Yesterday when we were about to take our walk I saw a shower pass by, it didn’t reach us but I did feel a few drops hitting my arm.
I’ve survived the two first day back to work 🙂 It hasn’t been that hard to be honest and I’m not sure half of us are back yet. When I grew up all industries had the summer vacation period at the same time, four weeks so it was called general industrial holiday.
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Suddenly Volvo I think it was decided that we would be able to change that slightly so half of all working in the company could take two weeks earlier than the rest, then the factory would close for two weeks and then the ones that had that earlier vacation started to work while the rest had their vacation. They thought it would be a good idea to only close for two weeks so the production could continue without too much disturbance. Well that didn’t work because they forgot that if only half of the workers were aty work things would move very slowly 🙂 🙂
Even dead butterflies are beautiful.Copper lizard..
Nowdays it varies slightly, at my work place we can have one week before they close for three weeks or one week after. Also one can work during summer if there’s anything to do if one want a later vacation, so some people only have three weeks vacation during summer and take the last two weeks later if they perhaps wants to travel somewhere. I always take four weeks in the summer and save one for christmas. If we’re lucky those five working days together with the holidays can make that one week up to almost three weeks vacation 🙂 🙂
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Yesterday was on the cool side, today was more towards early summer warm. Tomorrow will be vacation warm and after that it’ll be nasty hot if they’re guessing right. The weekend will be the worst and Monday as well but they’re guessing it will start to cool down after that. I don’t mind if autumn waits a bit before it arrives but I really don’t want another heatwave again. I guess however that it’s better than what happened in South Korea yesterday. It fell well over a foot of rain during one hour!
I noticed that in one of the plastic buckets where I put the spruts that fell off from the potatoes I was planting the leafs suddenly had gotten small black spots and that’s a sign that they are infected with potato blight. No bigger problem as long as one remove all green above surface before it spreads down to the potatoes. The problem was that these plants hadn’t flowered yet so the potatoes were going to be pretty small.
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So I went over to my neighbors so we could harvest them. There were potatoes and most were tiny 🙂 They had put some potatoes in the ground as well so they dug up some of those as well, they were almost as tiny as mine were 🙂 🙂 🙂 They do taste delicious though, I tried two of each today, so I’ll have them with my dinner at work tomorrow. I also got some onions, so I braided them together and now they hang to dry in my cool cellar. They won’t dry for long because I will continue to make my dinners for work. The food from the new restaurant is delicious but the price is way too high since we all know that the electricity will be nasty high this comming winter.
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It stayed on the chilly side today, it barely reached 16C (60,8F). I tried to stay outdoors but the flies were nasty. I know we’ll get rain later and that it will be the start of warmer weather arriving so perhaps we’ll have some thunder as well, it would explain why the flies were so nasty. People are saying that there are very few insects flying around where they live, it’s the contrary here. I guess that means nature still works pretty well here and I should of course be happy about that and I most likely would have been if it wasn’t for all those nasty flies that always wants to get in to my bears and nostrils 🙂 🙂 🙂
Mostly male flowers on the squash plants.But suddenly I noticed the first squash 🙂The beans are in bloom and the first bean pods are growing as well 🙂The walnut tree I got hasn’t grown especially much but I hope that it instead had concentrated its energy to grow roots.
I really need to buy new sofas or a sofa and perhaps an armchair. The dogs have gotten the old sofa and I really doesn’t like to sit in it any more 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really like rattan furniture and have seen some ads. The one I liked the most didn’t have pillows and I really wonder why, of course it should be sold with pillows. One I liked had a more Indian style to it and it had pillows 🙂 Even if I really don’t have any special kind of style in my home an Indian style still would look rather odd in my home 🙂 There was also rattan recliners and i do like them a lot but they were also a bit pricy. The delivery home was free though. I’ll continue to see what I can find. The good thing with rattan furniture is that it is easy to vacuum and scrub the floor beneath them, that’s impossible with the furniture I have now.
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It is time for something to eat and later on watch the British Antique Road Show.
