Category: The bog.

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!

Doing everything while it is cool.

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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 🙂

She will drive me crazy one day :-)

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The morning was quite wonderful today, sunny but also cool enough to keep the mosquitoes calm. I had to go a bit early because I needed to fill up the car with petrol. I had worked perhaps ten minutes when I noticed my neighbor had called me six times! It is a very noisy job to clean the paint box so I hadn’t heard the phone.

     

She asked me if I had arrived at work and if so said I better come home again because Alma and Malkolm were in her garden. I really can’t be angry at Alma but god knows she does test my patience a lot 🙂 🙂 🙂 Thankfully no hand painting for the two coming jobs so I left to get home again. My neighbor had tried to find where Alma had escaped from but couldn’t find any place and it was the same when I looked the first time as well 🙂 🙂 🙂

We went out to the bog again. It was a bit warm but a wind was blowing so I didn’t think it would be too warm for the dogs.
Well I think now that it was, so it’ll be nice to have walks in the cool morning air this weekend.

 

So I went in and checked in the dog yard and even then I first couldn’t figure out how she had managed to get out. There are two tree trunks lying along the fence and they are both attached to the fence with steel wires and both were still there 🙂 She had managed to squeeze her self beneath the trunks and the ground and then managed to bend up the fence and if she had managed to get out properly before Malkolm understood what was happening he would never had the chance to follow her but Malkolm is where Alma is.

The Lingon berry bushes are full of flower buds now 🙂

We call this little flower for Forest Star.

If it only had been Alma I just wouldn’t have cared to go home, everyone knows she’s either out of the garden or the dog yard and never walks anywhere all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂 My neighbors two daughters had had really fun playing with them both until I came home again 🙂 🙂 🙂 and everyone at work loved to see the photos my neighbor sent me showing that even an almost two year old kid can have lots of fun with both the big Alma and the puppy Malkolm 🙂 🙂

Clematis ‘Propertius’ has a weak but nice scent.
One of the Himalayan Cedar trees is alive and gives new needles now 🙂
We call this flower Troll Grapes. Gives very poisonous deep red berries in autumn.

I’ve made sure that those two trunks can’t be moved again and during the weekend I’ll check the rest of the fence, again 🙂 I will soon start to repair that fence properly but even then I’m pretty sure Alma will find a way to escape, I know Malkolm will be able to since he now can climb up net fences 🙂 🙂 My neighbor tried twice to put him in my garden but gave up since he pretty quickly sat by her side again 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

Have a great day!

Almost late to work :-)

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The first buds on the lilacs. I really don’t like lilacs but have a hedge almost 30 meters long (much the same in yards) and two big Hungarian lilac bushes outside my bedroom. The photos today are a mix from today and yesterday.

I am the secretary in the Road association board (sounds fancy doesn’t it 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) for our village so it is my responsibility to send out the invitations to our annual meeting. I remembered that yesterday so I started up the old laptop I have for that and when I wrote down the password it didn’t work!!

     

I was totally sure about that password to the laptop because I wrote it down on a piece of paper and left it in the laptop 🙂 🙂  It didn’t matter how many times I wrote it down and even though I knew it was the right word I even tried to write some variations with small and big letters. I think I had tried thirty times and then suddenly it allowed it?! I was thinking that I would have to write don the invitations by hand so it might have felt my desperation when it finally opened up 🙂 🙂

     

I once bought a printer for this once in a year job and it has always worked oddly enough, the one I had before always did the most off things, like only allow me to print out text if I used the red color 🙂 🙂 🙂 This one only have black and is some kind of powder and always works. This time however it smelled like there was an electrical fire inside of it 🙂 🙂 One year with dust burning away when the printer gets warm does that 🙂 🙂 🙂

  They have for once been very careful when they’ve placed all the twigs and branches in piles after they thinned out the forest, they were very careful to not damage the crabapple tree beside the road.

