Category: Snow.

I’ve picked up my car.

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So they texted me long after they had closed that my car was fixed. I didn’t mind since I had the car I could borrow anyway so I went there this morning to pick it up. The exhaust pipe wasn’t broken thankfully but the seals where the different parts of the exhaust fume pipes were stuck together had given up so they just put in new ones. So it didn’t cost an arm and a leg, just an arm 🙂 🙂 So a new spring for the front wheel, two bulbs and the seals costed around $ 900 US ( tricky to know exactly at the moment since the US $ has lost so much value lately but somewhere around there I would guess).

So I paid without crying 🙂 🙂 and went out to my car. It was so slow, like driving in fudge. The guy who had repaired my car had mashed a rookie mistake, never use the handbrake on a French car during winter 🙂 🙂 🙂 It will freeze stuck and must be brought inside to be knocked off the brake disc 🙂 🙂 Only took a few minutes and now the handbrake will rest until this winter is over 🙂 🙂 🙂 I stopped twice on my way home, once at a big grocery store in Falköping to get some jam for pancakes I’ll make later and a second time to pick up a parcel.

I have an incinerator toilet, no water used in it with other words, and need paper bags where everything goes before I “flush” the toilet so everything drops down and gets burned in a very high temperature. The odd thing is that the chimney from it just gets lukewarm. I’ve never been able to figure out how they can cool down that hot air so good that I only need to have a plastic chimney. It works and that’s the only thing that matters 🙂

I’ve started to sow those heart nuts now and went online to check something about the sowing. I never look at the AI suggestions google put at the top of every search but something caught my eye. AI said the nuts was supposed to be placed warm?! That’s not what I’ve learned.So I went out into the wonderful world called internet and finally had to admit that I might be wrong about keeping them cold before they germinate. The places I found said keep warm, so now I’ll keep them warm for a couple of weeks to see if anything will happen. There are always easy to remember general rules when it comes to sowing. If the seeds comes in early summer they’ll need warm weather to germinate, if they come in autumn they’ll need a period of cold.

There’s always exceptions to this rule and some seeds can work both ways. So if a seeds falls to the ground but surroundings aren’t good they can lie all summer and wait for next spring and germinate when there’s enough water and warmth, but it’ll then only work if they’ve gone through a cold period and not been collected and stayed indoors all winter. Some should have it warm but just refuse to germinate anyway and then a cold period will help them to start and vice versa . So I’ll keep these nuts warm as I wrote for a few weeks and see what will happen, we still have much winter ahead of us unfortunately.

It is time for a cup of tea I think and after that I’ll make some pancakes 🙂

Have a great day!

By the way, this is how my Kaki (Diospyrus kaki) fruit seedlings look like now

Snowy day.

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It has been snowing here all day but it barely shows on the ground. I’m not happy about it but I feel I really can’t complain about it since there are places in the US that will have it so much worse. According to the weather sites the temperatures will stay as they are now for at least ten days and sometimes we’ll get snow and sometimes sunshine. Almost no wind here now but it’ll come back next Wednesday till Friday they’re guessing.

 

Today was nice though, despite the snow falling. Almost no wind but I chose to walk in the forest and out to the bog anyway. We could hear animals moving away from us but I never saw any. I wouldn’t say that Malkolm is especially bothered by the cone but I can see the difference in mood when we go out for a walk and he doesn’t need to wear it. I’ve had to calm both him and Alma down because they play a bit rough in the garden and I can see they think I’m sooo boring 🙂 🙂

 

Nothing much has happened here, the only thing I’ve done is to put some pork chops in the oven, boil a few potatoes and made a mushroom sauce, I have to say the sauce was the best of it all 🙂 :-)I had bought a big pack of chops so I’ll need to put some of them back in the freezer.  A neighbour, well his mother is still a neighbour even though he has moved away, texted me yesterday evening and gave me 3-4 cubic meters of fire wood if I wanted. His mother doesn’t use firewood any more and he had more than enough where he lives now, so it’s time to make some space in the wood shed. No panic though because I can bring it home when I want. The space making can start now but I can bring home the fire wood when it gets warmer again. I’ll use my big wheel barrow (two wheeled) when it is time.

I think I’ll start with the sowing of Tamarillo seeds tomorrow. I really like that fruit and used to grow it when I lived in an apartment in Gothenburg. The plant itself smells like come and help me to die (Swedish expression 🙂 ) but the fruits are delicious. I’ll also need to see what tomato seeds I’ll sow, I think I mostly will skip the vines varieties and instead go for the ones growing like a bush and perhaps have a few in the ground instead of in the green house but I will of course have a few vines too in the green house. I do hope we’ll have an early and warm spring this year otherwise I’ll be in trouble 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that falling asleep in the recliner 🙂

Have a great day!