So today is the last day of my vacation, tomorrow is just an ordinary weekend. One could say that the vacation actually goes on until Sunday but I prefer to feel that Sunday’s just another Sunday and the day after is a work day, feels less dramatic that way 🙂
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Still I could win the big winning in the lottery but I would still work that month that we are supposed to just so that they’ll get a chance to get someone else to continue after I’ve left. It is very easy to be generous as long as that winning actually hasn’t happened 🙂 🙂 We were supposed to have a sunny day here with a temperature around 20C (68F). They have actually gotten the temperature right but the sun has been absent most of the day. It showed itself a short while in the morning but very little after that.
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Yesterday was very different though, we had sunshine now and again and the temperature was nasty high as also the humidity was. Rather unpleasant to be honest. Then the rain and thunder arrived. I have to say that it was a magnificent thunderstorm and it continued from around 5pm way in to the night. Strong winds created havoc in some places in this region and what the wind didn’t destroy the hail did. The wind didn’t do anything here but the hail perforated all bigger leafs it hit. I looked at my lightning app and it showed that at one point we had more than 500 lightning hits between Skara and Falköping, I live exactly in the middle of those towns. I can tell You that there’s no need to water anything today, on the contrary, I’ve needed to empty almost all pots I have 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I really should mow the lawn before I get back to work. It isn’t particularly high yet but with all this rain falling I can already see how it is growing. I’ll use all that cut off grass to cover the ground in the vegetable patch. It will keep the sand moist at the same time the mouldering grass will fertilize the ground, a win win situation 🙂 Also after doing like that a couple of years I’ll have more real soil than sand in there. I still only have male flowers on my squash plants, a bit annoying but there’s still plenty of time to get some squashes before autumn arrives. The beans are flowering and I have plenty of lettuce and chard growing. The cabbage is struggling though, I do remove any eggs and caterpillars I find but something is still eating those cabbage leafs. I also think we now can start to pick up potatoes 🙂
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It is time to give the dogs something to eat, no rush really because they’ve all had one pancake each already 🙂 🙂 Yesterday, when it still was nasty hot but the thunder was on its way I made some jam. I had some apricots that were too old but not really enough to make jam from it, so I tossed in a couple of mashed bananas too plus a pinch of cardamom. To my very big surprise it turned out really well 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s actually quite tasty so I had that on my pancakes today 🙂 I should perhaps have put in an apple or two from my crab apple tree because those apples contains lots of pectins that will stop the jam from being a bit runny. Still it runs very slow so it’ll work on toast as well 🙂
I’ve failed the only goal I had for this vacation and it was such an easy goal to reach to be honest. I had decided that I should take a nap every day all four weeks but I’ve only really done it since last Friday 🙂 🙂 🙂 (I don’t count dozing off in front of the tv though).
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It wasn’t the nicest weather when we woke up today, not especially chilly but the rain was pouring down. I really didn’t mind the rain but I had to force the dogs outside so that they would do their businesses 🙂 🙂
The rain has come and gone every now and again the entire day and it stayed on the cool side, it was quite nice being outside to be honest. Then the sun suddenly showed itself and when it did it suddenly became rather
warm and with the high humidity it went from nice to rather nasty. I looked at the weather sites and yesterday they showed that it would stay on the cool side today but now they suddenly show that we’ll have temperatures
up to 27C ( F). It’s just for on day thankfully, already tomorrow evening a cold front will pass by with lots of rain and most possibly thunder as well.
