Category: The bog.

The morning was really nice anyway :-)

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The weather has been really mixed today. The morning was cool and nice with the sun warming up the air rather quickly, later on the clouds arrived and with it heavy showers but lots of sunshine in between. Now we have sunshine and rain at the same time 🙂 Thunder was heading towards us but went north on the other side of the mountain.

The cattle have now moved on to the pasture beside the one behind the beekeepers cottage and that means the road still is blocked with electric wires so therefore much more difficult to walk along the creek.
We saw this deer buck on our way to the bog. Well I can see that it is more or less impossible to see it in this photos 🙂 🙂 🙂

Besides the morning walk I’ve spent most of my first day of vacation with having a long nap 🙂 I’ve had a cold for quite some time now, it has spread all over the country it seems, so I’ve been unusually tired this summer. I’m hit much less hard than most who have had it but instead had it for a longer time. I didn’t miss much while I, well we, were asleep. Every time it stops raining I’ve had the kitchen door open but the dogs have refused to go outside, they were caught in a shower early in the morning that not even Malkolm liked 🙂 🙂 and they wouldn’t do that mistake again 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Both the big weather sites are guessing we’ll have a rain free day tomorrow but loads of rain on Wednesday. I’ll have to go to a grocery store as well, I should have done that today but I looked in the fridge and decided I have enough at home to last until tomorrow 🙂 My neighbors did the same but decided to go today so they don’t need to go for the rest of the week instead 🙂 We all started our vacation today and none of us want to do anything unnecessary during these weeks.

     

I already have three composts but I ordered a new one today, a kind of tumbler. It is black and is supposed to stand in sunshine so it becomes a hot compost. One puts in the material, could be grass or what ever comes from the garden or kitchen, turns it around a couple of times and leave it until next time. This will make compost much faster than the other warm/ hot composts. I bought it mostly because I have a family of mice in one of the old ones and lots of ants in the second old one. I’ve tried to make them move by pouring lots of water through it but they refuse, plus it is hard to open up so I can use what’s in it 🙂 🙂 🙂

This is most likely not a Creeping bluebell because the flower grow out from the stalk n several sides of it.
This is a Creeping bluebell because the flowers all grow out from the same side of the stalk. Almost impossible to see the difference otherwise but my guess is that they both spread just as happily 🙂

I better start writing a list of what I need to buy tomorrow and put it in my wallet already today so I won’t leave it at home as I so often do 🙂 It is so much more expensive to forget that list because I keep guessing what I might need and come home with so much more and most of it is something I really don’t need 🙂 🙂

The peas are in bloom and have started to grow over to their neighbors 🙂 🙂
Malkolm is now almost as high as Nova is 🙂   

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 🙂

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 Källrå 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!

Elves and Alves.

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Saint Johns wort.

Malkolm woke me up at 4:08 am today with a loud but high pitched bark, he’s after all only four months old now 🙂 After that he ran as fast as he could and peed on the stairs all the way down to the kitchen 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest he’s really good in peeing outside almost all the time. Just before I was going to write here he once again barked, ran as fast he could down the stairs and peed all the way down again 🙂 🙂 He had been playing so much with Alma that he forgot that he needed to go outside 🙂 🙂

     

We don’t have Fairies in our folklore, the closest is Alves and Elves. I really don’t know a lot about Alves but there seems to have been two kinds of them, the darkness Alves who lived underground and the Light Alves who lived in the sky and shone brighter than the sun. It also seems many think they are the male equivalent to Elves but since I’ve read that there were male Elf kings I’m not sure of that. No matter what meeting Alves, who always came in groups was no good thing. Most of our beings seems to love hurting us 🙂

     

Elves however could be seen during early mornings and late evenings dancing in the fields. They were dancing in the morning mist and one can still see them when the mist comes in circles and is sort of uneven on its upper part, like small tops all around the circle, those tops are the heads of the Elves. So I can say that I see them fairly often here 🙂 Elves might be beautiful but their main purpose is to make humans sick, especially children. Sometimes so bad that they die but they mostly do this for fun and really doesn’t want to kill anyone 🙂 🙂

     

