Category: Nikon D610.

So my last work day and it feels just fine

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Cold and with some mist this morning, so I used my camera on the way to work, I almost came late to work on my last day of work, had been fun if that had happened for the first time in the 17 years I’ve worked there 🙂 🙂 🙂

I had to scrape ice from the car this morning but we didn’t actually have any frost, it only dropped to 2C (35,6 F) The sky will be clear again tonight so I’ve moved in some of the more sensitive plants to the cool cellar now and all orchids to the windows facing east or north. I would have liked to bring in more but it’s dark outside so I can’t ind them now, all I can do is to hope that the frost stays away for another night.

     

Neither me nor my work friend got that bag yesterday 🙂 🙂 🙂 The boy (who I call the one forcing me to quit) eventually made the work friend go up to the office to collect it himself. I think the boy understood that it would not work on me to go up there like a beggar so just before I was going to go home he had to go and find me 🙂 🙂 🙂 It was quite visible that he didn’t like that 🙂 🙂 The bag had of course the company’s logo on everything but those can be covered with other things 🙂 I must admit that the fleece sweater is really good so I’ll find one of those stickers or what they are called that I simply can iron over the old logo.

This is the beautiful pot I got from my work friend I pick up sometimes on my way to work.
This is the gift I got from the rest, Now I can buy ice cream for quite some time 🙂

The colors are starting to show in the garden.

Now I’ll take a few days of doing nothing but on Monday I’ll call two high end kitchen makers we have in this area, Kvänum kök and Vedum kök. People who work there really likes it and the pay is much better than in most companies around here I would take any job but they do paint lots of their products and I’m lucky to have learned to paint at Volvo cars and was amongst the last ones to learn everything from painting the cars and check and fix all surfaces before painting, ok that was a long time ago but it’s easy to get it all back thankfully.

My care tree, I don’t think it ever has carried so many berries before.
Lots of apples and these are really tasty.
I could make a lot of rose hip soup if I had the energy to remove all the hairy seeds in the hips 🙂
Time to harvest all then hazelnuts 🙂 First time this bush gives any at all 🙂

My work friends in the painting department Gave me a present today 🙂 They thought the boys thank you for long and faithful service was both odd and fun so they made me a card saying just that and inside it they had bought gift certificates for ice cream from the Ice cream van 🙂 🙂 🙂 It was also a birthday gift because I’m turning 60 on Sunday 🙂

     

Have a great day!

Summer is back for a few days.

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We had a maintenance day at work today so when I had done the things I was involved in I went home, no need to over do things at a place I won’t stay at. Almost 26C (78,8F), a clear blue sky and thankfully a rather strong and cool wind blowing. Normally I don’t take the dogs on walks when it is that hot but since the wind made it feel cooler we had a walk as soon as I had come home.

Hard to see the yellow crab apples beside the bright red rowan tree berries. Everything seem to ripe at the same time here now.

 b

We walked down to the creek and Nova walked off leashed all the way. We had to go back to find here quite often so at the end it felt like we had walked twice as long as we had 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wonder what had walked that way before us because she stopped every second meter (the same in yards) and stood there for quite some time. I had to leash her when we passed a field because she can barely hear anything ans it was hard to find her in the high vegetation 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

I thought it was Wednesday today so I’ve been longing for the ice cream van, guess if I feel disappointed now when I realize it won’t come until tomorrow!! Then again the temperature will rise up to 30C (86F) both tomorrow and on Thursday so I think I’ll need it more then 🙂 🙂 🙂 My apples that normally are ripe in late October early November are already ripe to eat. The seed sown apple tree is full of delicious apples and its mother, an Aroma apple, has fewer this year. No matter what I can’t eat that much apples so I’ll give my neighbors as many as they want, especially the kids loves apples so they even eat those normally rather sour wild apples growing beside the dog yard  🙂 🙂

     

Speaking of neighbors, the Beekeeper has now moved. The owner wanted an insane amount of money for that cottage (not even the realtor agrees on how much the owner wants for that place, said so to a customer who called and asked if there was any house for sale here and if realtors says so one really should listen to them 🙂 🙂 ) The Beekeeper found a house not far from here but up on the mountain and I do hope this is a place he can stay at to the day he himself wants to move elsewhere. I’ll miss him, good neighbors can be hard to find but so far I’ve been unusually lucky and I do hope I will continue to be so.