 

So I had to deliver all invitations on my way to work this morning and therefore I had to stop at each and every mailbox, the thing is only house owners get an invitation, not renters and some villagers have passed away, some moved and I have no idea in which homes they live in or if the new ones bought the homes or are renting. So I was pretty soon a bit late to work even though I started earlier 🙂 🙂 I also had to drive to the castle because the owners do own land in the village, the only thing is that few mail boxes are marked properly so I have no idea if I put the invitations in the right boxes 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It didn’t help that I also took a few photos on my way but I made it in time to work, I even managed to have a cup with machine made cappuccino, well it almost taste like it but the machine really do the milk in a perfect way. Besides that it has been really nice. The sun will continue to shine and even though a cold front will pass by during the weekend it still will be around 20C (68F) and sunshine during the days. They are also guessing that some rain might pass by but it will only be showers. I don’t mind some rain but then again it might be a good idea if we didn’t get more in a while, this year will otherwise be a mosquito paradise, it has already started.

     

It is time to cook some food for work tomorrow and then mail the last invites for the meeting. Now days we all enjoy these meetings but just a few years back they were horrible 🙂 🙂 This meeting is only about the road and nothing but the road but back then we had some people who always would bring up every feud there ever was in the village and everyone would shout at each other 🙂 🙂 🙂 They had all lived together in this village their entire lives so they knew every weakness the others had, they never even dared to talk to me about anything because I was an outsider and they knew nothing about me but also knew I’ve been told everything about them 🙂 🙂 🙂

Perhaps two meters of my Lilac hedge, the smell will be horribly strong.
If You want Tulips that comes back year after year buy wild tulips (the species). The bulbs You buy from modern varieties are rarely surviving more than one year. They also grow well outside flower beds.
The first strawberry flower to open up.
This is a Violet that has been growing here since long before I moved here. Have no idea what kind it is and it was gone for a couple of year but yesterday I found it in a lot of places again 🙂

Have a great day!

Even nicer today :-)

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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!

I had to apologize to Alma :-)

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Today I’ll show photos I’ve taken on my way to work so some can be a few days old but also some from today.

So it wasn’t Alma who had stolen the meat, it was all my fault even though it actually happened because of keeping it away from her 🙂 🙂 I was going to do something and it wouldn’t take long so I thought I just place it high. Like always things that won’t take a long time usually does 🙂 I have two window sills in every window and in this window I have one rather high up but at the moment no plants there. So I reached up and placed the meat there 🙂 🙂 🙂 One can’t see that window sill because the drapes hang low so even when I looked “everywhere” I couldn’t see it and had forgotten that all those pots now stood outside on the north side of the cottage 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

One the other hand today I once again got a call from my neighbor, Alma was outside the dog yard again and this time Malkolm had followed. My neighbor told the two of them to follow him to my garden and blocked the gate. He then called me and when he had he noticed that Malkolm sat beside his feet 🙂 So he let him in again and made sure the gate was properly blocked. Alma wouldn’t leave Malkolm all alone so he thought he could relax a bit before he had to go away for a while.

     

I came home not long after that and heard Malkolm in the garage and thought he must have told me wrong where Malkolm was because Alma was outside the dog yard again 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I placed them both (and Nova even though she would have been happy to be anywhere as long as Malkolm was busy with Alma. So I went to check where she had escaped through and turned around and there he was, Malkolm, by my feet 🙂 🙂 I had the same thought as my neighbor so I took him back to the garden again. For some reason I looked back towards the gate when I was going to fix the fence, she had managed to remove a huge log that I tied to the fence with thick electric cables, she had worked hard on those from the morning when I checked everything in the dog yard until my neighbor called.

     

So when I turn around I saw that Malkolm knows how to climb over a fence 🙂 🙂 🙂 When I saw that I remembered that I said that it was so nice to once again have a dog that loved to use his brain 🙂 🙂 🙂 So how long will it take when he’s grown up to be able top climb over the well over two meter (much the same in yards) high fence around the dog yard 🙂 🙂 🙂 The log by the way is now #tied” together with the fence with a really thick steel wire so now we’re guessing how long it will take until she manages to remove that, should be impossible but if any dog can it will be Alma 🙂 🙂 🙂

Well what ever I sowed there last year will most likely never see the light of the day unless it in some way has managed to be covered with enough wet sand and then grow up elsewhere.
I think it might be a joined work between these two 🙂

 

