Category: Gardening.

Misty morning and spider webs.

August 3, 2025 · 8 Comments ·

We had a wonderful morning here, just below 10C (50F), morning mist and a sun slowly rising. If I hadn’t just woken up I would have taken our morning walk there and then. however newly awake, quite tired and both I and the animals needed some food before we went out. So by the time we were ready the mist was gone but it was still sunny and cool.

We walked the same way we’ve done lately since the grass is way too high in the forest since it’s only us walking there and we haven’t been there for a while now. Plus the grass was really wet after the rain we had during the night so it would also most likely be full of ticks. Only two flies were out to pester us but as soon as we walked in to shadow it was a bit too cool for them to follow 🙂 🙂 We did however see two Roe deer on our walk and we haven’t seen any when we’ve been out walking in all summer I think.

We actually had several showers today, not heavy and not long lived but if we’ll get more as they are guessing we will the ground is now a bit softer so that the water has a chance on sinking down into the ground instead of just running down through the garden and down to the bog that starts more or less behind the old garage and dog yard.

No need to mow the lawn yet so instead I dug out some space to plant the rhubarb seedlings I sowed in spring. The sand beneath the grass was so dry that one c an find more water in a desert 🙂 🙂 I also mixed in some compost from my smallest compost, a black one that stands n legs and can be rotated and should be rotated once a day I think. The fun thing is that since one is rotating it the compost becomes sort of round and to be honest all those round pieces looked like dog poo 🙂 🙂 🙂 I need to empty at least two of the three other composts I have, the third one I think still has a family of mice living in it 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I’ve already eaten so I won’t have anything with it. The summer apples are now falling of the tree so tomorrow I’ll buy things I need to make an apple pie 🙂

I have two small Ginkgo trees growing in my garden, this one has huge leafs and the other one quite small.

Have a great day!

Potato tomatoes :-)

August 2, 2025 · 2 Comments ·

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

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

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

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

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

The Monsterkitten found something really interesting today.

Even Malkolm came to inspect what it was.

Turns out it was a frog who now lives safe from the cat 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day!

I want good weather for those on vacation but really bad for us who works :-)

July 13, 2025 · 6 Comments ·

I’ll get lots of peas this year, this is only one of places where they grow 🙂

Windy and partly cloudy or is it partly sunny? I’ve never know which one to use 🙂 🙂 I did three rounds of laundry this morning and it all dried up really quickly. Just enough warm though so I can’t but enjoy the day 🙂

I have several Honeyberry bushes beside the root zone and they needed to be trimmed because they were growing out over the root zone (my grey water filtration system). I also have a Hardy Kiwi vine growing there and it grew all over the place so I think I removed around 80% of the vegetation 🙂

Troll grapes, not to eat because they are poisonous.

The weather sites are still rather divided on if we’ll get rain or not but they all agree that it’ll be really hot from Thursday and though the weekend. I do wish really nice weather for those having vacation right now but want cool weather since I’ll be working 🙂 🙂 These weather guesses will of course change multiple times before it’s time and not even then they might be right 🙂 🙂

My neighbours, well at least one in the family 🙂 has decided they’re going to have chickens, the new neighbours have too many. I wouldn’t mind having some myself but have decided that I’ll wait until I’m retired. Yews they are cute and it is nice to have ones own eggs but there’s lots of work, they need food and they tend to draw mice and rats who wants that food as well 🙂 🙂 All I hope though is that both Alma and Malkolm won’t try to catch them when they are outside the chicken yard 🙂 🙂 🙂

Most of the Bellflowers are invasive or weeds as we tend to call it and this and the next one is no exception 🙂

The Wood Pigeon now have at least two chicks in the nest 🙂 I really like that such a shy bird nests in my garden, for the second year in a row 🙂

It’s time for a pot of tea and after that I’ll continue to re-pot my citrus trees. I also have a few melon plants that grows by the livxingroom window that I need to do something about. Most years snails and slugs tend to eat the plants so I was wondering if I should just leave them where they are and if there would be melons growing on them try and grow them there. They do need bigger pots though and perhaps one or two must be moved to the kitchen window where they will get lots of sunshine. The problem with the kitchen window is that there’s where I have most of my cacti 🙂 🙂 🙂 Could be painful to move them 🙂 🙂

My little meadow look so much better than last year. The photo doesn’t do it justice but You can see different dots with blue and other colours 🙂

Have a great day!

