Category: Sowing and growing.

Not happy about it.

May 26, 2023 · 6 Comments ·

f (6) — Today the photos can come from today or any other day this week.

We’ve had a rather nice week over here sunny and warm but not too warm. The rain that they said would fall here, and it would be well over an inch, never arrived. I have no idea where it went instead though but none at work had gotten any. So instead I’ve been watering both the vegetable patch and potato patch. To be honest I’m not sure I really had to but at least those tiny seeds lie close to the surface and most likely liked the little help they got. The first potato leafs are now showing.

I planted this tulip two years ago and never saw anything of it. Turns out it shows up so late that all the higher flowers (and stinging nettles) grow up before it shows. I will move the few I have already tomorrow.

No idea what this really tiny flower is called.

We were called to a meeting at work first thing in the morning on Thursday and that’s never a good sign. Times are hard so they will now shut down those departments that gives little to no money and my job is of course one of those that will stop to excist. I won’t lose my job though but September first I’ll go back to my old department again and will start working evenings instead. Not happy about it but it’ll be fewer hours but slightly more in pay. Also we’ll get two hours more in compensation hours than if we would work normal day shift. Things can still change all depending on how things go in Ukraine and it can all go to h..l if the Republican party doesn’t do the responsible thing and allow the US to borrow more money.

I wanted to go home two hours early on Wednesday, no special reason just because I really just wanted to 🙂 No problem as long as nothing turns up where they need my help. So of course it did. I had to pick off maskings from things we had painted. So instead I could take those two hours on Thursday instead. Of course they then was supposed to paint the same things again and I would be needed there again, so instead I officially took two hours today. The thing was that the maskings never arrived before I was going home the normal time on Thursday anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂 Today however nothing could stop me, so I went to the store and bought what I needed for the weekend, drove home and passed the factory and it felt rather nice 🙂

Nova limped after being outside in the early morning but I couldn’t find any spot that seemed to hurt. She didn’t limp at all when I came home but I let her decide on where we should go on our walk. Normally she loves the longer route but today she chose to go to the bog instead. slightly shorter but mostly in the shade from the big trees in the forest Now she’s sleeping beside me and snores quite loud 🙂 🙂 🙂 She always does and I’m surprised that I don’t wake up because of it 🙂 I’ve had a neck pain for slightly over a week now and I just couldn’t figure out why, yesterday however I realized that it was because of Alma pulling the leash. She is very much better now than she was but every now and again she decides that no one should enjoy the walk and pulls the leash and is quite loud and whines a lot and the neck ache started after one of those days. Turns out that every time she rush ahead in a high speed and the leash it stretched my neck hurts like insane. That dog will kill me one day and she will eb happy while doing it 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It is time for a cup of tea and a few oatmeal cookies with chocolate drops in them 🙂 It is so far the only gluten free cookie that is edible because it has milk and butter in it. I’ve realized tyat lots of gluten free things also are vegan and vegans don’t eat anything that comes from animals, including honey for example. So now at least I know why everything taste really sad 🙂 🙂

A15397_004 — One from the Meopta Milona just so we remember what we’ve just left behind us 🙂

Have a great day!

The sunshine is really hot.

May 21, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

a (4) — Clematis *Propertius’. It has a weak but pleasant scent.

We were supposed to have a gray and dull day here with little to no sunshine so is anyone surprised when I say that we’ve mostly had sunshine all day? 🙂 🙂 🙂 21C (69,8F) but really hot in the sunshine. I even hesitated to take the dogs for a walk because of how hot it was. Albins fur is so short that I doubt it can regulate heat especially well, Nova is old and Alma starts panting as soon as I open the door before the walk 🙂 🙂 🙂 But we did take a short one i the forest where it’s mostly shadowy. Still they are now all sleeping on the floor beside me here on the upper floor. The windows are open and there’s a wind blowing so it feel almost chilly here now.

a (1) — 35 meters (much the same in yards) of this and I’m not happy about it but also too lazy to do anything about it 🙂

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c (6) — I got this one from my friend who owns a garden center. They didn’t have time enough to take care of it and bring it back to what it once was and was going to toss it away. I have the time and now new leafs are on the way. This is by the way a Calamodin. The fruits can be used for jam but aren’t that wonderful to eat as they are.

