Category: Sunrise.

Our National day and why.

· 6 Comments ·

No ALT text today, it takes a long time and it's getting late.

Sorry about yesterday, first I visited my friend at the garden center and I can proudly tell You that I didn’t bring home and plants this time 🙂 I had been tired since the moment I woke up and when I came home I took a nap for well over an hour but was just as tired as before so I went to bed and slept all night long. I guess that I actually am having a cold because after our morning walk today I napped well over two hours but this time I’m not that tired again 🙂

     

So I was going to write something about our national day and why we celebrate it. There are two reasons for it, the first is that June sixth Gustav Vasa became king here in Sweden. Sweden was at that time occupied by Denmark and their king (we call him Christian the Tyrant 🙂 ) made a blood bath killing lots of the nobility in Sweden including Gustav’s father.  He wanted revenge and fled north to gather the support of the people in Dalarna (a region in Sweden that sort of have become the picture of what Sweden is when it comes to traditions). No one really did support him but he did eventually get their support and he of course promised them a lot in return. The Danish king was driven out and when the good people in Dalarna actually expected to get what he had promised he happily slaughtered them.

     

Before him the nobility here always chose the next king but after him it became an inherited title. He had three sons all more or less insane and all became king over Sweden and Finland (which was a part of Sweden for centuries). The first one I guess had schizophrenia, married his non nobility mistress which wasn’t liked at all so his brothers put him in prison and eventually poisoned him with arsenic. They spared his wife and children though but she had to move to Finland, promising never to claim the throne for her children and what I know they had a great life there.

     

The second reason is that we got a new constitution 1809 that removed most of the Kings power, that I see as a really good reason to celebrate though but very few know about it here. The king by the way was a French buddy to Napoleon which he then turned against and we helped to win over him. Denmark’s capital Copenhagen was heavily bombarded by the Brits so that Napoleon wouldn’t be able to use their harbors so they sided up with Napoleon instead. So after Napoleon lost Denmark was punished by giving Norway to Sweden. There was however a big problem with that because Norway had already declared they were now independent of Denmark. So they were pissed of by this (in my opinion they rightfully were so) but back in the days You really couldn’t do anything unless You were prepared to go to war with the big powers in the world. To be honest we really didn’t want Norway because we wanted to get Finland back from the Russians who had taken it from us by winning a war against us but Russia was also on the winning side so Norway it was. Lasted until 1905 when they finally became a free country. Not that the Swedish king wanted that but he was wise enough to not start a war. To be honest I don’t think we ever have won a war against Norway, the last time we tried our own troops finally shot our king with a big button. 

     

So anyway we haven’t had a national day for that long anyway, until 1983 it was the Swedish flag day (the next oldest country flag in the world, only the Danes have an older one) and it didn’t become a holiday until 2005. So since most people don’t know why we celebrate and to be honest Gustav Vasa was a horrible dictator, we never have sort of understood how to celebrate it (and to be honest they removed another holiday that we wanted to have much more so that sort of dampened the cheers 🙂 🙂 ) They do try to make it more festive but so far it is sort of a meh celebration we’re having 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

The morning walk was really pleasant, cool enough to keep flies and mosquitoes away but still sunny and no wind. We met two foxes and the deer doe was outside the garden once again, she doesn’t even react when we go out now days. Now however the rain is pouring down and it is quite chilly and we might get thunder later today. The weather will be much the same tomorrow, sunny morning and rainy before noon and with lots more rain. I don’t mind even though it would have been nice if we could have reached 20C (68F), we’re not even close today.

Magpie younglings photographed through mosquito net and window 🙂

 

Looks like it has rained over my car but it hasn’t, lots of morning dew here so this is normal every morning.

 

Remember I told about how easy it is to propagate tomatoes? Some tomato plants grow like a bush and others like vines. The vine ones are supposed to be pruneed by removing all shoots that grow out and those are easy to just put in soil.

 

Take those shoots and remove all but the to leafs and put them in a new pot.

 

They will create new roots along the stems and then You have new tomato plants. Normally our summers are too short to get any tomatoes on them but these had already flower buds so perhaps I’m lucky 🙂

Have a great day!

Cool and nice!

· 4 Comments ·

Malkolm sitting in the middle of the garden doing nothing, very unusual :-)

The mornings was quite cool here today, so cool that no mosquitoes or flies were pestering us even though we went out to the bog. Nova wanted to go down to the creek but since she has been a bit off since the last walk there I’d rather have her walking a shorter distance but at least come out so she could sniff on every track she found. Good appetite though so she’s not ill. She did get grumpy though so she dragged her feet all the way until she realized we were on our way home again, then she suddenly could walk really fast 🙂 🙂

The village on the mountain bathing in sunshine but they too got this mixed weather after a while.  The haunted tree :-)  Not all photos will have an ALT text, this is a piece of the log from a pine that was cut down earlier this year.  Cool summer mornings has a special kind of light that I like a lot.

