Category: Sowing and growing.

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.

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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 🙂 🙂 🙂

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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.

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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 🙂 🙂 🙂

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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.

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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.

DSC_0004 (2) — I have several small Loquat trees and I’ve planted one in my garden. It’s on the border to what it cane take here but since I have several so why not try. Normally one should wait to plant them until they are three years old, like I did with my Black Walnut but then again I have plenty 🙂

Have a great day!

The first potatoes are in the ground now.

May 29, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0002 (12) — I can barely see my gate during summer 🙂 I like it any day as long as it hasn’t rained. The slightest touch and all rainwater on those leafs will fall down on me 🙂 :-)

We’ve had such a nice day here, sunshine for half the day and it reached almost 18C (64,4F). Very little wind and the wind we had was lukewarm 🙂 Quite chilly in the morning (almost frost) though but with the sun shining it didn’t feel that bad anyway.

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I have continued to remove the lawn in my new potato patch and it does take much more time than one might think, especially since I want to remove as much soil from it as possible. I now have removed half the surface from grass and I’ve also put down the first potatoes. I know it’s good for my body to do things like this because moving my body is the only thing that actually keeps my rheumatism in place but I can tell You that it won’t feel that way for a couple of days from now 🙂 🙂 🙂 If the weather permits I will continue to remove the rest of the surface the coming days. After that I’ll have to do the same with the vegetable patch I’m planning 🙂

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Clouds are now covering the sky and every now and again I can hear some drizzle fall from the sky, not enough to actually call it a rain fall but I do like the sound it makes when hitting the leafs in the lilac hedge. Also so little that having an open window doesn’t even making it wet 🙂

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I’ve picked up the last plants from my cool cellar and turned off the lights until next autumn when I’ll move those plants back again. I’ve realized that I’ve sown loads of clementine kernels last autumn and most of those tiny plants have survived, both those who stayed in the kitchen during winter and those living in the cellar. Can’t say I can see any bigger difference in size between them but I guess that if it matters how they stay over winter I’ll most likely see the difference after this summer.

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It is time for a last cup of tea for the day. I’ve tried not tro fall asleep in front of the tv all day so I’m so tired now that I doubt that any ammount of tea or coffee would be able to keep me awake during the night 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

It’s raining, it’s pouring.

May 24, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

No photos from today. This is the beginning of a cherry plum tree 🙂

The day started nice but went downhill after that. It’s a bit chilly, the humidity is up to 94% and it is mostly raining. Sometimes it stops raining but not for especially long. The rain will continue more or less for at least five days. It seems that the Cuckoo bird I heard didn’t have a clue to what weather we’ll have this summer 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Thankfully the dogs refuse to take walks when it rains and I’m not complaining about that 🙂 🙂 Even the birds seems to think this is a bit much and it looks like most of them hide beneath the roof on my patio, so nice to get more poop on everything in there 🙂 🙂 I did however take advantage of this rain and I’ve spread lots of flower seeds on the lawn pieces I’ve placed over the stinging nettles. I do hope they grow large before the nettles manages to grow through it all.

Yesterday I woke up pretty grumpy, I can’t remember what I had dreamt but that grumpyness stayed all day. Today I woke up even more grumpy, still no idea what I had dreamt about and I’ve felt both grumpy and cranky all day 🙂 🙂 I do hope I dream about something funny tonight because the days get so slow when feeling grumpy 🙂 🙂 I once woke up in the middle of the night laughing like crazy, have no idea what I had dreamt about then either but I did feel very happy when I finally went back to sleep. I wish that could happen again because it felt just great!

Never a good sign when ants gather like this, there are most likely aphids hiding in those leafs.

b (149) — I’ve sown lots of these today.

We have a holiday on Thursday (Ascension Day) and I hope I have nothing to paint on Friday because if I haven’t I will go home early. They are so busy where I worked before so they’ll have to work and that sort of feels nice, for me that is 🙂

Have a great day!

Slow tv.