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It does look as if the anti tick spray works pretty well. Neither Nova nor Alma have had more than a couple of the nasty buggers walking on them. The lemon scented collar on Albin is harder to say anything about. I have
found a couple on him but he rarely have any walking around or biting him anyway. Flies are biting them all though so neither the spray or the collar helps towards them I’m afraid. I guess it’s the same insects that bite me when I walk
barefoot on my lawn. It itches for a short while and the red markings that show also disappears pretty quick but it had made me not walking barefoot outside before going to bed 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I went to buy groceries and pick up a package as soon as the stores opened today. I had ordered a new filter for my aquarium. The fish I have (platyfish) likes it so much that they are too many and it takes no time at all before I need to change the water. It is nice that they like it there but the joy of changing the water quickly fades off 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do use that water in my vegetable patch though so at least I have some good use for it. I haven’t picked it all together yet though but it will be up and running at least tomorrow 🙂 I really would like to have a 600 liters ( 158,5 gallon US) like I once had but I doubt that the over 100 years old floors here would managed to carry that kind of weight 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It is time to have something to eat and after that most likely fall asleep in front of the tv 🙂 I haven’t checked but I doubt they’ll show anything interesting on any channel, summer is re-run time.
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Have a great day!
My Black Walnut tree looks pretty good. It seems to fight the tree cancer with good results, I haven’t seen any new damages from that disease.
It rained during last night and it was quite nice to step outside when I let the dogs out. We didn’t get especially much though but any drop helps.
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We didn’t have any morning walk today because I wanted to go to the pet store and buy that spray that ticks don’t like. I guess there would be loads of them since they like when it’s a bit wet in the grass. I doubt that I would have managed to make the dogs go outside anyway 🙂 I went to the pet store and bought another spray with much the same content and I also bought a sort of collar for Albin. It really smells of lemon and that is a small ticks are said not to like. After that I went to the super market and the last thing i bought was a soft ice cream with tiny marshmallow topping 🙂
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The rest of the day has been rather nice, sunny and just enough warm. We only took a short walk since I wanted to see how the spray would work. Last walk I picked lots of ticks from mostly Alma but also Nova directly after the walk and I continued to pick even more until early this morning. It was different when I had sprayed them, so far I’ve picked five in total, three from Alma and one each from Nova and Albin. I’ll continue to check them all evening and I do hope these are all there were.
.I think this is a male Adder because it was fairly short and thin. The females carry the eggs in the body and the babies aren’t born until later this autumn, so if it had been a female one it should have been much thicker..
Nova was, as always, walking a bit ahead of us when we were out walking and just before we left the forest I noticed something on the ground. It was an adder. Nova must have walked straight over it but I managed to keep both Alma and Albin away from it. To be honest they never noticed it at all 🙂 🙂 The Adder is the only venomous snake we have and as long as dogs (or cats) aren’t bitten in the foot or leg they usually just swell up badly but nothing worse. It’s a good idea to go to the vet anyway because the bite can give infections.
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I’ve had two dogs who were bitten by adders and both swelled up badly but nothing worse. They did react with panic every time they saw anything that remotely looked like snake after the bite though. I’ve lived here for 22 years now ans so far I’ve only seen two live snakes (I never saw the one that bit old Erna) and one that was run over by a car. We must have loads of snakes here but mostly they stay in the fields where all rodents live, so I was surprised to see this one in the forest where it is much cooler, especially after the rain. It was still lying completely still when we left it.
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It is time for a last cup of tea and after that I need to check the cabbage leafs for butterfly eggs or caterpillars.
Nothing much has happened here. Yesterday morning started out much like the previous one, cold and sunny, so the morning mist was just starting to build up when some clouds came and destroyed it all. They prevented the heat from the sun to evaporate the cold morning dew so no morning mist.
...The Chamomile still flowers.
This morning had no clouds but it was too warm (over 10C (50F) ) so no mist today either. I really didn’t want to take a walk because of the constant war between me and Alma but I had noticed yesterday that the new harness actually does make a difference. I can attach the leash on the front and since it’s fairly low every time she pulls the leash she turns around because the leash moves towards her front leg and disturbs her balance. So far she hasn’t figured out a countermove but I can see that she’s trying 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It was warm enough for flies to fly around but not especially many did. I’m not sure if the fly season now is over, which I hope, or if they were busy elsewhere. It could be that they all are in my garden though because there’s no lack of them here 🙂 🙂 🙂 There’s absolutely no lack of ticks though. After we came home I combed Nova and took two from her. None was caught from Albin or Alma but then suddenly I saw plenty walking around on Almas head and also one on Albins. I don’t know where the one on Albin hid because he has plenty of white on him so it’s hard for a tick to hide. All in all I picked seven more from those two.
