Category: The bog.

December 3, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

The hunters were out until just after noon so we could have a walk in the forest while there was daylight. Thankfully we have no wind now because it fell down to -15C (5F) last night, much less cold during the day though but the temperature will drop just as low tonight again.

We went out to the bog and even though we didn’t see any animals we could hear what I think was a complaining wild hog while it ran away from us. No small birds or any birds to be honest. I guess the bigger ones stay close to the roads to eat what has been killed by traffic during the night and the smaller ones seems to be at my feeders 🙂

The Wood Grouse might not be a Wood Grouse after all. People knowing birds better than I do says the coloring is wrong. It has the size of one though so until they can tell me what it actually is I’ll still call it a Wood Grouse. It can be a crossing with the Black Grouse though, they do look different in their colors. It is still around every day though and I’ve noticed that it hasn’t any tail feathers, a close call with a lynx perhaps?

A female Bullfinch, the bright red dot above and behind it is a male.

The female have a more dusty mauve color.

The Blue tit rather stays close to the peanut feeder

We also had a visit from our local fox last night, I had the camera up for three days and as long as it snowed it stayed away, cold weather doesn’t seem to disturb it though.

BURREL — Alma is usually the one most caught by the wildcam but usually she’s so blurry that it’s hard to see what she is, that dog runs all the time 🙂

Have a great day!

They are picky primadonnas.

November 11, 2023 · 3 Comments ·

We had thick fog once again this morning but since hunters were out in the forest, one can wonder why because they really couldn’t see anything out there 🙂 🙂 🙂 , we couldn’t enjoy it. We might have fog again tomorrow so I hope it lasts long enough for us to have a walk in it.

We call these (well the entire bush) for Goat apple. They are poisonous for us humans and I have no idea why they got that name 🙂 If one for some odd reason would eat those berries one would pee red.

So I’ve put up the new bird feeder and I do hope Alma won’t try and take it down 🙂 The House sparrows and the Tree sparrows are so used to me that they don’t care that I stand on the other side of the window. The Big tits however are more suspicious and flies away as soon as they realize I’m there. So I had to turn off the lights in the kitchen so they couldn’t see me as well and then they came to the feeder. I still haven’t seen a single Blue tit and that’s odd because they used to be the third most common bird around my feeders.

Nova wanted to go out to the bog today but when we reached the peninsula we always walk out on she suddenly didn’t want to. Neither Alma or Albin showed any reaction so we continued out anyway. Turns out that someone had been riding there and Nova has never been particularly fond of horses so I guess that was the reason. Today was supposed to be rain free so I wasn’t the least surprised that it rained every now and again 🙂 🙂 🙂

We had our Saturday pancakes when we came home and even though the dogs had their pancakes Albin still complained when i didn’t give him any more 🙂 🙂 Yesterday I had pommes strips for dinner and the dogs got their fair share of them, besides Albin drooling so much that I had to clean the floor afterwards he still complained when there were no more strips left 🙂 🙂

I need to dig down the pots with plants in the ground since I don’t have space for them in my cellar.

This is how much of the ground in my garden looks like now. Even though the surface is just an inch deep with soil and beneath it it’s just sand the water doesn’t go anywhere.

The weeks when I have a long weekend feels a bit odd. Today was the second day I was at home and it felt like I needed to prepare for working tomorrow 🙂 🙂 It’s around the same time every second weekend, just after noon, that happens 🙂 I guess old habits die hard 🙂 🙂

I’ve placed on of my Camellias in the coolest spot I have in my cottage and now it shows lots of buds. Camellias are picky primadonnas and I really don’t know why I don’t just throw them away, make one mistake during the year and they won’t flower and most likely die as well 🙂 🙂 This one however is at the moment showing lots of buds, it might flower around Christmas if I’m really lucky.

Have a great day!

November 5, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

We actually had sunshine for a couple of hours here today!! but since the hunters were out in the forest all the time it shone we couldn’t enjoy it on our walk. Isn’t it typical that the one day the sun shines they’ve decided since long that they should be out hunting 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really can’t complain about them because I they haven’t been out there especially much this autumn, bit it is still annoying 🙂

Nova is quite angry at me today. Isn’t it strange how a dogs hearing can change so much as it does sometimes? yesterday for instance I very quietly opened a box with toffee and she could hear that even though she was sleeping upstairs in my bedroom. Today however she couldn’t hear me calling her when she was two meters ahead of us when I wanted to take a detour on our way out to the bog 🙂 🙂 🙂

I leashed her as soon as we caught up with her and she’s been really angry since then ,even though we’ve had pancakes for dinner after our walk 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will continue to have her leashed for a while because if she’s a bit too far away from the rest of us and a wolf is nearby it might be the last thing she’ll do. I guess that a lonely old dog is way to tempting for a wolf to just let got.

