Category: Summer.

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A storm passed by today and today it was noticeable even here in my garden, the strong ghusts shuffled the leaves in the trees pretty bad 🙂 The more steady wind was as always more or less unnoticeable here. They had guessed that we at least would have some sunshine in the early morning so I waited for quite some time before I gave up and we had our morning walk.

     

A good thing with the winds are that almost no flies are out and about irritating us 🙂 and if any mosquito had been desperate enough they still would have blown away really fast 🙂 Also pretty chilly for being a day in July, only 15C (59F) as warmest and that’s now in the early evening. I’ve noticed something, the dogs don’t like to be outside in the garden windy days like this, I think it is the roar from the wind blowing through the forest and perhaps they smell things from far away that they don’t like and believes what ever it is can be nearby.

   

I’ve been thinking about having a pond again but this time make sure no vole can chew through the rubber.

One being that I think exists all over the world is the Lantern man, When the day becomes night and one looks in to a forest or a bog one sometimes might see a flickering light, sometimes moving fast and sometimes really slow and if one is lucky one might even see the being carrying the light which is a small manlike being usually dressed in grey. It is the lantern man and quite often he tries to lure the human that see him out into the forest so they become lost. Sometimes however he lures them out into bogs or swamps to try and drown them. They will do the latter if they think one has been impolite or rude. However they can also save children being lost if one has been polite to them and also perhaps given them a coin or two (I guess that since silver always work with all other beings he would accept that too 🙂 )

     

They guess that he’s an evil spirit that, when he lived tricked others so that he made his property bigger at his neighbors cost, therefore he will never get peace after dying. He continues this behavior after death by moving property markings at nights, always saying this is wrong and that is right. The only way he can get peace is if someone follows him at nights moving back all the property markings he has moved. The thing is would one really follow someone that willingly would try and kill You just for fun? 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a cup of tea I think and then see what’s on tv.

Have a great day!

It’s raining, it’s pouring.

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Yesterday morning we all woke up pretty early and I thought why not stay up so I could have a really long and calm breakfast before going to work. I had just eaten breakfast and went to brush my teeth when I heard a loud crash. Malkolm had decided he should push down the glass plate I had my sandwiches on to the floor. So instead of having a nice calm morning I instead had a quite stressful morning going to work quite late instead 🙂

 

The cattle is in the pasture behind the Beekeepers cottage so that means we can’t walk along the creek because the path home is blocked with electric wires.
Can You guess what flower this is? I know You all know about it but perhaps never seen the actual flower. I’ll put the answer at the bottom 🙂

Now it’s Novas turn to have a bad stomach so I decided to boil more rice. I always put the pot on the stove and just barely let it start to boil before shutting down the stove, then put two handkerchiefs over the lid and just let it stay on the stove for twenty minutes, I made pancakes at the same time and put another glass plate beside the frying pan. The water just started to boil so I shut of that part and continued with my pancakes. Suddenly I could smell smoke and wondered what house was on fire when I realized that the handkerchiefs managed to reach down to the heat and had started to burn. The odd thing was that the water just kept on boiling harder and harder. That’s when I realized I hadn’t turned it off, instead I had started the stove top under the glass plate.

The oak refused to break when bigger trees fell over it, now it’ll always have that bend 🙂

   

I was just about to remove the plate when it suddenly exploded 🙂 🙂 Thankfully this plate was of a more good quality so the pieces mostly stayed on the stove but some dropped down on the floor. So I had to pour out the pancake batter, clean the floor (vacuuming it) clean out the frying pan, all the dog bowls and restart with making a new batch with pancake batter 🙂 🙂 I’m glad I had enough with eggs because for some reason I decided yesterday not to buy any on my way home from work 🙂 🙂 Besides that we’ve had a calm day. We managed to take a morning walk even though the sun they said would show before the rain never did.

the first blueberries growing by the bog 🙂

   

It is pouring down outside right now and thunder is on the way, I’m not sure if it will hit this village or if the mountain will push it to the other side. Tomorrow will most likely be rainy as well and we’ll have an almost storm passing by as well. We’ve also had a long nap today 🙂 Nice to know I can have that the coming four weeks 🙂 and since the weather seems to stay like this I might even have the chance to have two naps each day 🙂 🙂

     

It’s time for a pot of tea and then perhaps watch the Eurovision Championship in football (soccer for You Americans :- )

 

Have a great day!

