Category: Gardening.

Nice day and bread baking.

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I always take test photo before we walk away and today this was the one.

 

I’m baking bread, well not yet it’s still rising and will do so for an hour more.  Most of the gluten free recipes seems to be for tiny breads that’ll last for a day or so. A bit annoying because they won’t go bad so quickly, so I tend to double it all. I never have the right ingredients either so I just take what I have. In this recipe I should have had potato flour and brown rice flour, I had neither. So instead I had normal rice flour, oatmeal flour and since I didn’t have enough with rice flour I also put in Sorghum and buckwheat flour 🙂 🙂  They all react very different so one never really knows what the dough will be like 🙂

     

I was mixing it all and it behaved like concrete, that’s when I remembered that I hadn’t doubled the amount of water, slightly stressed I poured in cold water and less of what i should have, really glad that I didn’t take all the water I was supposed to because if I had done I would have been able to pour it in baking tin and this one isn’t supposed to be poured 🙂 For some reason they always want the dough to rise in a separate bucket and when it is ready one should just place it in the baking tin. Why? One isn’t supposed to do anything with it after it has risen. So I just put it in the baking tin from the beginning so there isn’t any risk that I press out the air in the bread while doing something unnecessary.

     

We walked out to the bog this morning and the flies were quite nasty. They behaved like we might have thunder but there were no signs of that. Turns out that there has been thunder but it has been everywhere around us but not here. I got warnings on the lightning app all day long but here the sun has been shining the entire time.  I can’t say I’ve done a lot today, mostly listening to the radio and the Olympics. Had a short nap but was woken up by a text message and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I have also planted some perennials, Six Coneflowers (Echinacea). I put them in the old vegetable patch where I was hoping our meadow flowers would like to live but only a few showed up 🙂 They’ll look amazing next year. Since they grew in a pot I’ll need to water them every day because since their roots isn’t attached to the soil yet the old soil in the pot will dry up much faster than the ground surrounding them. I’ll have to keep an eye on them until late autumn even if it will rain a lot. It’s the same with trees and bushes, they need lots pf extra water the first year.

     

I just took a look at the bread and it is rising a bit too good 🙂 🙂 Looks like it will over flow the baking tin 🙂 🙂 smells really good though!

     

It is time to go down and put that bread in the oven and I’ll also have a last cup of tea for the day. I might go to the grocery store tomorrow but the one thing I need to do is to mow the lawn, I might wait another day to mow the parts outside my garden, after all I’m still on vacation 🙂

This one is from yesterday, the dogs have mostly been close to me all day so it was a bit difficult to get a good photo 🙂

 

Have a great day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m finding potato plants everywhere now :-)

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We’ve had so much nicer weather than they guessed yesterday that we would get, as best we could hope for smaller gaps in the clouds where the sun might get a chance to shine through. Instead we’ve had plenty of sunshine since just after we had come home from our morning walk. We’ve also had a wind blowing, not strong but enough, so I’ll probably be able to mow the lawn tomorrow without the mower getting full of green gunk 🙂 I checked the new compost and I must say when the sun shines it works really fast. It was packed full just a week ago and now almost all of its contents has sunken down to just some left at the bottom of it! I’ll continue to fill it and see how it works but at the moment I’m impressed.

     

Autumn is on its way now, no it won’t happen for some time but the signs are there. Almost no birds sing here any more and every evening I can hear the Cranes gather in bigger flocks. Now I’ve seen the older ones mix with the newcomers out in the fields and it’s the same with the geese. Some of them will move south as early as they can but lots will stay until they are forced to move by the weather. The trend is that they stay longer and longer now because of the late start of winter. 

     

I still have small trees/ bushes to plant in my garden and I had, of course, to buy another little tree this week. A Red Mulberry tree 🙂 🙂 I already have problems finding out where I can plant those things I already have here but it looks like my English walnut died some time during this summer, have no idea why because it started really well after surviving the cold winter we had. I’ll try to reach it and take a closer look at it but if it is gone I will have space for the Red Mulberry 🙂 🙂 The perennials will be easier though because of the old vegetable patch that now is where I wanted wildflowers to grow but failed miserable 🙂 🙂 

     

I’m also thinking of getting rid of my wild grape vine, I don’t think I’ll get a single grape this year and it has been cheap with giving any at all. The easiest way to kill a grape vine is to cut it off just above the ground in spring, it’ll bleed to death quite quickly because they really don’t heal well at all. I’ll also most likely strip off the bark at the base of my plum tree, Google and other translators says it’s called to ring bark and it is the same name we use. The tree has to stand for two years before one can remove it but by doing like that it will not give any root shoots. I can always plant a climber beside it so it doesn’t look too awful during that time. It only gives a few plums every year and I only got it so that my neighbor would get plums on his tree. My “new” neighbors are thinking of getting rid of theirs so then there’s little meaning to keep mine. The space will soon be used for something else though 🙂

I think this is buckwheat.