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I had hoped the pet store would be open today but during summer he tends to have Saturdays closed. He sells a anti tick spray that is made only with scents ticks hate and it works pretty well. Albin is allergic to it but I can use it on the other two. It is after all so much easier to have to go through only one dog with extremely short fur 🙂 🙂 I can also spray it on my trousers. Pretty expensive though but it is well worth it. I’ll go there first thing on Monday morning instead. They even get them here in the garden and that’s because a deer seems to be visiting us when it knows we’re all asleep. I do like deers but I wish they could wait to visit us until the tick season is over 🙂 🙂
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I think it is time for a cup of tea and after that perhaps a nap. We’ve been up since before the sun rose and since I still am on vacation a nap sounds pretty nice 🙂 I do have some ice cream in the freezer and I think that would go nicely with a nice tea 🙂 Today I’ll only do one thing, every now and again I’ll go out to the vegetable patch to check the cabbage for butterfly eggs and caterpillars. It is amazing how fast even the tiniest caterpillar can eat those leafs!
The new harness, it is called “Military harness”. I have no idea if they used something like this in the army anywhere but it sort of looks like it. The leash can be attached at her back but also in the front which the next photo almost shows 🙂..
So I woke up to e clear sky just before the sun started to rise and we went out for our morning walk as soon as I had put on my clothes and the dogs their harnesses. I did take a look at the thermometer before we went out and it showed 4C (39,2F). It was wonderful to take a slightly longer walk in that temperature because not a fly or mosquito were around to bite and annoy us 🙂
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Alma had once again decided that she would be impossible but she did at least not scream loudly when we passed our neighbors and Albin didn’t even look for Salmiak. Salmiak however is totally ok and it might actually be that Albin never tried to bite him but just push him down with his nose but as I said to the beekeepers I’m not willing to try it again just to see if that’s the case 🙂 🙂 🙂 Anyway we walked down to the creek and followed it down-streams. Alma was everywhere as usual and when Albin wanted to walk out on one of those small bridges that cross the creek she naturally had to follow and since Alma is like she is she then fell down and in to the rather muddy water 🙂 🙂 🙂
.Those three trees are the last ones in the WOW trees 🙂.
That didn’t calm her down especially much and we had a full blown war between us all the way home. It’s fun but as soon as we pass the gate she calmes down and becomes that wonderful dog she is here at home. She smelled of mud and rust, lots of rust in the waters here so I had to shower her. I could have and should have done it outside with the garden hose but instead decided I should do it in my tiny bathroom. I decided that she would follow in her own pace and everything was going fine until both Nova and Albin decided they too had to go in to the shower. Well I did manage to get in there but she wasn’t happy. At least until she realized it wasn’t that bad, perhaps even rather nice 🙂
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After that I had to go to the store. I decided I should go to the one in the village where I work, mostly because I needed duct tape. They are the only ones I know that sell a kind where one can split it in half and get two thinner strips. All other ones are difficult to do that with. So off I went. At the same time I got two text messages that told me I was going to have two packages delivered to my home but I didn’t need to be at home at the delivery. Just before I left the store I also got a text message that Almas new harness had arrived and that I could pick it up in Gudhem. I could have waited but thought I really want to try it as soon as possible.
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When I came home again my neighbor told me that a guy had been here to deliver my packages but went to them instead. My neighbor told him to leave the packages with him or just put them in my garden around 20 meters beside. No problem the delivery guy said, tossed the packages in the car again and drove off??!! I then got a message that the packages had been delivered but I didn’t have them and my neighbor hadn’t either. So I called our postal service and was pretty angry, asked something about if the driver possible had some mental challenges or other problems (I’m not proud of that) (I did say to the girl in the phone that I wasn’t mad at her but she was the one who unfortunately had to take my anger). She fully understood and after perhaps ten minutes waiting she then asked how my neighbors house looked like. The delivery guy had told her he had placed the packages close to the post boxes (around a 100 meters, much the same in yards)Turns out that he had placed my packages at the farm up the slope!
