Category: My dogs.

So we won.

May 14, 2023 · 6 Comments ·

DSC_0009 (1)

It is raining. We weren’t supposed to get rain today but this comes from thunderstorms nearby and it is very dry in the ground so I doubt that anyone is complaining about it. It isn’t dry in my garden though, like in winter when the cold temperatures flow down through my garden so does the water that still is in the ground until there’s none left. It does help a lot to live beside a huge bog too, there’s still water in the swamp behind my garage so the ground water is just two meters (much the same in yards) down.

My little Red oak is opening up its leafs. I can’t say that it grows especially fast but it is at least alive 🙂 I’ve always wanted a North American oak since I was a kid and noticed that the leafs looked different than our oak leafs when I watched Chip and Dale at Christmas 🙂

DSC_0004 (2) — The oaks are getting green in the forest as well.

I slept until 5 am today (and so did the dogs) because I watched the finale in the Eurovision Song contest. Our song won because it got almost twice as many votes from the juries around Europe. The peoples votes however went to Finland so he ended up as the silver medalist. So like in the US elections a president can win the popular vote but still lose the election 🙂 For me it didn’t matter who won of those two because I didn’t get the Finnish one and I still couldn’t hear what our singer sang 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hoped for France to wind and like always my favorite ended up somewhere in the middle to last 🙂 🙂 🙂 So here’s a link to YouTube to the french song: Evidemment It should open up in a new tab.

DSC_0017 (2)

I could hear cranes trumpeting when we went out on our morning walk today and when we reached the open fields they stood not far from the gravel road we were walking on. They didn’t care much about us (and both Albin and Alma behaved really well). They were communicating with other cranes so i didn’t think more about it. Just as we were about to cross the creek two more landed in front of us. They too trumpeted a lot and to my very big surprise three big flocks of cranes then flew towards us, circled a bit and landed in a neighboring field 🙂 Must have been around 40 cranes in total. I think those are the ones that still doesn’t have a place of their ow since they arrived in couples. If they were nesting only one would have come while the other one wrmed and defended the eggs in the nest.

DSC_0038 (1) — Parts of the three flocks that came after.

DSC_0045 (1)

I’ve sown iceberg lettuce, chard and salsify in the vegetable patch today. I’ll sow much more later but these are quite safe to sown now since they can manage a chilly morning and we might have just that on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. The temperatures will drop considerable for two days and then go back up when our long holiday starts. Ascension Day is on Thursday and I took Friday off as well. Not all at work could do that unfortunately but since no one actually celebrates holiday like they did back in the days they’ll instead work on Thursday and take Friday off instead. I think that if they had done that when I was a kid they would have been flogged 🙂 🙂 🙂 Not that we Swedes were especially religious back then (and even less now days) but one just simply didn’t do anything like that then.

DSC_0065 (1)

The dogs have had their dinner and now I’ll go down to the kitchen and make dinner for work tomorrow. After that I too will have something but I haven’t figured out what I want to eat 🙂

Have a great day!

Buzy morning.

May 13, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I woke up pretty early (4:20 am), well I was woken up pretty early by the dogs. With my bedroom window open they now hear everything that happens outside and obviously they then need to go outside to check it out 🙂 🙂 If the window had been closed they would hear something and then they obviously would have to go outside and check what it was anyway so there’s no way I can win from now on 🙂 🙂

We had our breakfast and then we went out on our morning walk. Alma did behave pretty well even if two hares around 200 meters (much the same in yards) away ran around some and made her a bit crazy 🙂 Also there was this squirrel that caught her interest but she could just hear it so she lost interest quite fast. When we had come home again I brought out all the seed potatoes. I have bought two different ones, the most disease resistent I could find, and one kilo ( around two pound) of each. I also had a few that were green last autumn so I had saved those as well.

There were some old garden tools left when I moved here 23 years ago. I think this one was a sort of multi tool with a rake on one side but smooth on the two other. I use it for when planting potatoes.

One net was already in the ground when I remembered to take this photo. The ones in the egg carton are green potatoes from last year.

This is the “harvest” 🙂 of sprouts that broke off and a couple from the green ones as well and two tiny from last year that had way too long sprouts to be easily planted in the ground.