It has been less cool than what they were guessing in the weather sites and so far we’ve had a couple of small showers but that’s it. Lots of sunshine between the clouds as well. After we came home we had a little nap, well I tried to but Malkolm decided he would play with a nasty sounding plastic bottle so he woke me up every now and again. I guess the good thing was that I still just relaxed and most of the time even Alma stayed with me and Nova 🙂

Guelder rose in bloom. This one is unusually fine, they are almost always attacked by tiny pests.      There's still water in the tiny tjärn.

I only found three ticks crawling around on the dogs when we came home, cool mornings keep those calm as well 🙂 The deer was outside in the cow pasture again this morning, I still haven’t see her young one but I’m pretty sure it’s out there with her. My neighbor, the Beekeeper, saw a doe with two young ones a couple of days ago. I guess that Alma and I are just too loud so that they can hear us from a long distance, Alma shouting and whining like always and me scolding her for it like always as well 🙂 The thing with Alma is that if she can keep calm until we pass the Beekeepers she’ll stay reasonable calm for the rest of the walk as well, if not we’ll have a constant war between us all they way 🙂 🙂 🙂

  The first wheel shaped spider web for the year.    Now when the forest has been thinned lots more ferns grow big.

I’m thinking of buying some fish to have in my water barrels again, there are so many mosquito larvae in them and I can’t find the fishing net so that I can bring them to the fish i my aquarium. The problem is that they now have so tough rules for pet shops to be allowed to sell aquarium fish that most just don’t care to do it, I’ve heard that the license to be able to sell fish just costs too much. Good thing for the fish, annoying for us humans. Well I can always go down to the creek and see if I’m lucky fishing there 🙂 🙂 🙂

The first wheel shaped spider web for the year.    Now when the forest has been thinned lots more ferns grow big.

You don't want this one in Your garden, it can cover a big tree during a summer. The Swedish name foe it is Dog turnip :-) Its scientiffic name is Bryonia alba.
Bryonia alba is nothing You want in Your garden, it can cover a tree during one summer, smells nasty and I have had lots in my garden. Thankfully I’ve got rid of most of them.

Sorry but can't remember the name of this one at the moment :-) I have lots of our wild flowers in my garden, one can say that I'm lazy or say that I care for the pollinators :-) Chose the one You like most :-)
I have lots of wild flowers mixed with garden flowers in my garden. Some would say I’m lazy not weeding them out and some would say I think of the pollinators 🙂 🙂 🙂

Male flowers on Hardy Kiwi.
This is the male flowers on the Hardy Kiwi. My female plants are always freezing during winters (this one did in the beginning as well) so I’ve never seen those flowers but I think they look much the same.

Geum urbanum, much smaller and sort of shy comparing to all the garden varieties there are.
This is a Geum urbanum, grows everywhere here and beside it a wild pink Geranium.

The reasn this old flowerbed look so wild is that it actually grows a Sand cherry tree there, it is impossible to mow that area or keep in well maintained :-)
It grows a Sand cherry tree is that old flower bed so I can’t mow the area or remove all flowers we tend to call weeds 🙂

Another shower is just passing by and when they do the temperature drops a lot, then again it gets really hot when the sun shines instead so it evens out during the day 🙂 I forgot to write about our National day and what we are celebrating (most people doesn’t know why to be honest. So most just take this day as a day free from work and if the weather is nice they’ll barbecue something and just relax. I’ll try to remember to write about it tomorrow instead!

     

Have a great day!

Close but still no thunder or rain.

· 4 Comments ·

The path down to the creek is bordered with Dog biscuits.
The path that eventually leads down to the creek is full of Dog biscuits. I’m glad they have driven four wheelers there, otherwise we would have been drenched in water from the rains and morning dews.

Hot again today so it was really nice that we were able to have our morning walk in the early morning while it still was cool. Not cool enough to keep the mosquitoes away but cool enough for them to not attack us to hard 🙂 Malkolm woke me up at 3:27 am today but after he had been outside we all went back to bed and slept for another hour.

A Roe deer buck is eating in the field.
This wasn’t the only animal we saw this morning. It is a Roe deer buck.

 

Still lots of water in the creek.
There’s so much vegetation along the creek now that it is hard to see it 🙂

All the dogs are at the moment a bit wobbly in their stomachs so today I boiled rice and fish for them. Nova loved it, Alma loved it and Malkolm put his nose in the air and refused to eat anything until he realized they all had the same food 🙂 He did eventually eat all of his food but I can clearly say that he’s not a fan of boiled fish 🙂 Too bad for him because he’ll get this tomorrow as well 🙂

The path along the creek is very narrow now days.
The path along the creek is now so narrow that we need to walk in a line, something Alma have big problems understanding 🙂

  There's a little brige at the both ends of the creek where we alk so I had to stand on one of those to be able to see more than a couple of meters of it.

My camera refused to do as I wanted so here are two rather bad photos of fox cubs running away from us.
Some previous owner of my camera thought it was a good idea to adjust the camera to being able to go through the photos when turning the shutter speed wheel. Idiotic since if I need to adjust the speed after just taking one photo instead of changing the shutter speed I then started to go through my photos already taken. So instead of actually capture these two fox cubs so it would be easier to see them I instead took several photos that an editing program then tried to make at least some better. We met the mother later on but it happened so fast that I wasn’t able to take any photos of it.