Windy and cold and the cone of shame.

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Most of the snow is gone but there are a few places it still hangs around, even though it is mostly ice now.

Nasty and cold winds from east but oddly enough not that cold, just below 0C (32F) during the day. Temperatures will drop during the night though. I can say that our morning walk was anything but nice, there was just one place in the forest where the wind didn’t reach us.

I now know that it was the microwave that made the fuse pop because it happened again when I wanted to re-heat the meat sauce today. This time I had fuses though, 21 of them 🙂 🙂 So I decided to put the microwave in the wood shed until I can throw it away. It was old, most likely over 25 years old actually so I wasn’t surprised that it happened. I did not remember how heavy it was though 🙂  When I removed it I found lots of things that had fallen down behind it 🙂 I now have stamps for the rest of my life and also envelopes 🙂 🙂 I also found seed packages that I had forgotten that I once bought. A few more tomato varieties, nasturtium seeds, something I’d picked myself, wild geranium seeds and something I think must be for succulents. The name of the one selling them to me sort of rings a bell about succulents. It’ll be exiting to see if they’ll germinate one day 🙂 🙂 🙂

Malkolm managed to destroy the cone of shame and I duct taped it so it would hold together but then I remembered that I have some old ones that were made to hold together better, slightly different material I think plus it is reinforced all the way round. Thew biggest one is perhaps a bit small but he can breathe so it’ll have to do 🙂 He mostly behaves when he doesn’t wear it but every now and again he wants to clean himself and I fully understand that but it is still not allowed. He behaves as usual so the painkillers work well and he eats anything hidden in cheese 🙂

I think I’ll skip that last cup of tea for the day and instead I’ll have hot cocoa, it fits better on a cold and windy day I think.

Have a great day!

One more day before it gets cold again, yay

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Mostly grey and dull today, the sunrise that almost happened was really beautiful for a few seconds and then it was gone behind the clouds. I didn’t mind that much because it was at least over 0C (32F). We actually almost saw the sun one more time when there was a rip in the cloud cover.

Yesterday.
Today.
Lots of water yesterday
but less today.

I had to pick up a parcel today, the oat, sorghum and millet flour I ordered online this week since they didn’t order anything to the supermarket had arrived. I actually got the text message on Thursday but decided I could let it be until today. My phone has this thing of if I touch the screen in the wrong way (which I to be honest still doesn’t know how that works) the phone then put that message in the archives. I didn’t even know there was an archive for text messages. I had apparently done that with this message.

Worse in the forest though.

So there I stood in the store and couldn’t for my life remember what shipping company had been used 🙂 🙂 🙂 Thankfully no one else was there and the store owner did what she could to find the parcel anyway. It took well over 15 minutes but then she found it, it stood just by the door 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have now figured out how to find archived messages but I still need to know who the sender is, otherwise it’ll be gone for ever it seems 🙂 🙂 🙂

So I tried to use millet for the first time and I failed something spectacular 🙂 🙂 🙂 I found a recipe online, did exactly as it said but the dough was less thick that what it would be for a sponge cake?? I think, but it didn’t say so in the recipe, that this bread should have been thin but wide. I poured it in to a normal bread tin and that was so wrong. It collapsed already when I put it in the oven 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is edible though and millet has a sort of nut taste to it. I’ll either do the bread in a lower tin next time or I’ll find another recipe 🙂 🙂 I do think it’ll be really great to have now when I’ll have rice pasta and spaghetti sauce after I’m done here.

So I’ll wait with that last cup of tea for the day, I can have some after dinner instead. lots of snow has now melted away and there’s one more day before the colder weather arrives again so I hope most of what is left will melt away before it gets cold again.

Have a great day!

Finally, it is melting!

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It took its time but now we’ve finally had above 0C (32F) but the day began with mostly snow falling but also some rain. The roads have been rather bad and for once even worse in this village. My neighbour was going to take her children to pre school but had huge problems to even go up the small slope up to the village road. After that it was even worse, so she had to go back home again and can’t work tonight.