The flowers is a wild carrot 🙂

Finally :-)

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Something worried the geese and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. Lots of sound and running around.

The morning was quite nice with sunshine and just above 10C (50F) degrees. I stopped by the lake on my way to work, there isn’t much to see now but I did see some geese. I would most likely have seen plenty if I just had had more time but work was waiting and a work friend who I was going to pick up on my way.

Suddenly lots more came running from behind me (to the right). I guess it could be a fox hunting but geese are nasty so it must have been an inexperienced one 🙂

Then they all came flying.

It didn’t take long though until the rain arrived, mostly short but fierce showers and it has continued like that all the day but in between we had lots of sunshine as well. Despite it being the last day before vacation the day passed fairly quick. Could be because we had cake twice today 🙂 Firstly a work friend have his 29th birthday today and thankfully he bought an ice cream cake so that I could have some as well 🙂 After that the company had cake as well, unfortunately not gluten free but I did at least have coffee and an extra break 🙂

The sky when I had arrived after work.
I haven’t planted or sown anything in this pot but there are lots of plants in it 🙂 Looks like some kind of Nepeta, possibly Canadian Goldenrod and also an Aaron’s’ rod. plus something small with white flowers.
My tomatoes are coming fine 🙂
My little Mango tree. It stopped growing when it went colder unfortunately.

Yesterday we had lots of pastry because a work friend will retire next week 🙂  so it’s been a good week 🙂 🙂  The weather was nice all the way home but as soon as I stopped by the mailbox the sky opened up again 🙂 Tomorrow will be really rainy, if they’ve guessed it right but it looks like we’ll be able to have a morning walk with some sunshine before the rain arrives. The entire first week will have weather like this but I don’t mind as long as we can have a morning walk without getting soaked from above 🙂 After all vacation is meant for us to charge the batteries so we can manage to work until Christmas since we don’t have a single holiday before then.

Musk Mallow, grows everywhere in this area, I have the pink one as well.
My pees are now all entwined 🙂 Plus I saw that a few bean vines still are alive and grows well.

I think it’s time to go to bed even though I really don’t have to think about getting up early tomorrow but I always wake up early and it’s nicer to do so if I actually have slept enough hours 🙂 I can start changing the hours tomorrow instead.

The three tomato shoots I removed a couple of days ago now have roots. If we hadn’t loved tomatoes so much we would call it a weed 🙂
The Hardy Fuchsia cuttings I’ve taken are now planted in three pots. The yellow in the leafs indicate that they lack nutrients of some kind and that’s most likely because all the rain that has washed through the soil, there’s simply nothing left for the plants to use.
Don’t know the name on this one. It is a climbing vine and I think it once belonged to the Corydalis family but now have been moved to the Fumaria family, my favorite weed family 🙂

I hope All of You Americans had a great 4th of July!

Have a great day!

Only one more day :-)

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I always save photos for days when I can’t take any and put them in a folder called “For a rainy day”. All photos today comes from that folder. They can be taken earlier this year or some time during last year. The only important thing is that it doesn’t show snow 🙂

The weather is what I would call rather unstable right now, heavy showers coming and going. Pretty chilly here as well and it’ll be like this over the weekend they guess. No use in looking at what they are guessing for the coming week they change those predictions more or less every hour. Everything from sunny and warm all week to quite the opposite 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Lots of things to do at work and due to bad planning they asked if people wanted to work overtime, they never come to me even if they are desperate since they know I’ll just laugh at them 🙂 To be honest only three people wanted to work, most of us will after all start our vacation now.

     

Only Malkolm liked to be outside in the rain so we haven’t had any walk. Not good for any of us so it’s nice that vacation starts now because it is very rare that it rains all day, so in between showers we’ll be able to go out and get rid of some of all that energy that is building up in the dogs now. Normally during weekends and vacations we’re out on walks at least three times a day but the weather lately has really stopped us to do that. In winter time, before Alma, we usually had walks in the empty cow pastures and normally we walked a bit more than 9km (5,6 miles) but Alma being like she is and after tearing my shoulder twice we haven’t been able to do that last winter. I am hoping that she will have calmed down enough until next winter. They say hope is the last thing to leave us 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Tomorrow is the last working day before vacation starts and at first they said we would stop working with the painting early, then a bit later than they thought and today that we most likely will continue as normal 🙂 🙂 🙂 It doesn’t really matter because I won’t be back in four weeks anyway 🙂

     

Have a great day!