Besides that very little has happened. I’ve made dinner for work in the slow cooker but I haven’t tasted it yet 🙂 I’ve also done the laundry so now after this I’ll bake some bread. I have a cold that doesn’t want to break out so I hope it will go away by tomorrow because I feel tired all the time. Either that or break out so I can get rid of it that way 🙂

Have a great day!

They’ve changed it to rain.

October 28, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

They’ve now changed the weather predictions from snow to rain and it’ll also be “much” warmer than they guessed yesterday. Instead we’ll get loads of rain and my neighbor and I wondered if that was better because we really don’t need more rain now and everything is just muddy when we go indoors again.

I was thinking of what I might buy myself as a christmas present this year. It shouldn’t be anything I really need because that I should buy anyway. So my first thought was a telescope to watch the stars at night. The problem with that is that it’s usually cloudy almost all winter when it is dark enough to actually watch the stars and in summer when the sky is clear it’s never really dark here at all, just a couple of hours in the middle of the night because even when the sun has set or before it rise again it’s really quite bright here.

So no telescope, that would just be a waste of money. Then I’ve been thinking of one of those terrariums, You know where one quarter is like an aquarium and three quarters are for plants. The problem is that my cottage is rather small so I don’t have the space for one except if I built it myself to fit upstairs but then again I’m as handy as a drunk badger so that’s not going to happen 🙂

So I guess it’ll be a big tin box with Quality Street chocolates, 2,5 kilos (slightly more than 5 pound), I’ll most likely have two weeks vacation then and if the weather is nice I could walk all that chocolate off 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is still hanging there, the last walnut 🙂

Have a great day!

I was surprised today!

October 22, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

The rest of this weekend has been much less eventful and I’m so grateful for that 🙂 🙂 However I keep finding a lot of wasp queens here indoors and I have no idea how they get in here. Normally I try to just catch and release them but lately they have been a bit angry so I’ve had no other choice than to kill them. I don’t like that but I just can’t have angry wasps flying around in my home.

We went out to the bog this morning and everything was just fine. Nova leash free as always a bit ahead of us and the rest of us following her. We went out on the peninsula and stayed there for a few minutes and turned back homewards again. Then suddenly Nova, 17 years old, started to run on the path. Albin did look a bit worried frowning and Alma did suddenly behave as if she had been to obedience school. So I guess we might have had a wolf rather close to us. I never see them though even if I now days quite often look back to see if anything is following us. I guess wolves just are too smart to follow us on the roads or paths.

My orchid is finally opening up its flowers. They don’t smell anything but that’s quite common with orchids we have in our homes. I think it’ll get at least four more flower stalks before it’s season is over. The flowers look a bit more yellowish in the photos than they do in the real but I guess that’s because I used a flash when I took the photos.

I also found something in my garden that made me really surprised! I found four fruits beneath my Black walnut!!! I haven’t even seen it in bloom. At first I thought it was odd that I found four figs beneath the canopy since my fig tree stands closer to the kitchen door but then I picked them up and realized that it was walnuts 🙂 I know I should have waited to open up any of the fruits but I just wanted to see how big the nut would be, so I opened the smallest one. I figured that since it is so small I’d rather plant it in a pot and place it outside, if it germinates there’s always someone who would want a walnut tree and if not the forest is quite big and most people would see it as an ash tree instead 🙂 🙂

I’ve started to bring in more of what is going to spend winter in my cool cellar, like these apricot trees.

A16841_008Af — Nova taken with the Minolta 8000i.

I didn’t win the lottery so tomorrow it’s back to work again, it is at least a short work week this time. It’s dark outside now but tomorrow morning I’ll check if there are any more walnuts in the tree. To be honest I’m happy about the four I got since I didn’t think I would get any at all but as we say here: much wants more 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

They gave up early.

October 15, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

Another quite lovely day here. A bit chilly in the morning but the sun did its work and the temperature rose up to 10C (50F), very little wind as well so I could have the kitchen door open for quite some time.

The hunters gave up pretty early, not surprised since I’ve only seen two moose tracks since early July. So we’ve had a couple of really nice walks today. This nice weather unfortunately also made the few moose flies we still have pretty energetic, at least none of them landed on my neck like yesterday. Those moose flies are no more thankfully.