     

I’m rather tired today, I woke up three times last night. I drink a lot of water now so that was the first time I had to get up, second time one of the dogs had to go outside to poop and almost made it 🙂 🙂 and the third time it was the old lady who needed to pee but wasn’t really close to make it 🙂 🙂 🙂 She just wakes up, runs down to the door and hope I’ll be there, I’m a heavy sleeper so I rarely hear her walk down but Alma usually makes a lot of noise when Nova runs down, this time I had just fallen asleep again so no chance on me waking up  easily 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that this rarely happens 🙂 🙂

One of the Red mulberry trees I bought had one unripe fruit and I think we can call it a flower. Normally I’ve read that one need both male and female trees to get berries but now days there are trees that gives berries anyway but they can be either seed less or give seeds that won’t germinate.

My first ripe tomatoes 🙂 I doubt that I’ll get any more unless it stays warm for a very long time 🙂
My strawberries are flowering and gives me a few berries every week now 🙂

It’s time to go downstairs and watch some Paralympics. The Paralympics isn’t a big cash cow for the big tv channels so they sell those rights to PBS channels so we are lucky to be able to see it on our PBS, Swedish Television 🙂

The Aronia is cut down and it will start to grow again next spring. I have planted the first Red mulberry tree there as well, hoping the mulberry will grow faster and grow over the Aronia in the end.

Alma and I sat on the entrance stairs before the sun hid behind the trees, I drank a cup of tea and she looked through the gate on the cows that now has moved back too the pasture on the other side of the road, she doesn’t like them 🙂
Canadian Goldenrod, seen as invasive has self sown in a pot in my garden, really beautiful. WE had loads of it here back in the days but now it can’t compete with our native plants and we only have it in a few places.

Have a great day!

August was a shitty month but today it’s September.

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Yesterday morning. Today there will be a mix of photos from today and yesterday.

I’m sorry about not writing anything these last days but I’ve been a bit under the weather so to speak. No not in pain the medication really did its job but they also gave me a slight fever and a very wobbly stomach. I’ve been so tired that beside walks with my dogs I’v mostly been either napping or watching tv. So since I can’t have this anti inflammatory medicine I’m not sure there is any left that I can use, August has really been a shitty month this year 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Today however is September and it started sunny with only 2C (35,6F) outside. I must admit that I loved it when we were out walking in the village. It was a bit tricky to figure out what clothes one should wear since it would be really cold in the shadows but as soon as the sun hit it would start to boil inside. Very little shadow when walking there so I just wore a hoodie and normal trousers. I’m glad that I decided to close all windows yesterday because that night it was just slightly warmer and I woke up freezing in the middle of night. I really didn’t want to get up to close all windows so instead I called for the dogs so they could warm me up 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

They’re guessing that it’ll be really warm the coming week and so high temperatures at night that the risk of frost will be zero percent. Some places in this area did have frost during the night but for once it didn’t happen here, I sure hope it takes a long while because only two of my tomatoes are half ripe, the rest are still green. I also hope that I get them before the dogs do because I already had two ripe tomatoes but one morning when I went out to get them most of them were eaten by the dogs 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I’ve also started to cut down my Aronia bush, I really can’t stand the berries (the dogs and birds love them though) because too many berries and a couple of winters with lots of snow have bent down the branches so much that they were laying on the ground. It was a bit tricky to remove each branch because they were all entwined with each other. I still have some to cut off but there’s no hurry to do that. It will grow up again so already next summer it will become a new little bush. However I was thinking of planting one of my Red mulberry trees there, if it grows fast enough it will soon be higher than the Aronia and I hope they’ll co exists well together.

At least two different varieties of apples hanging on this apple tree.

   

It is time to make some dinner, I haven’t had that much of an appetite lately 🙂 but I think I can have some pancakes, if not I can have them as dinner at work tomorrow. Just bring some jam and since they are just as tasty cold as warm it’ll be fine 🙂

The biggest of my five seed sown Giant Sequoias, they’ll spend the winter in the cool cellar.
I do hope the flowers open up on this Butterfly bush before the frost comes, won’t be many butterflies around though.
The white flowers on the Woodland tobacco really shines when it’s getting dark around it and the smell is amazing.
My Christmas cactus loves staying outdoors all summer.

Have a great day!

       

I didn’t expect that after 17 in the same work place.

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I’ve been a bit distant lately and that’s because after working for 17 years at my work place I’ll have to quit my job. Not because I’ve done something wrong in any way but because my employer decided that I should start working four days a week (Monday till Thursday) from 4:25 pm to 03:00 am the next day. I told them I can’t do that for several reasons, I normally sleep from 9 pm to around 4:am and can’t just change my sleeping habits like that. They did this to me last autumn and I still have problems from that. I also can’t have my dogs in the dog yard because they bark like crazy as soon as any animal passes by.

