The new neighbour has decorated the bush with coloured feathers. Most people just brings in a lot of twigs, put them in vases or urns and decorate them there. Not only feathers are used though, could be plastic or papier mache eggs, tiny yellow chickens or flying witches 🙂
I don’t mind the little rain we’ve got but it is a bit chilly to be honest. That and a high humidity forces me to turn on the radiators again. Not a much but enough to keep that humidity outside. We haven’t been close to how much rain they predicted, the ground is still bone dry if on scratch the surface.
It seems like nature is a bit out of sync this spring. The vegetation started to flower long before the first Bumblebees started to fly and now when we don’t have any honey bees around very few pollinators visit my garden. Honeybees can be both a blessing and a curse for nature. If there are too many they can actually disturb the wild bees so they don’t get enough nectar to managing to survive the next winter. We used to have lots of wild bees here before the honey bees arrived so it’ll be interesting to see if we have fewer wild bees this spring. Today is so chilly that I haven’t seen or heard a single bee at all.
Badgers makes these shallow holes to get to worms and other juicy larvae.
I’ve now brought up all citrus trees as well from the cool cellar and some were replanted but I had to stop doing that because I suddenly went out of soil again 🙂 I hope that cloudy weather, despite northern and cold winds will keep the frost away. don’t think it would harm the bigger citrus trees because the cool cellar is quite often pretty cold, 0-1C (32-33,8F) isn’t that unusual down there and that’s why the cellar also works pretty great to be a root cellar and even a huge fridge during winter 🙂 🙂 All that’s left are a Christmas cactus, easter cactus and a few things I think have died 🙂 🙂
It is time for a pot of tea and perhaps a nap after that, I’m really tired so either I have a cold going on or the Birch pollen season has started 🙂
Not long before the Marsh-marigold opens up in the root zone.Red currants have buds now.
The Sloe is in full bloom as well. You really don’t wants this in Your garden 🙂The Juneberry will soon be completely white. Unfortunately they don’t like warm sunny days if the nights are cool and damp. That’s how it is here quite often and then they get attacked of mildew and then the berries are inedible and the entire bush looks sad. I’m afraid I’ll have to remove it and plants something else there, too bad because it is a favourite of mine.
Below 0C (32F) again this morning, nothing strange to be honest because that’s how it used to be back in the days. April here back in the days could be anything from what we have now to bitterly cold and snowstorms, usually the latter. This year the warm weather started so early that it isn’t until now we can see and especially hear bumblebees in the air. Also the ticks are active, yay, and yesterday I killed two mosquitoes that tried to drink my blood.
The first bumblebee of the year 🙂
We are thankfully out on our morning walks so early that it is too cold for ticks to be active, the ground is still frozen after the nights low temperatures. It will be less warm the coming days with especially Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights being pretty chilly but we’ll have sunshine and almost 10C (50F) temperatures during the days so it will not be as bad as they first guessed.Tuesday will be the start of rising temperatures again. So I took a bit of a chance today by sowing annuals in the little area where I’ll have flowers for pollinators. I most likely did this too early so that those more sensitive flowers might get killed even if they during those chilly nights still only will be seeds.
I’ve also brought up more trees from the cellar but those will be covered with fibre cloth so the freezing temperatures won’t reach them. It’ll be nice when I can bring out all those plants down there so that I can use it as an earthen cellar. The cool cellar works fine as a farther cellar but if summer is hot it will be a bit too warm down there as well. It is perfect during winter though when the temperature usually stays just above 0C (32F) as coldest, especially now days when it doesn’t get as cold as it used to be.