Thunder and heavy rain is nearby again but it looks like it’ll go either south or north of us. I wouldn’t mind if we at least got the cool air that always follow thunder but even if we don’t get it today it will cool down considerable next week. It’ll drop from today’s  26C (78,8F) to 14C (57,2F). It will stay that cool during the entire long weekend and I think I’ll enjoy it a lot, cool weather plus what they are guessing rain as well sort of forces us to just relax all the time 🙂

Nova didn't like that I wanted to go down to the creek, she wanted to go out to the bog. So she dragged her feet all the time until I let her go un leashed, then suddenly she had all the energy in the world :-) :-) :-)

Malkolm decided to not follow Nova and instead kept himself close to me and Alma.

Nova did stop and look after us every now and again :-)
Nova checked after us on and off, last time she walked away like this she too a wrong turn and it took some time until she finally found us. She’s more or less deaf so no use in calling after her 🙂

I moved the lawn, well most of it, when the grass had started to dry up some. I drank too little water while doing it so now I have a slight headache. What’s left will be moved tomorrow and it’s on the north side of the cottage and beside the woodland where the Pawpaws are growing. I do hope we’ll have a wind blowing because that’s where all the mosquitoes are and I have already been bitten quite a lot. I was bitten by a horse fly this morning as well, they’ve started their season a bit early unfortunately. Last month was unusually hot here and I guess that kickstarted them.

I do like the European Hornet, a gentle giant unless one comes too close to their nest. If one do one must run fast :-)
The European Hornets are back, favorites ogf mine :-)

Alma and Malkolm playing in the garden :-)
Alma and Malkolm had a few minutes to play before it became too hot.

 

It looks like both the thunder and rain will miss us so I better put together the new hose and spray gun so I can water the vegetable patch. Something is eating the beans I sowed but the rest looks untouched, the carrots however hasn’t shown them selves yet so I’m starting to wonder whether I’ll have to sow something else in that spot. I’ll give them a couple of more days before I do anything.

Have a great day!

It missed us again.

· 6 Comments ·

The factory where I work is almost surrounded by fields and I really like to stand outside in nice weather just watching what ever they are growing, sometimes a fox pass by and deer kan be seen gracing there too.
Took this one with my camera at work today, I think it came out rather nice 🙂

Another day another thunderstorm passing by but to be honest even though it did go through nearby I couldn’t even hear it this time. It was much worse along the west coast where cities and town have been flooded and cellars being filled with dirty water. An old gardening enthusiast who grew up nearby well over 90 years ago told me that the bog I live beside is so big that during hot summers it creates a high pressure area all by itself, so when rain comes close it push it towards its sides. So the rain can pour down on the mountain but we can have sunshine. It also makes it much colder here when winter arrives and so far I can’t say that he was wrong.

View from my window upstairs. Some sheep in the foreground and behind them the ground is covered by morning mist.
Not bad views when driving to work 🙂 This one however was taken from a window upstairs.

Photos taken in the village on my way to work. The sun is breaking through the mist showing how it floats around in different patters when the sun heats it up.  It doesn't take long before the sun burns it away but here the last of it is rising upwards behind the gravel road. 

We’ve had mostly thin clouds that the sun has shone through or clear blue sky. There was a strongish wind blowing when I came home after work so even if I thought it might be too warm for both Nova and Malkolm I took the dogs for a walk, I thought the wind would cool us down. Turns out that the wind wasn’t strong enough to blow through the forest. The odd thing was that there were no mosquitoes?! The first horse fly annoyed us for a while and the first forest flies a bit longer but even they gave up, so I guess it must have been much warmer in the forest than I actually thought.

This and the next photo showsmostly the did up fields and a small bit of the creek and a thin layer of morning mist floating around over it all.
And tow from the lake.

Dog biscuits, a quite common flower that looks much like wild carrot and smells rather nice.
The Swedish name for the white flowers is Dog biscuit, have no idea how they came up with that long ago 🙂 It is edible and the root is said to taste like Parsnip. They are closely related. The problem is that several other flowers looking similar are deadly poisonous so one must know what one is doing if one wants to eat them 🙂 Also We have wild carrot growing here, believe me when I say that it’s like chewing on a stick 🙂 the taste is there though 🙂

A cloud slowly building up to become a Thunder cloud.

The morning was cool and nice though, 8C (46,4F) and I would rather have had a walk with the dogs than having to go to work 🙂 🙂 🙂 Morning mist floating above the ground and birds singing like crazy. I brought one of my cameras with me and managed to get a few photos with the morning mist before the sun burned it away.

I'm bad at butterfly names but lots are flying around here now, This one was feeding n Lingonberry flowers just when I saw it.
Lots of butterflies here now.

The forest is filled with strwberry plants. Thankfully we have the law called Right to access so we can pick any berries everywhere (unless it is in a garden of course). No land owner has the right to stop us doing that.
Wild strawberry flowers

More Forest star flowers.

Have no idea what these tiny yellow flowers are called but I like them :-)
No idea what these are called.