July 12, 2025 · 2 Comments ·

We woke up quite early today and it was very and gloomy outside. Rather warm but still not especially nice, I can’t say why though because it was one of those things one just feel but can’t put a finger on to understand why. So we didn’t do much in the morning but took a nap and when we woke up the sun started to shine. So our morning walk was quite late 🙂

The first of the wild raspberries to ripen 🙂 They are delicious and so much tastier than the garden varieties. Used to pick loads back in the days but biting flies tends to stay away from them now days.

The wind had also gained strength so that helped with the flies on our walk but then I noticed that those flies we had around us were the biting kinds but I managed to chase away those landing on the dogs and I wore a thick hoodie so they couldn’t do much to me either thankfully. I hope we won’t have especially many around the cottage this year because they prefer more wet areas and we don’t have any cattle around us at the moment and by the looks of it not for the rest of the summer either, the grass is high in the field surrounding most of the cottage so they’ll most likely use it to make silage.

Lots of butterflies here now though and many different species as well, they won’t sit still for long though so they’re hard to get photos of but I managed to get a few anyway. I started to re-pot my citrus plants and other plants that has needed to be re-potted for a long time now 🙂 Almost all citrus plants and my tea bush were badly hit by the last frost we had soothed have mostly only had branches so far but now new growth shows. One is even giving me flowers 🙂

The weather guessing weather sites have now changed what they think we’ll have for weather next week but the different sites can’t agree on much, some say lots of rain and even warmer than before, yay we’ll be living in a steam bath and some says no rain at all but really Scandinavian hot, I’m not sure I like that either 🙂 🙂 🙂 So now I must remember to water all the re-potted plants before I go to work in the morning. Newly re-potted plants need a lot more water than before to survive. I’ve also picked those berries that have ripened in the garden, not much so far, one strawberry, a few red gooseberries, the red currants and five! (out of five bushes) honeyberries. I’m glad I even had some because I need two different varieties to get berries and it only took me ten years until I finally figured that out 🙂 🙂 🙂 they do taste like blueberries now of my favourite berries.

It is time for that last cup of tea and then wash and freeze the berries and then wait for the rest of the berries to ripen so I can make some jam.

This citrus tree, a Kalamodin ( I think it might be spelled Calamodine in English) never fails to flower, no matter how bad it has been treated. New flowers despite it almost died in the last frost. It gives small bittersweet fruits perfect for jam and I guess it could be good to make kalamodin ade as well.

Have a great day!

Scandinavian hot today.

June 22, 2025 · 8 Comments ·

Scandinavian hot today, 25C (77F), thankfully a wind is blowing to cool it down. Then again warm air dries out the ground even more so it’s sort of a damned if I do damned if I don’t situation for nature. They say we’ll get some more rain tomorrow evening though and the temperatures will drop some as well. The good thing though is that the laundry dried up in less than ten minutes 🙂 🙂

I will be surprised if the peach tree survives next winter, It is hit by leaf curl disease and this time it’s the entire tree. I’ve heard peaches usually can handle it when the tree is older but I’ve had so many peach trees dying because of it so I doubt it.

I’ve tried to remove this rose so many times that even I am beginning to give up now, it’s a garden variety of the Cinnamon rose and happily spreads via its roots.