If one would get sick after meeting the Elves one could be cured by blowing towards them with Bellows or perhaps drop some pieces of gold in a nearby creek as a sacrifice 🙂 Elves can sometimes invite You to dance with them and mean no harm with that but time flows much much slower in that circle so it’s best to not be in a hurry if one accepts. They will make You sick if You don’t dance with them and they will throw illness upon You and that will most likely kill You. Sort of damned if You do and damned if You don’t 🙂 🙂

     

In the year 1656 a woman was put to trial when she said she had had sex with the Elf King and had seven children with him. He one day came and brought the kids with him wearing golden clothes. The verdict was that she had been that the devil had made her insane and that they all should pray for her. I’m so glad that they never have asked me to dance with them since I have two left feet and my hip replacements really aren’t made for dancing 🙂

Have a great day!

Don’t try to catch a hornet.

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The only photo I have of Malkolm today 🙂 He and Alma learned that it isn’t a good idea to try and attack a Hornet, Alma was limping for a while and Malkolm as You can see was stung on the back.

 

More mixed weather today than what they guessed yesterday. It was sunny and rather cool in the morning while we were out on our morning walk but the clouds arrived much earlier, so by the time we came home the sky had an evenly dark grey color.

No ALT texts today, too tired in my brain :-)     

With darker day comes the mosquitoes and once again they attacked my ancles when I was watering the newly planted seedlings. The Dahlias were still there so perhaps the slugs still doesn’t know they are there. The dogs really didn’t want to be outdoors even though it has been warm but I guess they too are a bit sick of the insects now.

The little creek up by the bog is almost dried out oddly enough since it has been raining so much but the ferns shows where it usually flows.

 

Besides doing my chores it has been a rather uneventful day, perfect really 🙂 I’ve watched some football (soccer) and we took a nap, shorter than I had hoped for because a friend called on the phone. At least I didn’t sleep for too long so that I can fall asleep tonight 🙂 I have a short work week ahead of me because on Friday it’s Midsummers eve and that’s a big thing here.

   

To be honest I think it is even bigger than Christmas here and even though the church tried to make it a christian holiday (John the Baptist’s’ Birthday) it’s all pagan here to be honest 🙂 According to the folklore it’s a day when the Beings are out and about a lot and if we do it right we can keep us all healthy during winter and also see the future if we want to. For those new to this place but have been following me on post I think I’ve told You about the trolls and perhaps gnomes but there are a lot more to tell. I’ll start telling You more about the beings and how we celebrate Midsummer over here from tomorrow.

     

I have re-potted the Guava trees today. I think they have been a bit confused with the weather because first it was hot as h..l here, then almost autumn weatherwise plus all the rain, so they haven’t been growing that well, especially the roots have stopped to grow. I can only hope they’ll start growing again now when it has become a bit warmer. All apricots, peaches and pear trees are now re-potted as well.  and I had a few seedlings from the Lemonquat seeds I sowed just before the warmth arrived. It takes far less time to get a seed sown Kumquat, limequat, lemonquat and what ever other quat there is out there 🙂   than it takes for orange, lemon or lime trees sown from seeds. For those it can take up to ten fifteen years before they flower but perhaps, with a bit of luck, only four to five years for the quats. It is time for a cup of tea so I don’t fall asleep in front of the tv later. Only four more days before long weekend again 🙂

I totally forgot that I also planted the last potatoes in pots today. The sprouts were so long that I made them follow the inside of the pot 🙂
The Guava trees has changed color to red, normally a sign that they stand in too much sunlight but these doesn’t so I have no idea to why they’ve done that.
I hope the old Pawpaw tree that survived winter here also speed up the growth of the new leafs now when the warmer weather return.
Perennials and trees can take years to start germinate so I’m quite pleased that I now have Giant Sequoias growing.
The Himalayan Cedar is coming fine 🙂

 

If You want a flower that will keep on flowering until autumn, smells really odd and would spread like wildfire this is the one for You, Nepeta sibirica, Siberian catmint (our name for it is Siberian dragon flower). It is 5 feet high and smother any other flower to death within a year 🙂 Only just as invasive flowers can keep it in control 🙂 🙂 It is beautiful though.

Have a great day!

A day with warmth and sunshine, it’ll rain tomorrow.

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Every year since long before I moved here poppies have grown outside the Beekeepers garage.