I don’t have much soil at home so I had to plant too many sprouts in each pot/ bucket. I’ll show the result in the autumn 🙂

When one buy seed potatoes, at least over here, they always comes in a net bag. Since they always arrive (if one buy them online as I did) too early the sprouts then start to grow through the net and many will of course break off from the potato. So when I had put down all the potatoes in the ground I then had lots of sprouts that had broken off. So I fixed a bucket and three pots and planted the sprouts there. It’ll take a bit longer time to get potatoes but there will be potatoes. Last year I harvested enough of them in one bucket to last for an entire weeks dinners.

After that I mowed the lawn. I can’t say that it had grown an awful lot but some spots were worse than others. There was actually very little grass growing at the place where all the thorny bushes and roses grew but instead shoots had started to popping up from the ground instead. I really can’t skip mowing there because otherwise all those thorny bushes will grow up again. Yesterday I realized that stack ants had a nest in my compost so I had to poison them. Stack ants and all kinds of red ants are really aggressive and their sting is pretty nasty so if I hadn’t done that it would have been impossible to be in my garden at all. Looks like I managed to do the job because I can’t find a single ant there now. I’m sorry about the ants but it was them or us this time.

Tonight is the big finale in the Eurovision Song Contest and as I’ve told You our song is the huge favorite. Finland is the second favorite and then France. I’ve heard the Finnish one and I can’t understand why it is so popular, I guess I’m getting old 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally some warm weather.

May 7, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

a (1) — The bog more or less starts just behind my garage, at the moment it is more like a swamp and sometimes ducks swim around there 🙂

My body aches after all the work in the vegetable patch and potato patch yesterday 🙂 🙂 It was of course as worst this morning but I can feel the muscle pain after every time I’ve sat down for a while. I’ll survive and since I’m walking all the time while painting at work this will most likely be gone by tomorrow. The day has been truly wonderful, sunshine all day and 0C (32F) as coldest in the early morning. Then the temperature rose to 17C (62,6F) and the wind that was was lukewarm. I was thinking I should mow the lawn but my muscles said no 🙂 Instead I planted that English walnut I’ve had in the cool cellar all winter. It had new fine white roots so it will at least survive this summer as long as I remember to support water it until autumn comes an all leafs fall off.

a (3) — Alma saw several deer at our walk but behaved unusually well even when they walked (or ran) away.

a (7)

I’ve also replanted eight apricot seedlings, six that shows above the surface and two that might make it. When the apricot seed starts to germinate it always splits in two, don’t know why, sometimes one half just sort of falls off and sometimes it gives a root that sometimes give a new plant. Lots of sometimes there but why not plant it and see what happens?

Quite often when we buy, for instance, grapes they are packed in these plastic containers. They work perfect as mini green houses.

I’ve also done the laundry and dinner for next week at work so now all I have to do today is to bake two breads because I’m out of normal bread and down to a minimum when it comes to hard bread. It is quite easy to bake gluten free bread because there is no kneading involved. It is so sticky that it would be impossible 🙂 🙂 It isn’t as runny as what You get when baking a sponge cake though. Thankfully easy to wash away. I’ve managed to get a bread that is quite close to a gluten bread so I’m quite happy with that but I still haven’t figured out how to come close to a french roll 🙂

This one was a bit hard to just let it run away without getting a bit hysteric 🙂 🙂

a (19) — This is some kind of plum tree, I don’t think it is a Cherry plum but the fruits are pretty small but not round as cherries. Bright yellow and tastes really nice. It flowers too early most of the time so the flower freeze and won’t give any plums at all. If it does this this year I’ll cut it down.

a (21)

Have a great day!

White wood anemone.

I’m ready for the vegetable season.

May 6, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

Flowering Bog myrtle (Sweet gale). Smells really nice.

We’ve had a really nice day here, it would have been wonderful if it hadn’t been for the pretty cold night and sometimes the wind being a bit too chilly. To be honest it was warm enough to have the kitchen door open all day and the little wind that actually reached the garden helped when I worked in the vegetable patch and potato patch. The vegetable patch mostly only had grass that I needed to remove but the potato patch also had dandelions, greater celandine, a few small elder bushes, wild raspberry bushes and that red leafed oxalis one can buy as a potted plant, usually have yellow flowers and really is a spreader. Many oxalis can be used in food but this one isn’t one of those but I musty admit that amongst weeds it’s quite beautiful.