Otherwise it’s been a rather wonderful day, not hot but not chilly either. Lots of sunshine but also lots of clouds. I’ve re-potted some of the Guava seedlings, they are now placed outside as well. I had planned on mowing the lawn tomorrow but they’re guessing it will be a bit rainy. I have however a long weekend now so no more work until Monday. Malkolm will also get his second vaccine shot on Friday and I’m already worrying about Alma 🙂 It will not be especially warm so I might have to bring her with us and then Nova can relax here at home without being disturbed by wild playing between Alma and Malkolm, she deserves that the old Lady 🙂

I managed to break off one of the small branches on the Apricot tree I bought this year. I have no idea if this works but I put it in moist soil and put a plastic bag over it. I have done this with an apple twig once and it grew roots on its own. Those apple trees becomes very weak and usually dies with a few years. The Prunus family is know for spreading easily with their roots so who knows it might work. I’ll keep You updated weather it goes well or not.

   

Have a great day!

The thunder did arrive.

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The sky just before the thunder arrived yesterday.

The thunder did arrive not long after I posted the blog. It struck somewhere in the northern part of the village and not especially much south of my cottage. Thankfully none of the dogs react to thunder so we just relaxed while it was here. The showers were quite hefty though and washed away the grass seeds I had spread here and there in the garden, well I have plenty left so I can continue to sow if this would happen again 🙂

     

We woke up to a wonderful foggy morning, it was so thick that it even was foggy in the forest, that rarely happens here. We walked out to the bog and I could hear Cuckoo birds all over the area. We have a saying here when it comes to Cuckoo birds and the first time we hear it every year, so here’s some Swedish: Norrgök är torrgök, södergök är dödergök, östergök är tröstergök men västergök är bästergök. Gök is the Swedish name for the Cuckoo bird. So the saying say that if one hear the Cuckoo bird from north the first time it’ll be a dry summer, if You hear it from south someone close will die. If You hear it from east You will need comforting but it’s best to hear it from west which means it’ll be a great year. I heard it from east and I hope that included poor Albin because I don’t want more of comforting this year 🙂

     

Even though we took an hour long nap today I’ve been fairly busy. I’ve done two sets of laundry, I’ve made pancakes, I’ve re-potted all the tomato plants and also all bell peppers.Plus of course I have been watering all those trees I’ve already planted in the garden. I have defrosted some meat to make as dinner for work next week but I’ve forgotten to do anything with it and now I feel it’s too late in the day to start doing it. So I’ll do it tomorrow instead, just as well because I barely had any vegetables at home, I thought I had something more than tomatoes but I was so wrong 🙂

     

Only three working days next week though, holiday on Thursday and what we call a squeeze day on Friday. Some will work on Friday but I really didn’t want to when I don’t have to.Will not be any great weather according to the weather sites but I don’t care. I’ll just relax all four days until next working week 🙂

A Jackdaw inspecting the Magpies nest. I wonder if it would have used it if the Magpies haden’t used it right now? Jackdaws usually nest in chimneys and my neighbors chimney has always been a target 🙂

 

Alma inspected the pastures on the other side of the gate a long time this morning. She sat there with me as well for a long time when we waited for the laundry to be ready 🙂It is time to bring in the laundry that hangs outside. The sky is dark grey around the village so I better bring it in. The first round dried in a few minutes but we had sunshine and a very weak wind, now we don’t have any of that.

This is how it looks when one forgets or delays the re-potting of the tomato plants 🙂
90% of the plant is now below the surface and the plant will create roots all the way there making it much stronger than it otherwise would be.
I decided four potted tomato vines would be enough the rest I either planted in the ground like here or in a raised bed I still have where a redberried gooseberry bush grows.

Have a great day!

A really nice afternoon.

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He stops at every spot he can find something to sniff on 🙂 Drives Alma insane because she wants to walk and walk and walk 🙂

We’ve had two really nice days here. Yesterday was a bit cooler but after having a long cold winter and a few weeks where the temperature didn’t rise above 5 C (41 F) anything above that feels like summer temperatures 🙂 Even the dogs were panting when we were out walking 🙂 🙂 We had frost last night though and that can keep on happening until the first week in June. June sixth is usually the last night we have frost here.

