So we had a night without any disturbance thankfully but Alma was in a hurry to go outside. She hurried away behind some bushes in the garden so I couldn’t see how bad it was but she’s full of energy and happy so I guess she’s ok.
She’s not the one pooping outside the garden unless she’s desperate and that was what she was when we were out on our morning walk and this time I could check how bad her stomach was, I have seen worse 🙂 and most of what comes out are peanuts! I have no idea how much she ate from that big bag of peanuts but by the look of it at least a third of it 🙂 🙂
So she’s getting better but she farts and the smell is something that most likely can knock down a rhino 🙂 🙂 It is a horrible mix of sweet, sour and something that must have been dead for a week or so. I’ve tried to let the wind blow through the cottage, sprayed more of that air cleaner and used loads of matches but it has already sort of stuck to the walls and furnitures! I better go to the grocery store in Gudhem tomorrow to buy more rice.
Besides that the day has been rather nice, we walked down to the creek this morning and the latest rain has really filled up the creek again. It would of course not have been this full of water if the beavers hadn’t blocked the concrete pipe that goes beneath the gravel road. The thing is that I haven’t seen any more traces of beaver activity and haven’t in a few weeks so if they’ve moved they really should unblock that pipe. If we’ll get more rain which is quite possible that creek soon will overflow and start filling the fields as well 🙂
It is time to have that last cup of tea and some ice cream as well 🙂
I can’t for my life remember the name on this little bird but they are adorable when flying around looking for insects on the trees. Quite small but with long tail feathers. They only sit still for a second or two so I’m glad I managed to get this photo. Now I remember 🙂 It is a Long-tailed bushtit.
The days have been warmish now with a bit of sunshine yesterday but with mostly drizzle today. Not cold enough to feel that it’s ok staying indoors all day but not warm enough to actually wanting to do anything outdoors 🙂 We’ve been out on our walks but nothing more really.
We were on our way out and the monster wanted to go indoors and she showed really well what she thought of me when I continued with our walk 🙂
I’ve put together the table for the aquarium I bought, looking at the descriptions on how to do it it looked complicated but to be honest it wasn’t. It was like putting together something from IKEA but for some reason nothing was missing and for once they had put some extra screws and other things in the package and that was a good thing because I did need them. They had also put in lots of other screws, nuts and rubber things I think should be around some of the screws but not to this table 🙂 🙂 🙂
Here’s a raven gulping down something. This and the next photo were taken yesterday and since Alma is the dog she is these were the only ones I managed to take 🙂 🙂
This and the next one was taken today. Ravens are very aware of what is happening around them so if they see a camera they fly away.
Then I had to find somewhere to place it. I have had an old fridge in the kitchen that stopped working long ago but that I for some reason never moved out, I’ve used it as a storage unit more or less 🙂 🙂 The thing is that after a while it just collects dust and dog hair so I decided to move it out to the garage, (nowadays an indoor dog yard for the dogs since they dug their way in so I couldn’t have the car there any more 🙂 🙂 🙂 ). I tied and taped together the door because if dogs are determined to get inside they will and the risk of them getting in and the door gets closed so they suffocate isn’t something I would like to experience. One day I’ll move it to the scrap yard 🙂
A Magpie in flight.
It isn’t a big one but get it outside and in to the old garage wasn’t easy, especially when I dragged across the gravel road 🙂 🙂 Well it is done and I was surprised over how much dust and things had managed to get in under it 🙂 🙂 So now I’ve put it all ups and now It’ll stay empty for quite some time since I really don’t need it until next autumn when the goldfish I’m planning to have in the little pond and three water barrels need to go inside during winter. I can of course fill up with sand and plants and have some kind of fish in it until then it all depends on when I can drive to the pet store that still sell aquarium fish. The rules to sell aquarium fish are so hard now days and the licenses they need are so expensive that fewer pet stores sell fish now days. Cats and dogs have never been allowed to sell in pet stores here.