April 30, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

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We’ve had a rather wonderful day today. Sunny with the occasional cloud until the afternoon when more clouds arrived but it is still pretty nice and warm outside. Also the night was frost free, which is a bit odd since the sky was clear and usually clear nights this early in the year means nightly frost.

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DSC_0005 (15) — I wish the doe could have just stayed there but of course not. I did however manage to distract Alma so that she didn’t see it run away.

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We went out on our morning walk a bit later than normal, I did wake up by myself but that didn’t mean I wasn’t really tired all morning 🙂 They have started to show the great moose migration now so I watched that for a while (for those of You who don’t know what this is, it’s cameras stationed at the same place every year showing how moose migrate north when winter is over. We also see a lot of other animals of course and this is called slow tv), something they do every year and the fun thing is that I can hear the same kind of birds singing through the tv as I can if I open the door 🙂 🙂

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After that I’ve sown some more seeds, annuals outdoors because they’ll germinate when they feel it is the right time and some berry plant seeds that still need to stay indoors until we know the risk of night frost is over. I also dug up a Wisteria. I thought it died three winters ago but it resurrected last summer and grew terrible fast and slid up beneath the tiles on the roof. I really can’t have that so today I cut it down. I managed to get two big pieces of roots with a climbing stalk on each and thought why not plant them where they’ll do no harm?

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I planted one beside the crabapple tree with the big magpie nest. We call wisteria here for Blue Rain so I planted it beside the tree we call Gold Rain, The Laburnum. I could work all by myself without the dogs because my neighbors little daughter has her birthday today and lots of people would come. Since Albin and Alma really can’t behave, Albin would run up and down beside the fence huffing and puffing while Alma would start barking and then jump over the fence so she can bark a bit more before jumping back to star all over again 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I said that I’ll bring in the dogs while people will be arriving, my neighbors thought it was unnecessary because they all love dogs but I said that today none of us on this side of the fence would be the center of attention after all 🙂 🙂 🙂

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I think I’ll make myself a cup of tea and have some of my home made ice cream. First however I’ll give the dogs their food, they are standing beside me demanding it right now 🙂

Have a great day!!

Biting wind.

April 23, 2022 · Leave a comment ·

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The sun is shining, the sky is mostly blue and there’s an ice freezing wind there to destroy it all. At first it hit from south east so it was impossible to stay in the garden for more than a minute or two but now it has moved to blow from north so we can finally stay on the south side of the cottage without freezing.

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We stayed mostly in the forest on our morning walk today but we had to pass a couple of fields and of course we then met eight roe deer. I managed to stop Alma from seeing them but that didn’t stop her from shouting like crazy 🙂 It passed fairly quickly though and the rest of the walk she behaved reasonable well.Too bad I had to occupie her because I therefore couldn’t take any photos of the deer

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I sowed twenty kernels of corn in a small container about a month ago and they have all grown together, so today was the day I needed to do something about it. They are quite big now and that helped. I filled a bucket with water and after that I just put the entire lump with corn plants and soil in it. It took around an hour but finally the soil was so wet that I could separate them from each other so now I’ll just plant each and everyone of them in separate pots. Have no idea where I’ll place them because even though the pots are small they will need a lot of space 🙂

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Also it looks like Alme believes this is grass for her to eat, she tried to chew one of them but I managed to stop her 🙂 🙂 Perhaps I’ll place them in my cool cellar with the plant light. The cooler temperatures will slow down the growing but no dog will be able to chew them down 🙂 My brother’s cherry plum tree is in full bloom now, he lives by the coast. So I took a look at mine and it turns out that a few of its flowers also are open now. I wish it would calm down because frost and flowers aren’t a great thing if one want fruit and we can after all have frost at nights until at least June sixth.

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I better replant those corn plants and after that I think I’ll sow some cabbage and Broccolo. It looks like a green cauliflower but the taste is more like common broccoli. I’ve grown it before I moved from my old home town and I remember liking it a lot. Well I better get started or I’ll forget to do any of it 🙂

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Have a great day!