I’ve never seen as many flowers on my lilac hedge as there is this year. It’ll be horrible when they all open up but even worse when they wither away. It is too much work to remove it though so here I am complaining every spring when they open up 🙂 🙂 It will rain tonight they say, anything from light drizzle to heavy rain. They are guessing that we’ll get nothing up to 25 mm (an inch) of it during the night and early morning. They are also guessing that the warm weather will stay but one day or two the temperature might not reach 20C (68F). I can live with that 🙂

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I’m continuing to sow seeds and today it was mostly for flowers but I do have some more vegetables to sow but I want to see what of the seeds I’ve already sown will come up before I continue. Any bare spot will be filled with something new. I’m also pretty sure I won’t get any walnuts this year either, not a sign of “flowers” on my black walnut and the one I just planted barely has any branches or twigs at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 My Pawpaws looked fine until that rain/ hail and snowstorm passed by but now they look dead. There will be new leafs some time during the summer but it is annoying and that will make it harder for them to survive next winter if it is a tougher one.

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So back to work tomorrow since I didn’t even get one number right on the lottery ticket 🙂 🙂 🙂 The laundry is done and so is dinner at work for next week. I’ll only have to add baked beans and fried eggs. I I didn’t want to fry eggs today for something that won’t be eaten until next Friday and I don’t know how fried eggs make it if they are frozen.

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Have a great day!

Long weekend.

May 19, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I’m having a long weekend and the weather is quite wonderful. Yesterday was a bit chilly even though the sun shone most parts of the day but the cold feeling from the day before when we had thunder, rain, hailstorms and snow falling really didn’t want to leave. Today it was gone though, no wind, sunshine, birds singing and the first annoying flies have arrived 🙂 🙂 It almost feels like summer.

We saw this fox in the field just beside a little grove, he was looking towards the grove and didn’t notice us at first.

When he did he didn’t seems to care about us at all. It’s most likely a male fox hunting food for all the cubs he’s a father to now. He can have several litters but will help with feeding them all and will also stay long enough to play with them every day.

Then he scratched himself a bit while we were leaving. As soon as we had started to walk away he ran away towards the creek.

Today I was expecting a package. Normally they just leave it outside my door but since it weighed more than 20 Kg (44 pound) I for some reason had to stay at home to get it. No problem since I had taken the day off anyway. My cottage can be seen very clearly when one drives down the slope but still the postal service employees can’t find my cottage!! I was standing by my gate looking at the driver passing my cottage, passing my neighbors cottage and stopping just before she reached the beekeepers cottage. There she stood for at least five minutes while I was shouting towards her and jumping and waving my hands. Turns out that she had called a college to ask for where I lived. Turns out that it helps to threaten to call the police if they missed me again 🙂 🙂 🙂

He most likely knew that this doe was in the grove close to her youngling. she would have defended the young one so unless the fox had been desperate he wouldn’t try and take it as long as she was close.

I’ve done one set of laundry today, all my work t-shirts. I’ve also mowed the lawn, the grass started to grow way too fast for my liking so I did it today, normally I do it on Saturdays or more often on Sundays. I have an electric mower, not a battery driven one, they just cost way too much and one need two batteries (and the batteries are insanely expensive) even to mow a small garden as mine is. So instead I have a long cord, well actually I have plenty of shorter ones and it works fine as long as I plan how to mow so I don’t have to cross the cord risking to cut it off 🙂 🙂 Instead I tend to step on is to the cord gets unplugged. I always sound as if i planned that stop by saying to my dogs why have You put that thing there 🙂 🙂 🙂