I know that for many of You 25C (77F) is like a cool summer morning but up here in the north that used to be as high the temperature rose in summer with, of course, the occasional heatwave passing by a day or two before we had more rain 🙂 🙂 🙂 I can’t remember if it is two or three years ago the temperature never rose above 20C (68F) during the month of July and we had at least some rain every day that month. To be honest I didn’t complain even though I did get bored by it before the vacation was over 🙂 🙂 🙂

The potato sprouts I planted has now grown so high that it was time to fill up the entire bucket with soil. It will now produce potatoes along the stem that was just buried in soil. I doubt there will be many per stalk but they usually grow a bit bigger instead.

Three pots with sown rhubarbs. They are so easy to sow that it would have been surprising if even one seed didn’t germinate. Can’t eat any next year because the plant will need all leafs to grow bigger, but the year after that I can start harvesting 🙂

I’m still rather tired today but I guess it’s the combination of one week with high fever followed by a week with evening shift that sort of takes its toll, plus of course the warm weather itself. I’ve tried to not sit still too much, so I’ve done the laundry, started dinner for next week in the slow cooker and now I’m waiting for a bread to be ready to be taken out of the oven. This time I skipped the cheese but have plenty of rosemary in it. Also today I’m trying Teff flour, a cereal growing mostly in Ethiopia but I’ve heard they now grow it in a lot of places. I have used it once a long time ago but can’t remember how it tasted.

I have lots of the creeping bellflower in my garden, over here seen as one of the worst weeds there is 🙂 They are beautiful though and if too many just eat the roots, works great in a salad like radishes would.

I couldn’t for my life figure out what it was I had sown (name tags of course gone 🙂 ) Then I suddenly remembered it, garden varieties of the purple coneflower 🙂

This is truly surprising! Do You remember me telling You about mice chopping off both Giant sequoia seedlings and my Pawpaw seedlings? All looked dead to me but I saved them just in case it would produce new branches. I’ve mostly neglected this one but watered it every now and again. To my very big surprise this morning I noticed that it actually is alive and is producing new branches again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will take very good care of it from now on 🙂

Not even the dogs are especially active today, they’ve played some but mostly they’ve been napping. I’ve always wondered how thick furred dogs can survive in a warmer climate than what it is here, most of them are knocked out already in our temperatures. We now have loads of insects here but surprisingly few biting ones, that may change quickly now if we actually get the rain that se we’ll get. Not many butterflies though but plenty of different bees and at the moment they are all visiting my wild roses 🙂

Magpies, beautiful, smart, funny and probably one of the most annoying birds there is 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Not the best of days today.

June 8, 2025 · 8 Comments ·

I’m feeling like sh.t today, no fever though so I hope this will be better tomorrow when I go to work. I’ve eaten lots of honey and been drinking a lot of tea but most of all I’ve been sleeping in the sofa a lot. It gets really warm when two dogs decide to share the sofa with me 🙂 🙂 🙂 No walk today but we did walk around yesterday so the photos comes from then.

The road associating meeting went smooth and quickly and after that we just sat and talked. I gave up after one and a half-hour and I think the rest stayed for half an hour more. It bis a good way to learn to know other people in the village by going to these meeting even though they’re only once a year. Especially when they go as well as it did yesterday, then again one learns a lot when there are fights as well even though that was long ago that happened 🙂

Some sunshine today, some rain as well and when the sun showed it became so warm that it felt like walking in to a steam bath 🙂 🙂 The dogs have been going in and out of the cottage all day but I had to shut the kitchen door when the clouds became too thick. I’ve done my laundry and dinner is cooking in the slow cooker and today those were the shores I had to do.

I started to cut away big chunks of the Hungarian lilac yesterday. Still thick branches left but I’ll have to use a sw to get rid of those. When I had done that I realised that I could plant the potted gingko tree there. Didn’t go especially well because there weren’t a lot of roots in the pot, the tree managed to fall down leaning heavily towards one direction but a top branch is now instead pointing upwards so I just let it be as it is. Now I think I only have one red mulberry tree left to plant, five pear trees and possibly an apricot as well. I was thinking about possibly plants the trees as trellised but seed sown trees usually grow really high and there will be a lot of pruning to keep them low enough so I’m not sure but I will have that in mind when it is time.