I checked so that there were no bees visiting the dandelions before I removed them. There are plenty more dandelions in the lawn anyway so bees of all kinds won’t be hungry 🙂

The vegetable patch were much easier to clean out even though it’s almost twice the size.

The box is almost falling apart and I think I won’t have another there next summer.

I’m happy to say that today was one of those days when Alma behaved pretty good even though two Roe deer ran in front of her eyes and she even noticed a hare in a field without going insane. She did however almost fall of the entrance stairs and pulling me with her when we went out for our afternoon walk. I wonder if I should put on her harness when we’re not taking any walks because as soon as I put that one on she starts to tremble, panting and whining a lot. If I open the door and she doesn’t have it on she behaves like any other dog. When we start walking and I can keep her reasonable calm the first two hundred meters the rest of the walk usually works rather well. If not it’s horrible for both of us. She has become much better though, now days I can actually hear the birds sing, I couldn’t do that from the day she arrived until some time in the middle of the winter that just passed 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (4)

They are finally putting more gravel on the road outside our cottages 🙂 The “big” road in the village belongs to the village and all of us are responsible for it but the roads leading from it are private roads and are supposed to be taken care of us who live along them. The problem is that it is timber lorries that destroys it so therefore it’s the forest owners responsibility to keep it in good shape. This winter was warm and the road was soft so now we have huge holes in it and the forest owners have been no where to find but finally one of them said he’s taking care of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve done what I have been able to to fix the holes outside my cottage but that doesn’t help when a new lorry arrives and just makes it worse again, also I live at the lowest point of the road so all water runs down to me and sometimes I have to wade in water when I’m trying to go out from my garden (well wading is a bit much but there’s at least 5 cm (2 inches of standing water there, five meters (much the same in yards) wide) 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (11)

It’s the finale in the Eurovision Song Contest next Saturday. To be honest they have been really quiet about it so I didn’t know until a few days ago. Our song is the absolute favorite an it is Loreen, who already have won this with the song Euforia, who sings for us. The music isn’t that much different than when she won the last time but I can’t for my life hear what she’s singing 🙂 🙂 I’m not sure if anyone actually can hear that but she’s like always very dramatic in her performance so I guess that’s what they fall for. I must admit that even if I can’t hear what she sings it still was the only song that should win, the rest were actually total crap and probably the worst I’ve heard in years 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (20)

Have a great day!

A15398_008 — One from the Agfa Ambiflex.

It’s greening up :-)

May 5, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

The week has been mostly sunny but with a nasty cold wind from north. Also well below 0C (32F) every morning. Most days though the sun has melted away most of the ice on the car so it was only this morning I had to use the ice scraper again.I was a bit worried when the dogs and I was going out on our walk after work because the last two ones Alma has been horrible. Mostly because hares run out in front of us and instead of running out in to the forest continued in front of us for quite some time. I really wouldn’t feel sad if all hares just died out 🙂 🙂 🙂

Today however, despite some other hares, she behaved really well again. I don’t know it it was what I told her yesterday that helped, that I would let a hunter shoot her to oblivion 🙂 🙂 🙂 She’s smart but I’m not sure if she’s so smart that she would have understood what I told her but I think she could understand how tired I was after those walks 🙂 🙂 🙂 So today she’s forgiven again. It’s so fun because my neighbors like when she jumps over the fence to them because she’s so calm when she plays with their oldest daughter, sometime I wonder if we’re talking about the same dog 🙂 🙂 🙂

The road association meeting is next week so I have put out notices about it in the mailboxes here in the village. The village road is more or less a circle so if I would do it all by car before going to work I would have to pass my mailbox twice and if I did that the dogs would have thought I was on my way home again and would have started to bark like crazy. Not a good thing at six am, so I decided I would walk to the four closest. I haven’t been able to walk there in a long time since both Albin and Alma behaves like they do when seeing wild animals, they would wake up the entire village. So I brought my camera and took a few photos since it was not just sunny but also so cold that we had morning mist. I realized how much I miss walking there but I just can’t reach those two when they start behaving like that and those times are the times I miss my old dogs the most 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (12)

More and more flowers are in bloom in my garden now. I hadn’t checked that this week so I was surprised to see so many flowers 🙂 I also found a flower I tried to plant in my garden when I moved here, 23 years ago. They survived a winter or two but suddenly they were gone. Now I found a lump of them in my hedge and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see them there last year. I have no idea how they managed to get there but who cares 🙂 Also I now have six apricot trees growing from kernels I saved from last autumn and it looks like three nectarines are on the way too 🙂 I have no space for them really but who cares, I’ll make space for them when that day comes 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (18)

Have a great day!