All I have left to do today, because the dogs and I had our pancake Sunday already today 🙂 is to bake two loafs of bread. I’m almost out of hard bread and I haven’t had any other kind of bread for several days, I must admit that I’ve been way too lazy to bake and the store bought ones are just gross. Turns out that my work friends wife just found out that she too most likely is gluten intolerant, she’s just a few years younger than me. So I told my work friend who I think bought everything gluten free he could find, that she should bake her own bread because she will not like the one she can buy unless she loves toast insanely much 🙂 🙂 I tried two new gluten free cookie variants I found in the store, they were just as awful as all other cookies I’ve bought. So so far there’s only one edible cookie and it’s an oatmeal cookie with chocolate chips in it.

It’s time to give the dogs their dinner and after that a walk in the forest and then baking those breads. I’ll sow something as well, most likely broccolo (a sort of in between broccoli and cauliflower) Looks more like a greenish cauliflower but tastes more like broccoli, a good thing since I really don’t like cauliflower 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

So we won.

May 14, 2023 · 6 Comments ·

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day!

This year might become a great berry and fruit year.

May 12, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

a (2) — My plum tree (Czar) is in bloom. The risk of frost at night is minimal so I think it’ll actually give plums this year 🙂

We’ve had a rather nice weather this week. Pretty warm, up to and over 25C (77F). The wind has been rather persistent but lukewarm most of the time but now it seems to have calmed down a bit. I’ve mostly been able to see the sun this week but yesterday and today I’ve been “forced” to work inside the factory. Yesterday was quite awful but today I had an apprentice when I learned her what to do with the big washing machine before the weekend starts. She did most of the work and I said great work 🙂

a (6) — The Sloe, which I’m trying to get rid of flowers too.

The Juneberry trees/bushes are opening up as well.

We had the annual road association meeting on Wednesday and a few new people actually came!! and all behaved really well. The meeting itself didn’t take long, it was the coffee drinking, cookie eating and chatting after that made the meeting quite long 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hadn’t told anyone that I can’t eat gluten but since the one bringing cookies to the meeting have a work friend, who also just recently discovered that she can’t eat gluten, she thought it would be best to bring something gluten free to the meeting, just in case 🙂 It was of course something I’m not especially fond of but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her that so I ate two of them just because 🙂 🙂 🙂 and she also brought pear juice just in case someone couldn’t drink coffee, which I hadn’t told anyone either 🙂 🙂 I do like pear juice though 🙂

Old variety of tulip. Today one mostly see tulips as annuals since they are so hard driven that they usually don’t survive till next year. These however comes back every year.

I’m planning on putting down the potatoes in the ground tomorrow and perhaps sow some lettuce and other vegetables that like and cane take cooler weather. The temperatures will drop some next week and we might even get some rain they say. At the meeting everyone was complaining about how dry it is now, everyone but me 🙂 I told them that I just had planted a walnut tree and a cherry bush and the ground wasn’t dry at all. All water in the ground runs down via my garden so I’m the last one that actually will notice if we’re having a drought 🙂

a (15) — This one will, believe it or not, become really beautiful. Suddenly it will be totally filled.

a (16) — Like this one, a filled Yellow wood anemone.

a (17) — We call this one Sulphur anemone, a natural hybrid between the white and yellow wood anemone. I have both so it’s no surprise this one popped up 🙂

a (18) — This is the Yellow wood anemone, quite much deeper in color.

It is time for a cup of tea even though it is after 4 pm, The dogs have woken me up before 4 am every morning so I’m pretty sure that no ammount of tea will be able to keep me awake tonight 🙂 🙂 I’ll also have the bedroom windo open all night for the first time this year 🙂

Nanking cherry. I unfortunately only had one bush and this needs two different ones to give berries. So I’ve bought another one but that one won’t flower until next spring.

a (20) — I have a suspicion this flower grows on a ground stem that survived when my old plum tree died, that is called St Julien. Gives small oval yellow plums that are quite tasty.