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I know I have a high hedge but my cottage is very visible when driving down the slope so I have no idea why he though my neighbor next door meant the farm up the hill??One package weighs 20Kg (44,1 pound) and the other package was very big but not heavy at all, so I had to go back home and take my car to get it back home 🙂 🙂 🙂 On the other side, I did get my neighbors mail in my mailbox instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well everything was solved and now I don’t have any more packages so everything is as it should but if I can chose who will deliver my packages in the future it will never be our postal service again!
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Have a great day!
If Albin doesn’t want to play Alma is fully capable to entertain herself with an apple 🙂 🙂..
So we went out for our morning walk and while Alma was quite calm yesterday she today had decided not to be. It went fairly well to be honest but as we were passing the beekeepers home I was more concentrated on keeping her quiet since she has a tendency to start shouting when we pass that place.
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So suddenly Albin jumped to the side of me and went for Salmiak who happened to be in the grass beside the gravel road. This time it looked as if Albin actually managed to get to Salmiak. I managed to lift away Albin and Salmiak ran away. So I went home with the dogs while scolding Albin and then went back to the beekeepers cottage starting to look for Salmiak. I also phoned the beekeeper to tell what had happened. So we all walked around to look after Salmiak and it took some time before I could find him. He was of course not happy seeing me but he looked ok but went and hid elsewhere.
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They did find Salmiak after a while but he didn’t have any bite marks and they have kept an eye on him all day and if Albin had managed to injure him he would have shown signs of that by now. Also I checked Albins mouth to see if there was any cat fur in there but couldn’t find anything. So either Albin never bit but instead just pressed poor Salmiak to the ground or Albin just missed. Anyway I’m so happy that Salmiak wasn’t injured!
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Besides this rather awful start of the day the rest has been pretty calm thankfully. Windy and rather cool day with little or no sunshine. I must admit that I’m enjoying these cooler days because one never knows if we’ll get another heat wave before summer ends. It doesn’t look like it now but one never knows 🙂 Almas new harness has now reached the Netherlands so with a bit of luck it might reach us before Friday 🙂 🙂 🙂
.A Marigold with a Berry fart resting on it 🙂 Berry farts are relatives to Stink bugs.The Venus flytrap will soon flower 🙂Something has been eating my carnivorous plants! It might be the deer that Alma scared away from just outside the lilac hedge.
It is time for us all to have something to eat. Tomorrow morning Albin will have a short leash so he can’t jump anywhere, I’ll still try and keep Alma calm and Nova can walk without leash, she never does anything stupid so I don’t have to worry about what she wight do 🙂
Finally the rose on Teodors grave is in bloom.
By the way, I think we had well over an inch of rain yesterday 🙂
We’ve had a rather nice day here. According to the weather sites it should have started sunny and pretty early on slowly turn towards cloudy, so I wasn’t the least surprised when it started cloudy but then slowly turned towards sunny 🙂 🙂 🙂 We had a few hours of sunshine and the temperature rose to around 20C (68F) quite perfect really 🙂
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I didn’t need to water anything today because yesterday night we had some rain falling and since it was as cool as it was the ground still was pretty wet. I do however need to check anything cabbage because now is the time that both the Cabbage butterfly and Cabbage moth lays their eggs on anything that is cabbage or in that family. I just scrape off the eggs laid on the undersides of the leafs and I also spray water mixed with soap so that any egg that I might miss will be covered and therefore will suffocate because the soap won’t let any oxygen through.
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We walked sown to the creek and a bit up stream but stayed away from the high grass and bushes because this is a tick year. Albin rarely have any but both Nova and Alma are tick magnets, so the first thing I do when we come home is to comb through their fur with a very dense comb almost like a louse comb. None today but there’s always one or two that I miss so I’ll do it again later today. Nova is back to normal again after the ear infection but I must admit that I was worried there for a while.