     

The badger walks along my garden every night now days, deer pass by, our fox comes for visits and not forgetting all the cats that live here. If they bark they’ll wake up my neighbors and both the adults and the kids need their sleep and it’s illegal to have the dogs locked up in the cottage for so many hours without contact with humans plus I would have to clean up the entire cottage every morning when i come home every morning because they do need to do their business and I can’t let them out to do it. Unfortunately employers here can treat their employees just as bad as they want to without the union doing anything when it comes to at least my union.

     

If I come to work in the morning instead to work I won’t be paid and if I don’t come in the afternoon when they say I must work I will be charged (is that the right word?) with unauthorized absence and when that has happened too many times I’ll be charged with refusal to work and then they’ll fire me and I will never be able to find a new job with that hanging over me. So my last day will be on September 16, the day after I’ve had my sixtieth birthday. Anyway this is all I really can write about it now because I will still work there for a few more weeks. I must admit though that I’m feeling just fine, no worries at all and since I’m willing to take any job as long as I don’t have to work at night I’m pretty sure I’ll find a new job fairly quick, I at least hope so 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

The rain has poured down here today so for the first time in a long time I didn’t have to water anything when I came home after work 🙂 The Ice cream lorry passed by but since I now need to keep an eye on my finances I never went out to buy any ice cream, it felt a bit sad but better start now than when it is too late. On the other side I now I have two more Red mulberry trees 🙂 🙂 🙂 To my defence I bought those before I knew about this 🙂 🙂 🙂 These two will stay in my cool cellar during winter and then I’ll find a place for them in the garden next spring 🙂 The one I already have will be planted this weekend I think, I wonder where 🙂 🙂

The Rowan trees gives loads of berries this year. One can make the most delicious jelly from them even though the berries themselves are pretty tart.

This is a Jerusalem artichoke called Bianca. Normally it starts to flower at the end of September so it’s around a month early. I guess it’s because we had that long heatwave in May.

Time for a last cup of tea and then snooze in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

Have a great day!

     

His rebellious phase seems to be rather calm, at least right now :-)

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We had a really nice morning today, rather cool and lots of fog and it lasted until I arrived at work. I brought a camera with me so I have a few photos to show today. One of the red spots was about to become a scab so I showed it as soon as I could and it didn’t take long before it started to form a scab, so i went home as they had told me to. I hope this is the last one so I can go to work again as soon as it falls off. I feel quite good but am rather tired and I guess that’s because of thew chickenpox.

     

I went by the grocery store to fill up the fridge and pantry since I won’t be able to go there while I’m still contagious, thankfully there was almost no one there when I arrived so I didn’t give this to someone else. I’m feeling ok though so I hope this will pass quickly. They managed to fix the problem at work though so they’ll start working tomorrow so someone else will have to do my work until I’m back again.

I was lucky that these cranes were walking around in a place where I could see if cars came behind me so early that there wasn’t any risk of a car crash just because I had stopped my car.

 

We had a walk as soon as I came home and it has been pretty warm when the fog finally evaporated. A bit too warm for Nova so we walked in the forest where the trees gave a nice and cool shadow. It is quiet out there now, no bird song but the tweeting we can hear until next spring and oddly enough no flies there either, perhaps their season is over now? one can always hope.

     

Malkolms rebellious period continues 🙂 Yesterday I realized that he has bitten a hole in the sofa cushion (I have one big on the entire sofa) from beneath, I realized that when I wondered what that white stuff on the floor was 🙂 Not a big hole so it can easily be repaired but still. Also today my neighbors texted me with a photo of him walking around in their garden (I’m so lucky I have the best neighbors one can have!). He did come back when I called the first time, the second time however he really didn’t want to because they were changing diaper on their youngest 🙂 🙂 So they too tried to make him jump back but he just didn’t want to. He didn’t come back home until I sounded really angry 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Also Alma is in heat but thankfully he shows no interest what so ever, I don’t want to neuter him until he’s a year old. So hold You thumbs and cross You fingers that it stays that way 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it’s time to have something to eat but no more tea, I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night now 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Well that was a surprise :-)

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The Dog rose is flowering again.