Eight pots with at least six new Apricot trees 🙂 I had the kernels (well the seed inside) in the fridge during winter and they are growing quite fast now. These kernels came from a red skinned variety of apricots.

Have a great day!

Finally some warm weather.

May 7, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Have a great day!

White wood anemone.

A day of relaxation :-)

December 26, 2022 · 6 Comments ·

a (2) — Older photos today, no snow left and no photos taken since we couldn’t take any walk in the forest while we had daylight.

Today has been a day of relaxation, well the previous ones as well but today we took an extra long nap after lunch. The hunters were out for the most part of the day when we still had daylight and it has also rained quite a lot so none of the dogs were outside for any longer period of time. I could hear the hunting dogs every time I went outdoors so I guess they never met any of the potential wolves out there.

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I was planning on going to the grocery store tomorrow but we’ll have sunshine so I’ll postpone it until Wednesday instead (it looks like the rest of the week will be mostly rainy here, I don’t mind but it would be nice if we could have some sunshine and above freezing now when I have my vacation). I really don’t need that much but seeds for the birds are running low and I forgot to buy gingerbread last week so I haven’t had any this entire christmas, to be honest I haven’t eaten more than a couple this entire December so I feel that is one thing I need to correct 🙂 I’ll also buy some julmust, haven’t had much of that either.

a (11)

It’s the season to start thinking of seeds again. Either one buy seeds for perennials that needs a winter to start germinating or buy those vegetable seeds one want to grow this summer. I wasn’t that successful with peas but I did get a lot of beans. My white cabbage never became bigger than a tennis ball so I’ll sow some other kind instead. The lettuce however grew better than expected but then again lettuce isn’t especially hard to grow, they don’t like hot summers so spring or early autumn usually works perfectly. So far my Pawpaws look living and healthy and I do hope that if winter decides to come back again that it at least stays just below freezing and not much lower, they are still really small and need a few years before they manages our rather long dark period during winter.

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It’s time to get something to eat and then see if there’s anything worth watching on tv. I don’t dare to fall asleep again because I’m pretty sure that would make it impossible to fall asleep later tonight 🙂

Have a good continuing of the yule!

The heat from south will reach us after all, they think.

June 21, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

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This was a good day to have off from work, the sun has been shining all day and it’s been around 23C (73,4F). The winds have been rather strong so that makes it feel a bit cooler. The weather predictions have varied quite a lot about the coming week and at the moment it seems as if we’ll get up to 30C (86F) during the weekend. I’m not happy about that but there’s nothing I can do about it.

DSC_0004 (11) — For someone who really doesn’t like roses I sure have a lot of them 🙂

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A lot of people will love it though since we celebrate midsummer this weekend. Many will go to the beach, others will barbecue and some will start forest fires because they can’t use their brains and understand that open fires when everything is dry and hot aren’t such good ideas 🙂 🙂 🙂 We really should celebrate it today though since it is summer solstice now. Then again we won’t notice any change in daylight anyway since several days now are more or less just as long. Today the sun rose at 4 am and it will set at 10:16 pm. The only difference to Friday will be that the sun rise one minute later 🙂

DSC_0020 (9) — The giant rose has just opened its first flower. It is later than the common Dogrose and a bit deeper in color.

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I stopped at my favorite garden center on my way home and bought a couple of plants, two melon plants since the ones I have really doesn’t seem to grow at all and one Kiwi vine. It isn’t really hardy enough to grow here, close but no cigarr as they say but I’ll try and protect it from the worst cold if winter gets bad. That was bad luck for You though because I couldn’t find any parking spots in the shade so I couldn’t stop and take any photos for You and instead I had to drive home again. Well I’ll most likely take trip up there again during my vacation.

DSC_0015 (9) — Tiny caterpillars have eaten almost all leafs on my gooseberry bushes. No bigger harm for the bush since they’ll grow new leafs and they never touch the berries.

DSC_0018 (10) — My fig tree was hit by the frost a month or so ago and finally it grows new leafs again.