   

At the same time it really hurts to get rid of a tree but not even the birds or rodents have any use of it since it doesn’t give fruit for them to eat. Well I still have to start with the mowing 🙂 I can find more and more tomatoes now but the bell peppers still only have buds, I guess it has to do with all the raining and relatively cool weather. They say this is the warmer weather since they started recording the climate but I’m pretty sure that next time they show that map of the world where it shows the average temperatures in anything from blue (colder than normal) to deep red (hotter than normal) the Nordic countries and perhaps Britain will be colored light blue 🙂 To be honest I do prefer that than deep red and now there’s no risk of forest fires anywhere in that area. 

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for today. I might turn off the tv and start listening to the radio because I don’t have the channel that shows the Olympics but I can listen to it on radio and also do something else at the same time 🙂

Four of my Giant Sequoia seedlings.
Now all they have to do is to start getting red 🙂

 

Have a great day!

 

Some of the Aaron’s rod becomes pretty high, I think this one just about touches three meters (much the same in yards) 🙂
I had forgotten that I put down potatoes here and there in the garden and now I can find them all over the place 🙂 🙂  

A bit too close :-)

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100% humidity, no wind but towards the cool side should still make a rather nice day but both the dogs and I thought the humidity was just too much and that it made it feel much warmer than it actually was. We walked down to the creek in the morning when it still felt a bit cool but the flies were nasty and there were a few horse flies that tried to bite me. Oddly slow so now there are fewer horse flies to worry about 🙂

   

Winter food for the cattle. Lots of beans in it this year, they’ll cut it down and make silage from it.

I think we were close to wild hogs because Alma became a bit excited and looked straight at the point where we met one last week. We didn’t see or hear anyone though, I guess they too thought it felt a it nasty with the humidity and kept as still as they could to avoid the attention of the flies. We did see a Roe deer though but now Alma rarely cares about it. She has become so much better on our walks now and I do hope it continues that way 🙂

Roe deer don’t eat the beans, they only eat the most delicious herbs, that’s why they have problems surviving the old fashioned winters when the ground used to be covered with snow.

   

I got warnings from the lightning app when we had our nap but since the sun shone I really didn’t think much of it. Not even when the rain started to pour down because I really couldn’t hear any thunder. The dogs wanted to go outside so I opened the door so they could see how the rain was pouring down it was even too much for Malkolm. Just as I was about to close the kitchen door the lightning hit. I was close to peeing in my pants if I should be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I saw how it came from the mountain and passed my neighbors cottage rather close and hit the ground around 100 meters (much the same in yards) behind out cottages 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that I had almost closed the door because it is amazing how much it sounds 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

No rain tomorrow they’re guessing but the humidity will stay at 100% or close to it. Almost no wind but a bit of sunshine so I guess it will feel like living in a steam bath tomorrow. Well I’ll go to the pet shop tomorrow and will be closer to the big lake so I hope that helps some.

   

I took a look outside my bedroom window and realized that almost the entire eastern top half of the apple tree is covered in white bryony (Bryonia alba). It’s a poisonous vine that when it’s older can cover entire trees. It’s something I never would bring to my garden and it isn’t native here but back in the days people thought it was a great vine to cover big areas. It spreads easily with birds since they eat the berries. I did taste one berry when I was a kid and it tastes horrible 🙂 🙂 🙂 So even if one can die from eating the berries one need 40 of them and I’m pretty sure that no one can come even close to do that 🙂 🙂 This one is a young plant and only had three vines growing up from its root, still it managed to cover so much of the tree. They always grow where it is the hardest to get rid of them.

    

So we haven’t done much today, even before the rain the dogs preferred to stay indoors. Sunshine at the moment but still a chance/ risk of more thunder. I don’t mind thunder as long as I’m not caught outside when it arrives. I have had to chose between being the highest point in the fields or hiding beneath tress, a sort of choice between having plague or cholera 🙂 🙂

Ten seconds after I took this photo the lightning struck 🙂

The smell from the Woodland tobacco is wonderful but it only smells in late evenings and nights.

I took a photo from below on the bryonia, we call them dog turnips 🙂

It is time to have a last cup of tea for the day and perhaps I’ll have a couple of oatmeal cookies 🙂

Have a great day!

I forgot to take a nap!!

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I had been drinking a bit too much water last evening so I woke up in a panic that I wouldn’t make it downstairs to the toilet in time at 2 am 🙂 🙂 Normally if that happens I is to woken up to fall asleep again but last night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. That on the other hand made me sleep for too long so it was already too warm to have any walk. Nova struggled yesterday and today has been even warmer so we have stayed at home.