Yellow wood anemone and the now everywhere growing Nuns worth and Scilla of course.

I still have a Trillium but since first Albin and then Alma arrived they’ve slowly died away, those two run over them and dig everywhere.

This is the one I thought I had died out in my garden, the Pilewort.

The wind is the same but now it’s raining.

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

So if yesterdays weather looked nice from indoors todays wetaher doesn’t and isn’t either 🙂 There was at least no wind in the earky morning when we went out for our walk but it did rain consistently for the entire hour we were outside. To be honest, none of the dogs wanted to take a walk but I forced them because I wanted them to get rid of some energy. Albin and Alma can destroy an entire house when they’re going full force playing 🙂 🙂 🙂

The rain did stop and naturally during the time I did the laundry. Almost as soon as I’ve finished it the rain came back 🙂 🙂 During that time I also saw the sun for almost ten whole seconds 🙂 🙂 I wouldn’t mind that much if the wind just could stop blowing, especially since it is just as cold as it was yesterday. The birds doesn’t seem to mind the weather as much though, they sing a bit less I guess but then again lots of them are on the ground eating what ever they can find and it looks like they find a lot.

I did my taxes today and even before I made the car deduction for driving to and from work because I really can’t use public transportation (it would take 150 minutes one way and it takes 30 minutes with a car) I would get a few dollars back 🙂 Can’t remember when that happened the last time With the deduction I’ll get a few more back but since our inflation is insane here that money won’t last for long 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well it’s better than to have to pay back 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15398_002 — Four from the Agfa Ambiflex. A bit too wintery but they make today look nice and cosy in comparison 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15398_005

Around five? years ago I sowed some Gardenia seeds, I’ve tried before but have always failed. This time however I got five little plants and I still have five living even though one really look more dead than alive 🙂 🙂 🙂 Today I found flower buds on the two of them that I looked at!! I also noticed that they were attacked by something, can’t really say what I only saw the larvae or what it was. So now I’ve sprayed them with soapy water. Soapy water suffocates everything insect-wise and I do hope I didn’t destroy the coming flowers by doing so.

A15265_020A — Four from the Agfa Ambi Silette. These photos on the other hand make today look like a nasty november day 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15265_023A

Tomorrow’s a working day again so back to work it is. I actually almost won back all the money I spent on the lottery, not quite but very close 🙂 🙂 🙂 not enough to stop working but I’ll at least not have to pay more than less of a $ US next week 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15266_004 — Why not ad a wintery photo from the Flexaret VI too.

Have a great day!

This could have been such a nice day.

April 30, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

Today should really have been a wonderful day. The sun has been shining all the time and the temperature rose to 10C (50F) but there has been a nasty and bitterly cold wind blowing and that has sort of destroyed the entire day. I couldn’t even have the kitchen door open because the wind came from the only direction where it actually can hit my cottage and it chilled down the entire cottage. Still when we were walking in the forest where the wind had troubles reaching us it felt quite ok.

DSC_0015 (8)

Everything comes in cardboard boxes and everything in those cardboard boxes are wrapped in enormously much plastic, usually bubble wrap and I have finally got my thumbs out of my a..e and started to break it all down in smaller pieces. It is insanely boring in the long run to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 It doesn’t take especially much space when I’ve packed it all in the car though. I also vacuumed the entire cottage and by entire I also mean the ceilings 🙂 I thought I had removed all spider webs from the ceilings a couple of weeks ago but the spiders are either really fast in making new ones or I was half blind when I did it the first time 🙂 🙂 I realized that I had missed one place so I’ll get a stick and remove the rest later today.