It is time to check the dinner in the slow cooker and after that I’ll make a pot of tea 🙂

Have a great day!

I have a cold again.

June 6, 2025 · 2 Comments ·

I think this is a Welsh poppy. It is said to behave like a bad weed but not here. I sow it every year and all I’ve gotten is two or three that usually dies during winter despite it being a perennial.

I always complain about not being able to remember my dreams, I think I’ve done that at 5 times as maximum. However I do remember the dream I had last night and I was so annoyed that I woke up at 4 am and couldn’t fall asleep again 🙂 I dreamed that there was a tiny black and walking all over my back and when ever I tried to get rid of it it rushed out of reach 🙂 🙂 I even tried to squash it by lying down and rub my back towards the bed 🙂 🙂 🙂

When I woke up I realised that I now have a cold and a slight fever. Lots of people have it now but it seems to be short lived so my guess is that it’s over by Monday. My entire body hurts, especially my neck and head and since I can’t even eat anti inflammatory pills for children I have to rely on coffee 🙂 🙂 I’ve had too much coffee today so all I can do is to wish that it’s over by tomorrow.

If You look carefully You can see the monster climbing in a bush. She tried to surprise a magpie youngling and all magpies just laughed out loud 🙂

I checked my lottery tickets on Wednesday evening. It is called Lotto and one has to pick to seven numbers out of 35. They’ll also draw four extra numbers that if one has six right and one of the extra numbers one win a bit more. You won’t be rich by having six right and an extra number but You would still be very happy. The big money is in seven right, then it can be millions we’re talking about. Well I got four right and then three of those extra also were my numbers. So technically I had seven right numbers but in the wrong way 🙂 🙂 🙂 So instead of millions I won what would be $ 2 US 🙂 🙂 🙂 I didn’t even get annoyed, I just laughed out loud 🙂 🙂 🙂

Rainy day today but we have actually had some sunshine as well. A bit chilly though but I’ve been outside wearing a sweater just so I could get some fresh air and feel a bit less sick 🙂 The dogs and I stayed outside for quite a while yesterday evening. My lilacs have weak branches so when ever it rains they hang down so it is impossible to walk beside them to get around the cottage. So all evening yesterday I pruned away all branches that hangs low. I also cut away those being behind the huge roses and bled quite a lot after that 🙂 🙂 plus I opened up around the Red oak so it gets more light and air. So now it’s like a tunnel behind the roses and both I and the dogs can walk there now 🙂

Now I can pass without being drenched every time it has rained.

It continues on the other side of the gate.

These are the roses from the other side 🙂 No one can see me from the garden and no one from the road because of the lilacs 🙂

I think it is time for another cup of coffee but before that I’ll have some honey. I’m so tired right now that I doubt any amount of coffee will keep me awake tonight 🙂

Have a great day!

Been gardening a lot today.

May 31, 2025May 31, 2025 · 8 Comments ·

I woke up at 4:50 today despite staying up much later yesterday, still can’t say I feel especially tired today. We had a wonderful morning mist so I took a few photos before we had our breakfast. Oddly enough I can’t find them in my camera or in the computer?? I really don’t think that I used any other camera than the one I’ve used all day so I have absolutely no idea what happened to them 🙂 🙂 🙂

We had around thirty minutes of cloudy sky today and the rest totally cloud free. Even though it’s slightly cooler it still feels much warmer today than yesterday. No wind at all to talk about so I guess that’s why it feels so warm here. So I thought it safe to sow beans now, beans will rot if the ground temperature is too low but even though we’ll get loads of rain tomorrow afternoon we will still have warm weather. The rain is good and I will not complain as long as it is warm. I also planted three squash plants but two of them looked really sad so I think I’ll only have one left at the end of next week.