Our fox has survived the hunters so far 🙂

I walked up to my mailbox just a few minutes ago and if it doesn’t freeze too hard tonight it’ll be much better when I have to drive around noon tomorrow. I’ll go to a job interview so hold Your thumbs and cross Your fingers for good luck 🙂 Anyway, it had rained before we went out for our morning walk but it turned to snow when we were out. Instead of dry fluffy snow we now have what and slushy snow 🙂 I could get a grip when walking though so I think that was better 🙂

I can’t figure out if this is a track from a piglet or perhaps a small roe deer. I think it is a piglet.

Bot Alma and Malkolm behaved better than they have ever done I think. Well the only thing Malkolm does is to pull the leash because he wants to follow tracks as fast as he can but he does listen when I tell him to calm down, the majority of times 🙂 🙂 Alma is a different thing but today she stayed mostly quiet and also followed Malkolm to see what he thought was so interesting 🙂 So no aching shoulders on me today 🙂 Otherwise I haven’t done much. I baked some French rolls before we went out and I’ve realised that it’s the cheese that make any bread much better. I didn’t have any leftover cheese this time so the rolls sort of missed something 🙂 I also did some laundry just so I have some clean clothes tomorrow 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll have another of the rolls I baked because they’re always best the day they’re made 🙂

Have a great day!

Still waiting for those warm temperatures.

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That spruce beside the birches looks like the perfect christmas tree (or Yule spruce as we call it).

Since I knew we would have both snow and rain later in the day I drove to the supermarket as soon as we had some daylight. The road outside the village wasn’t especially well plowed but the big road thankfully was, we had gotten some snow during the night but most of it was already plowed away. No rain so far though but lots of snow, I do hope they’re right about warmer weather is on the way but it is still below 0C (32F) here.

I am a bit irritated about this supermarket now. Since I can’t eat wheat, rye or barley I have to buy other kinds of flour, like sorghum or buckwheat and they were out of most other flours before christmas and they still haven’t ordered them. I guess I’ll have to go to Falköping instead because there’s one place that always make sure to have other kinds of flour. They do have oat flour but as it says on the packet it can contain gluten. Most of the times it doesn’t but sometimes it does and a lot of it as well. So I’ve decided to order it online instead. If I include the gasoline price when I go to the store it will be much the same to have it transported to me.

They did however have everything else I wanted plus I found spare ribs for sale so I forgave them this time 🙂 No more mice caught in the box trap and it sort of feels good since it has been so awfully cold outside. They wouldn’t have had a chance if I had had to leave them outside in this weather. Also since the monster refuse to go outside now she instead wants to go down in to the cool cellar several times a day 🙂 🙂

It is time to make a pot of tea and I’ll have a couple of sandwiches too since I now have something to put on them, You call it condiments we say pålägg which would be onlays in English 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally, it is getting less cold!

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It is slowly but steadily getting less cold now and that makes me smile. Thankfully we had clouds covering the sky during most parts of last night so it wasn’t as cold as they guessed it would be but to cold for me 🙂

So it almost felt warm when we went out for our morning walk today, only -11C (12,2F). No wind and a thick layer of clouds so the whole area sort of had a led grey hue to it.  The wild life had noticed the change towards less cold as well so today we saw lots of tracks in the snow. Mostly wild hogs but also deer, both Roe and red deer and also some moose tracks. The squirrels are to light to make any prints in the hard surface the snow now has (still powdery beneath the surface though) but the foxes were just enough heavy to make paw prints.

We did hear a few smaller birds tweeting close to the village but that was it, no Jays or Ravens made any sounds. A squirrel ran down a pine trunk on the back side of the tree but we could hear it and just had to follow the snow that fell from the surface while the squirrel ran downwards. It felt like walking in a world where only the vegetation was left. Well the whining from Alma sort of destroyed that feeling a bit but she was actually much more quiet than she normally is.

Tomorrow I’ll brush off all snow from the car and go to the supermarket. I really don’t have much left in the larder or the fridge 🙂 I also need seeds for the birds, some birds just don’t like peanuts, especially not those who only comes to the feeders when it’s too hard to find food in the forest like the Bullfinches. To be honest they are rare then to but it looks like both the House sparrow and the field sparrow prefers seeds before peanuts. 

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. If I hadn’t had dinner just an hour ago I woukld have made a couple of sandwiches because I made some French rolls yesterday that almost tasted like normal ones and as always I’ll never recreate them since I just mixed together what ever kind of flour I had. Perhaps one day I should write it all down 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

This must be the most sad looking Thuja in the world. The ground is dry and it never get any sunshine 🙂

Nasty cold!