..They’ve now removed almost all branches and twigs after the deforestation.There’s still some logs left but the big pile will become pellets and briquettes fore fire heaters.
We’ll have a couple of days with below 20C (68F) temperatures and tomorrow we’ll also get lots of rain, if they are guessing it right but one never knows about that. They have risen the amount of rain for every update but right now they’re guessing we will get an inch of it. I don’t mind at all but I do hope it starts out gentle so that the ground gets moist first and therefore can let the rest of the rain actually sink down into the ground and not just run away in to creeks and ponds/ lakes (or in my case the bog/ swamp behind the garage).
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I ordered a new harness for Alma, she’s becoming too big for the one she has and I did it the 17/7. Normally it will take five days or so to get it delivered but this one takes its time. I can check the status of the order and it turns out that the one I buy it from buys it from Canada. They however order if from China. So I have now been following it as an order from Sweden to Canada, then the order went to Shanghai where it finally was packed. Now it looks like it’s shipped to Canada and after that to Sweden and hopefully me 🙂 🙂 🙂 It says something about it arriving in seven days 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest I thought that the seller at least had a couple of each size in stock but oh how wrong I was 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve found even more grapes to be 🙂.This is a kind of Lime tree where the fruits doesn’t give wedges but instead it looks like some green kind of caviar 🙂 I almost killed it last winter so I’m just happy that it has survived 🙂
The hot weather has not been kind to the flowers in the old wheel barrow 🙂 Not to self, don’t have too high flowers in it 🙂 🙂
Yesterday was horrible. We didn’t set a new heat record but it was still the hottest day in 73 years. Here in the village it reached 36C (96,8F) before it slowly, slowly started to get less hot. I really don’t want to go through that kind of heat again but most likely I will because of the climate change.
.The Creeping Bellflower is quite beautiful but seen as one of the worst weeds one can get in the garden. The roots grows so tight and it becomes too dense for anything else to survive with it. The roots are edible though so why not eat it to death 🙂.
One hot summer isn’t any proof of the climate change but when this happens frequently year after year, when it perhaps happened once every tenth year before it is one of the evidence of that the climate is changing. There were areas of rain and thunder all around this area but none reached us, the same today and I really wish it would come to us as well because the flies are soo annoying as they always are when thunder is about to arrive (well or at least it’s nearby). It is much cooler today though, 18C (64,4F) and hopefully dropping. This village is more or less in the eye of a low pressure so the rain just keep circling around us but it does at least cool us down.
Potato flowers are quite beautiful. I hope that these gives fruit, looks like small green tomatoes (rather poisonous so don’t eat them). One can sow those seeds and get all kinds of different potatoes from those seeds. Be aware of that those new potatoes might get all kinds of diseases they’ve managed to get rid of on those one took the seeds from. Best to grow in a big bucket if one tries...
Nova was the one taking the heat best of us all. She didn’t seem to care especially much and even slept in the sunshine on the kitchen stairs 🙂 🙂 Albin can’t take any heat at all, then again he can’t take any cold weather at all either, he truly is a lukewarm weather guy 🙂 🙂 🙂 Alma and I took it in much the same way, not as well as Nova but lots better than Albin. The night was horrible, the fan worked at maximum speed but I can’t say it felt much better. Also a fly had found my bedroom and did its best to annoy the heck out of us. The sticky fly paper has been full of flies so that was another thing I really needed to buy today. They didn’t have it in the big store I went to and the one I asked said Do You have flies? We all working here were just discussing about the lack of them! I said they all could come home to me but none seemed too interested to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂
Perennial sunflower.Finally big buds on the rose planted on Teodors resting place.It’ll look like this when opening up.Some “weeds” are quite beautiful and since they are easy to grow I’ve always wondered why they don’t try to grow these to give bigger flowers so we can have them in flower beds? Well I have them everywhere but I was thinking of those who are more meticulous about their flower beds than I am 🙂 🙂 🙂
I was out watering the vegetables and a few other plants and small trees already at 5 am 🙂 I went to the store quite early too since I wasn’t sure if it actually would calm down or not, one never knows with our weather services 🙂 🙂 🙂 I had almost nothing left to eat for breakfast and I also needed to renew my lottery tickets. I know the chances of winning the big lottery winning (today around 1,265 billion swedish kronor (around 126,5 million US dollars) is slim to none but it is a bigger chance to have a couple of tickets than to have none at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wonder if I would go insane if I won that much money, it’s so much that I really can’t understand how much it really is 🙂 🙂 🙂 I would never tell You if I did win but then again You would most likely notice that I had taken an early retirement 🙂 🙂 🙂
...The Chinese Catalpa really need some rain now.