I have lots of lilacs in and around my garden and I really dislike them 🙂 🙂 When all flowers open up it’s like living in a perfume bottle and when they slowly decay the smell is so nasty that it’s hard to breathe. Too much work to remove them all though so I prefer to suffer those weeks it happens instead 🙂 🙂 I do have an Hungarian lilac though, it smell less both times but it is growing too wide now so I’ve been cutting down big chunks of it on the side towards my Pawpaw trees. I’ll do the other side when the flowering is over. It is amazing how different a garden can look just by pruning bushes and trees really hard, light reaches everywhere and new weeds finds new homes 🙂 🙂

I can finally walk this way again but so far I’ve forgotten that so I’ve taken the longer walk around it all day 🙂

This is the next area I’ll start pruning but it’s so beautiful now and when the rose flowers so that will have to wait until late summer.

The potato sprouts are growing, the higher it grows the more soil I’ll put in the bucket and then it will produce more potatoes 🙂 I’ll have three buckets with sprouts soon 🙂

It was so quiet over at my neighbours today so I thought they weren’t at home, then suddenly now in the afternoon they started to mow their lawn 🙂 🙂 The rooster over at the next neighbour has been quiet all day, very unusual so I do hope it’s ok. Normally it isn’t quiet at all and I realised that I missed it a lot 🙂 Roosters and countryside sort of goes hand in hand and when one suddenly is missing it doesn’t feel right at all. I had to leave the dogs alone for an hour today and since it worked so great to have them in the cottage while I was working I didn’t think it would be any problem by being away for such a short time. The first thing that met my eyes when I came back home again was one of my working shoes and the heel on the shoe was chewed away and Malkolm looking really ashamed 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have another pair so no big problem but these were so nice that I will miss them.

I’ll go out to the vegetable garden again after this because it is also time to sow peas and leek. I already have leek in a pot that I just brought outside so it can stay away from the sunshine for a week before I plant them somewhere but one can never have too much leek plus they can be harvested as long as the ground isn’t frozen. I’ll also sow pack-choi (Japanese kale) and broccolo, a sort of mix between broccoli and cauliflower if I understand it right. The broccolo seeds are old so I’m not sure anything will happen but I won’t know if I don’t sow them. There really is no place for either in the vegetable patch but I can get big pots to plant them in instead 🙂 Peas, I need to remember to bring the peas as well 🙂

I’ve also cut away parts of my biggest wild rose so that my little red oak gets some sunshine.

It is time to go outside to sown and I think I’ll bring a cup of tea so I can take regular breaks and not overdo my working 🙂 🙂 🙂

I have lots of creeping bellflower in my garden and they can be devastating towards other flowers. They grow so dense that no other flower can survive there. I usually dig up a big chunk of them when they become too many and pick it all up in one piece. Any tiny piece of roots that’s left will be a new flower.

The old broken wheelbarrow will be full of annuals like always. Poppies and I think clarkia seems to take over this year 🙂

Last year I bought one bood red peony and one pure white. The dogs managed to rip away the only bud on the deep red and the pure white is yellow 🙂 🙂 To be honest I could have gotten something much more valuable because it does look like a Golden peony, nicknamed Molly the witch because of a part of its scientific namemlokosewitschii 🙂

Have a great day!

May 29, 2025 · 4 Comments ·

The sun is shining, a few clouds flies in the sky and both windows and doors are open 🙂 It has been like this all day but a low pressure is on its way with more rain but not especially much of it. Today the temperature reached above 20C (68F) and that’s summer temperature for me.

Alma behaved really well on our morning walk today and was almost quiet when we passed the new neighbours, both of the way out and when we were going back home again. Ok no human or dog was outside but for being Alma she was really good 🙂 We didn’t see any birds but sure heard them all the walk. Cranes and geese from a distance and all the small birds close in the trees and shrubs. I think we passed lots of interesting animals on the way because both Alma and Malkolm were really interested in what was hiding behind the trees.

