Category: Hot.

Today is her 18th birthday :-)

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18 and still going strong 🙂

So this little lady moved here around 16,5 years ago. An animal rescue organisation called me one day, not especially long after I had had to say goodbye to my “little” girl Erna (she was in the same size as Alma is but the smallest in the pack 🙂 🙂 ) They asked me if she could come to me because the previous older owner had been hit by cancer. The organisation knew me because they got all the cut flowers that still was pretty but too old to be sold and they used those flowers to decorate old pet graves where the owners perhaps no longer were with us, this was back in the days when I had a Garden center. 

I took some photos on my way to work this morning.

   

I really didn’t feel like it, it was too early after old Erna but they sent me a photo and Nova looked just like old Erna but half the size so how could I say no 🙂 🙂 Nova’s first year consisted mostly of abuse and starvation and living in a dark cellar all the time. After they had rescued her she then went to the older couple who really built her up to an amazing dog but to be honest a completely brat 🙂 🙂 🙂 Just as it should be after a start like that. So it took a while but the big and older dogs soon taught her to behave 🙂 🙂 🙂 

     

She had this idea that hares are animals that should be eradicated from the surface of this planet so, since my dogs back then always walked without a leash, if I missed a hare out in the fields but she didn’t she always ran after them in high speed. Hares are smart though so she never caught any and I never had to worry about her getting lost because she either came back to me or back to the cottage 🙂 🙂 🙂 One day, when I had to have her on leash she saw a hare and ran after it, she didn’t come far and almost broke my wrist. That was the only time I’ve ever scolded her in her life and I must admit that when I scold I’m not quiet 🙂 🙂 After that she stopped caring about hares and I have always trusted her after that.

     

She’s had a 5 cm (2 inches) long tumor removed that grew between her right ear and eye so the eye was saved but her ear had to be closed, chronic ear infections, one vet said her ears were built to be infected, she has no cruciate ligament in her left knee but a cheap orthosis and duct tape keeps it together, so good actually that the vet was amazed and said I don’t know how You do it but continue with what ever it is 🙂 🙂 and she also has cancer but a “kind” one that mostly behaves like a fatty lump. It does spread bout so slowly that she won’t have any problems with it for as long as she has left. Then again she doesn’t seem to slow down especially much so who knows how log she’ll stay after all 🙂 🙂

     

With age she has become really fuzzy with what she will eat, can’t blame her 🙂 So at the moment she only eats boiled chicken and rice but allows me to also put in some of the dog food the other ton eat as well, not too much though because then she’ll refuse to eat anything 🙂 🙂 🙂 She also always wait to start to eat her food until she sees the two other is almost finished with theirs, she knows they aren’t allowed to touch her food (I stay close though because both Malkolm and Alma wouldn’t hesitate to push her away and eat her food themselves). She also takes her time to eat it and the other two stays close drooling until she’s had enough 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

She has never been a cuddly dog so the few times she has lately I’ve had a hard time sleeping because I always fear that that’s her good bye 🙂 🙂 🙂  So today they’ve all had some grilled chicken and they will all also have some extra treats (she will of course get more than the others but it can’t be shown, my life is really tricky 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

 

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This is the pot with the self sown flowers. Canadian Goldenrod, catnip, Californian poppy and also an Aaron’s rod but I managed to break that stem .

It wasn’t much cooler today so the factory was nasty hot today, it’ll be slightly cooler tomorrow but now the ovens are building up the heat indoors. We do have two big gates where forklifts can go in and out of the factory but the problem is that the sun shines towards both almost all day, so it’s only when it is really windy it actually helps to open them up 🙂 🙂

I found these photos in the camera, must have taken them during the vacation I think.

   

No walk today either, the dogs didn’t want to go outside at all, they did follow me outside when I walked around watering all the trees I’v planted this year but as soon as I went towards the door to go inside they ran to be first indoors again 🙂 We did have a weak wind blowing so I opened up the windows upstairs but as soon as I did the wind died 🙂

The new shoots from the dead Persimmon hybrid, I will cover them with something to give them a better chance during our winter.

This and the one You can see behind it slightly towards the right are the Pawpaws I bought this spring.