The coming ten days they’re guessing that it’ll stay around 20C (68F), give or take a degree up or down and also some rain. I will not believe it until it happens but I do sure hope it’s right and that we’ll get even more rain than they are guessing 🙂 🙂 🙂
Not much walking in this heat but I did go up the the mail box yesterday morning.
I’m writing this early today because yesterday was so hot here that my computer had a slight heatstroke 🙂 🙂 Suddenly the fan inside it worked insanely hard, have never heard it working that hard before and then the computer froze and the fan stopped working at all. I quickly went down to the freezer and brought two cooling pads, placed one beneath the computer and one on top of it. I checked if it would start after a while and have had no problems at all after that.
.Lots of chicory growing in the field outside my cottage. I think we all know that it can be used as lettuce but back in the days it’s root was roasted and used as a coffee surrogate. One can still buy that but I haven’t tried it..
Today will be even hotter than yesterday and we might break our heat record if we’re unlucky. I think we had one of those rather rare tropical nights here, it was 20C (68F) outside when I went up at 4:25 this morning. Inside the cottage however it’s still 28C (82,4F). The fan worked all night and I like it but the dogs don’t seem to see the good with it 🙂 🙂 They actually avoid the bed when the fan works, can’t remember when I had that much space for myself 🙂 🙂 🙂
The piglets aren’t morning piglets at all 🙂 🙂.The last flower on the Dog rose.Still plenty on the big rose beside it.
I actually mowed the lawn yesterday morning when it still wasn’t that hot. Why You might ask? Well the grass on the north side has been growing fast so it was quite high and needed to be mowed before any rain will fall. Well we might not get that rain they had promised was on its way, still changes in their guessing about that but we do need it now. I also wanted to use that cut down grass to cover the ground in the potato and vegetable patches. The grass will keep the moisture in the ground for much longer at the same time grass is full of what plants need to grow so while it decomposes it’ll give that to the ground and plants growing there.
..My now three? year old date palm seedling. It takes quite some time until it finally starts growing those leafs we all know.My Chinese Catalpa is in bloom again 🙂
So the first thing I did after feeding the dogs was to water the vegetable and potato patches. Albin and Nova stayed indoors to sleep some more but Alma followed me outside. I’ve finally found out what she’s really good at (as long as Albin isn’t close though), she’s really good at fetch! She comes back with what ever it was I threw away and does so every time I throw it away!! If Albin’s close it’s just grab it and run away so that he will follow and chase her 🙂 🙂 🙂 Nova has never been good at it and now days she really doesn’t care at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 She prefers to mostly sleep on the sofa 🙂 🙂
.I still need more grass klippings to fill up the vegetable patch though.
Can’t remember the name of this flower but it should be growing in sunshine and fairly wet to like life, so I’m wondering why it thrives here when it grows really dry and mostly in the shadows 🙂 🙂
It is time to go downstairs and make another cup of tea and perhaps something to eat.
We were supposed to have sunshine from the moment the sun rose but it tok quite some time before the clouds thinned out. It was so dark actually that I needed the camera to be set on ISO 1000 (One only need to use ISO 100 on a sunny day so it’s a big difference).