I think it is time for a cup of tea and perhaps some hard bread with cheese and jam 🙂
I have a couple of old piles with branches I’ve cut of from trees and bushes and yesterday the monster kitten went in to one of them and Malkolm was upset, he couldn’t follow her 🙂
I’m glad I didn’t have to remove the ice from the car windows when I drove to Falköping 🙂
-5C (23F) here this morning, it wasn’t especially nice at all 🙂 But the sun did show itself and as soon as it did it became rather warm. We walked down to the creek and everywhere the sun hadn’t reached yet was covered in white frost. I only worse a thin anorak but it still rose the temperature beneath it so it almost felt too warm 🙂
I was going to be at the coffin factory at 1pm but they said don’t stress because that’s when the lunch break ends and it will take some time before everyone is working again, that was a good thing to know 🙂 🙂 I had plenty of time when I drove from home and when I reached Falköping I turned on the GPS on the phone and when I did I realised it didn’t work as it should 🙂 🙂 🙂 it refused to show where I was and I could only get instructions on how to get there from Stockholm, our capital around 350 km away 🙂 🙂 🙂
Falköping also seems to be ridiculously bad at putting up the street names so I just couldn’t figure out where I was so I had to call them and ask for directions 🙂 🙂 🙂 Turns out that I had passed the factory twice 🙂 🙂 🙂 This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. When I looked for a job the last time, 18 years ago, I did much the same. That village is tiny and I’ve lived close to it but I just couldn’t find the factory I was looking for, so I drove to another one, the building actually looks more like a office building, to ask for directions. Since I was there I asked if they had a job for someone who worked at Volvo Cars as a painter and assembler for well over twenty years the CEO shouted, our painter is quitting and I haven’t found another, can You start tomorrow 🙂 🙂 I could and stayed there for over 17 years.
Anyway it was a nice little factory with way too much to do and as someone not being there before I couldn’t figure out the logistics in there 🙂 We did the tour and had a chat afterwards. He wanted to know if I would stay until the day I retire and when that would be because he wanted someone who would stay for quite some time. I answered that I’m 60 years old and have no ambition to look for other jobs until I retire, It’s not like I wants to start a career and looking for other jobs 🙂 The pay is more or less what I had but I’ll have a shorter distance to the job. So he said that I’ll know some time next week if I get the job. I usually say that I’ll call at the beginning of the week but that never happens but some time next week at least.
So You will have to continue to have Your fingers crossed and or hold Your thumbs until some time next week 🙂 Now it’s time for that last cup of tea for the day. Tomorrow will be even nice than today and Thursday almost summer like and Friday winter might return 🙂 🙂 To be honest it won’t be that bad but temperatures will drop significant.
This is actually the second butterfly I saw today, the first one was a bright yellow Lemon butterfly. A slo finally heard the first Bumblebee.
Sunny and warm today, it did feel like an early summer day with a lukewarm wind blowing as well. I wasn’t sure Nova wanted to follow us on a walk today because yesterday I was pretty sure she wouldn’t last till today. It was tough for her walking up stairs or even get up from the dog bed.
Today it was quite the opposite She was the first one out jumping the stairs as if she was young again and really enjoyed our walk 🙂 🙂 The only time she wasn’t happy was when I vacuumed the floors, she hates the vacuum cleaner and for good reasons because she was severely abused as a puppy when they hit her with the tube and scared her and her siblings almost to death with the machine on. She does accept that I do it but isn’t happy about it, that’s why I usually use a cleaning brush most of the time.
Now the sun rise so late that I can’t say we went out in the early morning 🙂 we did however go out as soon as the sun had risen above the few clouds we had in the sky. We walked out to the bog and on the way we could hear people shouting over at the castles grounds. At first I thought someone was shouting after their dog but then I hear the shots, they were hunting. So instead of going down to the creek we went out to the bog. No moose flies today thankfully but lots of small dragonfly relatives, they are really small but still beautiful even though they doesn’t seem t have any colors.
When we had been out there for a while we slowly walked back homewards. It was time to continue with what I do with Alma now to try and calm her down (so far so good even though all the shouting from the hunting party had stressed her up quite a lot) so we stopped and everything worked as I hoped. That’s when I looked up and ahead of us when a fox slowly walked in front of us. Not even Alma made a sound oddly enough. I picked up my camera, took one photo but didn’t have any time to adjust it and then the fox was gone. To be honest I do think that photo turned out amazingly well 🙂
There it was, just for a second and then it was gone again.