WE have lots of Veronica's growing in the wild, I think these are called Granny's' goggles.
These veronica’s’ are everywhere now and I think our name for these are Granny’s’ goggles 🙂

The birds just stopped to sing, it is oddly quiet so I checked the lightning app and there isn’t any thunder even close  to here. There’s also a tractor working somewhere nearby that also just stopped making noise. I don’t think they are related in any way but it feels odd when it suddenly becomes totally quiet 🙂 Well th

Chamomile grows along the gravel raod towards the forest.
Chamomile.

The forst star loves living in the forest where it doesn't get too much sunlight that would dry out the ground.
Forest star.

More and more Buttercups are opening up now, soon the fields will shine yellow again nw after all the Dandelions have stopped flowering.
Buttercups.

This is a deep hole in the bog, it looks like it has a bottom rather shallow but it is in facy just roots that covers the water below. Hare tail cotton grass grows well there.
The little tjärn still has water in it and the hare tail cotton grass looks beautiful.

e birds are back and I hope they won’t drive that tractor any more 🙂 🙂 I noticed earlier when I was watering all the new trees that it is time to do something about some of my sowing, like the Hollyhocks and Morning glories, they are growing fast and I was wondering for myself if the best thing is to re-pot them (but I have very little soil) or just plant them where I want them to grow?

This small creek is almost dried out now but the ferns are covering it up instead.

Salmiak , the beekeepers cat, is sleeping on the patio table. We think he is as old as Nova, 18 years old.
Salmiak sleeping on the patio table.

These grow everywhere except in my garden 🙂

I sowed a Black Walnut almost 16 years ago and last year it gave nuts for the first time and this is the first time I've seen the male flowers :-)
The Black Walnut in bloom.

Also several more Giant Sequoias have germinated, still none of the Dawn Redwood but I still have hope 🙂 I have too much of the Greater celandine so I’ll remove some of them tomorrow, I’ll wear gloves when doing that because the sap in them are bright orange and it is more or less impossible to remove that color and I never know where smaller stinging nettles can hide 🙂 I also need to figure out where to plant that last Mulberry tree I bought and four Sea Buckthorn I have waiting as well.Plus the rose that I planted where Teodor the cat is buried seems to have died this winter, so I’ve bought another one, completely different. I doubt it’ll flower this year but it is much more hardy. Seems to spread happily with its roots though so perhaps I need to contain it with a bottomless big pot.

Four photos where You can see Alma and Malkolm playing.
It was too hot for Malkolm to have a walk but he and Alma could play for over an hour in the garden when we came home 🙂 🙂

   

It is time for a pot of tea and I bought a packet with gluten free oatmeal cookies. I’m pretty sure I’ll fall asleep in the retainer as soon as I’ve taken the last sip of the tea 🙂

Have a great day!

So slow today.

· 7 Comments ·

This day has been so slow! I’ve been able to do what I wanted to do and have had lots to do as well, still this day has been slow as cold molasses 🙂 We’ve been waiting for the rain and thunder to arrive but today it never did. Well I did hear some thunder at work, at least I think it was thunder but there were also some people up on the factory roof working and at one time it sounded more like they dropped something really heavy 🙂 I also hear the thunder once when I came home but it was from far away.

     

We had morning mist here in the village when I drove to work. I was already a bit late already from the start and it didn’t help that I stopped here and there to take some misty photos on the road to work 🙂 I made it just in time thankfully but I missed my morning coffee. I stopped drinking coffee for a while because my stomach got upset, well more upset than it usually was. Then we found out that I couldn’t eat gluten, my stomach became much better and now I dare to drink a cup of Cappuccino each morning, so far so good 🙂

   

We are supposed to kill all Lupines we can find in nature because they are invasive, they have even created a special day when everyone is supposed to go outside and remove them. The problem is that we love our Lupines so no one touches them 🙂 🙂 🙂

NO attempt from Alma to dig her way out of the dog yard today but I found evidence that she had tried after I went to work after getting the summer tires on. So I blocked it and put new obstacles in the way. This does not mean she’s given up, she’s just biding her time, checking out eventual weaknesses and will most likely try again soon. I was supposed to measure the length of the fence today so I can get what I need to repair the fence but now I can’t fine my tape-measure. I used it a few days ago and I was pretty sure I knew where I had placed it but no I didn’t 🙂 I had even borrowed tools from work to fix some things today so I guess I’ll need to do the same tomorrow, including a tape-measure 🙂

More from Falköping. The streets around the town square.

The original church that stood here almost a thousand years ago is actually still there, it’s built in to the “new” and bigger one.

 

Even Alma has figured out how to get the treats out of the little bottles I place in the dog yard every morning now so I better come up with something else soon, a few treats only keep her occupied for so long after all. I did have an amazing toy like that but old Sune, a dog who liked his treats for himself dug it down somewhere  in the garden 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll need to buy something similar. I do have one in the kitchen but it’s been put away fro a while. looks like a turtle with a see through cover. It is supposed to be pushed by the dogs and the treats will sort of pop up through a hole in the back. Alma never got that one but happily stole the treats from Albin who to my very big surprise understood it after a few minutes and he wasn’t the brightest star in the sky 🙂 🙂 I’ll put it back on the floor as soon as Malkolm is big enough to at least get a few treats as well 🙂

 

The red house to the left is actually for sale.

