Category: The fields.

Coughing and sneezing.

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So it isn’t the three or four day cold I’m having, it’s the sneezing coughing all night cold I have 🙂 🙂 🙂 No fever though so I guess I’ll survive it 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I’m so glad I turned on the radiator in the kitchen last night. The heat goes straight up to the upper floor and in to my bedroom. I do like a cool bedroom but ice cold is a bit too much for me 🙂 It took a while though but until it became warmer I had Alma as a living radiator sleeping beside me, she kept on sleeping all nigh at the same spot so I must admit that even though I was grateful for the help when it was cold it did become a bit too warm in the end 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

The outside thermometer said 1C (33,8F) as coldest and I think it must have been right because the vegetation weren’t covered in ice but the cars had more ice on them than yesterday morning. We also had lots of morning mist so we had our walk in the village. We met a villager, a woman who always are out running. At first I thought she just was one of those people who are obcessed with running because one can see her far from the village at any time of the 24 hours a day contains.

     

Anyhow, turns out that she is competing in long distance team running 🙂 I had heard she was attacked by a dog, a well know aggressive  dog, that the owners had in the garden that simply jumped over the fence and attacked her. So since Alma and Malkolm jump over jump over the fence too play with my neighbors kids I stopped her (since we were just beside her home) and asked her if she wanted to greet my dogs so she knows what she meets. So she said that Alma had met her several times so she wasn’t worried about her but she wasn’t sure about Nova and Malkolm 🙂 Malkolm was so polite that he didn’t even try to reach her head when they greeted and I said Nova is 18 and You’ve met her several times so she’s so well behaved that she never is noticed when she’s around 🙂

     

I think it is time to have some tea and a table spoon with honey. Never heat up honey because the good enzymes and bacteria in it dies when it is too hot, lukewarm is enough. If You kill them the honey will only become very expensive sugar. So I usually have a spoon of honey either before or after having the tea.

     

Have a great day!

   

I doubt that this Red Mulberry will ripen even though I plan to bring this little tree down to the cool cellar. I don’t want to bring in the little tree until it lost its leafs.

Summer is back for a few days.

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We had a maintenance day at work today so when I had done the things I was involved in I went home, no need to over do things at a place I won’t stay at. Almost 26C (78,8F), a clear blue sky and thankfully a rather strong and cool wind blowing. Normally I don’t take the dogs on walks when it is that hot but since the wind made it feel cooler we had a walk as soon as I had come home.

Hard to see the yellow crab apples beside the bright red rowan tree berries. Everything seem to ripe at the same time here now.

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We walked down to the creek and Nova walked off leashed all the way. We had to go back to find here quite often so at the end it felt like we had walked twice as long as we had 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wonder what had walked that way before us because she stopped every second meter (the same in yards) and stood there for quite some time. I had to leash her when we passed a field because she can barely hear anything ans it was hard to find her in the high vegetation 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

I thought it was Wednesday today so I’ve been longing for the ice cream van, guess if I feel disappointed now when I realize it won’t come until tomorrow!! Then again the temperature will rise up to 30C (86F) both tomorrow and on Thursday so I think I’ll need it more then 🙂 🙂 🙂 My apples that normally are ripe in late October early November are already ripe to eat. The seed sown apple tree is full of delicious apples and its mother, an Aroma apple, has fewer this year. No matter what I can’t eat that much apples so I’ll give my neighbors as many as they want, especially the kids loves apples so they even eat those normally rather sour wild apples growing beside the dog yard  🙂 🙂

     

Speaking of neighbors, the Beekeeper has now moved. The owner wanted an insane amount of money for that cottage (not even the realtor agrees on how much the owner wants for that place, said so to a customer who called and asked if there was any house for sale here and if realtors says so one really should listen to them 🙂 🙂 ) The Beekeeper found a house not far from here but up on the mountain and I do hope this is a place he can stay at to the day he himself wants to move elsewhere. I’ll miss him, good neighbors can be hard to find but so far I’ve been unusually lucky and I do hope I will continue to be so.

     

I’m rather tired today, I woke up three times last night. I drink a lot of water now so that was the first time I had to get up, second time one of the dogs had to go outside to poop and almost made it 🙂 🙂 and the third time it was the old lady who needed to pee but wasn’t really close to make it 🙂 🙂 🙂 She just wakes up, runs down to the door and hope I’ll be there, I’m a heavy sleeper so I rarely hear her walk down but Alma usually makes a lot of noise when Nova runs down, this time I had just fallen asleep again so no chance on me waking up  easily 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that this rarely happens 🙂 🙂

One of the Red mulberry trees I bought had one unripe fruit and I think we can call it a flower. Normally I’ve read that one need both male and female trees to get berries but now days there are trees that gives berries anyway but they can be either seed less or give seeds that won’t germinate.