DSC_0027 (5)

I found a dead kitten in my garden a week ago. I noticed that Albin was licking on something and realized it was a small cat. I called my neighbors and asked if they had all their cats but they weren’t at home so they sent me a photo of their cats and thankfully it wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t find any injuries on the kitten (can’t have been more than half a year old) so I don’t think Albin has killed it. He is a cat hater and have tried to take the beekeepers cats, I must admit that I’m afraid. He did (nor Alma) not show any signs of interest when I removed the kitten and not the place where it was lying so I don’t think he did anything to it. Anyway, it hadn’t been in that spot a couple of hours earlier so what ever has happened it must have happened almost just before I noticed it. I have a tradition that when one of my cats has died I bury it and plant something above it.

DSC_0035 (3)

Cosmos the kat is buried beneath some Irises, beside a big rose (rosa rugosa), Bertil i buried beneath a small cherry tree and Teodor beneath a rose that first gives orange flowers that then fades to almost white. This little unknown kitten is now buried beneath a Nanking cherry. Cosmos the Cat will have something else this summer because I plan to reduce the size of that rose, or remove it totally and the Irises never liked that place to be honest. Perhaps that’s the place where I’ll plant the Walnut, it is rather protected from the wind by the neighbors cottage and it will get sunshine all day.

We’ve had our pancake Sunday and I checked on the box what the mix is made from. Turns out it’s mostly corn flour! Had no idea. I have now also learned that the brand of oat flour I’ve bought lately can contain gluten so that’s the explanation to why my stomach is so upset again 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I better keep my eyes open the next time I go grocery shopping. I might come back tomorrow since it’s a holiday here, otherwise I’ll see You next Friday.

A15398_028 — These four ate taken with the Agfa Ambiflex.

A15398_034

Have a great day!

Still nasty cold nights.

April 28, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0004 (10)

We’ve had rather nice weather here this week, a bit cold perhaps and with both snowfall and hail but the sun has been shining quite a lot as well. Today was even better because finally it became a bit warmer again, that is after a nasty cold morning though.Thick and hard ice covered the car, so thick that the rising sun didn’t have a chance to soften it up before I had to go to work. We also hade a rather thick fog so I brought the camera with me and stopped by the lake for a few seconds.

DSC_0013 (9)

Alma has behaved unusually well on our walks this week! She’s extremely stressed about having to walk in the same pace as the rest of us but I can see that she’s really trying. Every now and again she flips out though but I will not complain or get angry at her those times. Compared to how she has behaved these last two years this last week has been wonderful 🙂 So I’ve started to think that she actually might not come from hell just to make my life miserable after all 🙂 🙂 🙂 She even stopped screaming like insane after just a few minutes after she saw a hare running in front of us, before she kept on screaming like insane for the rest of the walk which could be as long as two hours 🙂

DSC_0014 (7) — Very few cranes by the lake this morning.

DSC_0019 (5)

Now when my closest neighbors have gotten a second child they’ve been talking about moving to a bigger house or make this one bigger. It looked like they finally had decided to move and I wasn’t happy about it, they are amazing neighbors! but when they sat down and started to write down things about the cottage to a realtor they suddenly felt that they weren’t ready to move after all so guess if I’m happy 🙂 I can never get that good neighbors again, I just don’t have that kind of luck to be honest 🙂 So now can Alma continue to jump over to the neighbor to play with their eldest daughter 🙂

DSC_0030 (2)

I know that I don’t have space for any more trees in my garden so I guess that’s why I ordered a new one 🙂 🙂 This time it’s a Persimmon hybrid (crossed with its relative Kaki Persimmon). It isn’t as hardy as the American one though but I can’t find any “real” Persimmons for sale over here in Europe. I already have a few smaller trees in pots waiting to be planted but I’ll prioritize this one and the Pawpaw that also is waiting for a place to live 🙂 🙂 🙂 (plus I have seeds for more trees so I guess I really need to win the lottery so that I can buy lots of land so I can plant all the trees I already have plus all the ones I know I’ll be buying in the future 🙂 🙂 🙂

DSC_0035 (2)

Have a great day!

A15264_026A — One from the Voigtländer Bessamatic, taken around a year ago.

Nice spring rain.

April 23, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I can’t say that I wouldn’t have preferred to have that sunny and warm weather we’ve had the rest of the week but it hasn’t been that bad today either. Around 10C (50F) and mostly a nice spring rain but also some misty rain that eats its way through all clothes no matter what one is wearing. The kitchen door has been open quite a lot to be honest.