The hunters, well those who shouted to scare the animals towards the hunters anyway, came a bit too close, I think they went over to the wrong side and if they do and are being found out they can actually be seen as poachers, by scaring away animals to be hunted on their area so there’s less animals for other hunters. They could of course have permission but I doubt that. We walked homewards slowly just to be able to enjoy the wonderful weather we had. After that they day has been relatively calm and I’ve baked some french rolls plus the vacuuming, a tough day 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day,watch some tv and then bed.
It’s quiet in my cottage, the dogs and kitten are sleeping and even though the tv is on downstairs I can’t hear it. We went out to the bog this morning and I tried something old with Alma, I thought she has become older so perhaps it will work this time. It is more quiet out there and even though we do see animals every now and again that still can’t compare to a huge tractor passing in front of us, curious calves running towards us and dogs barking in dog yards 🙂
To my very big surprise it worked really well! This was only one day but we’ll continue with this for a while and if it works I’ll tell You what we did 🙂 It was fairly warm already in the morning and with almost no wind it did feel like an early spring day. No birds singing of course but some tweeting from smaller birds flying by and I could hear a Jay screaming from somewhere in the forest plus a few Ravens as well. One moose fly that I managed to get rid of when we had arrived here at home again, they should all be dead by this time of the year but there’s always a few that survives for a longer period I’m afraid.
I found eight more walnuts on the ground today and since almost all leafs are gone from the tree now I found seven more up there just waiting to fall down. This year I’ll use a hammer to crack them since they destroyed my very sturdy nut cracker last year 🙂 🙂 🙂 It wasn’t the best nut cracker to be honest but since it was made from thick iron I never thought they would break it 🙂 🙂 🙂 They’re still green on the outside so it’ll take some time until I can crack them open. I hope that they aren’t empty like the few hazelnuts I got 🙂 🙂 🙂
It will stay relatively warm and nice for a while now, with that I mean up to 59F as most but it looks like the sun will stay away most of it. I won’t complain even if the sun will hide behind the clouds as long as it is around that temperature. I’m not a fan of winter, truly dislike below freezing temperatures, hate scraping ice from the car windows and hate even more to shovel snow from the ground. To be honest it’s just four meters I really need to shovel and some around the car but I really can’t stand it. Now days winter tends to arrive when we usually was waiting for spring, some time in March and with fierce snow storms. Like this year when it arrived twice, the last time it came at easter just when I had brought home Malkolm. We had had spring for a few weeks by then when the snow arrived again and forced me to take a week of vacation because I couldn’t leave a small puppy in a dog house/ yard when we had well over 40 cm (16 inches) of snow everywhere 🙂 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day but I think I’ll skip anything to eat. I’m not hungry and don’t even crave anything sweet, a first time to be honest 🙂
I must say that this little compost works really well.
The first hunter arrived at the same time we were going out on our morning walk, I had already planned for us to walk in the village. There were morning mist floating in the cow pasture outside my cottage so I have to admit that I felt a bit disappointed when I saw that there wasn’t any up in the village. Still cool almost cold morning and with some sunshine. Alma managed together with Malkolm tangle the leashes to a knot already before we got out of the garden and both behaved just as bad for almost the entire walk 🙂 🙂
Here in Sweden You can’t just buy a license and then go out and hunt anything. The land owners own the hunting rights and then rent out the rights to hunt to hunting groups (some big land owners also allow single people or small groups of people to hunt there, it’s usually trophy hunters who rent some time on those places). The hunting groups are well organized and the same people year after year so it can be hard for younger people to actually get a chance to join those groups. Also You must go through a course to even get a license and if You can’t pass You will not get any license. Back in the days lost of hunters were drunk and could shoot anything that moved but now days they aren’t allowed to drink alcohol. It is rare that humans get shot these days.
There’s a tiny dark dot just before the trees in this photo, that’s the deer I could see today 🙂
We have lots of stone age tombs around here. They aren’t sure if this is one, could also be stones gathered from the field to make it easier to grow crops in it.
This one however is one and as far as they know it isn’t looted.
The same with this one.