Either we have hunters here during nights or the lynx or the wolves hunt here at night because we came really close to ravens yesterday, They were clearly eating either leftovers after a hunt or what’s left after something a predator has killed. Yesterday they were sitting in the middle of a field and today they flew up from the ground in the forest. A raven would never be on the ground in the forest unless they had something to eat. The dogs were a bit stressed when we followed the creek up-stream but not like they usually are when we have wolves around so if it is an animal my guess is on the lynx.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I haven’t really eaten anything since noon so I guess a couple of sandwiches would be great to have at the same time. Nothing interesting on tv to watch as usual so perhaps I’ll watch a dvd or read a book
Less cold today but we’ve had a nasty, bitterly cold wind blowing almost all day so it has been rather unpleasant to be outdoors. It was totally calm on our morning walk though so that was nice. I think I might have a fever now, I woke up last night felling awfully hot but my bedroom is anything but and today I’ve had a slight fever and sneezed a lot all day. I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself though but I do hope this isn’t the beginning of something worse like what my neighbours had last week.
Nothing special is happening here at the moment.  I have been thinking on Christmas decorations for some reason. I haven’t had a lot of that because cats and having rather big dogs that picked anything in their reach and chewed on them if they liked the taste 🙂 🙂 I do have a nice plastic Christmas tree and I’ve used it for two years but now I have a cat again 🙂 🙂 I do remember having a nativity set back in the days that I liked a lot but then one day I couldn’t find it, turns out my mother had given it away without asking me, quite common behaviour from her I’m sorry to say.
So I went online to see what they had there. Lots of different ones and they cost a fortune! Some I think I would be able to do better myself to be honest. I did find one I liked meant to be hanging on a wall I guess but it is oddly enough supposed to be filled with water?? Is it a kind of snow globe perhaps and every time one shakes it snow will fall down over the people? 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest, I have seen worse and I think that one would be the one working best because it would hang like a painting on the wall and the monster wouldn’t care about it. I’ll better check it once again 🙂
I took an extra look at it and no there’s no snow in it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s called a lantern with LED lights in it but why the water? Also rather expensive to be honest. Well I’ll keep on looking or perhaps I should try to make one myself even though making the humans and animals will be very tricky 🙂 🙂 I do of course have the advent candlestick I made from clay last year.  It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen but I did it myself, perhaps I should order some clay again and make the nativity set 🙂 🙂 I will at least have lots of fun making it 🙂 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then go out on the net to see whether I’ll buy some clay 🙂 🙂
Still waiting for that snow to arrive. Well to be honest we have actually had some but so little that it’s hard to find 🙂 🙂  They are threatening us with more later on though so I guess we’ll get it sooner or later. There has been snow chaos in other places though and I’m so glad it never came to us.
We have had fog though, so thick in the early morning that it was hard to see anything and then it slowly started to thin out just to come back again later. I do like fog so I didn’t complain but it did make the day a bit dark to be honest. The eyes didn’t notice it that much but the camera did 🙂
I had prepared for a snowy day so I made lots of rice porridge and learned that it worked just as well on a foggy day 🙂 Rice porridge is not something one make unless it is cold and snowy because it takes a long time to make, easily gets burned and if it is burned one has to toss it away because it tastes awful. Making it on a stove is hot and boring since one must stir it around pretty often. I however make it in the slow cooker so even though it takes almost three hours to make one only have to stir it a few times.
I put on a new collar on the monsterkitten yesterday and she wore it for almost half a day before she lost it 🙂 🙂  This time I wrote my phone number on the collar so I got a call just minutes ago, she had lost it at the farm just up the slope 🙂 So I’ll get it tomorrow when I’ll check if I’ve gotten any mail. I guess that’s the place she mostly walks to because she does tend to smell like a cow  now days. I’m pretty sure her mother was one of the feral cats living there and that’s where the cat looking almost identical to her lives at as well 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. It is pitch black outside and the temperatures will drop considerable so tomorrow morning might be the coldest morning so far this winter.
Dryer and colder winds will fly down over the country and I could feel it early this morning. 0C (32F) when the dogs and I went out for our morning walk. All the cars were covered in frost and the ground was slightly frozen so we weren’t especially muddy when we came back home.