First day back at work and it was a calm one, actually so calm that we didn’t especially much at all 🙂 Nothing in the painting department worked and it’s most likely because a heavy thunder storm passed by there yesterday. I got several warnings from my lightning app but nothing was close to the village, instead it passed over the village where the factory is.

     

So we did the little we could do and after lunch I went home. However I had to call the occupational healthcare because We suspected I might be ill even though I don’t feel sick 🙂 So I am for the fifth or sixth time having chicken-pox 🙂 🙂 🙂 Not something that usually happens to be honest. So I called them and described the suspected two red dots, the itching and the one scab I have so far  (I’ve never gotten lots of dots, five or six each time). So they were a bit skeptical at first but then the nurse said that one might get it several time if one has a really bad immune system, so I said I have Bechterews disease (my rheumatism) and then she laughed and said then You do have a really f.cked up immune system 🙂 🙂

     

That might sound strange coming from a nurse but we’ve met before and she heard my name but couldn’t put a face to it and her son has the same disease so we fully understood each other 🙂 🙂 I had already made sure that everyone at work already have had it before calling so there’s no risk of me giving it to anyone else and as long as I feel fine I can continue to work but if I get more rash I’ll have to stay at home until the last scab falls off. The one I have at the moment is covered to makes sure I don’t give it to anyone else. To be honest it might already be over since the two red dots also can be mosquito bites, we’ll only know if they too get that blister that belongs to it. Now of course it itches everywhere 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I guess I’ll know better already tomorrow. I know there can be bad complications having chicken-pox, especially as an older person so I’ll make sure not to dismiss any other symptoms. So all in all it has been a rather nice day 🙂 It was supposed to be cloudy all day but the sun has shined quite a lot after I came home. It was a bit too warm for Nova when the sun shone so we walked mostly in the forest and she was unleashed so she could walk in her own pace. I also had the new dog food delivered today, both Alma and Malkolm have problems with their stomach and since chicken is the main ingredient in their food and chicken is the most common issue for stomach problems I bought one made from insects. They all loved it when I gave them some as treats so now I’ll slowly change from the old one to this new and see if they’ll get better.

 

The Persimmon branches growing up from the root of the dead persimmon hybrid looks good.
Lots of berries on my care tree, a Rowan tree. 

It is time to make a last cup of tea for the day and  after that I’ll mostly listen to the Olympics on the radio, Mondo Duplantis the Swedish pole vaulter is competing today and it will be a big surprise if he doesn’t win.

Have a great day!

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

   

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

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

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

Have a great day!

A morning I liked.

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The morning was almost perfect here today, only almost because as usual the vegetation was so wet that Malkolm was soaking wet when we came home even though he barely walked in the high grass today. It was cool, morning mist and the sun slowly rising. We skipped having breakfast before going outside hoping to be in the fog as much as possible. The mist actually stayed our entire walk so I was more than happy 🙂

I went up to the mail box before we went out on our walk, back in the days I would have had all dogs with me, unleashed, because they would stay close to me. If I tried that today Alma would be all over the place, most likely chasing cats at the farm, Malkolm would follow her and Nova would have turned back home again 🙂

   

I did hope that we would see some bigger animals since the sun just had started to rise but we only saw one and that was a wild hog down by the creek. It was passing the gravel road perhaps twenty meters ahead of us (much the same in yards). At first it stood still just watching us but decided to pass since we had stopped only looking at it. The thing is that wild hogs never comes alone and I had no idea if this was the first or last of them I decided to turn around and walk back home instead.

     

It is getting more tricky to have our walks now days. Nova is old and I’ve noticed how much slower she is compared to just a year ago. So it is a bit tricky to understand what speed we should walk in. First we have Alma who most likely would love to run around as fast as she can, last is Nova who now days mostly enjoys to just walk really slow sniffing on everything she can find on the ground and Malkolm in the middle 🙂 Malkolm is more like Nova, more interesting in smells than speed so it is Alma who has to adapt the most and adapt is not her strong side 🙂 🙂 She too can find smells interesting but can’t concentrate for more than fifteen seconds, I’ve actually measured the time and it’s rare that she can be interested in anything for up to twenty seconds 🙂 🙂

     

She did behave pretty well when we met the hog though, I must give her that! The weather after that was rather nice, lots of sunshine and just a weak wind blowing. the rest of the walks she behaved really well. I thought of mowing the lawn but even though it was fairly warm and the sun shone the grass was still soaking wet, no mowing tomorrow either because it has just started to rain again and it will most likely last until early morning tomorrow. One newspaper shouted out that after this rain we’ll get higher temperatures again and lots of sunshine so I checked the weather sites. Yes we’ll get one day with high temperatures and then it’ll drop down to 20C (68F) again 🙂 🙂 They always do like that when they know most people are desperate to at least get some sunshine before work starts again 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and then bed I think. I guess it’s stupid to hope for another morning like we had today but I’ll be happy if it is cool and with some sunshine 🙂

     

Have a great day!