The seed sown pawpaws. I think they still are confused about the year. They germinated the absolutely wrong time of year to be honest.

The first Black walnut I could find 🙂 I’m sure there are more but really tricky to find up there 🙂

I met a villager out running when I came home to the village. I can’t think it i especially healthy to do that in this heat. He also wore a back pack, ok a smaller one but still. Back in the days when I was out running almost every day I never ran if it was over 23C (73,4F), I would not have been able to carry that much water 🙂 🙂 🙂 Also I used to bike every day as long as it wasn’t colder than 0C (32F). I actually liked to bike when it was cold but I never could find gloves or mittens that could keep the cold away from my fingers and I hate cold fingers 🙂

They didn’t have the energy to play, only to eat apples 🙂

   

It is time for a last cup of tea and then bed I think, I start an hour earlier on Fridays so best not to stay up too late 🙂

Have a great day!

Heat record for September.

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A couple of days old photos since we didn’t have our walk after work today.

We had another maintenance day at work so I managed to get out from work a couple of hours earlier again. Today was much like yesterday but the temperature rose to 30C (86F) so even if the wind was blowing it was much warmer than yesterday so I didn’t dare taking the dogs for a walk, Nova wouldn’t have made it far in the sunshine.

     

I cover all windows on the bottom floor with curtains so it is several degrees cooler in the cottage than outside when I come home from work. So the dogs have only been outside when they had to, after that they’ve mostly slept close to me. Not even Malkolm have had the energy to play at all. t’ll be much the same tomorrow they say but after that it will cool down slowly but steadily over the coming seven days, well that’s what they are guessing at least.

     

They had heavy thunderstorm closer to the coast all day but the winds from south kept those away from us, it was close though 🙂 Now it’s so quiet in the village, no one is outside but a few dogs, one just on the other side of the field beside my cottage and he barks quite a lot and I can hear a few from the other side of the village. To be honest it feels like in a movie from the deep south where the heat finally breaks people and murders starts to occur 🙂 🙂 🙂 The only things that really is missing are the cicadas, our katydids seems to have given up on making noise when it is as warm as it is 🙂 🙂 Since they started recording weather and temperature this is the hottest September day in history here.

     

I’m waiting for the ice cream van, should be here in half an hours. I haven’t heard it enter the village yet and it might even be a bit late since I guess lots of people wants to have ice cream in this heat 🙂

     

Have a great day!

Warm.

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I’ve found more Hazelnuts 🙂

It took two days to mow the lawn, it was just too warm to do it all during one evening. Today was even warmer but with almost no sunshine. Too warm to have a walk especially for Nova. I was worried for a while that she was near her end but then suddenly she started to eat a lot again (I boil chicken and rice only for her and since there’s almost no fat in chicken I also give a hand of a special food for senior dogs) so now she’s almost back to normal again 🙂

Four different colors on the five Petunias that germinated late this summer. There’s a fifth one that still not shows any flowers but it’s on its way 🙂

   

The cattle is now walking in the pasture behind my cottage. Alma hates cattle, the first time she saw them she ran straight into the electric fence. It was of course my fault but she forgave me quickly but she has not forgiven the cattle 🙂 🙂 🙂 Malkolm isn’t that happy about them either but he is happy to just bark towards them 🙂 No herding instincts shows so he hasn’t inherited that from the brodercollie that he’s 50% of. He’s more like a English Cockerspaniel that loves to follow tracks and much like Golden retriever when it comes to how he behaves otherwise and how he looks. Very much cockerspaniel head though.

The English walnut, a better photo than I had the last time.

Aronia berries, if You love tart and very bitter berries these are the ones for You. No ammount of sugar can make them taste good but the birds and Alma loves them 🙂 🙂

My seed sown apple tree. Delicious apples but they are easily attacked by fungus.