Two male Bullfinches.
Sunshine all day long though and the heat from the sun was so strong that I could have the kitchen door open as long as the light hit the south heading wall. I can’t say it felt like early spring but it was really nice. This was however most likely the last sunshine we will see for at least ten days if the weather sites have guessed it right 🙂
The temperatures will fall so from tomorrow it will be a bit chilly here. Not below 0C (32F) during the days but perhaps during nights.  I took a look at the Kaki fruit kernels (an Asian relative to the Persimmon fruit) in the fridge, It does look as at least one might germinate so hold Your thumbs and cross Your fingers for good luck 🙂  This time of year is a bit boring when it comes to gardening and sowing. Well some plants need a winter or two to be able to germinate so I’ll start with those but not until January.
I bought myself a big Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) bulb when I went to the grocery store in Falköping after our walkThe ones I’ve seen has been ridiculously expensive but these were manageable in price. It says this one will have red petals with a white string in the middle of every petal. I don’t care if it is or not (usually lots of those bulbs are wrongly marked but who cares just as long as they flower 🙂 ) Have You ever sown the seeds from the Amaryllis? It is quite easy but it’ll take around three to four years until they flower and the flowers will most likely not look the same as the parent plant, sometimes one get the most amazing flowers from seeds.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and later I’ll watch On the Tracks on tv, it’s really the only thing I watch now days 🙂
Normally or perhaps back in the days we would have winter now, mostly the temperatures would stay way below 0C (32F) at nights and barely reach above it if it even managed to do that. To be honest, I don’t miss it at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 I know the greenhouse effect and climate change is anything but good for us but I must admit that I like these warmer days and nights.
I can’t tell You how warm it has been today because the battery died in the thermometer 🙂 A new battery in today so I’ll know what it is like tomorrow 🙂 They are however guessing that it might reach above 12C (53,6F) and it will stay like that until at least Friday. No sunshine though but cloudy and a bit rainy. With the sun shining it would have been t-shirt weather in my garden 🙂 🙂
I went to the supermarket today and I saw a heard with Red deer not too far from the road and on my way home here in the village a young Fallow deer buck crossed the gravel road just in front of me. I saw it early so there was no risk of me hitting it with the car thankfully. Normally it is suicidal cats that cross the road way too close to the car so it was nice to see something else for once 🙂 🙂 🙂
This time of year is when I normally feel the Christmas feelings just to see them go away some time in the middle of December 🙂 🙂 Not so far though, I guess I was annoyed enough to see a big Yule gnome (or Santa) standing by the entrance to the supermarket already in the middle of October. Personally I can’t understand those people who start with any holiday two months before it happens, I usually get tired of it after a week or two.
I’m not a Christmas present guy at all but I usually buy myself a present this time of year, something I really want but perhaps normally wouldn’t buy, not because it is expensive but because I really don’t need it 🙂 🙂 One year I bought myself a Hasselblad camera for my birthday, I really didn’t need any camera since I do have way too many as it is anyway but I wanted to spoil myself with something 🙂 Today I think I have around 60 cameras, both for film and digital ones 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be fair, most of them pretty cheap, like an over a hundred years old Kodak camera that I bought for less then $ 3 US 🙂 It still works perfectly.
I have an idea about what I would like to buy this year even though I should be careful with money since I still am unemployed. So I will have to think a lot more about it before deciding. I’ll be just as happy at Christmas without it just as long as it doesn’t snow and is cold 🙂 The last cup of tea for the day is standing beside me and after that there’s a science program on tv I want to watch 🙂
The mist rolled out from the forest when we went out for our morning walk and people growing up here says that it’s because Mösakärringen ( I can’t find the phonetic letter but o and e goes together and so do the a and e so it should be something like this: Moesa Kaerringen) a translation would be something like the bog hags puts out there fires after a cold night. They are a local variation to wood spirits but I call them Bog Ladies because who knows they might exists and that sound much nicer 🙂 🙂 🙂
I saw it at several places and sometimes in the forest. We were lucky to have sunshine when we were outside but mostly it has been cloudy today. Rather nice and warm though to be honest. We went out to the bog and when we reached the end of the peninsula we stood still there for a while and both the dogs and I could hear something walking behind some trees. I have no idea what but it really tried to be as quiet as it possibly could. It might have been the two moose we happened to scare away on our morning walk yesterday.