Alma and Malkolm is playing wildly at the moment, they’r running in and out of the cottage, up the stairs to me, run back out and chase each other like crazy. Even Alma seems to be on the edge of what she can managed and not collapse 🙂 🙂 🙂 I hope that means I’ll get just as good nights sleep tonight as I had yesterday, they were playing just as much yesterday as the’re doing now 🙂 🙂 🙂 Unfortunately Alma just decided that she would go on a hike by herself to the other side of the little lake behind my garage to eat wild hog poop, it’s a gift she has, to sort of ruin the fun they had and have a breath that smells horrible 🙂

Cratageus of some kind.

Sibylla sell hotdogs, hamburgers and other things like schnitzel. They were here before the big hamburger chains moved in and to be honest they are so much better.

If You want me to calculate how much more expensive our petrol is compared to Yours I’ll do it. This was the last photo of Falköping for this time. And if You wonder why there were almost no people in the photos it’s because Falköping is more or less dead until the shops open around 10 am 🙂

It’s time to prepare something to eat at work tomorrow, I think I’ll save that chicken I bought for next week instead 🙂 I’ll see what I can find in the freezer and put together something from that 🙂

Have a great day!

Sticky flypaper.

· 2 Comments ·

I’m waiting for the rain and thunder, we already have the strong winds that usually comes with it. The dogs haven’t any energy to play. Every now and again they go outside to try and have fun but comes in again just to take a long nap. Even I joined them in one of their naps 🙂

     

We were up early today though, when it still felt a bit cool and the sun was shining. We took the short walk out to the bog and then back home again. None of them was especially enthusiastic about having a walk but they sure were when we headed back home again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I don’t blame them because there were about a gazillion mosquitoes out there and Nova is so badly bitten now that her face is a bit swollen and she has small wounds after scratching herself in the face. I can’t even imagine how bad it is for all the wild animals out there. Thankfully we don’t have any midges here. They are tiny and many and some years it can be so bad that if a Moose can’t get away from them all those midges actually can kill them. It’s a good thing this country have so many lakes they can flee out to.

     

So I haven’t done that much today, I’ve done the laundry and it dried up within a few minutes :-)I’ve watered the newly planted trees and also the Persimmon where the new branch is growing out plus the Pawpaw that survived the winter. I’ve also placed my summer tires in the car because tomorrow they’ll be put on and my winter tires taken off. I’m a bit late with getting that done to be honest 🙂 If the garage doesn’t have a car I can borrow I’ll just have a walk in Falköping while the job is done. I always do so when the car is in the garage and I always bring a camera. So if You want to see photos from Falköping wish that they don’t have a car, if You don’t wish to see Falköping just wish they have a car 🙂 🙂

     

If they don’t have a car I’m planning on buying a new garden hose and some other things while I’m there, that is if it takes long enough so that the stores open before the job is done and I have to go to work again. Some of them don’t open until 10 am and since I’ll be leaving my car at 7 am I might go to work long before that,unless the garage is really busy. Then again who says I need to go to work immediately 🙂 🙂

       

I haven’t done any dinner for work next week either, so I’ll buy something on my way to work for tomorrow and make dinner when I come home again for the rest of the week. I’m just looking at the thunder app and it is slowly closing in to us. It will feel good when it has passed and the temperature has dropped. I have done one more thing though, the first sticky fly papers now hang from the roof downstairs. A few have already found their way indoors even though I do have nets put up by the kitchen door and the windows. No matter what one does those flies always find a way in and thankfully they like to land on something close to the roof, those fly papers are heaven sent 🙂

The first bean is showing up 🙂

Potatoes keep comming up even though it was three years ago I had potatoes in that patch 🙂 Those red leafs looking like clover is actually an Oxalis, a popular annual pot plant. Turns out it thrives in this climate so now it’s one of the more common weeds we have in our gardens. I don’t fight it , instead I embrace it and it does get cute yellow flowers 🙂

This is a native annual Geranium (not the pot plants You call geraniums because those are actually Pelargoniums).

Columbines comes in all kinds of varieties.

Have a great day!

     

Doing everything while it is cool.

· 2 Comments ·

Before it went too warm.

Another warm day here, My thermometers aren’t to trust when it comes to how warm it has been since both are hit by the sun. But I think that 25C (77F) is most likely. So everything I had to do today had to be done before it went too warm.  So I watered vegetables, trees and a rose while it still was fairly cool, after that we went out for our morning walk.

Lots of water still and the reason for all the mosquitoes we have around our cottages.

 

White Wagtail.

It could have been much nicer if it wasn’t for all the mosquitoes and the first of the oh so annoying forest flies. Forest flies don’t bit or anything like that, they annoy! They come in big swarms flying around our heads and do their best to try and fly in to nostrils and ears. They are usually quite calm in the very early morning when it still is cool, almost chilly, after that I need to wear a mosquito hat while walking in the forest because they drive me crazy! On one hand I truly hate them on the other it is amazing we have so many and that they are food for lots of birds and other animals. Now days when driving during summer there’s no need to wash off all crushed flies on the windshields because there are no crushed flies any more. I guess they all moved to this bog 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

The laundry is done as well and everything dried within 20 minutes 🙂 despite the lack of wind and hanging in the shadows. We will get stronger winds again the coming week they’re guessing and I won’t mind, strong winds means no mosquitoes or forest flies, they will do what they can to hang on to vegetation and not blow away 🙂 More wind however mean more watering. The ground is still damp but the surface will dry up and since I’ve just sown seeds that mustn’t happen until the roots have grown deep to more reliable water sources. The ground water is just 2,5 meters (much the same in yards) down here.