I’ve started to prune the Japanese quince so that the White Mulberry tree will have more space growing up.

I still don’t think this is a Creeping bluebell even though it’s quite similar. It’s much too high though, this one is higher than I and I’m six feet high.

Morus accidosa, Mulberry tree that’s very similar to the Black mulberry but much hardier. Gives smaller berries though but just as tasty.

Well Alma has paid visits to our neighbor but only to check when the kids have sounded like they were unhappy and also when their dog complained because they left him alone for five minutes 🙂 🙂 Nova has slept almost the entire time. We also were outside the garden, Alma, Malkolm and I and had a chat with the neighbors so both Alma and Malkolm had a chance to meet other people than me. Malkolm is a very different dog than Alma 🙂 🙂 He ran around happy greeting everyone and actually listened when we called for him 🙂 🙂 :-). I noticed how Malkolm walks like a rather big dog, sort of heavy instead of how smaller dogs walk, sort of tripping. He will grow higher until he’s around one year old so I do wonder how big he’ll be.

     

It has been so hot that the dogs only played for a couple of minutes each time and then went indoors and napped. Today is actually the first day on my vacation that I haven’t napped, feels like a failure to be honest 🙂 Instead I have pruned trees and bushes, mostly because I want more light coming down to the Pawpaw trees. It was so dark there so only the most stubborn weeds managed to grow there beside the Pawpaws. Still lots to do there but I need to fix my electric chainsaw before I can continue.It isn’t important to get sunlight down there just to make it less dark. So I have removed big parts of the Laburnum so that the Wisteria that grows there starts to grow upwards and not sideways as it does now 🙂 🙂

First time in years the light can reach the ground here 🙂

Malkolm followed me all the time and here he has found the darkest and coolest spot in the garden 🙂

Light’s coming down after I had removed much of the lilacs and some of the branches of the apple tree.

After.

I’ve also collected much of the grass still on the lawn, I couldn’t use the collector because the mower just clogged when the grass was both high and wet. I now use that grass to cover pots and the newly planted trees in the garden with that grass, it keeps the ground from drying out (a bit fun since it has rained constantly these last two weeks 🙂 🙂 ) and also that it fertilizes the soil when it is breaking down. Actually it is really good to grow vegetables in pure sand and cover the surface with cut grass, You’ll use less water and since the grass breaks down You’ll almost never have to fertilize it at all.

I think two of the Pawpaw seeddlings have died this summer but then again I was sure three had and now suddenlt that one has the beginning of a new leaf. I think the problem is that they germinated so late in the year that they actually are a bit lost when it comes to what season it is. Here You can see the grass on the pots.

  

We finally have a wind blowing so I have both windows open upstairs, the wind feels so nice and cool and I hope it continues all night so old Nova will have an easier time sleeping, well the rest of us as well of course 🙂 Also I will have a cup of tea after this but I will try to not drink as much this evening as I did yesterday 🙂

   

Have a great day!

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I had both windows upstairs open during the night and woke up in the middle of the night because I was freezing 🙂 It was only 8C (46,4F) outside and not much warmer in my bedroom 🙂 So I just pulled up the blanket and had a really good sleep until the dogs decided it was time to get up, around 4:30 in the morning.

     

I was a bit too slow though so by the time we finally started walking the flies started to fly. It was still rather cool in the shadows but the warmth had already done the damage. The only place where the flies didn’t do what they could to drive us crazy was actually by the creek because it was still much cooler there. Nova did have a difficult time every time we walked in the sunshine, she can’t take any heat now days, thankfully though most of our walk happened where trees gave a really nice cool air. She is after all a quite old lady so it isn’t surprising. She eats better than she has in ages though, she doesn’t leave a single thing in her bowl for the other two to fight about 🙂 🙂

     

I have an ant colony in one of my older composts and I noticed that the new queens and can we call them kings? started to leave their old home. I noticed that when I was about to put in more grass in the compost and there were ants everywhere 🙂 🙂  They seemed a bit annoyed with all that grass poured over them but it only took a few minutes until they had made new passages so that they all could start to fly away. I really need to pour in more water in that compost, just enough for the ants to find a new place to live, after that I can pour in a lot of water because since ants are living there they dry it out totally so the compost just becomes a storage place for dry grass and twigs 🙂

     

I can’t say I noticed especially many horse flies but at least some of them found me and now my right arm itches and I’m a bit swollen around my knuckles on my right arm. Still this is an amazingly good year for us warm blooded animals because there are very few of those biting nasties  (well gazillions of mosquitoes earlier this summer but not so many now). I do hope this also means that we’ll get much fewer moose flies as well, since it has rained this much so that we have more ground water than we have place for in the ground it might actually mean that the moose fly larvae/ pupas have drowned but it sounds too good to be true 🙂

   

I had forgotten that I can make additional pages to this blog and thought that I perhaps should make a new page and write down gardening tips for those of You that are interested. For instance what to do and not to do with invasive species, when and how to sow different seeds and so on, would that be of interest? I know I live very much far north than most of You but most of what I know could be adapted to warmer climates, just as long as You actually have some kind of winter even though it might be shorter than ours up here 🙂

The Creeping bellflower is pretty but it is also a terrible weed so today I had to remove all flowers because they had started to produce seeds and it can be bad enough with just all the roots 🙂
Looks a bit empty now but they will most likely start growing new flower stalks already now so I might get a second flowering from them.
Buttercup ‘Citrina’.
Finally the Californian poppies flowers too.