Finally! Bell peppers on the way 🙂

He is a very soft dog in his behavior, loves to meet new people but shows clearly that he isn’t dangerous. If I call he comes immediately even though he sometimes walks very slow 🙂 🙂 🙂 Learns easily except for when it comes to putting on a harness 🙂 🙂 Even Alma has started to understand that, only took three years 🙂 🙂

Every morning when I let them out in to the garden both Alma and Malkolm runs straight to the gate, looks over it and down on the ground, when they don’t see what they think should be there Alma runs a few laps in the garden while Malkolm follows Nova. I couldn’t understand what it was they were looking for until I was going to mow the outside parts of the grass. The badger that was climbing over the fence at nights here now instead follows the fence around the garden, I can now see the typical little shallow holes in the ground they make while digging for insects and slugs 🙂

     

It is time for a last cup of tea and then see if there’s anything worth to watch on tv.

Have a great day!

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It was supposed to be cloudy here today and rainy as well. It was cool and sunny when we went out on our morning walk, Nova have had a good day so we walked down to the creek but up-stream than following it down-stream. The sun would be rather hot for her so I thought it best to stay in the forest so she could walk without getting cooked in the sunshine.

     

I really didn’t need to worry about that for the clouds arrived and kept the sun away until we arrived here at home. It started to rain when we reached the cottage but it didn’t last for long and after that the sun has shone quite a lot. It was supposed to rain a lot tomorrow but now they’ve changed that to very little in their predictions 🙂 🙂 The rain will now arrive on Friday they guess 🙂 🙂  We’ll know better when it happens 🙂 It would be nice if we had a heavy shower though because there isn’t much water in my water barrels now.

     

I have done very little today because there isn’t much to do. I have continued to take a nap but since we are home alone in this part of the village any sound that can be heard is really interesting for Alma 🙂 🙂 🙂 She runs between the open windows and sometimes down to the entrance floor, it is hard to have a good nap then 🙂

     

The ice cream lorry comes today , should be here in around 40 minutes, and I’m looking forward to it. I bought food enough to last the week but nothing like sweets or chocolate so now I really am looking forward to have some ice creams 🙂 🙂

     

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!

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The first of my perennial Sunflowers are in bloom now, a bit early but I guess the hot month of May helped with that.

We didn’t have any sunshine in the early morning but it was cool and nice when we went out for our morning walk. I don’t think Nova thought it was necessary to have any walk because today she really waked slowly, it wasn’t until she realized that we were heading homewards that she had speed in her feet 🙂 Fewer birds are singing now, they know they won’t have time for more chicks so they stop singing and I can see in the sky that many now are preparing for the move south. Not that they will move any time soon but they are flying around in big flocks trying to find the best feeding places.

     

I went to the grocery store after our walk, I went to the one I always go to in the village where I work. It’s a longer drive but a more beautiful drive. They have less to chose from but I know what I want and I know where to find it and that’s important to me 🙂 I really dislike when I have to walk around for half an hour in a super market to find just one thing 🙂 🙂 Also I know all who works there, I’ve been buying my food there since I moved up here and that’s almost 27 years now. So instead of walking around trying to find what I want I instead have chats with those working there and it takes about the same time 🙂 🙂

     

I had a small hope that the grass in my lawn would dry up some today but that didn’t happen 🙂 Normally it takes around an hour or so to mow the lawn but today it took twice as long. The mower clogged up so badly that I had to stop mowing, turn the mower up side down and dig out the green goo and I really don’t like that. Lots of flies that for once wasn’t that interested in annoying me and one horse fly that I hit several times while it flew in front of me that I truly hope that it at least got a concussion. It did bite me once though.

     

I also stopped to drink lots of water while I was mowing, today has been warm and the wind I so desperately wanted to blow into my garden while I was mowing finally showed up just a moment ago, not much of a wind to be honest but it would have been better if it had blown earlier today. I still have the parts outside my garden but I’ll mow those tomorrow. It’ll be even warmer tomorrow and on Sunday if they’re guessing it right. On Monday it’ll cool down some and we’ll have rain again. The rest of the week will be warm but not hot and of curse it will rain some as well. June, July and August are the months when we get most Precipitation in the year so I’m not surprised about it raining but I am surprised about how much we’ve gotten. In some places, like here where I live we now have over full ground water deposits, that’s why I still have that lake behind my garage instead of a swamp.

   

Finally, the beans are flowering.