Do You remember when I pushed all those thorny rose branches through the compost grinder? Those tiny thorns are now aching their way out from my hands. The spot gets swollen and there’s usually a small blister filled with puss and that has been happening all over my hands for a couple of days 🙂 🙂 🙂 Not nice but it’ll soon be over thankfully.
Today I put an entire chicken in the oven, I’ve done that so many times before but those times I mostly did it without any spices because it was meant for my severely food allergic dog Albin. He couldn’t eat any kind of fish or meat but he could eat chicken. Also he couldn’t eat all kinds of rice either so it was always rather tricky to get his food right. Mostly however he ate vegan dog food, the first time I bought it I must say it felt so wrong because dogs usually eat meat but it worked so great that I finally could stop cooking chicken and it too na couple of years before I tried chicken again 🙂 🙂 🙂
Since the oven was on I also baked a big loaf of bread and even though it didn’t rise especially much it still turned out to be rather good. No matter how tasty these gluten free breads can be when one doesn’t use readymade mixes nothing will beat a French roll with butter, cheese and a slice of bell pepper 🙂 Oh how I miss them 🙂
I’m drinking the last cup of tea for the day and since there’s nothing I want to look at on tv I’ll continue to watch Eureka before it is time to go to bed 🙂
Very little has happened these last days and that’s how it should be 🙂 The weather has changed loads of time, lots of just cloudy, a fair amount of sunshine and some rain as well, especially today will be rainy, they’re guessing it will rain all day long.
The dogs just look at me when I open the door for them to go outside 🙂 🙂 The little monster however will not be stopped by some rain, my guess is that she’ll go straight to the woodshed because she’s rarely especially wet when she comes back home again.
We have been lucky with the weather when we’ve had our walks though and yesterday morning was so chilly that I could see frost on the ground here and there. So no moose flies to deal with 🙂 It should be the end of their season anyway so from now on I shouldn’t have to wear the hoodie to avoid getting those nasty flies walking in my hair. It is a horrible feeling to wake up to at night 🙂 🙂
Today I’ll go to a job interview. The job is in a town called Skövde but the interview will happen in another town called Lidköping. Apparently they have two factories (I’m not sure it should be called a factory but I don’t have a better word for it), the job is about sanding objects before it is going to be painted and eventually later on also paint the things. To be honest I have no idea what kind of things we’re talking about but a job is a job and since I don’t tend to win the lottery I hope I’ll get this job 🙂 🙂
I have come to like staying at home all day though 🙂 🙂 but getting payed is better than hoping for that lottery winning after all 🙂 🙂 This time at home have however made me realise that I will love to retire when that day comes 🙂 🙂 🙂
I haven’t had any tea yet so I better make some before it is time to drive to that job interview. Since the weather is like it is I guess I’l spend the time until then in front of the tv or perhaps watch an episode or two of a Town called Eureka 🙂
Not the happiest weather today, cloudy and boring when we were out on our morning walk but on the way home the rain arrived and it continued to rain half the day or so. Even though the garden is rather muddy (and also my home) we still need more rain so the groundwater level finally rise to more normal levels. I’ve cleaned the bottom floor so much now that it feels that there isn’t much left of it 🙂 🙂
I’ve now made an appointment for when my car will go through the annual vehicle inspection, December 29th. We used to have it every twelve month but we’ve it every fourteen month because that what they have down on the continent. I can’t see the logic in that but since we’re member of the EU we do what they do. I usually have it the last day I can because if there’s something that needs to be fixed I have one more month to drive before it is illegal 🙂  I really don’t like to have to do it when it is winter but next year it can be done as late as late February to early March 🙂 All problems are so much nicer when it is warmer and nicer outdoors 🙂
It is Persimmon season now and it is one of my favourite fruits. This time however they sold Kaki fruits, a relative to the Persimmon, they taste much the same but You can eat the Kaki even though it isn’t fully ripe. These are always seedless but every now in a blue moon some have a seed in them and I’ve been lucky twice already 🙂 Both Persimmon and Kaki fruits are just as cranny as Pawpaw seeds to germinate but I’ve done as I always do, put them in a moist paper towel and inside a plastic bag and placed them in the fridge so I’m hoping for good luck. I doubt these will be especially hardy though but I can have them in pots for several years before they grow too big. The problem I can see is that those pots will be nasty heavy and difficult to bring down to the cool cellar during each winter 🙂 🙂
All the chickens have moved, I’ll miss them.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I’m thinking of perhaps having an ice cream at the same time but I have already had two today 🙂 🙂
This could have been a really nice day if it wasn’t for the wind that has been blowing all day long, a cold biting wind that made it hard to stay outside for any longer period of time. Not even the dogs wanted to stay out for especially long and kept coming to the door to go inside again.