I have two really happy dogs beside me right now. Warmer weather and no rain so now they’ve been playing outside all afternoon/ evening 🙂 Also a short walk after I had come home was really liked. Unfortunately the Forest fly season has started so after walking to the bog we all hurried out of the forest again 🙂 These flies are really harmless in all way but they always try to get inside the ears and nostrils and if they can’t they just walk around on the hair. So annoying!!! So I better find my mosquito hat otherwise I’ll refuse to take any walk after it becomes warmer than 10 C (50 F).

Clouds missing my village, they pass south or north of us :-)

This is some kind of Lathyrus, Sweet pea relative and it grows along the gravel raod.
I can’t remember the name but this is a close relative to Sweet Pea. Could be Spring pea perhaps ?

The first wild strawberries, they grow all over the forest and in to our garden :-)
The first ones for the year. I didn’t eat any because too many dogs walk by there and god only knows how many pee on them 🙂

They’re guessing that it’ll stay this warm tomorrow again but with rain and thunder. After that a few days with lower temperatures again and then up to summer temperatures and with rain almost the entire time, I guess the mosquitoes will be happy about that 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it might be time to go fishing and put what ever I catch in the little lake behind my garage, a few fish can eat a lot of mosquito larvae 🙂

White beam, not especially common growing in the wild outside this village. Whitebeam isn't rare here normally but I can't find it anywhere in this area except for in this forest.
Whitebeam.

The Birch wood on the way out to the tip of the peninsula in the bog. 

Lots of butterflies here now :-)
I’m not good at butterfly names 🙂

I found a new anti tick, horsefly, mosquito spray in the pharmacy last Friday. The last one I had smelled like really bad deodorant, the kind of buy while being abroad somewhere warm and wonder why one never find something like that at home and when You do come home fully understands why not 🙂 🙂 This one doesn’t seem so bad to be honest, it smells like a very flowery perfume older ladies used in the sixties. Sort of discrete but powerful. The thing is that it sticks around and if some of it has hit the floor or a wall that discrete smell sort of grows and fills the entire home and in the end forces You out of Your own home 🙂 :-)Nova doesn’t care much, Alma shows her displease and Malkolm starts to roll around in anything that might smell so bad that it at least kills the flowery smell 🙂 🙂 🙂

The bog.     

It’s supposed to be for humans as well so I sprayed some on myself as well. That smell has now followed me at work and it’s really hot where I work and I can tell You that heat really make this smell grow thousandfold. The bottle is new and it seems to do the job so I’ll keep on using it until I find something else 🙂 Can’t they come up with something that works but at least doesn’t stink so much 🙂 🙂

Maianthemum bifolium, relative to Lady in the valley and smells really nice.
Maianthemum bifolium, the Swedish name for it is Squirrel berries and I have no idea why 🙂

   

I won’t write anything tomorrow, too much to do but I’ll return on Thursday. I used to take Wednesdays off from the blog when I helped my friends daughter with her French homework and that continued even after she left school for good but instead of Wednesdays I’ll have a break every Monday, I never seems to be able to do what I should on Mondays any more 🙂 It is time for a cup of tea and perhaps something to nibble at as well 🙂

I guess You want a photo of Malkolm 🙂

Have a great day!

Cool and nice!

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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!

Cooler days and soon long weekend :-)

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Old Nova, she's 18 years old now and still going strong :-)

It is finally a bit cooler outside. Not so much when being in the sunshine but a lot when staying in the shadow. I had to water everything when I came home yesterday and suddenly it was evening and time to go to bed, so that’s why I didn’t write anything. Today the ground still was damp so I only watered the trees and bushes I’ve planted in the garden this spring. Well to be honest we haven’t had much of a spring this year, it went from winter to summer in a day or so 🙂 🙂

More and more wild flowers flowers now.  Cooler and nicer in the forest but oh so many biting insects.  The Swedish name for this flower is Hags' tooth.  On our way out on the peninsula out to the bog.