 

Ash tree. The first to drop its leafs in autumn and the last to get new ones in spring.

I’ve also re-potted most of my orchids. I’ve now placed them all on the north side of the cottage and after a week or so I’ll place them in the trees and leave them there doing nothing (unless we’re having a drought, then I’ll water them but not otherwise). I’ll also place my Christmas and easter cacti there as well. All I have left to do now is to make dinner for work next week and take a look at my notes for the road association meeting next week. We’ve already had a long nap but I’m still just as tired, pollen season does this to me. Then again the warm weather arrived so fast that the heat does this to me as well but I refuse to complain about that 🙂 🙂

     

I do need to check the melon vines I planted this morning as well. I think I better cover them with something now when the wind will arrive, they really can’t manage dry soil especially well. I haven’t seen many Cabbage butterflies yet but I better start to think about covering the little cabbage seedlings as well. The sun is coming back from behind the clouds we’ve had for an hour or so so I better go out and check those melon vines!

The garlic is coming nicely.

The extremely hardy Rosemary. It is said to survive -25C (-13F).

I have to protect the young Tree peony so the dogs don’t break it 🙂

One Ginkgo and most of my smaller citrus seedling plus all of the Guava seedlings to the right.

Three of the first kind of pear tree seedlings survived winter in the cool cellar

and five of the second.

Here are the bigger citrus trees, they all need more iron, hence the yellowish leafs.

Have a great day!

I have a few Sand cherry trees in my garden, I love the berries but birds are fast.

There isn’t any big difference between the subspecies but the first one seems more easily hit by mildew.

My new Persimmon tree (Diospyros virginiana).

Old Nova was outside too before it was too hot even for her.

The snail had a long shower while I was watering the vegetable patch 🙂

If it hadn’t been for the mowing.

· 4 Comments ·

If it hadn’t been for having to mow the lawn today would have been a perfect day. Cool but sunny and wind free morning, ok it gave the mosquitoes a good opportunity to drink our blood and we will all probably scratch ourselves a lot tonight 🙂 🙂 I am lucky in a way though because I get immune pretty quickly from the itchy thing we got so after four or five bites I usually don’t feel it any more, I can only hope the dogs are lucky that way too 🙂

We now have pine pollen everywhere, my car is now covered in yellow pollen every morning.

 

I think this is a Greylag feather (well could be crane as well) I should have brought it with me and made a quill pen 🙂

We walked down to the creek, the birds were singing like crazy and I could also hear lots of geese honking up in the sky. Lots of animals had followed and passed the gravel road so both Nova and Malkolm had to stop everywhere to sniff to get what animals it might have been, Alma ran around like crazy as always 🙂 The dogs had already eaten before the walk but I had my breakfast as soon as we had come home. They said that it would be rather warm today and yes it has been and still is. So I went out and watered the vegetable patch and all the potted plants after that.

     

I let it be for a while so the water could sink down into the ground and then I went out to sow more flower seeds in the old vegetable patch and after that I sowed split beans, two different peas, carrots and one more thing I at the moment can’t remember what it is 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have lots of different vegetable seeds waiting to be sown in places where what I originally sowed won’t start to grow. A few days ago I also sowed different flower seeds and also some of the seeds I sowed when it still was cold are now germinating as well 🙂

     

I still plants that needs new spaces in the garden but I still haven’t figured out where 🙂 After the sowing we all had a long nap before I went out to mow that lawn.  I didn’t drink enough with water so after a while I was bone dry in my mouth and not even thinking on lemons gave any result 🙂 🙂 I usually aren’t careless about that since I need to drink a lot of water at work because my workplace is close to a big oven so if I don’t drink a lot during the day I will get headaches. Only Alma kept me company while I mowed, Malkolm who now learns what warm weather is slept at the coolest place he could find, north side in the cottage just beside the entrance door and Nova slept in the kitchen close to the open kitchen door.

The vegetable patch. I’ve gone back to more traditional way of growing them. If one co plant with other vegetables if one doesn’t grow all of it will be a mess.

Six photos showing what’s in bloom in my garden right now.

       

They are all still sleeping but now close to me, I opened the window on the opposite end of the cottage so that the little wind there is now can blow through the upper floor. It is time for them to have something to eat and after that I think I’ll sow some more flower seeds, they are getting old so I’m not sure how well they are but to be honest one can’t have either too many trees or too many flowers 🙂

The English Walnut has it first leafs 🙂

Outside my kitchen window.

Aronia. The berries might be super berries as they call them but they taste like shit to be honest. To say they are tart is an understatement 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Time flies sometime.

· 4 Comments ·

The photos today can be from today but also from a day or two back.