We always have lots of morning dew here so my shoes and socks were soaking wet when we came back home 🙂 The shoes are now standing towards the cottage wall drying up in the sunshine. I’ve also mowed the lawn and all grass cuttings were placed around the potatoes so I don’t have to hill up the soil around them. The grass clipping’s will decompose with time so I need to place more around them a few more times while mowing. I think it will be time to sow beans, peas and cabbage this weekend plus what ever I might have seeds for in the space that might be empty.

It is time for a pot of tea and then I’ll bake a bread again. I’ll add rosemary of course and some cheese as well if I have any small piece in the fridge.

Have a great day!

May 25, 2025 · 4 Comments ·

Well today didn’t start like yesterday mostly was at all but it was warm enough for me not to care about it 🙂 A nice little summer rain and we spent a lot of time in the garden before we went out on our morning walk.

We walked out to the bog and unfortunately we met our new neighbour, well the new neighbours Arte really nice so that wasn’t it but they have a new puppy, Border collie by the looks of it and when Alma and Malkolm saw that they went insane. The puppy barked so that was what my two idiots did as well, scaring their white dog who normally comes rushing towards Alma and Malkolm with joy, today it turned away because of my two idiots. It didn’t help that one of their cats was present as well 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do hope we can repair this so that they won’t be scared when they meet us again 🙂 🙂 🙂

After that I’ve been a bit busy today. I’ve made dinner for the coming week at work and since all I had was potatoes, prince sausages and a packet of bacon at home that will be what I’ll have for dinner next week 🙂 I both boiled and then fried the potatoes so it took some time. I have as usual also done the laundry. It isn’t fun but has to be done.

a feeding station. Too many wild hogs around now days.

We didn’t continue since that grass now is a paradise for ticks. Had it been dry the ticks would have dug themselves down into the ground.

As You know I’m at war with the stinging nettles in my garden as well as with the Cleavers plus now days the Greater Celandine. So I have been raking a big part of the more wild areas of the garden ripping up lots go cleavers, they will grow up again but I’ll continue every week since they are annuals and if they don’t produce seeds they will slowly disappear from my home. They tend to grow well amongst the nettles as well so hopefully I’ve damaged those too 🙂 The greater Celandine is easier though, just rip them up with their roots. The problem is that those seeds can lie dormant for quite some time but I’ll be happy if I just have some control over them. They are really beautiful but they spread like crazy 🙂 🙂

After that I’ve tossed out lots of older seeds here and there in the garden, they might grow or they won’t 🙂 I’ll have a really beautiful wild garden if they do 🙂 🙂 It will be a good weather for those seeds though, its of rain tonight and tomorrow, also the temperatures will rise again and we’ll even get some sunshine in between rainy days (well we all know by now how great they are in guessing the weather here 🙂 🙂 ) It should also be time to sow beans, peas and other vegetables now so I’ll have lots to do this coming week 🙂 Carrots and beetroots are already sown and on their way growing. Also the strawberries that always gives berries in the autumn for a reason I don’t know flowers really good right now so perhaps I’ll get some berries for Midsummer, a holiday that perhaps is even more important than Christmas is here.

I bought a tree peony last spring and the variety I bought seems to have died but a new branch is growing up from the roots. Usually these varieties are grafted on herbaceous peonies but it does look like tree peony leafs coming up so who knows what it once will look like.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, tomorrow I’ll have dayshift again 🙂 The bread I baked yesterday turned out so much better than I thought since I forgot to start the timer 🙂 🙂 So I might have a sandwich with the tea 🙂

Have a great day!