Something is chewing on the new beans, have no idea what it can be but oddly enough only the ones sown in a straight line, I had a few beans left so I just put them down close to the fence and those are untouched. I also had a few peas left so I sowed those in the old broken wheel barrow, they seems to grow even better than all other plants I’ve sown this year 🙂 🙂 Lots of potato plants showing up in the vegetable patch I don’t use this year, I have instead sown seeds (not too successfully I might add) I haven’t had potatoes there for three summers and they still pop up 🙂 🙂 Can I cal them hardy now? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Despite the harw wind this place was packed with mosquitoes, that sort of dampens the joy of having a walk even in plsces where one loves to walk otherwise.    The bog is now full with Hare tail cotton grass.  They are already releasing their seeds now.

Yesterday we had a strong wind and walked out to the bog, normally that ,means the mosquitoes and flies will stay away from us, now we have so many mosquitoes that we were attacked badly when we arrives at the Birch woodland. So today with less wind we stayed at home, Nova is once again so badly bitten all over her head that I thought it would be cruel to bring her out to even more biting insects, it’s bad enough here at home to be honest. It’s a price we have to pay for having so many trees and bushes in this little garden of mine.

Malkolm grows so fast now.

Alma reacted as if she had injured the ball when it started to squeak, I don't think she'll touch it again until I've removed the squeaker :-)
Alma with the new toy, she loved it until it in, her ears, started to scream 🙂 It’s a squeaky thing in that ball and neither she nor Malkolm liked that 🙂 🙂

Those two are playing all day 🙂

I had a little walk in the garden before the mosquitoes chased me indoors. The Black Walnut is flowering, the English is living and now have two branches. The trees I plated this year all look great and the Pawpaw from last year now have green small dots all over the branches, even the ones I thought had frozen. The green dots are tiny, tiny leafs. Also the Persimmon hybrid that dies but where the Persimmon root (Diospyros virginiana) now creates at least eight new branches 🙂 I’ve read that it’s fairly easy to take some of those branches to create new trees from. Well they will. technically all be the same tree but I did also buy a new real persimmon this spring so I hope that at least that I’ll get both male and female trees from this.

This is a favorite in parks and everywhere really, Rose rugosa. It is now seen as invasive and I have no idea how they'll be able to remove them all, especially since it does spread like wildfire :-)
Rosa rugosa, the Swedish name for it would be something like Grumpy rose 🙂

We call this Iris for Swords lily.
Yellow flag.

See all those new branches the Persimmon tree creates now when the hybrid is dead :-)
Lots of new growth from the roots of the Persimmon tree 🙂 The inoculation dies during this winter but the Persimmon root survived and now gives lots of more branches 🙂

I found Morning glories, peas, poppies and Californian poppies growing here now. The poppies refuse to grow in my garden but always grow well in the wheelbarrow for some reason and no summer without Californian poppies at my home :-)
The old wheelbarrow will look good this year 🙂

Tomorrow will be the last working day this week, we have our national day on Thursday and I took Friday off. The weather will be cooler as I’ve already said and they are guessing we’ll get rain as well. I don’t care as long as we at least have sunshine when we’re out on walks, the rest of the time will be good napping times 🙂

Have a great day!

Sunny, warm and unpleasant.

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A Roe deer doe half hiding in the high grass, most likely the baby is there too.

Malkolm woke me up at 4 am today, so up we went so that he could go outside to pee. There was some morning mist just above the ground but instead of having our walk then we went indoors again and slept for an hour and a half instead.

The dog rose showed its pink buds for the first time yesterday.
I noticed that the Dog rose now is full of buds.

The deer was at almost the same place this morning.    This one is actually closely related to the pink flower I've shown several times this spring.

It was still rather cool in the air when we finally went out but I could feel that it became warmer and warmer for every minute, so we just took a short walk before it went too hot for old Nova. Yesterday just before we went to bed I could see a Roe deer doe just on the other side of the gravel road and she was still there this morning. The grass is high so I think she had her baby there as well. She’s been hanging around for a while now so she knows us well and didn’t bother to even try and hide when we walked out the gate.

The Haunted tree :-)   This is a favorite amongst all pollen drinking insects and also a favorite with spiders who there can get an easy meal.  This trailer used to be where all the hunters gathered before the hunt started.  The little tjärn still have some water visible.