They are now investigating whether we should have the European bison, the Wisent, roaming our forests again. I think they died out a couple millennia ago, perhaps because humans hunted them to extinction or perhaps for another reason, we don’t know. I’m not sure what I would feel about that, it’s another huge animal I would risk hitting with my car while driving to and from work. Then again since moose now are quite rare here in southern Sweden it sort of would even it out. I guess that hunters would like it since they sooner or later most likely would be allowed to hunt them as well.

If they do allow it I think we also should allow the European pond turtle back and why not the Black rat, this warmer climate would fit them both well and I’m pretty sure the Black rat wouldn’t help spreading the plague again, we just need to make sure the rats they bring here doesn’t have those lice that carried the disease 🙂 🙂 🙂 We already have the Red-eared slider here ( even though it still is a bit too long winter for them to reproduce) so why not the one that actually lived here so long ago.

Tomorrow will also be really nice and we might get frost once again. I didn’t win the lottery so I’ll have to go to work again. It’s a long work week and to be honest it actually feels worse on Monday knowing we have to work on Friday as well than it feels working on that Friday 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Strong winds.

October 14, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

WE had a lovely morning with sunshine and slightly chilly temperature, The wind was strong though and the gusts even stronger. No hunters out in weather like that (and certainly not in the kind of weather we’re having now), so we went out for a walk. Nova finally got what she wanted so out to the bog we went.

The moose fly season hasn’t ended, I found out that after we had come home when one of them were walking on my neck, that fly is no more 🙂 Anyway, we walked out on the peninsula that she loves to walk to and while we stood there for a while I think I actually could hear two wolves howling. They must have been far away and the wind drowned the sound every time a strong gust passed by. So I can’t say that I’m sure I’m right but when that sound reached us the dogs suddenly were in a hurry to go back home again. Due to their reaction I’m pretty sure it was wolves howling.

Especially since it’s the last two days of the moose hunt premiere no humans would be out there shouting and to be honest I doubt that any hunters, even in the neighbor hunting areas would be out a day like today. Trees will be falling in these gusts so even an avid hunter wouldn’t risk their life today. So since the dogs were in a hurry we hurried back to the village. I can’t say I was worried though because they were far away and the wind wasn’t in the direction towards the wolves so they would be able to figure out where we were. They did calm down the closer we came to the village though.

Yesterday when I walked around in the garden I suddenly found the last of the cacti I had placed in the trees during summer. I had apparently placed it high up in the summer apple tree. It wasn’t damaged by the frost so I replanted it in a bigger pot and brought it indoors. I have no idea what kind of soil it should have but I think it is one of those living as an epiphyte on trees and I figure that epiphytes can’t get any lime from the rain water so it shouldn’t require lime in the soil, so I used some of the rhododendron soil I still have. I finally did find a spot for it but anything I now find outdoors that needs to be brought inside will live in the cool cellar during winter, no matter what it is 🙂

One thing I’ve really missed now when I realized that I can’t eat gluten is Digestive crackers. I used to eat them almost every week, preferable with some blue cheese or cheese like camembert or just a strong normal cheese. The ones I’ve found in stores are more or less inedible and only a person that lacks any kind of taste buds would eat them with joy 🙂 🙂 So I found a recipe on the net and baked them yesterday. They are much better than the bought ones but still just barely ok. Too brittle and way too sweet. The sweetness is easily fixed but fixing brittle is a bit more difficult. There are plenty of recipes out there though so I’ll continue until I find the best one.

The weather now is very different from this morning. The wind is even stronger and the gusts have reached storm strength. I can only hear it because my neighbors cottage an´d garage takes almost all the wind. The roaring in the trees when the gusts comes are so loud now that even Alma has started to look out the windows to see what makes that noise 🙂 🙂 Tomorrow will be sunny and less windy so I guess the hunters will be back but hopefully they’ll be gone before the sun sets so we can have a nice walk.

Have a great day!

It did.

October 8, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

Yes the frost did arrive last night and just as I was on my way to bed I remembered that I had the rest of the cacti and the orchid to move indoors. So out I went at around midnight with a light on my head to find all of them and to bring them indoors. I brought in all of them except for the thorny one and one more. I placed them in the patio because early frost almost never gets in there.

I brought those two indoors today when the sun shone and it looks like they are ok. I did wake up a bit late for once so most of the frost was gone but I found a few plants that still were more or less covered in frost. I don’t know how cold it had been but my cousin who were by the ocean had -6C (21,1F), so I’m pretty sure it must have been much the same here.