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DSC_0014 (10) — Magpies found it funny to rip up the beans that had started to grow and just leave them on the ground so now I’ve covered most of the vegetable patch.

So tomorrow it’s back to work but only for two days since we don’t work on Friday. Midsummer is almost as big as christmas here and anyone who doesn’t have to work will not work.

Have a great day!

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I think it hoped we wouldn’t see it :-)

June 19, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

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It hasn’t been as nice as they said it would be today but it has still been pretty nice weather anyway. A bit on the chilly side as soon as the clouds covered the sky. Those times were perfect to take naps on 🙂

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It is always interesting to watch how they change the weather predictions every day. Yesterday for instance they showed that we were going to get pretty unstable weather, lower temperatures and anything from a bit of rain to loads of it. Today they show that we’ll have pretty nice weather, just above 20C (68F) but no rain what so ever. It still looks though as the heat they have down in Europe won’t reach us but that can change any minute since it as usual doesn’t look as if they know what they’re doing 🙂 🙂 🙂

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As You all know I get my water from a neighbor around 100 meters (much the same in yards) away, if You draw a straight line between us. However the owner of the land between us back when they put down that pipe refuse to let them put it down the straight way, instead it takes a long detour so it is perhaps three times as long 🙂 🙂 🙂 No problem really to be honest and to be even more honest I doubt that anyone now days actually know where that pipe is placed 🙂 🙂 🙂 Anyway, I’m the only one using that water now days but the one having the pump on his property is kind enough to still care for the filter so I didn’t have to buy a new one and install it here.

DSC_0019 (11) — The path down to the island in the bog where we always walk. If the dogs and I don’t walk there the grass grows high, we are the only ones ever walking there except during hunting season.

DSC_0020 (8) — The same on the path to the peninsula. The cranes are nesting there now so we don’t walk down there until the younglings can fly away.

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Every time he fixes anything with that filter though some of what has been caught in that filter ends up in the pipe, can’t be helped and back in the days when we both used that water I never noticed anything because he then pour out that water into his garden through his garden hose. He can’t do that any more since he now have communal water and those water taps were closed. Now days it all comes to me 🙂 🙂 🙂 He always tells me when this is about to happen but I don’t use that much water and the pipes are soo long so I actually never can guess when it will arrive over here 🙂 🙂 🙂 It did that last Monday and as worst it looked like I was pouring out very strong tea from my taps 🙂 🙂 🙂

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There’s nothing wrong with the water, it is mostly rust and some silt but it really looks bad 🙂 So it has been a good thing that I’ve sowed a lot of seeds and that we didn’t get that much rain because to get rid of it and to get back my clean water I’ve watered a lot 🙂 In between when I have needed water I’ve just filtered it through thick paper but it is really nice to just be able to use the water out from the tap again 🙂 The seeds I’ve sown are finally showing up in my vegetable patch. I had to wait for them to so I then knew exactly where those plants were and how many that showed up in case I needed to sow again. As soon as the seeds I sowed today shows up I’ll be able to cover the soil with grass from the lawn mower.

DSC_0033 (6) - 2 — I think it hoped that we wouldn’t see it 🙂 Well the dogs didn’t but I did. It has a tiny pine cone in its mouth 🙂

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I’ll go back to work tomorrow. I can’t say I feel back to normal but I don’t have any fewer now. It’ll be a short week anyway. Friday’s off since we’ll celebrate midsummer and I’ll be at the hospital for my twenty years inspection of my right hip on Tuesday. I guess I’ll go back next year for the tenth (really eleventh) year inspection of my left hip. I wonder why they couldn’t do both at the same time, it would just take five more minutes to be honest. It really doesn’t matter, I’ll always enjoy a day off from work 🙂

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Have a great day!

Neither Albin nor Alma screamed??!!

June 18, 2022 · Leave a comment ·

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We did get rain last night, I woke up at some time hearing a shower passing by. We didn’t get especially much though, just enough so I won’t have to water the patches today. I still have some sowing to do so I’ll do that tomorrow morning I think.

