Category: Spring.

Cataract in my right eye.

March 16, 2024 · 2 Comments ·

It’s snowing outside, still just tiny flakes but I’ve seen photos taken not far from here where they are much bigger. It has rained on and off all day and now when the temperature is dropping it turns to snow instead. Tomorrow will be sunny they say but above freezing temperatures (barely) so hopefully it will all melt away quickly.

More and more Cranes are arriving to the lake and today the nesting couple nesting closest to my cottage arrived, they started trumpeting loudly when they landed in the cow pasture on the other side of the gravel road. I know it’s too early to say winter won’t make a come back but those trumpeting Cranes made it easier to actually believe it won’t 🙂

I had an appointment with my optician yesterday, I need new glasses and they always do a eye health check when I’m there. Turns out I have cataract in my right eye. I have actually suspected something was going on, sometimes I feel like I have something in the eye that sort of make my eye sight even less good. He said that this can go quickly, six months and I’ll need a new lens or it can stay like this until the day I die, feels good that he could narrow it down that much 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I guess I’ll call my health center to see what to do next.

I’m not surprised because lots of people in my family have had it so I guess I would be the next in line. Two pair of glasses, progressive, and now $ 520 US poorer 🙂 It’s almost that I look forward to new lenses in the eye, just imagine how nice it would be to not having to wear glasses all the time, if for no other reason that it will be much cheaper 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll pick them up on Maundy Thursday. She asked when in the day I would like to be there and I said that any time that I can leave work but not having to go back again that day, so I’ll be there just after noon 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Winter weather again.

March 10, 2024 · Leave a comment ·

So the Swedish rounds of the Eurovision Song Contest is over for this year. Two Norwegian brothers, twins, won this year and their win was really big. Not my cup of tea but they can sing without taking a single false tune, can dance and seems to be genuinely nice guys so I’m pretty sure they’ll end up amongst the top five when the Final is in May here in Sweden. Malmö is hosting, our third biggest city just opposite Copenhagen in Denmark. My favorite came second and is very different to the winner but both the international jury and we Swedes wanted the twins to win and when both agree we usually end up amongst the top five.

I doubt we’ll win because down in Europe they’ve come to dislike our songs just because we tend to end up amongst the top five 🙂 🙂 🙂 We have after all now won the whole shebang seven times. Only Ireland has done that before. The weather has been indoor weather for two days now, cold, windy and some snow falling. Ok the snowfall was so tiny and so were the flakes that it was hardly noticiable on the ground but it was annoying anyway 🙂

I stayed home from work last Thursday and Friday because of an accident, nothing serious happened to me, bruising and a scrape. We were lifting things weighing 44Kg (97 pound) and we do that with a magnet. This thing is flat on the side I stood and has a sort of sharp edge all around. I was prepared with hooks when it was high enough to be hanged on the chain that transports the thing through the factory. Suddenly the magnet came loose and the thing fell down. I was hit on my right hand, then it hit my left knee, scraped my right shin and had it come just a half centimeter (a fifth of an inch) it would have cut off my toes on the right foot. Now it landed on the toe-cap instead so I didn’t realize that until I tried to walk away 🙂 🙂 🙂

No serious injury but I have been fairly sour until now. It’s still a bit tender but nothing worse. Even though it was very unlucky to be hit I did have luck with the weather those two days, no wind, sunny and warm enough to have the kitchen door open all day 🙂 But as I said today and yesterday were quite different. Winter jacket on and I should have worn mittens because the wind made it so cold that I couldn’t feel my fingers when we came home again this morning 🙂

I’ll be warmer again in a couple of days and I think the Cranes will arrive with the warmer weather and better winds. I’ve seen a few circling around high up in the air but that’s it. Lots of geese and swans here now though plus all the smaller birds already singing their spring songs. Still plenty of birds by the feeders though, especially many forest birds because they are now thinning out the trees, they’ll only take the biggest trees and leave the rest but before they started they also cut down almost all those smaller trees and bushes where the smaller birds nests and find food. We’ll I’ll continue to feed them for as long as they come here.

Have a great day!

Grey and dull and rain.

March 3, 2024 · Leave a comment ·

Warmer than they guessed but also more rain, so we have mostly been indoors after our morning walk. It rained when we went out as well, sort of intense drizzle or light spring rain, I decided to only wear a hoodie and not the winter jacket so I was happy when Nova decided that we should walk in the forest today 🙂

They are still cutting down trees in there so the clean road was anything but today. Even though horses are used instead of heavy machines the ground, now saturated with water still gets worn down pretty bad. The grass will grow back fast as soon as spring springs for real though but at the moment we all get muddy while walking there.