I remember one year when I was in my twenties and listened to the news that the custom service had stopped a van full with people with Germans. They claimed to have shot a herd of Moose, around twenty if my memory is correct. Well they didn’t have any license to hunt here in Sweden and also Moose don’t live in herd. Turns out they had shot a bunch of Reindeer. I think they shouted something about The right to public access (all mans right, a law that allows us to walk anywhere, pick berries, camp at least for 24 hours without having to ask for permission and much more as long as we don’t do it in other people’s gardens). They really should have learned more about that law 🙂 🙂
I did see a deer on our walk but it was far away and I also heard lots of cranes and geese in the air somewhere over the forest. Normally Nova would have been without a leash but since I knew hunters would arrive everywhere around the village and some drive like crazy, not the ones in my part of the village, they know they can meet all kinds of animals coming from our gardens at any time of the day, they drive really slow 🙂 🙂 so today she had to be leashed. She always show very clearly what she thinks about that 🙂 Today she stopped and sniffed on the ground for unusually long every second meter or so 🙂 🙂 🙂
I haven’t done much otherwise but to water the new trees and bushes. Even though the ground water is just 2,5-3 meters down (much the same in yards) sand can’t keep water but instead dries up really fast. So even though I now have a lake behind my garage (it’s usually a swamp as worst) the ground in our gardens are now bone dry. Older vegetation manages this fine but plants that hasn’t grown here for two years usually struggles until the roots have grown down to the ground water.
It is time to go downstairs to have a last cup of tea for the day, there’s nothing worth watching on tv so I’ll probably fall asleep in the recliner and wake up with an aching neck 🙂 🙂
Have a great day!
Finally the Lupinus texensis looks like they do in photos, my first ones only had one or two flowers and they were also white.
The Hardy Fuchsia likes how much more sunshine it gets after I thinned the Golden rain (laburnum)
One Honey bee, one spider and one species of Hymenoptera. Could be that the tiny hymenoptera actually is after the spider while the spider is after the honey bee. The honey bee managed to escape though.
Mostly cloudy today but really nice. Just warm enough and no wind. The no wind did make the flies too happy but only while we were walking in the forest, here at home they mostly kept away. So I could walk around watering the plants that need extra attention without going crazy 🙂
Today I scolded Malkolm for the first time, three times actually 🙂 🙂 He has now gotten the idea to pull out my potted plants and then start to chew on them. He’s getting his real teeth now so I guess it itches something awful in his mouth right now. I caught him in action so I thought that it would stop after the first time but oh no, he tried again 🙂 He really look miserable after scolding him and refused to go inside after the first time, no such behavior the other times though, he almost looked proud instead 🙂 🙂 I think the time of rebellion has started 🙂 🙂
Otherwise I’ve mostly listened to the radio and the Olympics and I’ve also napped so I’ve only missed to nap twice during my vacation, always feel nice when I can keep a promise to myself to almost 100% 🙂 🙂 They warned about showers passing by but so far nothing has fallen here. They’re guessing that we will get rain tomorrow as well but the amount and when keeps changing all the time. I won’t mind if it will rain the entire day, sort of fitting since I’ll go back to work on Monday 🙂 🙂
Nova has had a bad day today. The walk was tough for her so I let her off the leash so that she could walk in her own pace. I haven’t noticed any signs of wolves in the area so I’ll do the same tomorrow.
My cold has come back, yay. I don’t have any fever but my throat is sour and my nose is runny. Summer colds are the best 🙂 🙂 They stay long and close as an old friend 🙂 🙂 So now I’ll have a cup of tea with lots of ginger in it and hope that will stop the cold from going worse.
These are the Guava seedlings, they haven’t grown much in the cold weather we’ve had but look really healthy.
Here are the Apricots, I have one more but I test planted it amongst the Siberian nepeta. It doesn’t look happy because the nepeta is too invasive.
My two peach seedlings. The one to the right was the first tree Malkolm decided to chew on 🙂
My strawberry plants are thriving now, I’ll get plenty of strawberries if the warm weather continues for a while.
Have a great day!
I’ve found two small squashes beneath the leafs, perfect size to have in the dinner.
He doesn’t look too guilty after chewing on my plants 🙂 🙂
The test photo of the day, my and my neighbors trash bins. The brown one is for leftover food and the green for non recyclable trash. I’ve used the brown twice, once when the freezer broke and once fr some really old food that I managed to hid in the back of the fridge 🙂 Still if I don’t have that brown bin I’ll have to pay more. It is more or less impossible to refuse to have garbage bins over here.