It is time for a last cup of tea before bedtime. The dogs are all sleeping here upstairs but I’m not ready to go to bed yet. I doubt that there’s anything worth watching on tv but I’ll take a look anyway.

     

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!

Now they’re guessing it won’t cool down until Saturday.

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It has been much warmer than the weather presenter and weather sites guessed yesterday, 30C (86F). Also there was no wind what so ever so the heat in the factory was nasty. Now the Swedish weather site says no rain what so ever and around 77F, yesterday they guessed up to an inch with rain.The Norwegian site which I trust more says much the same temperature but at least a fifth of an inch with rain. So I wouldn’t be the least surprised if their first guess comes true anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I once had a garage where I used to park my car if the weather was going to be bad but then some of the dogs living here years ago dug their way in and my garage became an indoor dog yard 🙂 It’s just walls and roof made of metal sop nothing special. Anyway I’ve always thought it would be like staying in an oven when the weather went hot but it is actually cooler in there than outside?! I have always wondered why the dogs preferred to be in there on sunny and hot days. The floor was once made of wooden planks and beneath it just plain sand and since the wooden floors are long gone I think that maybe the sand, damp because of all the rain we have here cools the entire place down.

     

Nova is sleeping behind me but the other two are outside playing, coming in every third minute to drink some water, run up to us to see that we’re still here and then run outside again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was watering the vegetables before I started writing here and Alma avoids the water like it is death coming for her while Malkolm sits down so that the little wind we have blows the water steam all over him 🙂 I think it might be time to bring out the little dog pool and start filling it with water, Neither Nova nor Alma will like it but I have a hunch that Malkolm will 🙂 The other two have as most only shown interest in it when the water becomes so dirty it’s disgusting, that when they drink it 🙂 🙂

The surviving Pawpaw finally is growing, I think that them being as late as they are even though we did have a really warm May is a problem with them surviving this far north and if they will flower one day they’ll be very late. Some trees do adapt though so it might work anyway.

The new shoots on the Persimmon root are also finally showing some speed in their growth.

The new Persimmon however already had leafs when it arrived here.

This is a White Mulberry that will give yummy berries, normally they taste, as someone described it, if You like to eat dry grass they have the berries You want 🙂 🙂 I can see that I really need to  prune the old Japanese quince 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Sunny, warm and unpleasant.

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A Roe deer doe half hiding in the high grass, most likely the baby is there too.

Malkolm woke me up at 4 am today, so up we went so that he could go outside to pee. There was some morning mist just above the ground but instead of having our walk then we went indoors again and slept for an hour and a half instead.

The dog rose showed its pink buds for the first time yesterday.
I noticed that the Dog rose now is full of buds.

The deer was at almost the same place this morning.    This one is actually closely related to the pink flower I've shown several times this spring.

It was still rather cool in the air when we finally went out but I could feel that it became warmer and warmer for every minute, so we just took a short walk before it went too hot for old Nova. Yesterday just before we went to bed I could see a Roe deer doe just on the other side of the gravel road and she was still there this morning. The grass is high so I think she had her baby there as well. She’s been hanging around for a while now so she knows us well and didn’t bother to even try and hide when we walked out the gate.

The Haunted tree :-)   This is a favorite amongst all pollen drinking insects and also a favorite with spiders who there can get an easy meal.  This trailer used to be where all the hunters gathered before the hunt started.  The little tjärn still have some water visible.

I mowed the rest of the lawn and the outside parts as early as I could, then I did the laundry and the temperature dried it up within minutes. It did look like we would get thunder and rain again today but it all passed to the east and west of is. The day has been unpleasant though with the high humidity and temperature plus the fact that we’ve had very little wind, so we have mostly stayed indoors taking long naps instead.

  The little creek is almost totally dried out but ferns will soon cover it. 

I was outside for a few minutes an hour ago, the wind has started to blow but despite that I sweated like a pig when I planted some of the sowings (Hollyhocks and Morning glories). Also there were so many mosquitoes biting us that we all went in, closed the doors and now only have windows covered with mosquito nets open. They are guessing that tomorrow will be mostly cloudy and perhaps not warmer than 20C (68F) and that fits me fine 🙂

Today the first dog rose opened up.