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We weren’t supposed to have any sunshine this morning but the clouds would go away some time before noon. So I wasn’t the least surprised that the sun shone through big patches of cloud free sky already in the early morning 🙂 🙂 We had breakfast before we went out on our walk so the temperature was above 10C (50F) which means the flies are flying around. We have a really strong wind blowing though so I hoped it would keep the flies away. No it didn’t. I didn’t want to walk down to the creek because horse flies reign there at the moment so we went in to the forest instead.

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We swapped horse flies to forest flies and mosquitoes instead. The forest flies are still a bit shy so they just circles around the head and don’t aim for ears and nostrils so the walk was quite pleasant. We walked to an opening in the forest where they cut down the trees a few years ago. We stopped just where it opens up and the dogs were quite interested in something out there. If it hadn’t been for my tele photo lens starting to argue about where to focus I would now have been able to show You photos of adorable striped piglets.

DSC_0027 (4) — She isn’t that big thankfully, perhaps 50 kg (around 104 pounds ).

The lens calmed down so that I at least could take photos of one of the sows. She had her eyes on us all the time and I think she didn’t care about us especially much because both Albin and Alma were quiet???!!! So we stood there for a minute or so but since I know wild hogs are fast and the boar must be around somewhere we slowly turned around and went back homewards. I have by the way bought another lens. I did it as soon as we came home. I went out to check our EBay, called Tradera and found a used Tamron telephoto lens. It has reasonable good reviews so I’m hoping for the best.

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My neighbor looked out the window when we were on our way out to the forest and I asked how she (well they because they are a family after all) was doing. Turns out that she got sick on Tuesday, her daughter just after and her fiance yesterday. All the symptoms are the same except for her, she has lost her sense of smell and taste. Could be corona but it can just as well be a normal influensa. I do feel better today even though I do cough a lot from time to time. I have very little energy so I’ll skip the lawn mowing until that returns.

DSC_0039 (4) — I may not have poppies around my garage but I do have buttercups, dog biscuits and stinging nettles 🙂 🙂 🙂

We’ve just had our dinner, well I had my dinner and the dogs had lots of my french fries :-). They’ll get their food as soon as I’m done here. I think I should have some dessert, ice cream 🙂 The banana split ice cream I bought is ok, too much chocolate sauce on it for my taste. It’s strange, I really like chocolate but have problems with chocolate sauce, it’s just sticky and way too sweet 🙂

f (5) — Flag Iris? The first one to open up.

f (9) — The Dog rose will soon be almost pink. The rose behind will open up a bit later. It is now well over 4 meters high (much the same in yards).

Have a great day!

I didn’t expect that :-)

June 17, 2022 · 6 Comments ·

a (2) — Took this when I woke up, view from where I have my computer.

We’e had a rather nice day again, mostly sunny till afternoon arrived but now a sheet of grey clouds cover the sky. It’s just above 20C (68F) with a kind lukewarm wind blowing. I’ve had the kitchen door open since early morning so the dogs have been able to go out and in as they’ve pleased.

b (1) — Took this and the next one a few minutes later when the sun just had started to rise above the tree line and with another camera.

b (5)

We had our first walk this week, I finally felt enough well to do that. The sun was shining and the temperature well below 10C (50F), so none of the flies annoyed or bit us. Yes the fly season has started. Still mostly biting flies and they are annoying enough but still not as many as the overly friendly forest flies who seems to have only one wish in life, to take a look inside our ears and nostrils 🙂 🙂 🙂

b (10)

I bought a garden hose yesterday and today I used it to water my now showing vegetable plants and potato plants. I also now have the cleanest kitchen floors in the world, why You might ask? Well because the hose I bought turned out to be a dripping hose. It has loads of tiny holes in it so that while I water where I want to the hose also water gently where I place it, like in my kitchen 🙂 🙂 🙂

b (11) — We only walked down to the creek and turned back again. The grass is filled with dew and most likely with ticks as well.

