow cooker and it turned out even better than the first one. I really can’t understand how people can fail baking bread in a slow cooker. Just do as always but instead of letting it rise the second time just put the dough in the cooker. The temperature is so low that it’ll have time enough to rise before it starts to being baked. For once I even took a photo of the bread. It is up side down so the top is pointing downwards and that paret is very light but the rest is just as brown and crispy as one wishes 🙂 the “folds” on the surface of it are prints from the baking paper (parchment paper).
I had a tough night last night, my dogs tried to take over my bed and push me off it 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest I think it mostly was Alma but the two others just spread out more the more space she gained from pushing me away 🙂 🙂
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I went to my friend who ownes a garden center today (didn’t take any photos but I can’t say I know why I didn’t 🙂 🙂 ). She now has two eight months old german shepherd/ rottweiler cross dogs and it’s fun to see the difference between them and Alma who is a cross between white swiss shepherd dog (more or less a white german shepherd) and dobermann. While her two dogs looks more like rottweilers Alma looks more like a german shepherd. One of her dogs has begun to behave much like Albin when it comes to other dogs while the other one is more like Alma. Really want too meet but is also really vocal about it 🙂 🙂 Two beauties non the less 🙂
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I didn’t stay for long and wasn’t planning to buy any plants this time but I had planned to buy some soil because I’m out of it now. So naturally I didn’t come home with any soil but I do have a walnut tree here now 🙂 🙂 To be honest I didn’t buy it because she didn’t think she would be able to sell it any longer and was going to throw it away. So I could take it if I wanted and of course I wanted that 🙂 🙂 The tree wasn’t standing in a pot with soil but instead the roots were covered with something I can’t guess what it is and it had no problems staying alive as long as it got water.
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So the first thing I did was to plant it in a pot with the soil I had left and some peat and then I watered it a lot. I’ll keep it like this until next year, so it’ll spend winter in my cool cellar (if it survives for that long) and then I’ll plant it next spring. I know where because I have some plants I’m pretty sure won’t tolerate the toxins that will leak out from the walnut tree and that would be an easy way to get rid of them 🙂 🙂 🙂 All walnut species are more or less toxic towards their environment, a good way for plants to eradicate anything that would compete about the nutritions in the ground.
The wheel barrow is full of flowers now.
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Today has been mostly sunny, warm and with a strong wind blowing. Quite nice to be honest. They’re guessing that tomorrow will be rather hot and after that it’ll slowly cool down until Friday when it will be rather chilly, 15C (59F) if we’re unlucky. We’ll also get plenty on rain on Friday so I won’t complain too much, I can always nap all day if the weather will behave like that 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I’ve sowed poppies in my garden for many years now but I get one or two as best. This is one of the two that actually isn’t growing in the wheel barrow.
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Have a great day!
The walnut needed some support so I used this old ring net (is that the right word?). It’ll stand here on the north side of my house for quite some time before I move it anywhere.
I told my Amur grape vine that if it didn’t give me any grapes this year I would dig it up 🙂
The Cottage by the crane lake. 