Category: Summer.

Well I’m still alive :-)

June 14, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0003 (8) — A photo of light yellow flowers towards green-yellow background never comes out well 🙂 It looks much more beautiful in the real.

These last days have been a bit tough. Sneezing during days and coughing during nights. The throat has sometimes been really nasty but it is amazing how much better it feels after having half a teaspoon with honey slowly melting down the throat. The pain almost goes away totally after just ten minutes. It’s important that it is unpasteurized honey though, so that all good bacteria in it still lives.

DSC_0005 (7) — The wild roses are finally opening up 🙂

DSC_0011 (7) — This one will be so beautiful with pink roses towards those leafs.

We’ve had really nice weather but I’ve mostly been indoors sleeping. It has felt like the fever has come and gone but today it feels like it is at one level all the time, it’s the small things one can enjoy 🙂 🙂 🙂 My voice was so hoarse yesterday when I called my work place that they just laughed when they heard me 🙂 🙂 🙂

DSC_0004 (8) — More potato leafs are showing 🙂

DSC_0016 (5) — Did You know that if some potato sprouts fall off when You put potatoes in the ground actually can be planted and give more potatoes themselves without being attached to the potato?

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I had to go to the store today, I had no food at home. It does feel a bit bad going to a store with a nasty cold, people all around me can get it then but I do need food even if I’m sick and I live a bit far from the rest of the world to get food delivered to my cottage, at least to a reasonable cost. I went there early though so it was almost only me and the people working there and I was never close to any of them.

DSC_0027 (2) — Sometimes the light falls just right.

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It was on my way home I realized I had forgotten to buy lots of ice cream, in fact I hadn’t bought any at all but I was too tired to go back and buy some. I did however buy some carnivorous plants. Normally they are hard to get here but today I was lucky. This is a paradise for flies and other insects so they’ll have plenty to eat this summer 🙂 🙂 🙂 I bought three Venus fly traps and four Sarracenias. None tough enough to survive a real winter here but I can have them in my cool cellar during winter. I would have bought a pitcher plant as well if they had had any.

A13796_004 — Two photos taken with my Moskva II.

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They are all now standing on the north side of my cottage protected from the sun by an old cardboard box. As soon as a plant has been standing indoors for a while they must stand in the shadows for a week or so when they are moved outside. The sun otherwise will burn them to death even though they actually love standing in full sunshine. I’ll later on replant them in peat and in deeper boxes without any drainage holes because they need acidic water and lots of it too.

A13797_008 — Two taken with my Flexaret VI.

A13795_001 — Two taken with my Hasselblad. Something has happened here, either some moisture have reached the film or perhaps just the lens but they still look rather good.

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It is time for some more honey and after that some tea I think.

Have a great day!

I’m pretty sure it’ll stay a while.

June 12, 2022 · Leave a comment ·

DSC_0002 (7) — I took some photos in my garden when the sun shone.

I’m slightly worse today than yesterday so I have mostly been sleeping to be honest. The kitchen door has been open though so the dogs have been able to go outside and play almost all day.

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I had to close the door twice because of heavy showers passing by and the lightning app warned about thunder as well. I noticed that when I woke up and it already had passed 🙂 🙂

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I doubt that this will go away any time soon since those at work who have had it still have a hoarse voice many days after the fever is gone. I will eat my honey and I’ll drink tea with ginger in it and hope for the best 🙂

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Have a great day!

It’s always fun to get a summer cold.

June 11, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

a (1)

I sound like I have been drinking whiskey and smoking twenty four seven for the last thirty years 🙂 My throat hurts and it feels like fever comes and goes as it pleases. I did feel a bit off yesterday but thought it was just being Friday and I’m getting up at 3:30 am in the morning.

a (4)

So I haven’t done an awful lot today but I have actually vacuumed all floors. The dogs do drag in a lot of mud and sand but I have contributed to it a lot as well since I didn’t remove my shoes after working in the potato and vegetable patches.

a (10)

I’m going to x-ray one of my hips next week so if I’m not better on Monday I won’t go to work. I really don’t want to risk being stopped just because I have a cold and I do need to do this next week because I’ll go to the doctor for the hip check up the week after and then those x-rays are needed.

a (15)

I do have a lot of honey so I think that at least my throat will feel ok pretty soon. I’ll also drink a lot of rose-hip soup, I always do that when I have a cold 🙂 Too bad that I don’t have any ice cream or ingredients to make som myself but I guess one can’t have it all. It’s time to make that soup 🙂

DSC_0019 (5) — Edible but not yummy. Very early this year.