b (15)

The thought behind it is that if one place it strategically in the vegetable patch (or inside a green house) one just plug the end of it and the water will then gently drip out of the hose, a perfect way to not waste water. So now I really need to buy a new hose long enough so I just put this “leaking” hose in the two patches and let it slowly water the ground. To be honest not what I had planned but kind of right anyway. This time I think I’ll order the hose online. To be honest I also totally miscalculated how long the hose needed to be and it should have been at least twice as long as I thought 🙂 🙂 🙂

b (20)

I also bought a toy for the dogs, well at least Alma and Albin. Nova doesn’t play that much any longer. It’s a big Cotton? rope. They had fun with it for around five minutes and then they left it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is still fun if I throw it up in the air and one of them catch it. Then they play with it for five more minutes 🙂 🙂 🙂 Those dogs don’t seem to be the toy kind of dogs, they’re more in to chewing bones and preferable hard ones that will take a year or so to chew through.

b (24)

Rain is on the way and for once I really hope we’ll get lots of it. The creeks is getting narrower and narrower and the swamp behind my garage is no more. Ok we’ll get fewer mosquitoes if it is dry but we’ve gotten unusually little rain this spring and early summer so the vegetation really needs it. Back in the days June, July and August were the most rainy months we had. Still it’s much better than down south in Europe, It isn’t that nice in big parts of the US either to be honest. It’s time for something to eat and perhaps a cup of tea.

Blue Irises are in bloom in my root zone.

Grapevine flowers aren’t pretty to be honest 🙂

Have a great day!

If You ever are about to buy a new garden hose, don’t buy this black one 🙂 🙂 🙂

Finally I have the right tree :-)

June 7, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

a (1)

So the weather prognosis said we should get rain from very early morning to late night today but it didn’t start until after 5 pm. Mostly drizzle but one heavy shower has passed by just now. Thunder is also in the neighborhood but it doesn’t seem to come any closer at the moment.

a (9)

I was surprised by getting two packages today. The first one I was expecting, it was the anti fungal thing I’ll use against peach leave curl. A disease that always hit peaches and slowly kills the tree. I hope this will help my peach tree to survive. I can’t understand how the first wild peaches (there is no wild peach any longer and they don’t seem to really know from where this fruit first came) survived at all but then again we’ve most likely meddled with these trees so much that they no longer can survive without our help.

a (12) — Three times I tried to get the all three dogs too look at me, three times I failed 🙂 🙂

a (13)

The other package wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow but I’m glad it did come today. I finally have my apricot tree 🙂 They had delivered it to my entrance. The odd thing is that they refused to do so when the first tree (which is the peach tree I now have) because the package was too high. This package was exactly the same hight but this time there was no problem at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 So now I need to figure out where to place it since the peach tree now stands in the spot where I was supposed to have my apricot tree 🙂 🙂

a (18)

So today was back to work after the long holiday and I’ve been painting all day long. I had a chat with a higher up person about what I thought about Fridays events and I really can’t write anything about it here but I did think that I might be forced to have a conversation about it with the one planning it 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I didn’t but I do hope they think about the next time they want to do something similar. I won’t go because I said that that would never happen again 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (28)

It is time to go downstairs again. I feel like a cup of tea might be in place. I have a head ache so I hope that a cup of tea will solve that. I’m really tired now as well so I doubt that a late cup of tea will keep me up tonight. It doesn’t look like the thunder will come any closer though. I’ve always wondered what I should do with my electrical toilet. Should I keep it plugged in or do like I do with almost all other electrical things, unplug it? It has happened that the lightning has come out into my cottage but that was before they dug down all the cables. It would be good to know though.

DSC_0002 (2) — My vegetable patch. It does look much smaller than it actually is.

DSC_0001 (1) — I left all the removed lawn by the fence side. I’m thinking of perhaps just arrange them in a nicer way and to keep them all there. It would become a wind break when eastern winds blow.

Have a great day!