I’ve done my chores mor or less today. I’ve done the laundry and is baking a bread at the moment and soon I’ll do a meat sauce so I’ll have something to eat at work next week, I didn’t win the lottery so I will have to keep on working 🙂 I’ll just add rice nudels each day and I can boil them while giving the dogs their breakfast 🙂

I’ve had this cold coming and going since christmas and it was back again this week. No fever to be honest but sour throat, runny nose, either coughing or sneezing and a tiredness that never goes away. We are plenty to have it and it is so annoying. Not enough fever to not go to work but not feeling good enough to go to work 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s a damned if You do, damned if You don’t feeling to it 🙂

I don’t mind but I’m pretty sure this will be a nasty mosquito year.

The sun will of course show itself on Monday and Tuesday but then again we’ll get snow on Wednesday. It’ll be warm enough so the snow will melt away unless it comes at night because nights will stay cold. It feels like this weather is too good (despite the grey and dull weather) to be true. It is after all only the beginning of March yet and back in the days we could have winter here until late April and if it was really bad in to early May. I don’t miss those winters at all to be honest 🙂 🙂 I heard that California might get up to three yards of snow up in the high mountains today, that’ll be fun when it melts.

I think this is a Coal tit. there are two other tits that looks almost identical though.

Have a great day!

Not the nicest of weather but it is at least not cold :-)

March 2, 2024 · Leave a comment ·

It isn’t the nicest of weather but it is warmish and most of the day not especially windy. The wind comes and goes and in between it’s quite calm. It’s mostly slightly misty or misty rain but every now and again rain has passed by and we haven’t even been close to sunshine. They said it would be well over 10C (50F) tomorrow but suddenly it has dropped to around 5C (41F), I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t drop down below 0C (32F).

I did hear some cranes last weekend but none after that, lots of geese and swans though but no cranes. I can hear lots of owls at nights too and every now and again foxes scream, I won’t call it barking because it sounds more like a scream 🙂 Meteorologically (when the temperature is above 0C (32F) all the time for seven days in a row) it’s for once spring at the same time we normally call this spring. It’s usually not the case up here in the north where winter, at least back in the days, could last until the end of April. I don’t miss those days at all 🙂

Lots of birds are not only tweeting but singing spring songs as well here now and today I saw the first Lapwings in the fields 🙂 I only saw two here last spring and after that they vanished, it used to be loads here all summer long but something has happened, no one at work saw any after last spring either. I do hope that it just was a temporary dip in their population. We’ll have fewer birds around here this spring because they have thinned out parts of the forest, both big pines and spruces but mostly all the under vegetation that is so important for all the other animals, You know the ones that would have taken care of all the pests that now will have a free entry to attack anything that’s left, like the bark beetle that kills spruces. Why do they never learn?

Tonight it’s the fourth semi final in the Swedish parts of the European Song Contest. I must say that I’ve never heard this much crap in my life before 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s so obvious what songs they want to go to the final because the rest are so bad that it’s cringy 🙂 🙂 🙂 One of the singers wants to stay anonymous because she normally sing quite dirty texts and she calls herself Fröken snusk (Miss Filth). Well since this is mostly a family show she actually for once had a song that wasn’t directly filthy 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tonight we’ll have Norwegian twins (around 18-19 years old) competing and even though it isn’t what I would listen to I still know it will be something good, they would never risk their reputation with something crappy 🙂

Besides this very little has happened here at home. Times are tough at work though, two more has been given notice about losing their jobs (it’s worse in the neighbor factories though). Over here no one is fired on the spot, we have at least one months notice and people like me who have worked in the same place for over ten years have six months before losing the job, so much can still happen for those having to leave in two months. The inflation is finally under control and they say the interest rate will start to drop down as well and when that happens people will start to buy things again 🙂

The morning shift is just around to take over 🙂

It is time to prepare for the show and hope that at least the Norwegian twins has a good song 🙂 🙂 🙂

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!

Buzy morning.

May 13, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

I woke up pretty early (4:20 am), well I was woken up pretty early by the dogs. With my bedroom window open they now hear everything that happens outside and obviously they then need to go outside to check it out 🙂 🙂 If the window had been closed they would hear something and then they obviously would have to go outside and check what it was anyway so there’s no way I can win from now on 🙂 🙂

We had our breakfast and then we went out on our morning walk. Alma did behave pretty well even if two hares around 200 meters (much the same in yards) away ran around some and made her a bit crazy 🙂 Also there was this squirrel that caught her interest but she could just hear it so she lost interest quite fast. When we had come home again I brought out all the seed potatoes. I have bought two different ones, the most disease resistent I could find, and one kilo ( around two pound) of each. I also had a few that were green last autumn so I had saved those as well.

There were some old garden tools left when I moved here 23 years ago. I think this one was a sort of multi tool with a rake on one side but smooth on the two other. I use it for when planting potatoes.