I’m rarely nostalgic and Malkolm is much better.

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So Malkolm is much better already 🙂 I went to work an hour later this morning just so I could see if the food would stay or not. My biggest worry was if he possibly had eaten something that blocked the food. He ate and had no problems at all 🙂

The sky on my way home today.

   

We have lots to do at work but the things I do had all been done just after lunch today, so I left work a couple of hours early 🙂 I went to the grocery store in the village where I work and was going to buy some frozen fish for Malkolm. When I was a kid fish was poor mans food, so we ate a lot of fish. Today fish is rich mans food because those prices really make one need an income on the top 1% to be able to buy it 🙂 🙂 🙂 Instead I bought frozen chicken and that also works really well for an upset stomach. I made the rice this morning before going to work and boiled the chicken as soon as I had come home. Now days Nova only eat any food made from chicken and the smell made even her want to eat so of course both she and Alma had some too 🙂

     

The food stayed where it should be and now Malkolm have more energy that I think he should have 🙂 🙂 He and Alma were playing here on the upper floor and when both finally fell off my bed and it to what sounded as the radiator I had to shout to make them stop 🙂 🙂 All three are now sleeping on the floor here beside me 🙂 For once no one is snoring 🙂

     

It was supposed to rain this afternoon and the sky sure looked like it when I drove home but one drop hit my head and that was it 🙂 They are now guessing that it will rain more or less all day tomorrow and Friday and Saturday but I’ll believe it if it happens. They are also guessing that my first vacation week will be sunny and just enough warm, I’ll believe that when it happens as well. Some times they don’t even get it right when they show what weather we’ve had during the day. I remember one winter when they said that we had had cloudy weather and -18C (-0,4F) when in fact we had had sunny weather all day long and minus 28C (-18,4F) 🙂 🙂 🙂 WE haven’t had such low temperatures since then so it must be well over 15 years ago but unfortunately the weather sites haven’t become much better since then 🙂 🙂 🙂

I think these are Creeping bell-flowers.
I have two Hardy Hibiscus in my garden but so far no signs of buds.

I’m not the one to be nostalgic or think back on memories form the good old days that weren’t particularly good to be honest but today lots of memories came back when a smell I really can’t say whet it was brought back a lot of memories, mostly about our summer cottage up in the mountains just outside my home town. Suddenly I saw myself sitting in the glassed veranda with place for two people eating two sandwiches and I could feel the smell of newly brewed coffee. The cottage were placed at the top of the mountain and there was no running water, an outhouse painted screaming green, a gas cooker and showers were taken outside with cold water that we brought with us in big plastic jerricans.

     

I started going there by myself when I was around 13 years old. I lived on the other side of the city so I think it was around 40 km (25 miles) to our cottage. The only heating we had was a kerosene  heater so i rarely went there when winter had arrived. From early spring to late autumn however I want there quite often, the rest of the family didn’t care especially much then. Normally I biked there so I didn’t bring a lot of water but enough for a cup of coffee in the morning and to be able to wash myself if there wasn’t any water in the rain water barrel (well this is Sweden so naturally there was water in the barrel 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) The best thing, I think, was that I passed my mormor (grandmother on my mothers side) so I usually had a pit stop there bunkering up with a couple of sodas and cinnamon buns 🙂 and of course I had some while visiting her as well 🙂

     

I was quite young so if something walked outside the cottage it could be a bit scary but it was always a moose or deer that passed by 🙂 I loved that place and I think I mostly just read books or listened to my radio, back then they often played the Radio theater shows and those were really good. I don’t think they do that any more. Nothing would grow there except for grass, moss, daffodils and some Irises, we tried to grow potatoes there once but the potatoes were tiny and so hard that it didn’t help that we boiled them for hours, they just kept on being like little round rocks 🙂

Have a great day!