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and then hope it’ll cool down a bit before we go to bed.

Have a great day!

There are places that need water, so why does all of it fall here?

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Now I know how effective that anti tick spray is, it is very much so. It had been raining all morning and I thought that since Malkolm would be so wet while walking around most of it would drop off pretty fast so I skipped it since he actually hate that smell. It’s a long time since I’ve picked so many ticks of any of the dogs who has lived here. Nova was the only one that didn’t have any and I guess it is because she walked after us all  after we just had walked there, so no more walks without it, no matter how awful it smells 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

My shoes hadn’t dried at all since yesterday so today I had to wear my winter boots 🙂 🙂 They are light brown but by the time we came home all the water had made them dark brown 🙂 My feet were dry though so 🙂 I placed my shoes towards the south heading wall and even after a day with at least some sunshine they still aren’t dry. I guess it doesn’t help when the humidity stays at 100% or just below 🙂 There will be even more rain tomorrow and much of the week. There are places on this planet that desperately need rain so why does it all have to fall here 🙂

Lots of Rowan berries this year, perhaps I should make some yelly or ade when it is time. They need a couple of frost nights to become less tart and then putting some honey in it will make them rather yummy 🙂

This is a rather unusual flower, it is a parasite and has no chlorophyll of its own. The Swedish name for it would be Pine wort in English.

I haven’t done much today, I was going to bake some bread but then I found two packages with hard bread I had forgotten so I skipped the baking 🙂 We did have our nap, I realized we napped for almost two hours but I can already say that it will not keep me awake after the usual bet time 🙂 Oh I forgot I also now potted some of the Quince seedlings. I must admit that I mostly had forgotten about them, so some have grown in a 90 degree angle, I’ll need to find some sticks so I can direct them in the right position again 🙂 Two more Giant Sequoia seeds have germinated as well but unfortunately none of the Dawn redwood seeds. Well they might need one more winter before they wake up, they do look ok when I check if they still exists.

Lots of lingonberries this year.

This one is rather delicious and it looks like it has a thick layer of clear coat put on it. It’s actually a thick layer of slime that protects it from pests, easily removed though and I usually pick lots of it.

It is time to go and look at at least the beginning of which team will be the European champions in football (soccer) England or Spain. I always hope for England but they have a tendency to never win when it really matters 🙂

I’ll get at least two pink poppies this year and if You look at the top of the photo You can see the leafs from the Californian poppy, no summer here without it 🙂

I wonder if he will continue to have that quilted fur in his neck when he gets older?

   

Have a great day!

The new compost.

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This morning was sunny and quite chilly with some morning mist hovering above the ground. It wasn’t supposed to be like that but since the sky was clear blue I thought I had some time before the more cloudy weather would start. It started as soon as we came outside the entrance door 🙂 The sun had evaporated the fog so it rose and then created a evenly grey layer between us and the sun. It had also warmed up the air a lot so the few flies we have here were really annoying.

     

All vegetation was soaking wet, both from the rain yesterday and the morning dew. So we just walked down to the creek, followed it up-stream and turned back homewards again. We did see a Roe deer and when we just had turned around to follow the creek down-stream again a wild hog gave us a friendly warning that it stood hidden on the other side of the creek and that we shouldn’t try to go over to that side 🙂 🙂 I never saw it though but it did sound as if it was big 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I had just done some laundry when a package arrived. It was the new compost I’d ordered, the one that looks like a tombola and that one shall spin every now and again plus it is supposed to stand in direct sunlight so the things inside it sort of get so hot that it in a way boils into compost. I was naive to believe that it would be put together already in the package but oh how wrong I was 🙂 I also believed that it as most would be just to sort of pop it together in to the compost. Turns out nothing of that was remotely close 🙂 The package was rather flat and when I opened it the first thing I noticed was a bag with a zillion screws and Screws and nuts. I have to say that they had packed it really nice and there were even some Screws and nuts extra so it didn’t matter that one of the screws was defect.

 

I think this is the first year that the Beekeeper will get cherries on this little tree.