The hunters arrived early I guess so I knew we couldn’t take a walk in the forest and since I’ve never managed to make neither Albin nor Alma to behave when we meet joggers or bikers or anything remotely moving we no longer can take walks in the village. One screaming dog I can handle but two is just too much. Plus to be honest there are now days a couple of dogs more that really can’t behave either 🙂 🙂

To my big surprise however all the hunters left quite early so we did manage to take a walk out to the bog anyway. Guess if I was happy because both Alma and Albin had so much energy that they started to become pretty annoying 🙂 🙂 🙂 I don’t think it reached 8C (46,4F) today so I wore my bright yellow winter jacket. There was a bitterly cold wind blowing so if any mosquito had survived the night they were at least not flying around. There was one moose fly though and it fell down behind my t-shirt on my back. It took some time to get it but it did at least not bite me.

We’ve had our pancake Sunday and I’ve also made lots of rice porridge. This cold weather sort of demands that 🙂 I did forget to do the laundry though but I’ll do that tomorrow before going to work. Hunters will be out in the forest again so I’ll have plenty of time to do it then. Now I have to stay awake until at least 11 pm so I don’t wake up way too early tomorrow and mess up my working day 🙂

Have a great day!

Chilly wind.

September 30, 2023 · Leave a comment ·

It looked really nice outside when I woke up in the morning and looked out through the windows but it wasn’t. The sun was shining but the strong wind we had was way to chilly. That changed later in the day thankfully.

Nova wanted to go out to the bog again this morning so that’s where we went. One good thing with the strong and chilly wind was that most mosquitoes and moose flies blew away. I did kill one mosquito so I had to get rid of a blood stain when I came home 🙂 and the one moose fly that landed on me is no more either 🙂

I was going to do so much today but I never came around to it. To be honest, all I’ve done today is to do dog walks, some of the laundry and pancakes, I have no idea what I’ve been doing for the rest of the day 🙂 🙂 So I guess I can say that it has been a good day 🙂

They say we’ll get sunny and warm weather tomorrow so I hope I can come around to start picking the apples on my apple tree. I did after all buy one of those fruit picking things, the ones one can reach way up in the tree without having to risk the life by climbing on a ladder 🙂 I’ve bought what I need to try and preserve apples the way we always can buy pear halves in. Apples can of course be stored in my cool cellar for quite some time but I really want to try this. Pears on the other hand can’t be stored at all to be honest so I guess that’s why one never see preserved apple halfs in the stores 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally a chilly night.

September 15, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

The temperature had dropped down to 5C (41F) when I drove home after work last night and we all loved it 🙂 After staying in a way too hot factory for so many hours the cold air made us less tired. Good thing it did because when I drove homewards I had to break hard three times. Two times because deer was passing the road and once for a hare. There was a fox passing to but from a place much further down the road.

Nova wanted to go out to the peninsula at the bog today but I managed to make a turn andd walk down the path to the island we like to walk at.

I wasn’t sure it would be dry enough to even walk that way but it was just enough dry and hard to walk there.

The big creek is still full of water but this creek was actually less full than I thought it would be.

So because of the cold air last night was the first time in a very long time I wasn’t attacked by mosquitoes when I went out of the car, this morning was cool as well but a few mosquitoes didn’t care about that, so now I have a new itching spot on my right hand. So far it looks like this isn’t a moose fly year. We went down to the bog this morning and not a single one landed on either me or my dogs. I really wouldn’t be sad the least if those nasty things just died out 🙂 🙂 🙂

I have been really tired today though even though I slept really well and just enough hours. So after I had been at the grocery store in Gudhem to pick up a package I took a two hour long nap in my recliner. To be honest, two hours sleeping in a recliner is a bit too long. Yes it is comfortable but since one doesn’t move at all the body really aches afterwards 🙂 🙂

It does look dry enough to walk there but I won’t do that mistake again. The mud is knee deep and jumping from one grass tufft to another is great as long as one doesn’t loose ones balance 🙂 🙂

The package I was picking up contained an old Kodak SLR camera. I really didn’t want the camera but I wanted the two lenses that followed with it (I haven’t checked if the camera works, to be honest I haven’t even looked at it yet 🙂 ). The only problem now is that I actually can’t find the camera I wanted those lenses for 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well it’s here somewhere so sooner or later I’ll find it.

Next year I’ll plant the Gladiolus along the east wall of my cottage, there’s less wind there so it’ll be easier to keep them standing up.