Sick puppy.

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One can make a really good tea substitute from the leafs and flowers from the Fire weed. I realized that I only have two left in my garden and I’ll leave those alone but found another place at the edge of the forest, I think I’ll pick some of those tomorrow if the weather allows.

I became a bit worried after I had come home and Malkolm suddenly threw up all what he just had eaten. I waited a little time and gave him a small treat and it didn’t take long before he threw up that too. Naturally I then started making scenarios in my head that he had eaten something that had gotten stuck and that he would need surgery tomorrow. Just to be sure that it isn’t anything stuck I then boiled some rice and poured in lots of water and gave it to him. He started to eat and then looked at me and I understood what he meat, so I crushed four pieces of his regular food in my mortar and poured out the powder in the rice.

     

It still inside him well over an hour and a half after he ate it 🙂 I now also know he has a case of really bad stomach because he wanted to go outside and I said to him that if You’re going to throw up I really need to know it so stay indoors, no it wasn’t throwing up he wanted to do and the small after he had the runners on m,y floor is pretty bad 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve already sent a notice to my team leader that I’ll come in later tomorrow, if the boiled rice and fish I’ll give him stays I’ll come to work, otherwise we’ll go to the vet.

     

I am however not that worried any more because he has been playing just as wild with Alma for quite some time now and I realized that he also had thrown up in the garden when I saw him eat what was left 🙂 🙂 That’s really gross but that food has stayed down as well 🙂 The thing with Malkolm is that he doesn’t make that awful sound when being sick, it just comes out, so no warning what so ever. Besides all this I must say that the day has been rather good. A bit on the cool side and mostly cloudy but the hours at work passed fairly quickly.

I was sure that last winter had killed my Eastern redbud but then I saw new lafs 🙂 It never grows bigger than this though.

I know it’s hard to see but here are a few of my seed sown apricots.

Alma is sleeping on the floor to my right, Nova is sleeping on the floor to my left and Malkolm is sitting on the stairs half way down to the kitchen 🙂 He does that quite often and it’s like he’s bored but still don’t want to be downstairs all by himself 🙂 Well it is time to go to watch the news and then most likely fall asleep in the recliner 🙂

And here are the two seed sown peaches.
Here are the cuttings (the second round) I took from the Hardy fuchsia, all fuchsias tend to produce flower buds really early and there’s no use in removing them, all that happens is that it will continue to produce even more flower buds and that takes more energy than to just let them stay.

   

Have a great day!

A persistent but nice summer rain.

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They were very unsure about how much rain we would get today, they guessed on from nothing up to two inches. They came somewhere in between I would say. It only drizzled when we woke up but by the time we all had had our breakfast the more steady but nice summer rain started and it has kept on falling all day.  I could hear hunting dogs in (specially trained to only follow wild hogs and never care about other animals but I guess all other animals still will be really stressed having barking dogs running around in the forest) the forest barking, it is still legal to hunt wild hogs as long as the sow don’t have any piglets. Those dogs must have been soaked just minutes after they were released 🙂

The peas likes this weather.
The tiny wisteria that I moved to the Laburnum looked really sad yesterday but since I pruned the Laburnum rain and eventually sunshine can reach it. I still haven’t seen any new shoots where it grew before but I’m pretty sure they’ll show next year because it is almost impossible to get rid of it 🙂 🙂
Have no idea what this is but it looks much like a giant Yarrow but smells and becomes just as high as a Tansy.

So we’ve mostly stayed indoors today, only Malkolm have stayed outside for any longer period of time while Alma and Nova only been outside when they really had to. On days like these I used to read books or draw or paint but now days I don’t have the patience to do that, I’m lucky if I can read a book for twenty minutes before I can’t do it any more. I guess that can be a side effect from the Corona virus. I have however no problems just sitting in my recliner having the tv on but not really watching what’s going on 🙂 I also have no problems taking long naps in it either 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have started reading a new book though so I’ll see if I manage to keep on reading it later today and force myself to do it next weekend when my vacation starts.