I don’t know where yesterday went! It passed by so fast that I all day today have believed it is Monday today 🙂 🙂 Two days with no Alma escaping the dog yard, it feels like it’s my turn to win the lottery tonight 🙂 🙂

   

It has been really warm today so we didn’t take any walk after work, Malkolm is after all only three months old and 25C (77F) is a bit too much when being so Young. Still he and Alma played in the garden both before and after their dinner so it wasn’t that much of a difference to be honest 🙂 🙂 Well they were close to water any time they wanted to drink.

     

I watered the planted trees and the vegetable patch on the part where I had sown seeds and Malkolm thought it was really funny to catch the water jet 🙂 🙂 Alma kept her distance from it though, the risk of getting clean really scares her 🙂 🙂 Nova slept in the kitchen 🙂 🙂  Sleeping is mostly what she does now days but every now and again she starts to play with the others just as though as they do 🙂

     

I cut Malkolm’s claws today, he’s really good at screaming in pain long before I’m even close 🙂 🙂 Any imagined pain is gone as soon as he sees the treat bag though, sometimes that bag is so good that he forgets to complain at all 🙂  Alma really doesn’t care, just cut the claws and give me the treats 🙂 Nova is also easy since I can cut them while she’s sleeping, I will however wake her up for her treat 🙂

Three of my four apple trees are in bloom now.

 

and so is the quince.

They’re guessing that we will have this wonderful weather for at least ten more days. Back in the days we knew that if May was warm and nice June would be cool and rainy and July when most people have their vacations over here would then be warm and nice. Today we never know, it can switch pretty fast. Last year my entire vacation was rainy and rarely warmer than 20C (68F) and for me that was quite ok, I’ve rarely felt so relaxed after a vacation because one couldn’t do anything outside anyway so I had long naps every day 🙂

I marked where I've sown seeds with small stones along the lines :-)
I marked where I’ve sown seeds with small stones along the lines 🙂

The first leafs on my Black walnut.

The melons decided to start flower now, I haven’t even separated them yet 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Even nicer today :-)

· Leave a comment ·

I think today has been even better than yesterday, we woke up to a blue sunny sky and fairly chilly morning, it had dropped to 0C (32F) during the night. This is not unusual for this area, the last frost usually arrives at June sixth and after that, normal summers, nights regularly have temperatures down to 3C (37,4F). Well if the days are sunny, cloudy days the temperature usually don’t sink especially much, the clouds keep the warmth from escaping upwards.

     

We went out as soon as we woke up and that was way too early really because I watched the Eurovision last night and I think it stopped just before 1 am and we woke up just after 5 am 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well even after napping I still think I’ll sleep very well tonight 🙂 I, Nova and Alma didn’t see any animals this morning but Malkolm did so he started to growl. That of course made Alma running around looking for what threat we might meet and after that she couldn’t relax at all 🙂 🙂 Malkolm stopped caring about it as soon as we had passed where he saw what ever it was.

     

I’ve started to move the citrus trees I have from the less sunny north side of the cottage out to the sunny garden, even if we would get frost now and blazing sun during the days they’ll manage it. I’ve also sown iceberg lettuce, squash, chard and some kind of Japanese cabbage today. Iceberg lettuce is hard to fail but both the chard and squash seeds were a bit old so I’ll better start to look for what I can sow in those places nothing germinates. Peas and beans will be sown later when the temperature is more reliable. I’ll sow most of the potatoes in buckets this year so as soon as I buy more soil I’ll start with them.

     

The rest of this day I’ve mostly just watered the trees I’ve planted and I’ve had a couple of short naps 🙂 The dogs have been rather calm since it has been so warm. The wind can’t reach us down here so when it becomes warm it’s always a couple degrees warmer here and the opposite when it comes to cold weather. It’s almost never cold weather that kills plants here during winter, it’s because we have such a long time when it is dark here. So if we have a warm and sunny summer most of the less hardy plants make it till next year, is it cool and rainy most of those will die. They need that warm and sunny weather to collect so much energy that it lasts all winter through. It’s the same with how good plants flower and how much fruit/ berries they give, it all depends on what last years summer was like.

     

The big dogs are sleeping beside me but by the sound Malkolm is chewing on a stick in my bed 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve done dinner for next week at work and the laundry so for the rest of the day I’ll do as little as possible 🙂

     

Have a great day!

Always that wind.

· 2 Comments ·

We’ve had a really nice day here today. Mostly sunshine and almost 20C (68F). The only thing that sort of made the day less nice was the wind, the gusts were too strong and dried out the trees I have and had planted these last day. It’ll stay warm and so will the wind but I guess it is good all those wind power plants produce all that electricity so the price stays low.

     

We had a pancake day today so now I need to buy more jam, the one I had made myself is long gone 🙂 Nova has been unusually picky with her food lately. I know she liked it because they sometimes get that dry food as a treat so I just couldn’t understand why she refused to eat it. I always boil up water and pours it over the food and then cools it down with cold water so it isn’t too hot. Turns out that this food instead of swelling just falls apart and becomes some kind of porridge and that’s what she hates. So later in the morning I gave it to her dry and everything went down in a hurry. So I wasn’t sure if she would eat much pancake shortly after that but she gulped it down and did the same with her afternoon meal. It’s nice when problems are so easily solwed.