     

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A storm passed by today and today it was noticeable even here in my garden, the strong ghusts shuffled the leaves in the trees pretty bad 🙂 The more steady wind was as always more or less unnoticeable here. They had guessed that we at least would have some sunshine in the early morning so I waited for quite some time before I gave up and we had our morning walk.

     

A good thing with the winds are that almost no flies are out and about irritating us 🙂 and if any mosquito had been desperate enough they still would have blown away really fast 🙂 Also pretty chilly for being a day in July, only 15C (59F) as warmest and that’s now in the early evening. I’ve noticed something, the dogs don’t like to be outside in the garden windy days like this, I think it is the roar from the wind blowing through the forest and perhaps they smell things from far away that they don’t like and believes what ever it is can be nearby.

   

I’ve been thinking about having a pond again but this time make sure no vole can chew through the rubber.

One being that I think exists all over the world is the Lantern man, When the day becomes night and one looks in to a forest or a bog one sometimes might see a flickering light, sometimes moving fast and sometimes really slow and if one is lucky one might even see the being carrying the light which is a small manlike being usually dressed in grey. It is the lantern man and quite often he tries to lure the human that see him out into the forest so they become lost. Sometimes however he lures them out into bogs or swamps to try and drown them. They will do the latter if they think one has been impolite or rude. However they can also save children being lost if one has been polite to them and also perhaps given them a coin or two (I guess that since silver always work with all other beings he would accept that too 🙂 )

     

They guess that he’s an evil spirit that, when he lived tricked others so that he made his property bigger at his neighbors cost, therefore he will never get peace after dying. He continues this behavior after death by moving property markings at nights, always saying this is wrong and that is right. The only way he can get peace is if someone follows him at nights moving back all the property markings he has moved. The thing is would one really follow someone that willingly would try and kill You just for fun? 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a cup of tea I think and then see what’s on tv.

Have a great day!

Really nice day.

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I really hope the birds don't find my Sand cherries. They are really delicious and I rarely get a chance to get any myself.
I’ve found several Sand cherries this year 🙂

I slept late, for me this morning. I didn’t wake up until after five am. The weather was just as grey as they had guessed and it was actually pretty chilly when we finally came out for our walk. So instead of wearing my mosquito hat I just wore a hoodie and it was enough to keep the flies away from my face. Also I did spray the entire hoodie with that anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray that works for both animals and humans and that could have helped more that I thought it would. So today both my dogs and I smell like an old lady in the sixties that didn’t understand when to stop spraying her perfume 🙂

I do like ferns!      The Grape Elder is early this year.

We have actually had much more sunshine than they guessed that we would so the kitchen door has been open most of the day but I really need to buy a new mosquito net for that door, I’ve taped it together in some places 🙂 🙂 Dogs never walk though slow and carefully, they run through ripping of the magnets keeping it together but every time I’m out on the internet I tend to forget to order any. From now on they’re guessing that we’ll have sunshine and hot weather for the rest of the week so I didn’t mow the lawn today as I had planed because the grass is still very wet since it has grown so high. I’ll start doing it tomorrow after work and just take small areas each day until it is done. So I won’t write anything here tomorrow.

I've never seen either a toad or frog here so I guess the Källrå might stay in the lake itself :-)
No unusually big toads or frogs here so I guess there isn’t any KällrÃ¥ living here.

Lots of Lingonberries this year, I might even go out and pick some myself this year.

  Squirrel berries in bloom still.

Two more weeks until the vacation starts 🙂 Those two weeks will feel like years because when it is hot outside it’s even hotter in the factory. The one standing at the paint ox it can quite often reach 44 C (111,2 F) and no matter how much waster one drinks it’s not enough. Hopefully the painter working there will work every day, otherwise it might be me they think should do that job and after 16 years of it I truly hate it. So cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs for good luck so he’s healthy both weeks 🙂 🙂

Japanese climbing rose in bloom, lots of flowers this year.
I can’t remember that I’ve seen as many flowers on the Japanese climbing rose as I have this summer. These are above my head now making a roof together with the apple tree and a grape elder.