I’ve been rather busy doing the laundry, making our Sunday pancakes, walking with the dogs and baking a bread. I’ll also make dinner for work tomorrow before I can sit down and relax again. I was planning on doing lots of things this weekend but I just didn’t have the energy, pollen season has started and even though the worst ones, birch and pines, haven’t started yet I still can react some to hazel if there’s a lot of that pollen around.

A15264_022A — From the Voigtländer Bessamatic.

A15264_024A

Once again I didn’t win the lottery so I’ll need to continue to work for a while longer 🙂 🙂 The coming week will be gry, a bit chilly and a bit rainy they’re guessing and it really is a perfect week for sowing annuals and spices outdoors. I don’t know how much of those spices I would use but they usually like to live on sunny and rather dry places and my entire garden contains mostly of sand so that’s what they’ll get 🙂 🙂 Also bees and butterflies love them and who doesn’t want many of those in the garden?

A15398_033

Have a great day!

The last of the nice days, for now.

April 22, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

a (1)

Another rather wonderful day, the last one for a while they say. It does however look as that they now are guessing that it won’t be that cold as they first guessed so I guess they were right the first time they guessed 🙂 Even nights will be fairly nice the coming days so that means I don’t have to cover the potted plants I brought up from the cool cellar. They have been though and that saved them from as low temperatures as -6C (21,2F) several nights. The meat eating plants I bought last spring have also survived and are now moved outside. Anything that eat flies are friends of mine 🙂

a (4) — There was still frost on the ground when we were out on our morning walk.

a (6)

A week ago I started to cut down a part of the garden that mostly consisted of thorny wild roses and thorny sloe bushes. They spread way too fast and it was impossible to pass without getting caught by all those thorns. It was a paradise for birds and other small animals because no predator could ever reach them in there. Still they had to go but the birds and all other small animals can still enjoy the protection of the thorns because I placed all those thorny branches in a big pile beneath the apple tree. They’ll stay there until next year when I’ll put it all through my compost grinder. It really doesn’t work well with fresh branches so it’ll have to wait a year.

20230416_140402 — Two thirds of what I was cutting down left here.

20230416_140338 — The first pile of thorny branches.

20230422_121329 — Two more piles that were moved to the first one.

20230422_121341 — This is the result. One rose is left and I do hope I saved the right one, the one that doesn’t spread via the roots 🙂 To the right, beside the blue large pot, You can see sand cherry trees. They are actually quite long but tends to follow the ground instead up growing up towards the sky. Gives delicious berries 🙂

Now I’ll have to continue to mow that area no matter what weather we’re having so that no new shoots can grow up again. Either that or cover the area with a hug and rather costly tarpaulin. I used my the little hand chain saw I bought last year and even though it works well the batteries don’t last for long but takes hours to recharge. Now I’ll need to sharpen the chain because sloe is really hard and wears down the chain pretty quick. I have one more place I need to cut down, new bushes grew up in the middle of one of my gooseberry bushes so now there’s very little gooseberry bush but lots of other things instead 🙂 I also mowed the lawn for the first time today and I think I was first in the neighborhood. I’m not that keen to do it as often as the neighbors though 🙂 🙂

DSC_0013 (7)

Alma has now adopted my neighbors and is over there just as much as she is here. They thankfully like her a lot, especially since she’s so calm with their older daughter?! She’s never calm here but as soon as she jumps over that fence she the calmest dog in the world playing nicely with a 4 year old 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s good to know she’s welcome though, otherwise life would be so much more complicated.

A15265_010A

Have a great day!

A little toad came walking by.

April 21, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

Another quite wonderful day here, around 20C (68F) and almost no wind at all. Those are the days I hate to work 🙂 We really should have our vacation when spring has sprung because it is now when we enjoyes the nicer and warmer weather as most. Then again we’ll only have one more of these wonderful days before it changes and the temperatures will drop down to 10C (50F) and we’ll get rain as well. I guess I should be happy that I don’t live further north because they’ll get snow and snow fall in late April is just depressing 🙂 🙂

I don’t mind some rain though because I can see from day to day how much lower the water levels are in the creeks and ditches and this is not the time to have low water leves because now is the time frogs and other amphibians lay their eggs. When I moved here I hade a very shallow pond outside my cottage, in the cow pasture and in warm spring evenings I could hear hundreds of frogs quacking there. Then the farmer decided that he should drain that pond so all frogs disappeared. I miss that sound a lot. Talking about amphibians though, today at work when I were driving in materials to paint I saw something move on the floor. It was a toad 🙂 Toads really shouldn’t walk in there but they do a couple of times every year. One could think that all the powdered paint that lies on the floor would make it walk elsewhere but in they go.