So I unpacked it all and at that time it was cloudy and not too warm. I started to put the pieces together and I’m really happy that I am ambidextrous (for those of You who don’t know what that is, I am both right and left handed since birth) because I think it would have been pretty tough to reach all the screws from the outside to the bolts on the inside otherwise. So I stood there in a bad posture of course and then the sun broke through warming up the air even more plus trying to fry my back 🙂 I’m glad I remembered to put the middle piece in while I still could (a sort of wall in the middle to make two compartments, when one is filled but not really ready to use one has a second compartment to start to fill up), it would have been impossible otherwise.

They had packed everything really well and I now have more plastic than the world needs this year 🙂

Each segment had to be screwed on individually and overlapping the previous one with eight tiny screws and bolts. I also got a screwdriver and for some reason I just can’t understand a pair of very thin gloves that only would have made me drop anything smaller than a tea cup 🙂 🙂

In this photo I thought I would show the middle wall but forgot to brighten up the photograph 🙂 🙂 🙂

So every time one puts anything in the compost one is supposed to spint it a few times and one must also spin it around every now and again so it composts evenly. This one is supposed to be totally smell free.

The normal flies acted pretty calm while I stood there sweating like a pig and to my surprise only one horse fly tried to bite me! Last winter really thinned out the fly communities and also the ticks seems to have been culled hard thankfully 🙂 Still plenty of them around though but clearly fewer than before. I moved the compost to the sunniest place in the garden, just in front of the vegetable patch and put in the fruit peels and other things in to the first compartment 🙂 So all needed now is that the sun actually makes a try to shine for more than an hour a day 🙂 🙂 I’ll have some twigs as soon as I’ve started to prune the bushes that now have grown too much and removing small plants that has spread too well with their roots. I do have a rather wild garden but even I have a limit to how wild it can become 🙂 🙂

My garden raspberries aren’t especially tasty but the birds love them.

I do however have plenty of wild raspberries, they truly behaves like weed 🙂 The wild one are probably the most delicious berries we have this far south in the country. We have even more delicious berries up far north but they can’t give any berries this far south.

The Elderberry tree suddenly started to flower 🙂

The dogs are sleeping deeply right now. Malkolm on my left side and the other two in my bed. They’ve enjoyed a sunny afternoon being outside playing but quite often come in to drink lots of water. The weather will be mostly rainy this weekend but they’re guessing that our early mornings will be almost cool and sunny, so I better get up and go outside with the dogs as soon as we wake up 🙂

Doesn’t Malkolm look worried here? Two seconds after I took this photo he attacked Alma 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

Have a great day!

Finally :-)

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Something worried the geese and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. Lots of sound and running around.

The morning was quite nice with sunshine and just above 10C (50F) degrees. I stopped by the lake on my way to work, there isn’t much to see now but I did see some geese. I would most likely have seen plenty if I just had had more time but work was waiting and a work friend who I was going to pick up on my way.

Suddenly lots more came running from behind me (to the right). I guess it could be a fox hunting but geese are nasty so it must have been an inexperienced one 🙂

Then they all came flying.

It didn’t take long though until the rain arrived, mostly short but fierce showers and it has continued like that all the day but in between we had lots of sunshine as well. Despite it being the last day before vacation the day passed fairly quick. Could be because we had cake twice today 🙂 Firstly a work friend have his 29th birthday today and thankfully he bought an ice cream cake so that I could have some as well 🙂 After that the company had cake as well, unfortunately not gluten free but I did at least have coffee and an extra break 🙂

The sky when I had arrived after work.

I haven’t planted or sown anything in this pot but there are lots of plants in it 🙂 Looks like some kind of Nepeta, possibly Canadian Goldenrod and also an Aaron’s’ rod. plus something small with white flowers.

My tomatoes are coming fine 🙂

My little Mango tree. It stopped growing when it went colder unfortunately.

Yesterday we had lots of pastry because a work friend will retire next week 🙂  so it’s been a good week 🙂 🙂  The weather was nice all the way home but as soon as I stopped by the mailbox the sky opened up again 🙂 Tomorrow will be really rainy, if they’ve guessed it right but it looks like we’ll be able to have a morning walk with some sunshine before the rain arrives. The entire first week will have weather like this but I don’t mind as long as we can have a morning walk without getting soaked from above 🙂 After all vacation is meant for us to charge the batteries so we can manage to work until Christmas since we don’t have a single holiday before then.

Musk Mallow, grows everywhere in this area, I have the pink one as well.

My pees are now all entwined 🙂 Plus I saw that a few bean vines still are alive and grows well.

I think it’s time to go to bed even though I really don’t have to think about getting up early tomorrow but I always wake up early and it’s nicer to do so if I actually have slept enough hours 🙂 I can start changing the hours tomorrow instead.