Have a great day!

Much the same this morning as yesterday.

June 10, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

a (2) — Taken with my phone early this morning.

Today started much the same as yesterday weather vise here and it was just the same as I reached the lake and the weather became just dull. I didn’t mind since I was going to work anyway and the birds sang just as much as if we would have had a sunny morning.

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I finally called the bank to which the one who put in money by mistake? on my account and they couldn’t find anything wrong so today I finally payed him back his money 🙂 🙂 It took him a month to ask via his bank if I could send back the money so I didn’t hurry in any way. I really didn’t want to become a victim in a scam. The things was that he had texted me some spam texts earlier and the name he gave couldn’t be attached to the address he gave. The last thing could be because of many different reasons but I called his bank anyway just to make sure. So now I don’t have to think about that any more.

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I haven’t done much after coming home after work. We’ve had a walk and we’ve all eaten our dinners, after that I’ve mostly been half asleep in front of the tv 🙂 My old camera is slowly giving up I think. The auto focus has behaved oddly for quite some time. Every time I’ve wanted it to focus the lens has mor or less went in and out until it finally managed to focus on anything. Today it stopped focusing at all. I turned it off and on again and after a while it managed to focus again. It’s not that there’s a lack of cameras in my home but this one, the Nikon D5100, has always been my favorite. I have the D5300 so when this one gives up I’ll just continue with the 5300.

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Then again I do now have a reason to look for another used camera and perhaps a slightly newer one as well 🙂 I have had some films developed and two rolls had damages. One is because I had to change camera after putting in the film so some light reached the film while I was swapping cameras and the other one I’m not sure but I think some water or the humidity has managed to get inside the camera. All but one photo are quite ok anyway.

It is time for some rose-hip soup and after that doze off in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

DSC_0036 (2) — Garden gooseberries. These will become red as ripe.

DSC_0033 (2) — The potato plants are beginning to show 🙂

DSC_0037 (3) — Hungarian lilac. Smells less and spreads less, much better in all ways than the common one :-)

Today I paid for it.

June 9, 2022 · Leave a comment ·

DSC_0002 (3) — Sunshine, water drops hanging on my Amur grapevine. A rather nice view from my kitchen window.

The sun shone and there was a beautiful layer of fog above the ground when I left the village to go to work and I thought that it was typical that we would have such a wonderful morning when I’m working and can’t take a walk in it.

DSC_0004 (3) — I’ve taken a photo like this loads of time but can You see the difference from before?

DSC_0008 (3) — This is the difference, they cut down almost all trees.

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Turns out that it only was here that we had that wonderful morning, As soon as I came to the lake I met a grey sky and some rather boring fog, sort of being there but not really hiding anything. It was like that all the way to work. The finishing of the potato patch and vegetable patch finally caught up with me so today my body has been aching, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to get out of bed 🙂 🙂 🙂 So since The things I have to paint at work were in no hurry to be painted I instead went home after lunch. I thought I might as well stay that long since I had ordered lunch and didn’t want to reheat it when coming home.

DSC_0011 (3) — There are two oaks in this photo. One is growing between the pine trunks and one to the left of them. Both are much the same age, perhaps around 25-30 years old. One grows like a tree and one is more or less the same hight it has since I moved here, it’s more like a bush.

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I don’t think it helped that I decided to start sowing some things in my vegetable patch in heavy rainfall yesterday either 🙂 🙂 🙂 The day was warm but the rain pretty cold but now I at least have started. I had ordered a new hardy kiwi vine since one of the ones I have seems pretty dead and it arrived today. The problem was that they had delivered it to my neighbor instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was surprised that they actually had done that since I’ve had plenty of packages delivered to my home. Also they delivered the package to a road where there are three houses and I don’t think it is common for the middle house to have the number 3 as home number 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It’s a good thing I’m so good friends with my neighbors because technically I’m not sure I’m allowed to walk in to their property to get my package even if it delivered wrong. I planted the vine and then we went out for a walk. Alma behaved pretty well, I was so glad she didn’t see the deer in the field. The first annoying forest flies have arrived but they were so few that I didn’t care. We still have plenty more mosquitoes but I’ve been bitten enough times now so it seems I’m immune to the itching again 🙂