My tree peony, bought last year, have already given me two flowers and a third is on the way.
My tree peony has two flowers and one bud now, unfortunately these flowers look down to the ground.

I wasn't sure if my lemon tree would survive last winter but it did anjd now it has lots of buds.
Lemon flower.

The second daylile flowers too now.

Have a great day!

Close but still no thunder or rain.

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The path down to the creek is bordered with Dog biscuits.
The path that eventually leads down to the creek is full of Dog biscuits. I’m glad they have driven four wheelers there, otherwise we would have been drenched in water from the rains and morning dews.

Hot again today so it was really nice that we were able to have our morning walk in the early morning while it still was cool. Not cool enough to keep the mosquitoes away but cool enough for them to not attack us to hard 🙂 Malkolm woke me up at 3:27 am today but after he had been outside we all went back to bed and slept for another hour.

A Roe deer buck is eating in the field.
This wasn’t the only animal we saw this morning. It is a Roe deer buck.

 

Still lots of water in the creek.
There’s so much vegetation along the creek now that it is hard to see it 🙂

All the dogs are at the moment a bit wobbly in their stomachs so today I boiled rice and fish for them. Nova loved it, Alma loved it and Malkolm put his nose in the air and refused to eat anything until he realized they all had the same food 🙂 He did eventually eat all of his food but I can clearly say that he’s not a fan of boiled fish 🙂 Too bad for him because he’ll get this tomorrow as well 🙂

The path along the creek is very narrow now days.
The path along the creek is now so narrow that we need to walk in a line, something Alma have big problems understanding 🙂

  There's a little brige at the both ends of the creek where we alk so I had to stand on one of those to be able to see more than a couple of meters of it.

My camera refused to do as I wanted so here are two rather bad photos of fox cubs running away from us.
Some previous owner of my camera thought it was a good idea to adjust the camera to being able to go through the photos when turning the shutter speed wheel. Idiotic since if I need to adjust the speed after just taking one photo instead of changing the shutter speed I then started to go through my photos already taken. So instead of actually capture these two fox cubs so it would be easier to see them I instead took several photos that an editing program then tried to make at least some better. We met the mother later on but it happened so fast that I wasn’t able to take any photos of it.

Thunder and heavy rain is nearby again but it looks like it’ll go either south or north of us. I wouldn’t mind if we at least got the cool air that always follow thunder but even if we don’t get it today it will cool down considerable next week. It’ll drop from today’s  26C (78,8F) to 14C (57,2F). It will stay that cool during the entire long weekend and I think I’ll enjoy it a lot, cool weather plus what they are guessing rain as well sort of forces us to just relax all the time 🙂

Nova didn't like that I wanted to go down to the creek, she wanted to go out to the bog. So she dragged her feet all the time until I let her go un leashed, then suddenly she had all the energy in the world :-) :-) :-)

Malkolm decided to not follow Nova and instead kept himself close to me and Alma.

Nova did stop and look after us every now and again :-)
Nova checked after us on and off, last time she walked away like this she too a wrong turn and it took some time until she finally found us. She’s more or less deaf so no use in calling after her 🙂

I moved the lawn, well most of it, when the grass had started to dry up some. I drank too little water while doing it so now I have a slight headache. What’s left will be moved tomorrow and it’s on the north side of the cottage and beside the woodland where the Pawpaws are growing. I do hope we’ll have a wind blowing because that’s where all the mosquitoes are and I have already been bitten quite a lot. I was bitten by a horse fly this morning as well, they’ve started their season a bit early unfortunately. Last month was unusually hot here and I guess that kickstarted them.

I do like the European Hornet, a gentle giant unless one comes too close to their nest. If one do one must run fast :-)
The European Hornets are back, favorites ogf mine :-)

Alma and Malkolm playing in the garden :-)
Alma and Malkolm had a few minutes to play before it became too hot.

 

It looks like both the thunder and rain will miss us so I better put together the new hose and spray gun so I can water the vegetable patch. Something is eating the beans I sowed but the rest looks untouched, the carrots however hasn’t shown them selves yet so I’m starting to wonder whether I’ll have to sow something else in that spot. I’ll give them a couple of more days before I do anything.

Have a great day!