Cold and frosty in the morning and despite the sun hitting my car I still had to scrape ice from the windows at 9:30am, not a favourite thing to do 🙂 🙂 Still the morning walk was quite nice because the wind hadn’t arrived yet and the sun still giving some warmth. We walked out to the bog and while we stood at the end of the peninsula we could hear something walking towards us. We never saw what it was but it did sound relatively big, like a red deer or perhaps a moose.
The dogs didn’t really react to it more than that they stared in the direction the sound came from and looked curious 🙂 It was impossible for anything to walk silently in the forest because of all the frozen leafs on the ground, it sounded like we all were walking on cornflakes spread on a hard floor 🙂 🙂 🙂 I went to the supermarket after we had come home because I had very little to eat in my fridge.
It was a costly trip, much more than I had expected 🙂 I did buy everything on the list but I also went in to the pet shop (can one say it’s a pet shop supermarket because it’s really big that store?) I found a prefect food for my aquarium fish and it costed a fortune but then again the fish are few and will eat very little so it might last for the rest of my life 🙂 🙂 Also I bought two new ceramic food bowls for the dogs, Malkolm seems very unwilling to eat from his old one made from some kind of metal. Those weren’t cheap either but oddly enough didn’t cost more than the fish food 🙂 🙂 🙂
After that I went to the Dollar store just around the corner and bought seeds for the wild birds in the garden. They also coast a little fortune but compared to any other store they were cheap 🙂 🙂 I don’t want the birds to stop eating what they can find in the nature so I’ll only feed them when I know nights will be frosty. They still need to know how to find food if I for some reason can’t help them. They have noticed that birds who live in areas where lots of people feed them forgets how to find food elsewhere and even what things they can eat. I also only give them seed mixes even though they all most likely would love to just have sunflower seeds for much the same reason. We have very few sunflowers flowering here since those who do comes from either what we sow in our gardens or from bird seeds that birds brought with them from the feeders and dropped them on the way to where they can eat them safely.
It is time for a cup of coffee I think, it’s way too early for that last cup of the yet. I actually bought peanuts for the bird feeder by my kitchen window, I know mice climb up and eat those peanuts but that was before the little monster moved here 🙂 She’s outside most nights and I’m pretty sure the mice soon will stop eating the peanuts because she’s a really good mouse hunter 🙂
I have now two bigger and four smaller apricot trees in my garden and this is the only one giving me autumn colours.