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So last night was cold, the temperature dropped down to a bit lower than 19C (2,2F). The sky was clear so there was nothing stopping what was left of the heat from going straight out to space. Tonight will be even colder they say and it is already -16.4C (2,48F). The weather sites says it’s only -13C (8,6F) at the moment and won’t fall that much more 🙂 🙂 🙂

We did go out for a morning walk when it was slightly less cold but the dogs changed their minds after a while. Malkolm refused to walk where there was less snow for some reason so his paws got really cold and I did warm them up but that did only help for a short while. Thankfully my neighbours had to buy food so they helped me with a few things because I had no wish what so ever to be out driving when it was that cold 🙂 🙂 🙂

They say that it will be much warmer the coming week and even above 0C (32F) from Wednesday and for the rest of the week but since they can’t get what temperature we have now right why would I believe them about what might happen later in the week 🙂 🙂 🙂

So it has been a lot of tea drinking most of the day, so I have already had that last cup because what goes in must come out 🙂 and so far not all has come out 🙂 I think I’ll make myself some warm sandwiches  and try to stay close to the radiators for the rest of the day 🙂 🙂 I truly hate winter!

Have a great day!

It does at least not snow.

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Nothing much to write about today, the wind is back and is nasty cold but for most of the day it didn’t reach my cottage or reach in to the forest. Now it clearly reach the cottage and the kitchen feels a bit chilly. Now both big weather sites says cold during Sunday and Monday but one says -13C (8,6F) and the other says -16C (3,2F) I really don’t like either of those options 🙂 🙂 Two days after they say above 0C (32F). cold roads with melting water will be fun to drive on.

I could almost see the sun but those blue gaps in the clouds were never in the right place 🙂

No mice have been caught in the cool cellar but the monster has been very interested in going down there and of course I let her do it. She tells me when she think it is enough 🙂 Lots of people are sick here now, lots of coughing and nose dripping 🙂 So far I’ve been spared but I do feel tired all the time but that can also be because the lack of sunshine.

We walked down to the creek this morning and as long as we walked on the gravel road everything was fine but then we followed the creek and only had our old tracks to walk in and the wind had blow a lot of snow in those tracks so it was like walking in potato flour, I never knew what way I would slide 🙂 🙂 It was even worse in the fields because the perfectly smooth snow surface didn’t show where the wild hogs had been digging 🙂 :-)Sometimes the snow barely reached the sole of my shoes, sometimes I stood in knee deep snow 🙂 🙂 🙂

Not a sign in the snow where the wild hogs have been digging 🙂

It was even a bit too much for the dogs in the end and the walk took much longer than normal. I didn’t mind the longer time especially but I did mind the wind that hit us all the time. I could barely feel my hands when we came back home. It was so nice to be able to sit down and have a cup of tea just doing nothing after we had come back.

I think it is time for that last cup of tea for the day and to fall asleep in the recliner. I’ll have to have the alarm on though because today it’s On the Tracks on tv, something I actually like to watch 🙂

Have a great day!

Cold and sowing bananas.

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WordPress is really slow today and has been for a while but I hope it will allow me to post something. We had a warning about heavy snowfall today but barely nothing extra had fallen when we went out on our morning walk. I could even see some blue spots up there in the clouds.

We walked out to the bog and I must say that Alma has become much better now, ok she still have these high pitch whining that drives me crazy but they are fewer now days and Malkolm has really learned how not pulling the leash makes my mood so much better :-)There was some new snow on the ground but it was still pretty easy to walk in the tire tracks the hunters had made two days ago.

So it wasn’t until we walked in to the forest that walking became a bit harder, it is like walking in potato starch, two steps ahead and one back so to speak 🙂 but then the sun broke through and we had a huge blue opening in the clouds and that made life so much easier, even the walking in the snow 🙂 🙂 When we reached the end of the peninsula roe deer were jumping around everywhere 🙂 I did manage to get photos of one that stood still but the rest were like bouncing balls 🙂

It tried to stand so still that we wouldn’t see it.The sun kept shining almost the entire way home and when I had closed the door behind us the snow started to fall and it was a lot of snow falling. It didn’t last for long that time but it came back several times and enough of it for the guy that plows our road to get out working. Now the weather sites seems to have lined up and says the same thing, just a little more snow but nasty cold instead, especially during the weekend. I’m not happy about that at all but can’t really do anything else than to except it 🙂 Well they aren’t too good in guessing the weather so it can be just the opposite instead 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll have a sandwich or two at the same time. I baked a couple of loafs yesterday and they turned out really good, no I can’t make the same again because I just tossed in what kind of leftover flour I had at home 🙂 🙂 But to be honest, I think that it actually is the cheese I put in that make all the difference 🙂 I’ve also started with the sowing today, two different bananas, Oriental raisin tree and Chinese dogwood.