Another really nice day but it was a bit too warm in the morning and absolutely no wind so the flies were quite annoying, no biting ones though and that’s always positive. We walked down to the creek and I had hoped we at least would see the Roe deer we’ve seen lately but I guess they too were a bit tired of the flies and instead had walked in to the forest and hid in the shadow amongst the trees.
A bad year for acorns, normally this little tree is full of them but today I found five.
The spring was amazing when it comes to Rowan berries though. Old folklore says that if there are lots of Rowan berries we’ll get a cold winter. We had almost no berries last year and got a nasty cold winter again 🙂 All it says is that the spring was amazingly good for Rowan trees.
I think the beavers are back in the creek, even though the water level is really high on one side of the place we pass on our way home it’s really low on the other side. Last time they were here they blocked the big pipe passing under the gravel road and it looks like that’s what happening again now. I’m happy about it but I know the land owners aren’t. Still that was what saved the fields along the creek last time we had a drought for well over two months here. The rest of the area was so dry that the trees started to lose their leafs but everything was green and lush along the creek.
No risk of that happening this year though since the ground water levels now are higher in this area than there’s space in the ground 🙂 Still my garden has mostly sand so even though there’s lots of water in the ground the surface still dries out really quickly, so now the first thing in the morning I’ll go out to water what is newly planted and those things where the roots don’t go especially deep. The good thing with having sand is that almost nothing even get close to rot away because of standing water and the dogs are usually quite clean after being outside in the garden after a shower 🙂
I was disturbed twice when I tried to have a nap today. First time it was a phone sales person, I never answer a phone call if I don’t know who’s calling but my phone said it was trash and second time it was a text message telling me that a package had arrived and stood outside my gate. I know I should turn off the sound while having a nap but I usually never get a call that time of the day and when I do turn off the sound I usually forget to turn it on again 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I did get two short naps so I’ve fulfilled my vow to have a nap every day of the vacation 🙂 Today was the last day of my vacation but I still have the weekend to enjoy. Tomorrow will be much like today weather-vice but Sunday will be rainy they guess.
The perennial sunflower the Jerusalem artichoke is very early this year, they normally start to flower some time in Early September but I can already see buds. Badly eaten by snails this year.
I sowed sunflowers all over the garden this spring and the few that started to grow are still small and tiny. This one however, sown by birds I think, grows in the vegetable garden 🙂 🙂
My seed sown apple tree has lots of apples. They taste delicious but the tree almost always get attacked by fungus and the apples rot directly on the tree, doesn’t look like that will happen this year though. So this tree proves that seed sow apples always becomes sour and bitter.
The blueberries are coming fine as well but they ripe really unevenly, so I’ll have to pick and freeze them one by one.
Alma is in the dog basket, she isn’t sleeping but I can’t say what she’s doing either, could be chewing on something. Malkolm sleeps beside the vacuum cleaner, he has no fear of it what so ever and Nova sleep just beside me, both of them sleeps quite heavily and at least one of them has gasses and it’s bad 🙂 Time to have a last cup of tea for the day and then see if there’s anything worth watching on tv.
Have a great day!
Chicory. I tossed the left over seeds from yesterday all over the garden and one germinated. The ones that grew quite well last year died during winter.
The weather has been so nice today, an almost perfect summer day like the ones one tend to remember from childhood even though here most summers used to rain away and the only reason one had to remember those warm and sunny summer days was because summer breaks were so long as a child 🙂 🙂 🙂
We walked down to the creek this morning and thankfully there was a strong wind blowing so mostly we weren’t that annoyed by the flies, some did try and bite us but it was mostly the small really irritating forest flies that managed to keep up with the wind. Also the wind and sunny weather has now dried up the grass so for once none of us was soaking wet when we came back home and even better I couldn’t find a single tick on the dogs when I checked them before going inside. They do tend to calm down this time of year but normally I always find one or two anyway.
Couldn’t see any damselflies today but quite a lot very active small dragonflies. None would sit down long enough to be photographed though.