The three tomato shoots I removed a couple of days ago now have roots. If we hadn’t loved tomatoes so much we would call it a weed 🙂

The Hardy Fuchsia cuttings I’ve taken are now planted in three pots. The yellow in the leafs indicate that they lack nutrients of some kind and that’s most likely because all the rain that has washed through the soil, there’s simply nothing left for the plants to use.

Don’t know the name on this one. It is a climbing vine and I think it once belonged to the Corydalis family but now have been moved to the Fumaria family, my favorite weed family 🙂

I hope All of You Americans had a great 4th of July!

Have a great day!

Such a nice day.

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The Beekeeper has really managed to make beautiful meadow flower patches.

It has been such a nice day here, mostly sunny and just below 20C (68F) as warmest. The wind was blowing pretty hard in the early morning so I skipped the mosquito hat when we went out on our morning walk and it was cool enough to wear a hoodie. I sprayed us all with the anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray but I can’t say it was because of that I only found two ticks in total on the dogs and no insects bit us either, the insects bit could be because of the wind though because the only place we came close to them was down by the creek.

     

Later in the morning my neighbors texted me asking if I needed an office chair because he was going to toss some away because they had ordered new ones at his work place and since there were nothing wrong with the ones they would toss away he thought of not only his family but also on me 🙂 So now I finally have a really good chair when I sit in front of the computer 🙂 I can’t remember when I didn’t have any pain in my back or legs while sitting here.

     

I’ve finally planted the last Mulberry tree I ordered but I still have four Sea buckthorn bushes to plant. I have also pruned the Laburnum so that the, so far, little Wisteria gets some sunshine and also the area behind the tree. I once had a rather nice flowerbed there but it went too dark when the tree got bigger. I also pruned the Japanese quince and a Ginnala maple, the Japanese quince because it has become too big and threatening the little new white mulberry tree and the maple because it gives too much shadow towards the root zone. I’ve decided to remove that maple just because it gives too much shadow and Ginnala maples tend to spread like weeds. I have another one that also needs to be pruned just because no sunlight can reach the ground where it grows.

     

I found the first tiny tomatoes on one of the tomato vines 🙂 I was fastening a string towards the cottage wall so that it has something to keep it in place and while I was doing that Alma decided that she would give me a visit. Alma has this habit where she must press her face towards mine and it isn’t a gentle touch, she press her face really hard towards mine 🙂 🙂 So while I tried to tie the string around the tomato vine she stood there pressing so I couldn’t see anything and managed to break off all the other flowers 🙂 🙂 Well I have more plants with more flowers so I’ll get my tomatoes 🙂 I also tore off the new shoots and planted them too. I will not get any tomatoes from them but I can save them till next summer. If they’ve become too long and thin I’ll just cut them down in large enough pieces and plant those in new pots.

     

The weather guessing on the weather sites are galloping right now 🙂 🙂 🙂 The big Swedish one says rain all day and around one fifth of an inch with rain. The Norwegian one that I trust most of all those sites says rain all day and two inches of rain!! Well in which case I think we’ll be able to have our morning walk but two inches is a bit much 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I have things I must do indoors anyway so I won’t get bored 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!

The first Gooseberries are turning red 🙂

Red currants but I won’t get a chance to get any, the dogs and Magpies are there as soon as they ripe 🙂

This tomato variety is called Tigerella, I guess one could translate that to Tiger Ella 🙂

I’ll get lots of Blueberries this year.

Mösakäringa.

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Foxglove to the right.

We’ve had everything from cloudy weather to sunshine to rain and thunder today.It rained when I came home from work and after that we had so dark clouds that I though more thunder was on the way so we stayed at home and in the garden. I and my dogs once got caught in a thunderstorm where I had to chose from being the highest point in the fields or standing between the trees in the forest 🙂 🙂 It was one of those fierce storms so the lightning flew all over the sky above us but none hit the ground here in the village.

Grape vines grow like weeds.
I apparently still have two grapevines in my garden 🙂 I thought I had removed this one several years ago but here it is 🙂

The broken old wheelbarrow. I always sow different poppies and morning glories in it.

The poppies will soon open up, the Californian poppies however is far behind.

I sowed this Mock orange around 20 years ago and it flowers nicely every year and has become pretty big.
I sowed this Mock orange well over twenty years ago. It is now huge and flowers nicely every year.

They are guessing that the weather will stabilize towards Midsummers eve and after that become warmer and more sunny but You all know by now that they aren’t too good at their work when it comes to guessing what the weather will be like here 🙂 🙂 🙂  I know that in some folklore the beings doesn’t like to be out and about in daylight but very few is like that here in our tales. Like the Skogsrå, a forest nymph. She has lots of local names and I think that when people talk about here in this area they call her Mösakäringa (would be something like the Bog hag, personally I call her the Bog Lady just in case I ever should meet her 🙂 ). Everyone knows that when the fog rolls in over the fields from the forests it’s the Bog hags that has poured water over their nightly fires.