     

None of us wanted to get out of bed when the alarm started this morning, it seems that Malkolm loves to stay in bed after we’ve woken up, that I like 🙂 but not even Alma wanted to leave the bed today and that was surprising. No need to hurry up tomorrow morning though, it’s May first, the workers day in big parts of the world. So I guess we’ll all get up at normal time just because we actually can stay in bed 🙂 🙂

     

Today however is Valborgsmässoafton, Walpurgis night which is celebrated here. No one actually knows who Valborg or Walpurgis as her English name was, is. She was actually an English princess I’ve read. She became a nun (and a couple of her brothers became monks) and was apparently really good in making pagans christians. She later became a saint and is the patron saint for those being infected with rabies. So as I said no one here knows who she was 🙂 🙂 Perhaps she does hold her hand over us because we haven’t had rabies here in this country since 1886.

     

So today they’ll start huge bonfires, choirs, usually men only choirs, will sing when the bonfires burn and singing spring songs. Today is a bit unusual because we have nice weather, all too often I’ve been standing is rain and / or snow freezing my b..t off not feeling the warmth from the fire because I had a tendency to always be placed on the other end far away from the fire 🙂 🙂

Tulipa tarda, spreads happily in my garden.
White checkered lily buds.
Checkered lily.
Lung worth. I was trying to photograph the Bumble bee that You can almost see at the bottom in the middle.
Leopards bane.
White wood anemone.
Yellow wood anemone and Corydalis.

So this will be a short working week but next week will be even better because next Friday is what we call a squeeze day. Thursday is Ascension Day and a holiday here so no one wants to work on Friday. Unfortunately most must but I applied for being free the right way so I won’t work 🙂 I’ll also stay at home on Friday the seventh of June because our national day is on Thursday. To be honest very few know why we celebrate our national day that day, we just don’t care that much as long as we don’t have to work 🙂 🙂 No it isn’t because of some war or something like that, we haven’t been to war since we helped to beat Napoleon. There’s actually two reasons but I’ll tell You all about it then.

     

The dogs are sleeping all over the cottage. Nova because she’s old and tired but Alma and Malkolm because they’ve played wildly in the garden just before clouds covered the sky. I think I’ll join them in a while. The best tomorrow though is that the Ice cream lorry comes, I’m out of Ice cream and it’s stay warm a while they say so I’ll but more than I usually do 🙂

I really like this photo, just look at Alma 🙂 🙂

 

Have a great day!

Now I fear the phone when I’m working :-)

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Nicer morning yesterday so I’ll start with some from then.

Now days when the phone rings while I’m working my anxiety levels rise quite high and when I see it’s my neighbors the level hits the roof 🙂 Especially since we are way too few painters at work right now, so I wasn’t especially happy when the phone rang and it was my neighbor 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

Yes she had escaped once again and this time the hole was so small that it even looked like it would be impossible for Malkolm to get out through it 🙂 My neighbors said that she sat down by the fence towards the gravel road and looked up the slope. She knows I’ll be coming home not too long after she has done this 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m going to check the fence this weekend to make sure there are no weak spots left.

Grape elder. the flowers will soon open up, nothing special to be honest but they are usually the first and yellow so I like them a lot.
This is the place where Alma saw piglets for the first time and she’s always calm and quiet here so we go there quite often 🙂 🙂
Rowan tree leafs.

I have also noticed that one of the dogs, almost 100% sure it is Alma, has tried to dig her way out of the garage so now I’ve blocked that way with old car tires, with rims, and those are so heavy that it’ll take even her quite a lot of time to remove them before she can try again 🙂 🙂

 

Bog Myrtle in bloom. One of my favorite smells!

We’ve had rather nice weather today, lots of sunshine and slightly below 10 C (50 F).  The morning was a bit meh though, grey and dull and -2 C (28,4 F) so the car was covered in ice, easy to remove though. Nova wanted to go out to the bog today so out there we went. Lots of small birds singing but not a sound of any other animals, normally we can hear them run away when we come too close but today nothing.

I was going to photograph this when Malkolm jumped up on the tree stump 🙂

 

Tomorrow it’ll both rain and snow during the night, great because can one ever get too much water 🙂 🙂 🙂 Same temperature as today but no sunshine until late in the afternoon, on Sunday it’ll be really warm, too bad it couldn’t be the same tomorrow since I’m at home and would be able to enjoy it. Malkolm took a mud bath in the root zone (where all my dish water, shower water and washing water goes to be cleaned) so today he had his first bath. He now refuses to be close to me, didn’t even follow us up to the computer, he’s really grumpy and sleeps down stairs in the dog igloo 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!