     

I have as I mentioned planted most of the trees I had delivered the other week. No matter what place I found it would mess with other plans for the future 🙂 🙂 🙂 Plus having two walnut trees makes it a bit harder. Walnut trees tend to spread a toxin called juglone in the ground to keep other plants away from them, but to be honest I have the Black walnut which is said to be the worst of them and so far everything around it is just as healthy and happy looking as they were the day the walnut was planted and that was well over 15 years ago. Still it is a bit risky to plant anything that might be sensitive to it too close and in my little garden everywhere is a bit too close 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Also all good places are already having trees growing there 🙂 I do have a plum, gives tiny yellow plums but usually flowers too early so frost takes both flowers and fruits that I’ve planned to remove so I did plant my Persimmon tree close to it. The tricky thing with cutting down all kinds of Prunus (plums, cherries and so on) is that they tens to spread a lot via its old roots so the best thing one can do is to ring bark it. That means one will remove a ring of bark around the stem so that no water and nutrients can move up the tree. it tales two years before one can remove the dead tree but it will not start making new stems from the roots. I really don’t like to cut down trees but there will at least grow a new tree just beside where the old one stood.

The early flowering plum tree has lots of flowers and buds right now.

This and the rest of these photos show the newly planted trees and are actually quite useless since it’s hard to see the thin stems and needles 🙂 🙂 🙂 This is the Apricot.

The Persimmon.

The white mulberry.

This is the best looking Himalayan Cedar, There are new needles growing in between all the dead ones.

This is the Persimmon hybrid and peach tree I planted last year. Both are alive anf
d healthy.

This is the Cedar I think might be doomer already but there are green needles even towards the top so I thought I would give it a chance.

I’ve also planted an Apricot ‘Hargrand’, one of the hardiest there is and a white mulberry tree (can’t remember the name of it). The white mulberry tree usually gives berries that tastes somewhat like grass 🙂 🙂 but this one will have pretty tasty berries they say. So now and for at least a week ahead I’ll have to water everything I’ve planted with at least ten litres of water every day and continue to help with water all summer long if we’ll have a dry summer. Good thing I don’t have to pay for my water 🙂 I still have two Pawpaw trees to plant but I want to buy more peat because they like a slightly acidic soil.

     

All the Apricots and pears I sowed last year and have survived will have to stay in the cool cellar for two more winters, well except for those two Apricots I’ve already planted, I thought I would test how they manages a winter already that young, I have after all four more Apricots and very little space in the garden 🙂 🙂

   

Just look at Alma’s eyes, she’s not impressed 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

If it wasn’t for the wind.

· 6 Comments ·

The sunrise this morning.

It could have been so nice today if it wasn’t for a biting cold wind blowing. Thankfully it comes from north so I can still have the kitchen door open but just walking a few steps from the door makes the world bitterly cold and nasty.

     

There was no wind when we had our morning walk though but then again the temperature had barely rose anything since I watched the thermometer when we got up, -6C (21,2F). We went down to the creek again but continued it up-stream and then in to the older forest. Lots of Ravens in the air and the Jays started to scream as soon as we closed in to the forest. The Swedish name for them is, if directly translated, Nut screamer 🙂 Sort of spot on to be honest, they behave like nuts and scream all the time 🙂 🙂 

     

Both Nova and Malkolm wanted to stop every second meter to sniff on something and they did so for a very long time every time, so in the end I had to hurry them up because they were driving Alma crazy 🙂 🙂 🙂 She really have no patience to stand still while they sniff around 🙂 

     

Malkolm really dislikes the collar he has to wear now when the harness is too small, it itches so when ever he can he stops to scratch where the collar is. I’ll try and find the harness I know I have somewhere here in the cottage, I never throw away things that isn’t broken and still can be used so I know it is here somewhere. Otherwise I’ll buy a new one when I order their food the next time. The problem is that I have no idea how big he’ll be 🙂 it can be anything from English Cockerspaniel to Golden Retriever. Thankfully I do have a big one that can be used if I would buy a too small one.

     

I think I’ll get the new table tomorrow. I know it already is here in my county waiting for being delivered but I haven’t gotten any text or mail that tells me when 😦 I can’t just stay at home (even though it would be nice 🙂 ) and hope that it’ll come 🙂 I’m sure they’ll call just as they enter the village and then it’ll take me around thirty minutes to get home. Last time it was like this, several years ago, the driver just left it inside my gate even though he really should have seen my drivers license. I do hope it can be fixed like this this time as well, if he can’t wait for me that is.

It isn’t easy to keep the balance while scratching because of the collar 🙂 

Then some more scratching. Thankfully no scratching at all when collar is removed.

I do know however that some time this week a Tea tree will arrive at the grocery store in Gudhem and on the 25th all the trees and bushes I’ve bought will arrive. I don’t need to stay at home for either of them thankfully so that makes it so much easier. I’ve done the laundry today and yesterday I baked a couple of breads, they turned out quite ok 🙂 I haven’t however made any dinner for work next week, so I guess it’ll be sandwiches for work tomorrow and then I’ll buy something after work that I can have for the rest of the week 🙂

Have a great day!