I have more roses than I can remember and I really can't say I like roses :-)
Found another rose that I remember I brought home after a plant swapping day. It has had a tough life fighting with wild roses I now have removed.Turns out it was lying flat on the ground so I’ve now helped it up again.

Persimmon shoots.
New shoots from the roots of the dead Persimmon hybrid. I’ve read that it is easy to make those shoots grew new roots so I’ll try that with some of them.

The Wisteria that I’ve tried to remove so many for years now but cut off a big piece of root is now growing in the Lathyrus, Golden shower. They have leafs looking very similar so if I’m lucky I’ll have both yellow and blue flowers in that tree 🙂

She’s the one that reigns over the forest /bog and all the animals and if she likes a human she will allow them to hunt in her area. In this region she’s always described as very beautiful and tries to lure men to follow her and, if she wants to, kill them or seduce them. Her backside looks different when it comes to where she lives, Here she looks like a hollow log on her back but further north she look just like a human but has a tail. In the Norse beliefs the god Odin hated her and often hunted her like an animal but she’s hard to kill, only a silver bullet could do that (and I guess that since there were no bullets back in Odins days he must have used something else made by silver. If one would meet any kind of beings when walking around in the forest it’s always a good idea to have  some pieces of silver, either as an apology if one has done something stupid or a way to become friends with them Preferable that silver should be begged while walking on a pilgrimage 🙂 To be honest I don’t think they are that picky now days since so few wear pieces of silver in their pockets while walking in the forest 🙂 🙂

Nepeta sibirica.

Rosa multiflora. Forbidden to have in many states in the US.
Rosa multiflora, Japanese climbing rose. It is still behaving nicely up here in Scandinavia but can spread fast and tends to push away other wild roses. Forbidden to have in many states in the US.

Have a great day!

Don’t try to catch a hornet.

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The only photo I have of Malkolm today 🙂 He and Alma learned that it isn’t a good idea to try and attack a Hornet, Alma was limping for a while and Malkolm as You can see was stung on the back.

 

More mixed weather today than what they guessed yesterday. It was sunny and rather cool in the morning while we were out on our morning walk but the clouds arrived much earlier, so by the time we came home the sky had an evenly dark grey color.

No ALT texts today, too tired in my brain :-)     

With darker day comes the mosquitoes and once again they attacked my ancles when I was watering the newly planted seedlings. The Dahlias were still there so perhaps the slugs still doesn’t know they are there. The dogs really didn’t want to be outdoors even though it has been warm but I guess they too are a bit sick of the insects now.

The little creek up by the bog is almost dried out oddly enough since it has been raining so much but the ferns shows where it usually flows.

 

Besides doing my chores it has been a rather uneventful day, perfect really 🙂 I’ve watched some football (soccer) and we took a nap, shorter than I had hoped for because a friend called on the phone. At least I didn’t sleep for too long so that I can fall asleep tonight 🙂 I have a short work week ahead of me because on Friday it’s Midsummers eve and that’s a big thing here.

   

To be honest I think it is even bigger than Christmas here and even though the church tried to make it a christian holiday (John the Baptist’s’ Birthday) it’s all pagan here to be honest 🙂 According to the folklore it’s a day when the Beings are out and about a lot and if we do it right we can keep us all healthy during winter and also see the future if we want to. For those new to this place but have been following me on post I think I’ve told You about the trolls and perhaps gnomes but there are a lot more to tell. I’ll start telling You more about the beings and how we celebrate Midsummer over here from tomorrow.

     

I have re-potted the Guava trees today. I think they have been a bit confused with the weather because first it was hot as h..l here, then almost autumn weatherwise plus all the rain, so they haven’t been growing that well, especially the roots have stopped to grow. I can only hope they’ll start growing again now when it has become a bit warmer. All apricots, peaches and pear trees are now re-potted as well.  and I had a few seedlings from the Lemonquat seeds I sowed just before the warmth arrived. It takes far less time to get a seed sown Kumquat, limequat, lemonquat and what ever other quat there is out there 🙂   than it takes for orange, lemon or lime trees sown from seeds. For those it can take up to ten fifteen years before they flower but perhaps, with a bit of luck, only four to five years for the quats. It is time for a cup of tea so I don’t fall asleep in front of the tv later. Only four more days before long weekend again 🙂

I totally forgot that I also planted the last potatoes in pots today. The sprouts were so long that I made them follow the inside of the pot 🙂
The Guava trees has changed color to red, normally a sign that they stand in too much sunlight but these doesn’t so I have no idea to why they’ve done that.
I hope the old Pawpaw tree that survived winter here also speed up the growth of the new leafs now when the warmer weather return.
Perennials and trees can take years to start germinate so I’m quite pleased that I now have Giant Sequoias growing.
The Himalayan Cedar is coming fine 🙂

 

If You want a flower that will keep on flowering until autumn, smells really odd and would spread like wildfire this is the one for You, Nepeta sibirica, Siberian catmint (our name for it is Siberian dragon flower). It is 5 feet high and smother any other flower to death within a year 🙂 Only just as invasive flowers can keep it in control 🙂 🙂 It is beautiful though.