The table has finally arrived.

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It wasn’t a lucky day for my work place today. One was at home with migraines, one was at home for back pain, one managed to injure himself so his eyebrow was torn up and he started bleeding like crazy and had to be driven to the hospital and then I went home because I had to sign for a package that they just refused to leave outside my door.

   

Gooseberry bush in the wild. Those gooseberries are delicious but very small and the bush is the thorniest one can find. I did the mistake to bring in one to my garden once. As soon as a branch hits the ground it creates roots and spreads insanely quick. Those thorns are horrible to be stung by and they tend to stay inside the foot as well 🙂

The package, my new table for the living room, was going to be delivered some time between 11 am and 3 pm. I was also going to pick up a package at the grocery store in Gudhem today and managed to do that before 11 am. That package was the Tea bush I ordered for quite some time ago. I was really stressed by the time I came home so naturally the table arrived almost exactly at 3 pm 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is starting to green up 🙂

 

Yellow wood anemone.

So I managed to fall asleep in the recliner and the two big dogs in the sofa and Malkolm in the dog igloo 🙂  The weather could have been worse today, not especially warm but sunshine every now and again plus almost no wind to speak of. So we had a quite nice walk after the table had arrived. It will be slightly warmer from now on but we’ll also get rain and on Friday even some snow.

Her favorite spot on hot summers days 🙂 Also works when it’s cold in the air but the sun is shining 🙂

   

The new table is much smaller but have a shelf under the table top (which is made of glass), so I placed one gardening book there, one crime novel and the book Doctor sleep written by Stephen King if You for some reason didn’t know that 🙂 I love that book but I have no wish what so ever to see the movie, I have a tendency to get in to horror movies a bit too much and that’s not good when living at the outskirts of the world where imagination can carry You away a bit too much 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

We’ve already had our dinners but I feel that I might have the last orange or perhaps an ice cream or why not both 🙂 I’m going to the store tomorrow anyway 🙂

Alma can become a bit jealous if Malkolm spend time with Nova, she just place herself between them until either of the two other leave 🙂

Have a great day!

A sunny and wind free day for a change.

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For once we’re having a day when the sun shines, no wind and after the ice cold morning a relatively warm day and I’m not at work 🙂 Also a low pressure with rain and possibly snow is slowly entering the country and it looks like it’ll miss us here 🙂 Something must be wrong and in one way or the other I’m sure I’ll have to pay for it 🙂 🙂

     

We walked down to the creek early this morning and even saw a few deer. Nova and Malkolm walks really good when leashed but Alma has after all that has happened here gone back to being impossible. She whines and shouts plus pulling the leash all the time. It hasn’t been easy for her losing her best friend like that and now when Malkolm is here being over protective.

   

He’s fascinated by the creek and its running water 🙂

Today I wondered where she was because she hadn’t been indoors for quite some time. So I went out through the kitchen door and it wasn’t until I walked over to the other side of the cottage when I heard her barking like insane 🙂 She was down by the now rather big lake behind the garage so the sound couldn’t really reach the cottage. She was probably defending us towards something horrible like deer or pheasants 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well it could have been wild hogs too and she was smart enough to not trying to reach what ever it was because then she would have become wet and she really doesn’t like that 🙂 🙂

     

Later on we went out to the bog and she was just as impossible then as she had been in the morning. I do hope she calms down when Malkolm gets bigger and doesn’t need her protection but I doubt that 🙂 Otherwise it has been a calm and nice day. I’ll need to bake some bread though but the day is still young and there’s plenty of time to do that. I could also start with the laundry but I really don’t feel like doing that 🙂 🙂

   

The lake behind the garage is getting bigger and bigger, normally it’s a swamp there 🙂

The dogs are sleeping and I really would like to join them but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all tonight if I did that 🙂 I would have liked to start doing things in the garden but the nights will stay below freezing so no use in doing that, I could mow the lawn though because when nothing else is growing the lawn sure does 🙂 I have to put the new lawn mower together first though so bread baking it is 🙂

Have a great day!