I mowed the rest of the lawn and the outside parts as early as I could, then I did the laundry and the temperature dried it up within minutes. It did look like we would get thunder and rain again today but it all passed to the east and west of is. The day has been unpleasant though with the high humidity and temperature plus the fact that we’ve had very little wind, so we have mostly stayed indoors taking long naps instead.

  The little creek is almost totally dried out but ferns will soon cover it. 

I was outside for a few minutes an hour ago, the wind has started to blow but despite that I sweated like a pig when I planted some of the sowings (Hollyhocks and Morning glories). Also there were so many mosquitoes biting us that we all went in, closed the doors and now only have windows covered with mosquito nets open. They are guessing that tomorrow will be mostly cloudy and perhaps not warmer than 20C (68F) and that fits me fine 🙂

Today the first dog rose opened up.

My tree peony, bought last year, have already given me two flowers and a third is on the way.
My tree peony has two flowers and one bud now, unfortunately these flowers look down to the ground.

I wasn't sure if my lemon tree would survive last winter but it did anjd now it has lots of buds.
Lemon flower.

The second daylile flowers too now.

Have a great day!

It missed us again.

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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!

Sticky flypaper.

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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!

     

Rain and thunder is close but won’t reach us.

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There’s thunder nearby but looking at the radar sequence on all weather sites it will miss us, I wouldn’t mind if we had gotten the rain because my two big water barrels are closing in to be empty and the cooler air would be nice as well. The cool air will come tonight though but only stay for one day, it’ll be warm again on Saturday.

A tiny part of my Lilac hedge, I have around 30 meters (much the same in yards) of it and I truly dislike Lilacs 🙂 🙂 In front of it stands a Red leafed Rose.

Whitebeam. A close relative to the Rowan tree and can become fairly large. I would like to have one in my garden but I have so many other trees growing now so it’ll have to wait until I win the lottery and can buy lots of new land 🙂 🙂 🙂

We haven’t had any walk today because it is just too hot for a puppy and an eighteen year old dog, it was bad enough yesterday when we were out for a short walk. Still I’m not yet complaining about it being too warm 🙂 Alma and Malkolm have been outside playing a lot though and now they sleep here beside me on the cooler floor while Nova sleeps on two fleece blankets and snoring loudly as well 🙂

  

Alma has stayed in the dog yard all day today, Yay 🙂 funny because today had been the perfect day for her to do it when it comes to me and my job. The same company all day long, only one color and long series of what I painted. She always escapes those days when it is most inconvenient 🙂 🙂 🙂 I must admit though that the dog yard hasn’t been this clean and tidy in a long time. I’ve been there fixing and cleaning almost every day and all eventual plants that tends to grow in there are almost totally gone 🙂 Nothing bad that doesn’t bring something good with it as we say over here 🙂 🙂

     

So I’ve mostly hand watered the vegetable patch and all the potted plants. The vegetable patch has only been fried by the sun but the wind can’t reach it, so the ground was actually a bit damp on the surface now in the evening. The potted plants however needed a lot of water. It’s always a bit tricky to water all the potted trees and bushes because some need acidic water, like the Pawpaw and other preferres water with lots of lime in it, like peaches and Apricots. So now I need to place them in two groups so that I don’t use the wrong water.

One of the Ginkgo’s I had in my garden survived the snow storm, the other one seems to have died.

My seed sown Pawpaw’s. Three of them now have new leafs growing out and three have leafs since during winter and I think those need to drop before they too get new leafs.

Can You see the tiny green dots? New leafs on the outdoors Pawpaw!

This and the next one shows the two Pawpaws I bought this spring.

I can also tell You that the Pawpaw that stayed in the garden all winter has survived because today I could see the first tiny leafs growing on it 🙂 The Columbines are opening up now and the tree peony has big buds 🙂 My seeds sown Gardenias are either flowering or just about to. The seeds sown aren’t filled with petals like the ones we can buy and has a slightly weaker scent so they are easier to have if one has problems with strong smells.

Columbine. If You look at the petals they look like a dove seen from the side, hence the name, columbine means dove like.

This and the next one is the same species but since they self sow all kinds of varieties can show.

 

I “won” almost nine dollars US on the lottery yesterday 🙂 I use ” because if I don’t win on Saturday I’ve only lost 3 dollars US 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s a bit sad when one is happy because one only lost three dollars 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!