One net was already in the ground when I remembered to take this photo. The ones in the egg carton are green potatoes from last year.

This is the “harvest” 🙂 of sprouts that broke off and a couple from the green ones as well and two tiny from last year that had way too long sprouts to be easily planted in the ground.

I don’t have much soil at home so I had to plant too many sprouts in each pot/ bucket. I’ll show the result in the autumn 🙂

When one buy seed potatoes, at least over here, they always comes in a net bag. Since they always arrive (if one buy them online as I did) too early the sprouts then start to grow through the net and many will of course break off from the potato. So when I had put down all the potatoes in the ground I then had lots of sprouts that had broken off. So I fixed a bucket and three pots and planted the sprouts there. It’ll take a bit longer time to get potatoes but there will be potatoes. Last year I harvested enough of them in one bucket to last for an entire weeks dinners.

After that I mowed the lawn. I can’t say that it had grown an awful lot but some spots were worse than others. There was actually very little grass growing at the place where all the thorny bushes and roses grew but instead shoots had started to popping up from the ground instead. I really can’t skip mowing there because otherwise all those thorny bushes will grow up again. Yesterday I realized that stack ants had a nest in my compost so I had to poison them. Stack ants and all kinds of red ants are really aggressive and their sting is pretty nasty so if I hadn’t done that it would have been impossible to be in my garden at all. Looks like I managed to do the job because I can’t find a single ant there now. I’m sorry about the ants but it was them or us this time.

Tonight is the big finale in the Eurovision Song Contest and as I’ve told You our song is the huge favorite. Finland is the second favorite and then France. I’ve heard the Finnish one and I can’t understand why it is so popular, I guess I’m getting old 🙂

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.

I’m ready for the vegetable season.

May 6, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

Flowering Bog myrtle (Sweet gale). Smells really nice.

We’ve had a really nice day here, it would have been wonderful if it hadn’t been for the pretty cold night and sometimes the wind being a bit too chilly. To be honest it was warm enough to have the kitchen door open all day and the little wind that actually reached the garden helped when I worked in the vegetable patch and potato patch. The vegetable patch mostly only had grass that I needed to remove but the potato patch also had dandelions, greater celandine, a few small elder bushes, wild raspberry bushes and that red leafed oxalis one can buy as a potted plant, usually have yellow flowers and really is a spreader. Many oxalis can be used in food but this one isn’t one of those but I musty admit that amongst weeds it’s quite beautiful.

I checked so that there were no bees visiting the dandelions before I removed them. There are plenty more dandelions in the lawn anyway so bees of all kinds won’t be hungry 🙂

The vegetable patch were much easier to clean out even though it’s almost twice the size.

The box is almost falling apart and I think I won’t have another there next summer.

I’m happy to say that today was one of those days when Alma behaved pretty good even though two Roe deer ran in front of her eyes and she even noticed a hare in a field without going insane. She did however almost fall of the entrance stairs and pulling me with her when we went out for our afternoon walk. I wonder if I should put on her harness when we’re not taking any walks because as soon as I put that one on she starts to tremble, panting and whining a lot. If I open the door and she doesn’t have it on she behaves like any other dog. When we start walking and I can keep her reasonable calm the first two hundred meters the rest of the walk usually works rather well. If not it’s horrible for both of us. She has become much better though, now days I can actually hear the birds sing, I couldn’t do that from the day she arrived until some time in the middle of the winter that just passed 🙂 🙂 🙂

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They are finally putting more gravel on the road outside our cottages 🙂 The “big” road in the village belongs to the village and all of us are responsible for it but the roads leading from it are private roads and are supposed to be taken care of us who live along them. The problem is that it is timber lorries that destroys it so therefore it’s the forest owners responsibility to keep it in good shape. This winter was warm and the road was soft so now we have huge holes in it and the forest owners have been no where to find but finally one of them said he’s taking care of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve done what I have been able to to fix the holes outside my cottage but that doesn’t help when a new lorry arrives and just makes it worse again, also I live at the lowest point of the road so all water runs down to me and sometimes I have to wade in water when I’m trying to go out from my garden (well wading is a bit much but there’s at least 5 cm (2 inches of standing water there, five meters (much the same in yards) wide) 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It’s the finale in the Eurovision Song Contest next Saturday. To be honest they have been really quiet about it so I didn’t know until a few days ago. Our song is the absolute favorite an it is Loreen, who already have won this with the song Euforia, who sings for us. The music isn’t that much different than when she won the last time but I can’t for my life hear what she’s singing 🙂 🙂 I’m not sure if anyone actually can hear that but she’s like always very dramatic in her performance so I guess that’s what they fall for. I must admit that even if I can’t hear what she sings it still was the only song that should win, the rest were actually total crap and probably the worst I’ve heard in years 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

A15398_008 — One from the Agfa Ambiflex.