I think I’ll need to prune the apple tree that stop almost all sunshine down to the surviving Pawpaw tree. Not much, just enough so that at least some sunshine will reach it, it grows really slowly and I think it will have to stop growing soon so it can survive the winter.
This and the next photos shows the ones I bought this spring. One is seed sow and the other is a garden variety. 

Also I think that the Ginkgo needs more sunlight than it gets.

I haven’t been too lazy today though, I’ve done the laundry, made dinner for at least three days at work and also made pancakes for me and my dogs 🙂 I only had very little jam left so I mashed a banana and mixed it with the strawberry jam, I must say it was quite good but a little too runny, I now have that jam in several places on my clothes 🙂 I will also bake some rolls because I only have hard bread at home. I really like hard bread but it is nice to change to something else every now and again.

 

We have several different Aaron’s rod species growing here and I always let them stay, this big one is Verbascum thapsus.
The last of the Yellow flags.

Alma and Malkolm have a lot of energy now because they aren’t outside playing because of the rain, so instead they’ve been in my bedroom and I could hear from downstairs that they jumped up and down from my bed 🙂 🙂 I haven’t dared to take a look on what it looks like in there yet 🙂 At the moment though they’re right beside me and by the looks of it they are both now trying to chew of at least one leg of each other 🙂 It also looks like Alma is trying to chew off Malkolms bot ears 🙂 he’s no better though but he still can’t reach that high on Alma so he’s aiming to her throat 🙂 🙂

I took these three shoots from one of my tomato vines and just put them down in to wet soil, they start to create new roots as soon as they stand in the soil.
I bought a potted Dahlia a few weeks ago and naturally I had to break hard while driving home so it broke just above the soil, so I just took the twigs and put them in a pot and now it’s time to plant them somewhere.

Moss and lichen growing on the lilacs.

Well I guess I better start baking those rolls if I want to have any. This time I’ll freeze those I won’t eat today or tomorrow because the last ones I made started to mould really fast due to the high humidity we’ve had for so long.

Have a great day!

Such a nice day.

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The Beekeeper has really managed to make beautiful meadow flower patches.

It has been such a nice day here, mostly sunny and just below 20C (68F) as warmest. The wind was blowing pretty hard in the early morning so I skipped the mosquito hat when we went out on our morning walk and it was cool enough to wear a hoodie. I sprayed us all with the anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray but I can’t say it was because of that I only found two ticks in total on the dogs and no insects bit us either, the insects bit could be because of the wind though because the only place we came close to them was down by the creek.

     

Later in the morning my neighbors texted me asking if I needed an office chair because he was going to toss some away because they had ordered new ones at his work place and since there were nothing wrong with the ones they would toss away he thought of not only his family but also on me 🙂 So now I finally have a really good chair when I sit in front of the computer 🙂 I can’t remember when I didn’t have any pain in my back or legs while sitting here.

     

I’ve finally planted the last Mulberry tree I ordered but I still have four Sea buckthorn bushes to plant. I have also pruned the Laburnum so that the, so far, little Wisteria gets some sunshine and also the area behind the tree. I once had a rather nice flowerbed there but it went too dark when the tree got bigger. I also pruned the Japanese quince and a Ginnala maple, the Japanese quince because it has become too big and threatening the little new white mulberry tree and the maple because it gives too much shadow towards the root zone. I’ve decided to remove that maple just because it gives too much shadow and Ginnala maples tend to spread like weeds. I have another one that also needs to be pruned just because no sunlight can reach the ground where it grows.

     

I found the first tiny tomatoes on one of the tomato vines 🙂 I was fastening a string towards the cottage wall so that it has something to keep it in place and while I was doing that Alma decided that she would give me a visit. Alma has this habit where she must press her face towards mine and it isn’t a gentle touch, she press her face really hard towards mine 🙂 🙂 So while I tried to tie the string around the tomato vine she stood there pressing so I couldn’t see anything and managed to break off all the other flowers 🙂 🙂 Well I have more plants with more flowers so I’ll get my tomatoes 🙂 I also tore off the new shoots and planted them too. I will not get any tomatoes from them but I can save them till next summer. If they’ve become too long and thin I’ll just cut them down in large enough pieces and plant those in new pots.