I woke up in the middle of the night because too much tea I guess 🙂 🙂 and naturally I couldn’t fall asleep especially quickly leading to me sleeping unusually long and when I looked out the window I could see the ground was covered in unusually thick fog. The dogs and I rushed to go outside, took perhaps as most ten minutes and by that time almost all of it had vanished. I was a bit annoyed to be honest but then the sun shone and the leafs in the trees looked like they were burning, so I stopped being annoyed 🙂 🙂
I wouldn’t say it was cold but I can say it wasn’t warm so even if we went out to the bog only one moose fly showed any interest in us, meaning me 🙂 Deer were barking so something out there were scaring them but I doubt that it was a wolf, deer have a tendency to think anything is scary as long as it moves. Could have been a fox or perhaps wild hogs passing by. Lots of small birds flying between the trees, Jays arguing further up close to the tree tops and ravens flying towards the bigger roads to see if breakfast was served (meaning something gotten hit by a car or lorry during the night).
the temperature never rose above 12C (53,6F) in the shadow but the sunshine was so warm today that I had to change from a sweater to a t-shirt. It was impossible not to enjoy it so we spent a big part of the day outside in the garden. I really didn’t have anything to do so I decided that those roses I had cut down and would put in the compost grinder next year (mostly because of the thorns) would be better if I did that today 🙂 This rose has millions of small but awfully sharp thorns but they soften a lot if being wet for a longer period of time so the branches can be handled without too much problems. The problem is that not all become soft so now I have lots of tiny thorns in my hands because why would I use gloves 🙂 🙂 🙂
The old vegetable garden looks a bit odd now when the fence is gone. I didn’t remove any weeds after I had harvest all but some leeks and the potatoes so half is green and half brown where the potatoes grew 🙂 There are still some tiny leeks in there though 🙂
Since I now have found my jigsaw I thought why not cut those barrels open so I finally have those extra rainwater barrels I’ve been talking bout to do as soon as I found the jigsaw 🙂 I do like to play with machines but I must admit I’m not good at it 🙂 🙂 So I cut one open at the top and placed it by the entrance door. Then I thought that it is actually impossible to have too many rainwater barrels and I knew I had two more barrels I could use (blue plastic ones, I’m not much for the aesthetics to be honest. Yes a rainwater barrel in oak do look good but costs a fortune especially since we don’t have any distillery where one can get them for free anywhere near 🙂 So blue plastic ones will do great 🙂
So I made one more to the greenhouse and realised I have at least one extra barrel in the old garage (so two more instead of one more) but by then I’d started to look at those thorny branches so I might do another rainwater barrel tomorrow and place it  on the other side of the greenhouse 🙂 🙂  in between I went indoors to have some tea and ice cream 🙂  Now it’s dark outside and I could hear rain hitting my window so tomorrow I’ll check how much water has fallen in to the new barrels 🙂 At the moment however my biggest concern is to try and remove as many tiny thorns I can from my hands, they itch like crazy right now 🙂
I’ll skip that last cup of tea for the day, it is much nicer to be able to sleep all night instead 🙂 Also if I go up the dogs go up as well and if they go up they want to go outside and if they go outside I’ll have to go first to check there’s no badger walking around looking for food and since it’s chilly at night I’ll have problems falling asleep again 🙂 🙂
My big apple tree is actually only half a tree, the other half fell one summer because that side grew too big.
It has been a meh day weather-wise. The sun didn’t show itself until now when it is about to set for the day. Ok it has been around 10C (50F) all from morning to now so at least there was no need for any radiator to be working.
Malkolm is now refusing to eat anything in the morning but after a walk there’s no problem what so ever to give him the exact same food from my hand 🙂 🙂 🙂 I guess this has to do with the chemical neutering slowly is giving up, he’s also normally a sensitive dog but at the moment he’s even more so, so if I sound the least annoyed he looks like the world is ending 🙂 poor guy. No problem what so ever to eat his food in the afternoons though.
I’ve removed the fence around the vegetable garden now and it looks quite funny with a circle with no vegetation (well there are my tiny leeks, they never grew to anything really since I mistreated them from the start but I can say they taste really good) and a sort of border with higher grass growing around it 🙂 🙂 I’ll take a photo of it tomorrow. I also moved the chrysanthemums I had planted outside the fence to new and hopefully better places for them climate-wise. They aren’t as hardy as autumn asters are.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. The sun is down and I can see ground fog slowly flowing out in the pasture I can see from my window here by the computer. They say we’ll have fog again tomorrow and I hope it stay for longer than it did this morning.
The Cottage by the crane lake. 