It’s greening up :-)

May 5, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

The week has been mostly sunny but with a nasty cold wind from north. Also well below 0C (32F) every morning. Most days though the sun has melted away most of the ice on the car so it was only this morning I had to use the ice scraper again.I was a bit worried when the dogs and I was going out on our walk after work because the last two ones Alma has been horrible. Mostly because hares run out in front of us and instead of running out in to the forest continued in front of us for quite some time. I really wouldn’t feel sad if all hares just died out 🙂 🙂 🙂

Today however, despite some other hares, she behaved really well again. I don’t know it it was what I told her yesterday that helped, that I would let a hunter shoot her to oblivion 🙂 🙂 🙂 She’s smart but I’m not sure if she’s so smart that she would have understood what I told her but I think she could understand how tired I was after those walks 🙂 🙂 🙂 So today she’s forgiven again. It’s so fun because my neighbors like when she jumps over the fence to them because she’s so calm when she plays with their oldest daughter, sometime I wonder if we’re talking about the same dog 🙂 🙂 🙂

The road association meeting is next week so I have put out notices about it in the mailboxes here in the village. The village road is more or less a circle so if I would do it all by car before going to work I would have to pass my mailbox twice and if I did that the dogs would have thought I was on my way home again and would have started to bark like crazy. Not a good thing at six am, so I decided I would walk to the four closest. I haven’t been able to walk there in a long time since both Albin and Alma behaves like they do when seeing wild animals, they would wake up the entire village. So I brought my camera and took a few photos since it was not just sunny but also so cold that we had morning mist. I realized how much I miss walking there but I just can’t reach those two when they start behaving like that and those times are the times I miss my old dogs the most 🙂 🙂 🙂

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More and more flowers are in bloom in my garden now. I hadn’t checked that this week so I was surprised to see so many flowers 🙂 I also found a flower I tried to plant in my garden when I moved here, 23 years ago. They survived a winter or two but suddenly they were gone. Now I found a lump of them in my hedge and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see them there last year. I have no idea how they managed to get there but who cares 🙂 Also I now have six apricot trees growing from kernels I saved from last autumn and it looks like three nectarines are on the way too 🙂 I have no space for them really but who cares, I’ll make space for them when that day comes 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

Yellow wood anemone and the now everywhere growing Nuns worth and Scilla of course.

I still have a Trillium but since first Albin and then Alma arrived they’ve slowly died away, those two run over them and dig everywhere.

This is the one I thought I had died out in my garden, the Pilewort.

The wind is the same but now it’s raining.

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

So if yesterdays weather looked nice from indoors todays wetaher doesn’t and isn’t either 🙂 There was at least no wind in the earky morning when we went out for our walk but it did rain consistently for the entire hour we were outside. To be honest, none of the dogs wanted to take a walk but I forced them because I wanted them to get rid of some energy. Albin and Alma can destroy an entire house when they’re going full force playing 🙂 🙂 🙂

The rain did stop and naturally during the time I did the laundry. Almost as soon as I’ve finished it the rain came back 🙂 🙂 During that time I also saw the sun for almost ten whole seconds 🙂 🙂 I wouldn’t mind that much if the wind just could stop blowing, especially since it is just as cold as it was yesterday. The birds doesn’t seem to mind the weather as much though, they sing a bit less I guess but then again lots of them are on the ground eating what ever they can find and it looks like they find a lot.

I did my taxes today and even before I made the car deduction for driving to and from work because I really can’t use public transportation (it would take 150 minutes one way and it takes 30 minutes with a car) I would get a few dollars back 🙂 Can’t remember when that happened the last time With the deduction I’ll get a few more back but since our inflation is insane here that money won’t last for long 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well it’s better than to have to pay back 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15398_002 — Four from the Agfa Ambiflex. A bit too wintery but they make today look nice and cosy in comparison 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Around five? years ago I sowed some Gardenia seeds, I’ve tried before but have always failed. This time however I got five little plants and I still have five living even though one really look more dead than alive 🙂 🙂 🙂 Today I found flower buds on the two of them that I looked at!! I also noticed that they were attacked by something, can’t really say what I only saw the larvae or what it was. So now I’ve sprayed them with soapy water. Soapy water suffocates everything insect-wise and I do hope I didn’t destroy the coming flowers by doing so.

A15265_020A — Four from the Agfa Ambi Silette. These photos on the other hand make today look like a nasty november day 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Tomorrow’s a working day again so back to work it is. I actually almost won back all the money I spent on the lottery, not quite but very close 🙂 🙂 🙂 not enough to stop working but I’ll at least not have to pay more than less of a $ US next week 🙂 🙂 🙂

A15266_004 — Why not ad a wintery photo from the Flexaret VI too.

Have a great day!