So I jumped out of the fork lift, picked it up and carried it out to one of the forgotten gardens that belongs to the factory and placed in the shadows behind a small spruce. I do hope it doesn’t continue on its travel because roads are never far away and I really don’t want it to die. I pass a big pond or small lake on my way to work and this time of year I really have to slow down there because lots of amphibians pass that road to get to the pond/lake. I almost drove over two on my way home today. I usually have several toads in my garden every summer, they like to stay close to the root zone where there is some water but also lots of shade so they don’t dry out. Back in the days old Hector chewed on one of the smaller ones and all toads are poisonous so he started to drool something insanely.

So I had to drive to the vet almost 50 km away. Hector drooled so much that he had to have his head outside the window and the entire car was covered with dog drool when we arrived. People outside the vet laughed like crazy 🙂 🙂 Hector got a shot of something and finally stopped to drool so back home again where he naturally found what was left of the toad so back to the vet we went 🙂 🙂 🙂 Toads are actually so poisonous that animals who eat them can die, had I known that back then I wouldn’t have driven to the vet so calm and carefully as I did 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m tired as always so I’ll risk a nights sleep by having at least one more cup of tea even if it is after 4pm 🙂 It just isn’t the same to have a cup of cocoa 🙂

A15397_003 — I’ve bought another old camera called Meopta Milona. It’s a viewfinder camera from the same company as the Flexaret. The problem was that the lens were unscrewed and i had no idea how far I should screw it back 🙂 🙂 A couple of photos were just too blurry, the joy of having an Alma in the family but the rest turned out quite well. I must have done something to make a light leak because only the last photos have it at the bottom of the photo. I must buy one of those tiny little lamps again so I can check where it is.

A15397_009

Have a great day!

April 16, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

I really can’t complain about the sunrise this morning. Minutes after and the sky went bland grey.

We’ve had quite a lovely day here today. It started a bit cloudy but was warm enough for me to only have a sweater when walking with the dogs. That would have been enough even when it was as coldest here as well since it at least was impossible not to boil while walking with Alma 🙂 🙂 She has however calmed down considerable even though she still pulls the leash quite a lot.

I haven’t been lazy today though. I’ve done the laundry, like I do every Sunday. I’m baking a bread right now actually and I’ve started to clean my cottage. Well I have at least started to carry out all cardboard boxes out to my car, I’ve also tossed away loads of things that I for a reason I don’t remember had saved. I did also start to saw down a corner of my garden mostly containing old thorny wild roses, thorny blackthorn bushes and false spiraea (Sorbaria sorbifolia). The last one is fairly easy to remove because the roots lay just beneath the surface but it spreads like crazy. I do like it though because pollinating insects love it.

I can’t say that I overdid anything but I did work with a bent back, so now I have huge problems unbending it. It’s the rheumatism that argues with me but I’ll have my sack of rice in the micro later on and put it between my back and the recliner. I would have loved to be able to do the entire place but the batteries needed to be charged and I could for my life not find the charger. Not especially strange to be honest because there’s no charger, just an electric cord put straight in to the battery 🙂 🙂 🙂

When I’m done cutting down it all I’ll push the the lawnmower over it so that no shoots will get a chance of growing up there again. I would have loved to be able to plant there immediately but most of what I cut down now (except for a birch that unfortunately grew up where it shouldn’t) spread via roots and I’m really tired of not being able to walk barefoot in my garden during summers. Well to be honest I’m hesitant to do that anyway because of the dogs using it as a toilet 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time to go downstairs and check the bread. I still haven’t come up with anything that even remotely could work as french rolls and the scones I make tend to be very brittle. They usually falls to pieces as soon as I come close with a knife to cut them in half 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15265_012A

Have a great day!

A15266_008 — From the Flexaret VI around a year ago.