How come is it that every time one is waiting for more than one package they never arrive at the same day? I was up at the grocery store in Gudhem yesterday to pick up that tree I had ordered, today the next package arrived!!! I didn’t want to go there again today, just didn’t have the energy to be honest. I will however have to leave home tomorrow to pick up those new shoes and insoles. The rather annoying thing is that I have to drive the opposite way to pick up the package and then turn around to go to the hospital, almost back to home, and drive all the way to Lidköping. I know it’s a first world problem but oh so annoying 🙂 🙂
I haven’t done much today to be honest and that’s just how it is supposed to be while having vacation. I have watered all the trees, potted plants and all the newly planted perennials, there’s very little soil in the ground here, it is mostly sand, slate and bog ore so the ground dries up really fast as soon as it gets warmer and dryer. We have lots of Iron in the ground here so that’s why the water in the creek has that rusty color. Luckily not enough for anyone to start trying to bring it up and at the same time destroying the area. We also have one of the biggest deposits of Uranium in the mountain north of the lake. At the moment it’s forbidden by law to try and mine it but the right wing government that supports on the fascist party wants to remove that law. It is never a good thing for the environment to have a mine and especially not when it’s about Uranium. Well the people stood up and fought the government the last time they tried and they will again 🙂
It is time for a last cup of tea and today I won’t drink as much as I did yesterday, I woke up around three am and desperately needed to go downstairs 🙂 🙂 Oddly enough I managed to go back to sleep again and didn’t wake up until after six am 🙂
This is Salmiak, the kindest cat in the world. His biggest problem is that he believes that there’s good in everything and that has given him huge problems with dogs. My Albin tried to take him and I think at least three other dogs bitten him badly. Now days he tries to have some distance between himself and dogs. He is at least as old as Nova, so eighteen years old by now.
We didn’t get a morning with cool air and morning mist, instead we had fairly warm morning with a thick layer of clouds above us. So instead of having a really nice and cool walk we had a walk in the forest where flies and mosquitoes reigned. Still we’ve had worse walks so I’m not complaining too much 🙂
One of the cats living at the farm next door.
I think there was just one horsefly flying around and it found my hand so now it itches something nasty. Another one found me when I mowed the outside space but that one will never bother anyone else any more 🙂 To be honest this year has been pretty good when it comes to flies, with that I mean fairly few. If we get in to an area where suddenly lots of flies fly around it means animals are close, most likely wild hogs because there are always many together and therefore draws more of those annoying insects.
I had to go to the store in Gudhem today because the package with the Red Mulberry tree had arrived and it was just in time, the soil in the pot was so dry that I had to put it in a bucket of water as soon as I opened the package. As soon as the soil was wet I planted it in a bigger pot and I think I’ll keep it like that until next spring, down in the cool cellar. Now I have three different mulberry trees. This red one, a white mulberry with tasty berries and one called Mulle which is a Morus accidosa. I can’t find any info about M. accidosa so I think it must be some kind of hybrid. It gives black berries, really tasty ones, but they are smaller than the ones the Black Mulberry tree gives. So lets now hope we get a mild winter so that they all survive plus of course the Pawpaws and persimmons 🙂
Snails and slugs live in paradise when they find my Root zone.
So this is the last week on my vacation and I’m desperately hoping for that lottery winning 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wouldn’t hesitate to quit my job immediately even though that is frowned upon (I really don’t hate my job but I’m not crazy in love with it either 🙂 🙂 ). Normally we have one month to work after we’ve given notice but since I wouldn’t plan on going back to work again ever so why bother 🙂 🙂 🙂 However until that happens, most likely five minutes before I leave this earth 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will have to keep on working, at least until I can retire and I think I’ll start with part time retirement when I’m 64, just a few years left 🙂 I think I would be really pi…d if I died before I could retire 🙂 🙂 🙂
It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and later on I’ll watch Midsommer Murders, unfortunately they show Death in Paradise at the same time in another channel but since I’ve watched all the murders in Midsommer from the beginning the choice is easy tonight 🙂
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 🙂
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 🙂 🙂
The Cottage by the crane lake. 