I don’t complain about the weather sites got it wrong :-)

May 24, 2025 · 4 Comments ·

We were supposed to have rain and strong winds today so I’m not surprised that we had a lot off sunshine and sort of half strong winds 🙂 Couldn’t notice much in the garden though since the winds came from south.

I wonder what they use this for? I thought it looked like a piece of art but I’m sure they have a more practical use for it 🙂

So the dogs, cat and I spent a lot of time in the garden today, the dogs playing like crazy and the cat running up to them so they would chase her 🙂 I spent a lot of time cutting of dead branches from bushes and trees and also got attacked by small black ants, it never hurts when those black ants attacks (the small red ones though is a totally different thing, that hurts like h..l 🙂 🙂 🙂 Still it took hours to get rid of all of them since they were crawling all over my body 🙂 They lives in a pot whee I tossed away the dead plant and since I had no idea they lived there they managed to run over to me in rather big numbers before I noticed them 🙂 🙂

It was a bit warmer today because of the sunshine, sort of perfect this time of year, not too warm so one could do some gardening but not so cold that one wanted to go inside to have a pot of tea. I’ve also pulled up a lot of weeds from places where I didn’t want them to grow, normally they’re quite welcome here if they flower a lot so that the bees get lots of nectar from them but if they grow where I don’t want them they’ll have to go, if not for any other reason than that snails and slugs love to live there.

I’m baking a bread right now and everything would be good if I just had remembered to start the timer 🙂 🙂 It looks nice in colour but I put a tooth pick in it and it felt a bit too damp, then again it might have been a prefect bread since I did put a lot of cheese in it and therefore it should feel like that sort of 🙂 🙂 I put a lot of rosemary in it and the small is filling the entire cottage. Talking about rosemary, the extra hardy one I planted in the garden has actually survived winter and is now producing new shoots 🙂 Still tiny but I can see them now. This is an American variety and I’ve forgotten the name 🙂 🙂 I have also forgotten from whom I bought it so I can’t get the name from the seller either 🙂 🙂

I just went down to the oven and checked, I’ve shut it off and will let the bread stand there for five more minutes, the cooler of it says it should be ready by then. Even though I did enjoy working the evening shift I still don’t think it is worth it. I was really tired all Friday long even though I did lots of things during the day and I’m still tired today. I’ll probably be back to normal tomorrow so I’ll be fit for fight for work on Monday. I’m an extreme morning person, goes to bed at nine pm and up around 4:30 am the day after, changing sleeping hours even though just four hours later does cost me a lot but thankfully this will only happen every fourth week.

It is time to go downstairs again to pick out the bread so wish me luck that it is ready 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

The first evening was quite ok.

May 20, 2025 · 2 Comments ·

The first day at the evening shift yesterday and I have to say it wasn’t that bad with the hours, I am however not so sure I’ll feel the same on Thursday night 🙂 🙂

Both today and yesterday have been wonderful summer days, just above 20C (68F), almost no wind and sunshine all day. This will shift tomorrow, chilly weather is on the way and tomorrow won’t be that bad but on Friday we’ll only have 5C (41F) as warmest. The temperatures will rise slowly after that but the entire weekend is supposed to be rainy. I don’t mind the rain but those temperatures after having summer is just nasty 🙂 🙂

My left hand is itching and stings a lot after I put my hand in stinging nettles. Normally I wouldn’t do that but I planted a potted sand cherry tree in the garden and there were lots of smaller nettles in I didn’t see and when I tried to remove them it only went worse. Sand cherry tree are not growing upwards like most trees but along the ground but the trick is to let it grow some before planting it so one can plant it upright. That way it is easier to not mow off the branches and it is so much easier to pick the cherries if one get the chance before the birds do it 🙂 🙂

It is time for a pot of tea and most likely something to eat. I might even have a nap with a timer on because one never knows for how long that nap might become 🙂

I’ve mowed this sand cherry tree too often now so it was time to plant it. It becomes quite high when forcing it to grow upwards 🙂

Have a great day!