The Nasturtiums are finally taking over the old wheel barrow.

The Red leafed rose still gives a flower or two.

This year we even get a chance to see the Jerusalem artichoke in bloom.

Besides that very little has happened here. I do get more hours awake with the dogs working evening shift and it looks like I’ve managed to change the hours I sleep to fit my working hours but I also know that if I stopped working I’ll go back to my old self within a day 🙂

Have a great day!

So I’ve survived my first week.

September 10, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

The photos can come from any day this past week.

So I have survived my first week working the evening shift 🙂 To be honest it is the ones one is working with who makes the day bad or good and these people I work with made it good 🙂 The job itself is just as boring or fun no matter what shift one is working even though I really don’t want to work nights ever again.

I’ll be working Monday to Thursday every week and then for some reason they’ve decided that we also must work every other Friday and to make it even better they’ve made that day longer. So I’ll be working one and a half hour more those days. In my opinion that’s a not too smart idea but I’m not the one deciding these things. So yesterday I was quite tired all day and even though I had an almost two hour long nap I still was so tired in the evening that I went to bed earlier than I had planned.

The dogs and I have had some really nice morning walks this week, one of the big plusses about working in the evenings. Later on when the nights are getting so long that they’ll start before 4 pm I still will have those walks in daylight. The dogs have mostly behaved really well but one evening some deer had started to “bark”, they do that when they are warning about dangers. So naturally my dogs had been answering and since they too then must have been warning about something the evening had become pretty lively 🙂 🙂 🙂

Alma also shows how happy she is that I’m at home again by shouting her lungs out 🙂 🙂 🙂 I told her that I really like that she likes me being back again but could she possible be doing that a bit more quiet 🙂 🙂 To my big surprise she is now mostly shouting in either the old garage or in the dog house 🙂 🙂 I’ve also noticed that there is a big space in the big fridge at work so that I can go to the grocery store and buy things that needs to stay cool just before I start to work! That’s a huge plus because I don’t want to have to go grocery shopping either early in the morning at work days or in the weekend.

DSC_0028 (1)

So so far things work as good as they can. Tomorrow I’ll most likely be a bit late for work because I’m waiting for a package. Originally I was going to get it to the grocerystore in the village where I work but for some reason the mail delivery company decided that no” Either You go and get it at the big office in Falköping or You’ll have to stay at home and sign that You’ve gotten it. The thing (it is one of those things one use to pick fruit high up in the trees) costs less than $ 10US! I’ve had packages delivered to my home (well mostly to my neighbors but they were close enough) costing three times as much and not having to be at home at all. I really don’t understand how they are thinking at Post Nord as the company is called 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for a cup of tea and after that perhaps a tiny nap so that I won’t go to bed too early tonight.

I had more than twenty-five Admiral butterflies in and around my apple tree yesterday.

Have a great day!

17 years old, quite impressive.

September 3, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

Nova is 17 years old today and since she isn’t much for toys these days I instead mixed in some of her favorite blue cheese in her breakfast and then some boiled chicken in her dinner. She really liked both her meals 🙂

She decided that we would go out to the bog in the morning and we followed her like always. We had a thick fog as well so I hoped that we would have some out over the bog as well. We could hear cranes somewhere out on the bog and two big ravens flew above our heads.

We couldn’t stay for long out there because the mosquitoes were attacking us every time we stood still for more than a couple of seconds. I also picked away a couple of moose flies walking on both Nova and Alma while we were out there.

We must have scared away some wild hogs because the road had new parts that had been ripped up and we could also see signs of badger activity. A woodpecker was frantically searching for insects on a pine or should I say in a pine. It did sound as if someone used the tree as a drum 🙂

I picked some apples for my neighbors yesterday and today they gave me a jar with apple sauce 🙂 I’ll try it next Saturday when the dogs and I will have a pancake day again 🙂 I’m waiting for the fruit picker thing I’ve ordered, You know the kind one has on a long pole so one can pick the apples further up in the tree. I’ll try and preserve some like the pears one can buy preserved (well peaches and other fruits as well of course), I’ve only seen apples in that way once before and I think I liked them. I have no idea why they don’t do that more than they do.

Tomorrow is the first day I’ll work evening shift so I need to stay up until at least midnight today, yesterday I managed to stay up until eleven and today I woke up just before six thirty. If there’s sunshine tomorrow as they’re guessing it will be I’ll start mowing the lawn, the grass is actually dry enough now but it’s soon seven pm and that’s no time to mow any grass 🙂

Have a great day!