It has been hot here today, Scandinavian hot that is, 28C (82,4F) and it isn’t nice at all. No problem at the beginning of it though because we had a strong and cool wind blowing but when the wind died out so did our energy 🙂 Alma tried to be full of energy for as long as she could but even she had to give up in the end 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tomorrow we’ll most likely reach 34C (93,2F) so I’m not looking forward to that at all. It’ll only last for three days, on Friday it’ll get much cooler and we’ll have loads of rain if they are guessing it right.
.They are now gathering all twigs and branches in big piles, they’ll make pellets from it all so that we can buy that and use in our heating systems..
Like on me Novas joints don’t like the hot weather at all, she has problems walking up the stairs now, while she in the cool and early morning had no problems at all. She has been a bit spoiled now when she has been feeling bad because of her ear so I’ve added something she likes (well both the others likes it too), Tuna 🙂 Now she refuses to eat at all unless I put in tuna or something else she really likes 🙂 🙂 🙂 So this morning when there wasn’t anything extra in the food she just sniffed at it and walked away, she ate almost twice as much as she usually do when I had added tuna to the food this afternoon. Hot temperatures really didn’t affect her appetite for something she likes 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Fewer and fewer birds sing during the days now, they are doing what they can to secure the future for the younglings they have now rather than prepare for another batch of them, instead katydids have started playing, and loud as well especially in the evening. I do like to fall asleep to the sound of playing katydids. Especially hot days like this one can pretend that they are rather quiet cikadas 🙂 🙂 🙂 We don’t have cikadas here so it’s easy to let the imagination fly free 🙂 🙂
This one used to belong to the Corydalis family but they split that family up. No idea what it is called now though. I think it is annual and really grows as much as the weed it is. It is a favorite of mine in my garden.Lots of blueberries in the one bush I still have left.Perennial sunflower.The Sweet William grows here and there in my garden.
22 new species are added to the list of invasive and forbidden species here in the EU. From the previous forbidden species we already had around half of them growing in the wild but so I’m not sure if forbidding them actually will help anything. My guess is that since we have problem enough as it is, like the drought most likely will reduce the harvesting to around half of what they normally can harvest and the war in Ukraine will reduce that perhaps even more, the will of killing of plants and animals that shouldn’t be here might be a bit low. I was surprised that the The African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) actually is seen as a threat here, our winters are after all still quite chilly in periods.
.It is hard to see any apples in my Aroma apple tree but it doesn’t look as a successful year for that tree.However it’s a totally different thing when it comes to the tree I once sowed from an Aroma apple kernel. The apples on this tree are delicious but they tend to be hit by rot and fungus easily.Lots of small fruits on my Japanese quince bush too. I’ve never made jelly or jam from these but I have from it’s relative the real Quince and it was delicious. It is said these will be just as good to use but they aren’t even a quarter of the size from the real quince.
Lots of garden plants are also forbidden now, even though we seems to be allowed to still have them in our gardens but they are not allowed to be sold or spread by humans. Last year they tried to have a “Kill all Lupins” day here in Sweden and I think zero people cared about it 🙂 🙂 🙂 We love our lupins and really don’t care what authorities says about them. Do You know why they are seen like a problem? It’s because they start growing in places where very few other plants will grow due to really bad soil. When they start to grow someplace they actually make the ground much better and plants that can’t compete with other plants where the ground is good will then die instead.
..This is now the first thing I see when I start my mobile. He does look a bit grumpy, doesn’t he 🙂
I’ve baked another bread in the slow cooker and it turned out even better than the first one. I really can’t understand how people can fail baking bread in a slow cooker. Just do as always but instead of letting it rise the second time just put the dough in the cooker. The temperature is so low that it’ll have time enough to rise before it starts to being baked. For once I even took a photo of the bread. It is up side down so the top is pointing downwards and that paret is very light but the rest is just as brown and crispy as one wishes 🙂 the “folds” on the surface of it are prints from the baking paper (parchment paper).
The Cottage by the crane lake. 