These are the seeds to the Pink Banana. I soaked them in hot water over night.

I then placed them in a damp paper towel and put them in a plastic bag. Now they hang over the kitchen radiator so they will be as warm as possible.

This is the seeds for the Ethiopian Banana. Ten times bigger but will be treated the same but soak in that water for a couple of days.

Haste great day!

A day free from snowing.

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Bullfinches looking for food.

No big difference today compared to yesterday but it didn’t snow for once. It will start to snow again tonight but after that the two big weather sites once again have different opinions. Yesterday it was the Norwegian site that said nasty cold during the winter and the Swedish just bitter cold, today it’s the opposite and according to the Swedish site we’ll have snow falling for two days while the Norwegian says one.

Yesterday evening I thought it would be very cold here because my brother living on an island by the sea had it much colder than here and so was a friend living by our biggest lake, Vänern. That never happened here, it was just the normal cold temperature so I feel like that was a sort of win for us here because it’s always much colder here during winter. We get it back when summer comes though because it’s always a couple degrees warmer here. An old garden enthusiast said it’s because of the big bog, it is so big that it makes its own miso climate. Big lakes and oceans evens out the temperatures while big bogs like this one do the opposite and so far I’ve never been able to prove him wrong 🙂

No mice in the box trap this morning but later in the day when I had let the monster down there, she sits outside and looks at me until I open the door so that she can walk down, I heard a rumble that can’t be anything else than she chasing a mouse.  I haven’t checked if I can find any victim but she usually eat up her victims so I’m not sure I would even find any signs of it.

I had to pick up a parcel in Gudhem today. I have a couple on the way and all have different delivery companies so I was a bit unsure what it was I was going to pick up 🙂 Today it was all the stories that the Grimm brothers had collected. All these stories comes from different origins and to get one story, like Cinderella, they had to combine several local stories to one. Some of those local stories were so bad, even for that time, that the brothers actually had to censor them 🙂 🙂 It’ll be interesting to see if they are anything different to what I read when I was growing up because those stories shouldn’t be read to children (but they were because I grew up in the stone ages 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) and if they were censored I can’t imagine how bad the original stories were 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I think I’ll start reading those stories when I have that tea ready 🙂

Have a great day!

More snow will come or perhaps not :-)

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Hunters were out in the forest this morning because it didn’t snow, they wouldn’t have if it had snowed they said 🙂 So I drove to the supermarket while they were out there. I actually woke up pretty late today, at least the last time 🙂 The dogs needed top go outside just before four am and afterwards we went back to bed for a while 🙂 I woke up well after eight am 🙂

The smaller roads were no fun to drive on but the big one to Skara was pretty good actually. The reason I drove today was because of snow warnings the coming days. Now when I look at the biggest weather sites they really can’t agree. The big Swedish one says snow and the same temperature as today (around -6C (21,2F) but the Norwegian one, the one I trust the most, says no snow but bitterly cold. I don’t want it even colder but then again I don’t want more snow either 🙂

Wild hogs had been working on the forest road before the hunters arrived 🙂

I used a big brush when I went out to remove all the snow in front and on the car. It was so fluffy that it only took a few minutes but the snow on the car had melted to a thick ice sheet.It was more or less impossible to remove that on the car roof but the ice on the windows was sort of fragile so I didn’t even have cold fingers when I was done 🙂

I’m so glad that our hunters are a bit lazy because instead of walking to where they are supposed to be they take their cars. To be honest I can understand them because it is so hard to walk on this fluffy and dry snow because nothing can get a good grip while walking in it. Anyway that helped me a lot when we finally could have a walk because the cars are so heavy that I could walk in the car tracks and actually get a grip. Only when walking on the road of course but still. I walked in their foot steps in the forest and that didn’t help at all 🙂 🙂 🙂

There were lots of tracks from mostly wild hogs and roe deer and the occasional fox as well but this weather make the animals stay where they are. I guess it’s just nice to get out and get fresh air and saying they’ll hunt is just a good excuse to get out of their homes 🙂 Well it is time for that last cup of tea for the day but I think I’ll instead have a last cup of coffee. Waking up so late as I did today sort of mess up my day, I don’t have a headache as I usually get when that happens but my brain is sort of a few seconds behind if You understand what I mean 🙂

Have a great day!