     

The weather guessing on the weather sites are galloping right now 🙂 🙂 🙂 The big Swedish one says rain all day and around one fifth of an inch with rain. The Norwegian one that I trust most of all those sites says rain all day and two inches of rain!! Well in which case I think we’ll be able to have our morning walk but two inches is a bit much 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I have things I must do indoors anyway so I won’t get bored 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!

The first Gooseberries are turning red 🙂
Red currants but I won’t get a chance to get any, the dogs and Magpies are there as soon as they ripe 🙂
This tomato variety is called Tigerella, I guess one could translate that to Tiger Ella 🙂
I’ll get lots of Blueberries this year.

Lots of rain and thunder.

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So I guess I can’t say that the weather service we have got it right this time but at the same time not too wrong either 🙂 🙂 Early this morning it did say, on the net, that we wouldn’t get any rain at all but   and that the temperature only would drop a degree or two. Earlier in the week though they did guess that we would get an inch of rain and the temperature would drop down below 20C (68F).

     

We have gotten bucket-loads of rain, lots of thunder and the temperature dropped to just above 20C (68F) 🙂 It didn’t help much with the heat at work though because the wind blew in the wrong direction so even if we had two big gates open none of it would reach us in the factory. Now in the evening however I have the wind blowing from the kitchen door, up to the upper floor bringing in the cool air through the bedroom so now I think we all will get a good nights sleep. It will be nice not having the feeling being boiled the first in the morning 🙂 🙂 🙂

Troll grapes.
We call this plant Troll grapes. It is a native plant many of us have in our gardens and the berries are quite poisonous for us humans. Actaea spicata, it only thrives in dark shadow and good soil. I do have the shadow but apparently it also likes to grow in sand 🙂 The fun thing is that the seeds this one comes from were bought from a Canadian seed business that unfortunately doesn’t exist any more.
I sowed some Borage this spring and some have pink flowers
while others have deep blue 🙂
I sowed the Campanula rapunculus, the Rapunzel, last summer. It is a biennial flower so it flowers before it dies. This one is edible and can give rather big roots that can be sued like radishes. Very closely related to the Creeping bellflower but not even close to as bad since it dies its second year. The Creeping bellflower is also edible in the same way.

The dogs are running in and out through the open door and then to my bed where all the rain water drops off, I can only hope it doesn’t get too wet to sleep in. Tomorrow will stay cool and for the rest of the coming week they’re guessing that the temperature will stay just above or below 20C, that works great with me 🙂 It isn’t supposed to rain or thunder any more but the sky is dark grey, I need to have the lights on indoors, so I guess it isn’t really over yet. Nothing clears the air like a good old thunderstorm and it feels like we need some more clearing of the air before I’m happy 🙂

Aaron’s’ rod. Grows wild here and always have yellow flowers.
They mix with our garden varieties so every now and again one with a different color turns up.
Iris hollandica isn’t the hardiest of bulbs but two survived the winter here and one was destroyed by the dogs and the second one pressed to the ground but survived 🙂
Sorry can’t remember the name for this one 🙂 Some kind of Nepeta though.

No walk today because of the thunder but I do hope tomorrow morning will be sunny as they’re guessing it will be so we can have a long nice walk while it is rather cool. No watering in the garden either so no more mosquito or hose fly bites to scratch today. I was outside for a few minutes to gather some Iceberg lettuce though. I need to thin them out as much as possible and it is nice to have on sandwiches together with some ham, tomato and cheese plus today I had something we call Skagenröra, it sort of is like shrimp salad with lots of mayo but with more things in it 🙂 Unfortunately I only had hard bread and one never knows how hard bread breaks, so now I need to find a clean t-shirt 🙂

These photos were taken yesterday.     

It is time to stop for the day and go to bed, the heat has really made us all really tired. Only one more work week until vacation 🙂

Have a great day!

Now they’re guessing it won’t cool down until Saturday.