Have a great day!

It is at least warmer again.

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Misty morning looking up the road before leaving for work.
No the coming photos with morning mist isn’t from today, I had those in my car camera.

It is raining outside, a nice gentle summer rain and the temperature rose up to 18C (64,4F) so it’s quite nice outside. It looks like Malkolm doesn’t mind rain after all, he’s the only one of them that willingly goes out no matter how much it is raining, Nova and Alma just stand by the door opening looking at him 🙂 🙂 I’m still trying to figure out what kind of dog he will be as grown up, when it comes to behavior I men. There are no signs of herding characteristics, not good at fetch but is truly gentle and like rain.

Fur photos taken in the village on my way to work when we had a few misty mornings.
My work friend once said that this isn’t a village but a wasteland 🙂 Big open fields in the middle with a few groups of houses and cottages spread here and there around it 🙂

   

That sort of fits with both Cockerspaniel and Golden retriever. Border-collie isn’t a retrieving dog so that fits with him, then again no herding 🙂 So it will most likely be something towards the golden and spaniel . All goldens and spaniels I’ve met have loved water 🙂 I tried to see how high he is now and he’s somewhere around (he wouldn’t stand still 🙂 🙂 ) 42cm-44cm (16-18 inches) high. That’s actually higher than what a Golden should be at that age?! He’s still the little guy here, Nova is 52 cm (almost 21 inch high) and Alma is 70 cm (28 inch high).

Malkolm yesterdxay when I had come home from work. The big package behind him is the dog food and toys I had ordered :-)
Malkolm waiting for me to walk in with him and as You can see the dog food and toys I’d ordered had arrived.

Buttercups, in the real those flowers are slightly tinged with green, really hard to get in a photo.

The haunted tree.  Still can't remember the name on this one :-)

Our morning however was rather wonderful! Sunshine and cool enough to keep all mosquitoes calm but not cool enough to keep the flies calm. Still it was enough to wear a hoodie to keep them away from bot nostrils and ears 🙂 Later on a strong wind arrived so that kept most of the flies away as well. We walked down to the creek and Nova sort of thought that was a good idea, not great though so she did walk more slowly than usual 🙂 The only animal I could see, besides birds, was a deer. I had hope that we would meet the foxes again but perhaps tomorrow, They’re guessing that we’ll have much the same weather tomorrow, cool and sunny in the morning and warm but rainy in the afternoon. They are guessing much of next week will be much the same 🙂

Down at the creek, lots of flies there but surprisingly few mosquitoes.     

I let both Nova and Malkolm walk without a leash on the last part of our walk, turns out Nova had quite a lot of speed in her legs 🙂 🙂 She did stop and look after us every now and again but we were never really close to her until we came back to the gate 🙂 🙂 🙂 Malkolm followed her for a while but decided to run back to Alma and me. He is very slowly accepting the smell from the anti tick spray and I could only find one tick on him when I checked him before I let him go inside. Alma had five and Nova only one.

  Quite often we meet a fox here but I guess she has learned when we come by :-)  I'm pretty sure that if the deer hadn't moved I wouldn't have seen him at all but they are more cautious now when we have wolves here. 

Besides that I haven’t done much today, I did plant the dahlias I’ve sown but I don’t think they’ll last for long. Lots of hungry snails and slugs now when the weather is like it is. We don’t have the feared Spanish forest slug here, it behaves like a forest machine when cutting down trees, it eats anything and everything in its way but our native slugs and snails are enough as it is. One advantage we do have here though is the Panther slug, it eats other small slugs so we take really good care of those 🙂 🙂 So to be honest, it could have been much worse.

Nova and Malkolm walking ahead of us.  She did stop every now and again to check where we were :-)  Malkolm stopped and waited for us. 

Time to go down to the tv and watch the European championship in football (soccer for You Americans). I’m not a huge football fan but I do like to see these big championships 🙂

Malkolm then decided he wanted to walk with me and Alma.     

Have a great day!

I had forgotten to bring in the water bowl and (lying inside the bowl) the treat cup yesterday :-)
The water bowl I forgot to bring in yesterday 🙂

The dog yard fence is now slowly covered in Boreal vetch (and stinging nettles) on one side and

One neighbor once threw away hops he had in his garden not knowing how great it is at surviving. Male plants though so nothing to use for either scent or beer making :-)
hops on the other.