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Besides this nothing much has happened. The company I’m working at is going so well that they now will make a new storage building so we finally can have the space we have in the factory for working spaces we really should have already. They’ve also rebuild my old painting department so that most people will be working outside the nasty hot and humid paint department. I’m really happy for my work friends because that hot department made me hate warm weather, instead i enjoyed walking outside in my t-shirt when it was below freezing temperatures outside 🙂 🙂 🙂 Now when I don’t work there I hope I’ll go back to liking warmer temperatures again 🙂

DSC_0034 (2) — It’s hard to see but here’s my new apricot tree.

DSC_0036 (1) — I threw out seeds all over and around the upside-down lawn pieces and now small seedlings show here and there 🙂

DSC_0037 (2) — I’ll grow melons in this one 🙂

Have a great day!

DSC_0039 (2) — My little peach tree. The thought of this placement is that if it survives and gives peaches in the future my neighbors will just have to reach over the hedge and grab as many as they can. I have great neighbors and they’re worth that.

Blueberry flowers. I have neglected my blueberry plants for years now but they still give me plenty of berries. I think it is time to actually care for them now.

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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!

So nice day!

June 5, 2022 · 6 Comments ·

a (3)

I really can’t complain about anything today to be honest. 23C (73,4F), sunshine, a weak but cool wind blowing and Alma has behaved all day! There was this one deer that refused to move out in a field but Alma didn’t see it and only pulled the leash forward. It’s when she suddenly make quick turns that my shoulder gets worse.

a (8)

The first horse flies have arrived, still they aren’t too bad, just annoying by circling around showing they are here. Well I think one bit Alma because most of the day she has been chasing everyone of them that has been close to her. These look like wasps so I’m a bit worried she will try and catch one of those, a sting in the mouth isn’t a good thing. I can also tell already now that it’s a wasp year, long time since I saw these many as I do now.

a (14)

I’ve finally done the potato patch 🙂 I haven’t placed the last pieces of lawn over the stinging nettles yet, I was so tired and my body hurt so much when I was done that I decided to do that tomorrow. It was so fun because every time I went away for a short while small birds landed in the patch and took any maggot, larvae and worm they could find. Some were even so brave that they came down while I still was working there. I’ll rake the place tomorrow before I put down the potatoes so they’ll have another chance to find food. There is this larvae (who eventually will become some kind of beetle) that feeds on grass roots, when the grass roots no longer is there they will go for the potatoes so any of these the birds will take is a good thing.

a (18)

Tomorrow I’ll start with the vegetable patch and do the exact same thing there. I’ll have some very well fed baby birds this summer 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think there are lots of birds nests in the garden this summer because I could hear when they fed their younglings. It’s amazing how loud they are, especially since there are so many who would love to have them as a snack. I don’t have any cats now but the neighbors have plenty but they are of course not in my garden if I and my dogs are there.

a (22)

Tomorrow is our national day and that’s a day very few actually celebrates here. Most of us didn’t want it to become a holiday because we knew they would remove another holiday we had if it did become a holiday. The one they removed was Whit Monday. No one did celebrate that one either since no one actually knew why we had it as a holiday 🙂 🙂 The thing was however that it always was on a Monday so we all knew we would get a long weekend.Our national day can come any day since it is a fixed date. So since no one actually wanted it both the employers and the union agreed on us getting eight hours of compensation time every year it happened on a Saturday or Sunday so that we actually could take a long weekend anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (27)

I can feel I have drunk way too little water after working in the sun all day so now I’ll have something to drink and I will also open a tin of canned peaches because I feel I deserve it 🙂

Have a great day!

a (29) — Tiny little spiders who are all ready to start to eat each other 🙂

DSC_0002 (1) — The potato patch. I’ve planted three hardy kiwi along the fence. It looks like one might be dead or on its way to so I’ve ordered a new one.

I’ve made a path for the dogs with the cut out pieces of lawn.

DSC_0009 (1) — This is a male plant of the hardy kiwi. It’ll get small beautiful white flowers. None of my female plants will give any flowers this year so I’ll have to wait for a chance to eat the berries.