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It has been much warmer than the weather presenter and weather sites guessed yesterday, 30C (86F). Also there was no wind what so ever so the heat in the factory was nasty. Now the Swedish weather site says no rain what so ever and around 77F, yesterday they guessed up to an inch with rain.The Norwegian site which I trust more says much the same temperature but at least a fifth of an inch with rain. So I wouldn’t be the least surprised if their first guess comes true anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I once had a garage where I used to park my car if the weather was going to be bad but then some of the dogs living here years ago dug their way in and my garage became an indoor dog yard 🙂 It’s just walls and roof made of metal sop nothing special. Anyway I’ve always thought it would be like staying in an oven when the weather went hot but it is actually cooler in there than outside?! I have always wondered why the dogs preferred to be in there on sunny and hot days. The floor was once made of wooden planks and beneath it just plain sand and since the wooden floors are long gone I think that maybe the sand, damp because of all the rain we have here cools the entire place down.

     

Nova is sleeping behind me but the other two are outside playing, coming in every third minute to drink some water, run up to us to see that we’re still here and then run outside again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was watering the vegetables before I started writing here and Alma avoids the water like it is death coming for her while Malkolm sits down so that the little wind we have blows the water steam all over him 🙂 I think it might be time to bring out the little dog pool and start filling it with water, Neither Nova nor Alma will like it but I have a hunch that Malkolm will 🙂 The other two have as most only shown interest in it when the water becomes so dirty it’s disgusting, that when they drink it 🙂 🙂

The surviving Pawpaw finally is growing, I think that them being as late as they are even though we did have a really warm May is a problem with them surviving this far north and if they will flower one day they’ll be very late. Some trees do adapt though so it might work anyway.
The new shoots on the Persimmon root are also finally showing some speed in their growth.
The new Persimmon however already had leafs when it arrived here.
This is a White Mulberry that will give yummy berries, normally they taste, as someone described it, if You like to eat dry grass they have the berries You want 🙂 🙂 I can see that I really need to  prune the old Japanese quince 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Really nice day.

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I really hope the birds don't find my Sand cherries. They are really delicious and I rarely get a chance to get any myself.
I’ve found several Sand cherries this year 🙂

I slept late, for me this morning. I didn’t wake up until after five am. The weather was just as grey as they had guessed and it was actually pretty chilly when we finally came out for our walk. So instead of wearing my mosquito hat I just wore a hoodie and it was enough to keep the flies away from my face. Also I did spray the entire hoodie with that anti tick, horsefly and mosquito spray that works for both animals and humans and that could have helped more that I thought it would. So today both my dogs and I smell like an old lady in the sixties that didn’t understand when to stop spraying her perfume 🙂

I do like ferns!      The Grape Elder is early this year.

We have actually had much more sunshine than they guessed that we would so the kitchen door has been open most of the day but I really need to buy a new mosquito net for that door, I’ve taped it together in some places 🙂 🙂 Dogs never walk though slow and carefully, they run through ripping of the magnets keeping it together but every time I’m out on the internet I tend to forget to order any. From now on they’re guessing that we’ll have sunshine and hot weather for the rest of the week so I didn’t mow the lawn today as I had planed because the grass is still very wet since it has grown so high. I’ll start doing it tomorrow after work and just take small areas each day until it is done. So I won’t write anything here tomorrow.

I've never seen either a toad or frog here so I guess the Källrå might stay in the lake itself :-)
No unusually big toads or frogs here so I guess there isn’t any KällrÃ¥ living here.
Lots of Lingonberries this year, I might even go out and pick some myself this year.

  Squirrel berries in bloom still.

Two more weeks until the vacation starts 🙂 Those two weeks will feel like years because when it is hot outside it’s even hotter in the factory. The one standing at the paint ox it can quite often reach 44 C (111,2 F) and no matter how much waster one drinks it’s not enough. Hopefully the painter working there will work every day, otherwise it might be me they think should do that job and after 16 years of it I truly hate it. So cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs for good luck so he’s healthy both weeks 🙂 🙂

Japanese climbing rose in bloom, lots of flowers this year.
I can’t remember that I’ve seen as many flowers on the Japanese climbing rose as I have this summer. These are above my head now making a roof together with the apple tree and a grape elder.
I think the flowers are quite beautiful and these have no thorns 🙂
Red leafed rose, self sown.
The self sown Red leafed rose has been planted and grows really fast now.