I think the flowers are quite beautiful and these have no thorns 🙂

Red leafed rose, self sown.
The self sown Red leafed rose has been planted and grows really fast now.

Today I’ll write about a slightly more nasty being, the Mara. She’s the one that gives us nightmares But also from how I interpret it anxiety attacks at night. She crawls up on a humans chest at night and squeeze out all air and will to live. If she has been visiting You Yo’ll know it since You will wake up cold sweating and have the feeling of being suffocated. She cab squeeze through any crack she can find so it is more or less impossible to keep her out of any place. Thankfully the Mara suffers from obsessive thoughts so it is fairly easy to occupied until it is morning. One can for instance put a bible with lots of hair in between the pages because she must count them all before she can do anything else. Another way is to spread lots of tiny seeds around the beds because she must count them as well.  I guess that not cleaning the floors if one has dogs could help a lot as well because of course she would have to clean before doing anything else. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been around my place for ages because my floors are just as dirty as they were the night before 🙂 🙂

Old Nova, 18 years old and still going strong :-)
She’s hanging on the old lady 🙂

   

No one really knows where the Mara comes from but it is usually a female and some think it is the soul of dead unmarried women who tries to get the warmth from the living. It could also be as simple as a curse is put upon her because their mothers, trying to not have as much pain giving birth and therefore used black magic by crawling through amniotic membrane from a new born foal. If the woman would give birth to a boy that boy would later on become a werewolf. Now our werewolfs  are slightly different than the ones we have seen on films or read about but more on that another day 🙂 🙂

I asked Malkolm what he was doing and then he covered the hole and looked so innocent 🙂

 

This beetle doesn't seem to do any harm in the garden so it is a favorite of mine.
This is a favorite beetle of mine.

It is time to prepare something to eat at work tomorrow, I really don’t have anything at home so I’ll just make a couple of sandwiches and bring some yogurt too.

Have a great day!

Väettir.

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Today is actually the real midsummer but they’ve made sure that it always is celebrated on the first Friday after summer solstice. Midsummer eve isn’t a holiday (Midsummers day is though) but most people working in factories and offices still have the day off and it’s also a payed free day. This is the last holiday we have before Christmas. I would say that it is as big or perhaps even a bigger holiday here than Christmas. The bad traffic started already today because everyone wants to be where ever they are supposed to be already today.

 

This is an unusual Plantago major since it is variegated. Normally they are seen as somewhat irritating weeds but for some reason they aren't when they look like this :-)
A variegated Plantago is really unusual and if I had liked them I would have brought this one home. Normally they are seen as weeds but for some reason not when they look like this 🙂 🙂

I’ll write more about the celebrations and folklore the coming days. Today I’ll tell You about Vättar (Väettir). They are usually small beings dressed in grey clothes but they can easily change to something else like toads or little mice. Like all beings they can be rather grumpy but we rarely know that we have them around us since they can change what they look like. There are several different kinds of Väettir, it all depends on where they live, like lake väettir, mountain väettir and forest väettir. It isn’t unusual that they live just beneath our cottages and if there are unusually many toads hanging around in our gardens it might be because they actually are Väettirs 🙂

Bumblebee beetle. Some years there are plenty of them here and some years one is lucky to see one.

  The Blue vetch grows everuýwhere here and I like it a lot. 

So if one lives a calm and orderly life and don’t disturb them they might become Your friend and then help you with the animals or perhaps give you and unusual amount of good luck. They really don’t like warm water so if one would toss out some from the home one should always warn them before one does. If one would meet a Väettir that needs help and help with what ever it is they usually give you a gift. It might look like an old pine cone or a stone, always take it and thank for it because they day after it can have turned in to gold or gemstones. If you don’t help them or disturbs them in any way they then instead might give You some terrible disease.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night by an awful screaming of fear (and the barking sound of an older deer), sounded like a small baby deer was attacked by something, probably a fox. I thought it must have been the young one that the doe in the cow patch was the mother too. I found the doe walking in the cow patch when I left for work and thought that she might look for her young one and felt so sorry for her.

She was still in the cow patch when I returned home (almost impossible to see her here) and she was completely calm. So either it was another animal screaming or she managed to scare what ever it was away 🙂

Väettirs are guardians of the area so I wonder if they live where gnomes doesn’t. Normally gnomes lives at farms while Väettirs seems to be more adaptable and live even close to poor people. They are my favorite beings to be honest just because they more often are kind than evil. Have I mentioned that there lives an unusual amount of toads in my garden? 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!