Today I’ll write about a slightly more nasty being, the Mara. She’s the one that gives us nightmares But also from how I interpret it anxiety attacks at night. She crawls up on a humans chest at night and squeeze out all air and will to live. If she has been visiting You Yo’ll know it since You will wake up cold sweating and have the feeling of being suffocated. She cab squeeze through any crack she can find so it is more or less impossible to keep her out of any place. Thankfully the Mara suffers from obsessive thoughts so it is fairly easy to occupied until it is morning. One can for instance put a bible with lots of hair in between the pages because she must count them all before she can do anything else. Another way is to spread lots of tiny seeds around the beds because she must count them as well.  I guess that not cleaning the floors if one has dogs could help a lot as well because of course she would have to clean before doing anything else. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been around my place for ages because my floors are just as dirty as they were the night before 🙂 🙂

Old Nova, 18 years old and still going strong :-)
She’s hanging on the old lady 🙂

   

No one really knows where the Mara comes from but it is usually a female and some think it is the soul of dead unmarried women who tries to get the warmth from the living. It could also be as simple as a curse is put upon her because their mothers, trying to not have as much pain giving birth and therefore used black magic by crawling through amniotic membrane from a new born foal. If the woman would give birth to a boy that boy would later on become a werewolf. Now our werewolfs  are slightly different than the ones we have seen on films or read about but more on that another day 🙂 🙂

I asked Malkolm what he was doing and then he covered the hole and looked so innocent 🙂

 

This beetle doesn't seem to do any harm in the garden so it is a favorite of mine.
This is a favorite beetle of mine.

It is time to prepare something to eat at work tomorrow, I really don’t have anything at home so I’ll just make a couple of sandwiches and bring some yogurt too.

Have a great day!

Väettir.

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Today is actually the real midsummer but they’ve made sure that it always is celebrated on the first Friday after summer solstice. Midsummer eve isn’t a holiday (Midsummers day is though) but most people working in factories and offices still have the day off and it’s also a payed free day. This is the last holiday we have before Christmas. I would say that it is as big or perhaps even a bigger holiday here than Christmas. The bad traffic started already today because everyone wants to be where ever they are supposed to be already today.

 

This is an unusual Plantago major since it is variegated. Normally they are seen as somewhat irritating weeds but for some reason they aren't when they look like this :-)
A variegated Plantago is really unusual and if I had liked them I would have brought this one home. Normally they are seen as weeds but for some reason not when they look like this 🙂 🙂

I’ll write more about the celebrations and folklore the coming days. Today I’ll tell You about Vättar (Väettir). They are usually small beings dressed in grey clothes but they can easily change to something else like toads or little mice. Like all beings they can be rather grumpy but we rarely know that we have them around us since they can change what they look like. There are several different kinds of Väettir, it all depends on where they live, like lake väettir, mountain väettir and forest väettir. It isn’t unusual that they live just beneath our cottages and if there are unusually many toads hanging around in our gardens it might be because they actually are Väettirs 🙂

Bumblebee beetle. Some years there are plenty of them here and some years one is lucky to see one.

  The Blue vetch grows everuýwhere here and I like it a lot. 

So if one lives a calm and orderly life and don’t disturb them they might become Your friend and then help you with the animals or perhaps give you and unusual amount of good luck. They really don’t like warm water so if one would toss out some from the home one should always warn them before one does. If one would meet a Väettir that needs help and help with what ever it is they usually give you a gift. It might look like an old pine cone or a stone, always take it and thank for it because they day after it can have turned in to gold or gemstones. If you don’t help them or disturbs them in any way they then instead might give You some terrible disease.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night by an awful screaming of fear (and the barking sound of an older deer), sounded like a small baby deer was attacked by something, probably a fox. I thought it must have been the young one that the doe in the cow patch was the mother too. I found the doe walking in the cow patch when I left for work and thought that she might look for her young one and felt so sorry for her.
She was still in the cow patch when I returned home (almost impossible to see her here) and she was completely calm. So either it was another animal screaming or she managed to scare what ever it was away 🙂

Väettirs are guardians of the area so I wonder if they live where gnomes doesn’t. Normally gnomes lives at farms while Väettirs seems to be more adaptable and live even close to poor people. They are my favorite beings to be honest just because they more often are kind than evil. Have I mentioned that there lives an unusual amount of toads in my garden? 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!