My first ripe tomatoes 🙂 I doubt that I’ll get any more unless it stays warm for a very long time 🙂
My strawberries are flowering and gives me a few berries every week now 🙂

It’s time to go downstairs and watch some Paralympics. The Paralympics isn’t a big cash cow for the big tv channels so they sell those rights to PBS channels so we are lucky to be able to see it on our PBS, Swedish Television 🙂

The Aronia is cut down and it will start to grow again next spring. I have planted the first Red mulberry tree there as well, hoping the mulberry will grow faster and grow over the Aronia in the end.

Alma and I sat on the entrance stairs before the sun hid behind the trees, I drank a cup of tea and she looked through the gate on the cows that now has moved back too the pasture on the other side of the road, she doesn’t like them 🙂
Canadian Goldenrod, seen as invasive has self sown in a pot in my garden, really beautiful. WE had loads of it here back in the days but now it can’t compete with our native plants and we only have it in a few places.

Have a great day!

August was a shitty month but today it’s September.

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Yesterday morning. Today there will be a mix of photos from today and yesterday.

I’m sorry about not writing anything these last days but I’ve been a bit under the weather so to speak. No not in pain the medication really did its job but they also gave me a slight fever and a very wobbly stomach. I’ve been so tired that beside walks with my dogs I’v mostly been either napping or watching tv. So since I can’t have this anti inflammatory medicine I’m not sure there is any left that I can use, August has really been a shitty month this year 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Today however is September and it started sunny with only 2C (35,6F) outside. I must admit that I loved it when we were out walking in the village. It was a bit tricky to figure out what clothes one should wear since it would be really cold in the shadows but as soon as the sun hit it would start to boil inside. Very little shadow when walking there so I just wore a hoodie and normal trousers. I’m glad that I decided to close all windows yesterday because that night it was just slightly warmer and I woke up freezing in the middle of night. I really didn’t want to get up to close all windows so instead I called for the dogs so they could warm me up 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

They’re guessing that it’ll be really warm the coming week and so high temperatures at night that the risk of frost will be zero percent. Some places in this area did have frost during the night but for once it didn’t happen here, I sure hope it takes a long while because only two of my tomatoes are half ripe, the rest are still green. I also hope that I get them before the dogs do because I already had two ripe tomatoes but one morning when I went out to get them most of them were eaten by the dogs 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I’ve also started to cut down my Aronia bush, I really can’t stand the berries (the dogs and birds love them though) because too many berries and a couple of winters with lots of snow have bent down the branches so much that they were laying on the ground. It was a bit tricky to remove each branch because they were all entwined with each other. I still have some to cut off but there’s no hurry to do that. It will grow up again so already next summer it will become a new little bush. However I was thinking of planting one of my Red mulberry trees there, if it grows fast enough it will soon be higher than the Aronia and I hope they’ll co exists well together.

At least two different varieties of apples hanging on this apple tree.

   

It is time to make some dinner, I haven’t had that much of an appetite lately 🙂 but I think I can have some pancakes, if not I can have them as dinner at work tomorrow. Just bring some jam and since they are just as tasty cold as warm it’ll be fine 🙂

The biggest of my five seed sown Giant Sequoias, they’ll spend the winter in the cool cellar.
I do hope the flowers open up on this Butterfly bush before the frost comes, won’t be many butterflies around though.
The white flowers on the Woodland tobacco really shines when it’s getting dark around it and the smell is amazing.
My Christmas cactus loves staying outdoors all summer.

Have a great day!

       

Autumn flowering strawberries?!

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I did see the sun slowly rising above the forest when I woke up so the first thing we did was to have our morning walk. It didn’t take long before clouds covered the sun but the walk was quite nice anyway. WE walked in to the village again and today one of the dogs was outside when we passed.

This was the last we saw of the sun while we were out walking but it did come back for a long time later in the day.

If I as a human would walk on old stone age tombs or move a single stone they would arrest me but cattle can damage it as much as they can and the owner wouldn’t risk being arrested 🙂
We have quite a lot of crab apples in the village, these apples taste horrible 🙂 🙂

I was so glad to see that all my dogs behaved perfectly while the dog we passed barked like crazy, it was especially fun to see how the owner opened the door to try and quiet the dog, didn’t work at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I must say that Alma’s behaviour has become so much better. Ok she pulled the leash a lot after all that excitement but she didn’t make even the tiniest sound and that’s a huge change. Malkolm did sort of bark twice but since Alma and Nova were quiet he stopped as well. Really good for a seven month old puppy 🙂

   

The branch doesn’t look that big but it was and it was quite heavy as well 🙂

The only problem I’ve had today is my back. My immune system attacks my spine (and most of the cartilage in my joints, slowly but steadily, I got my first hip implant when I was 38) and most of the time I can take it but times like today it’s just nasty. The best thing I can do is to move use my back a lot and after a while the pain goes away, so today I picked up things that had flown around in the storm yesterday, I even moves away a big branch that fallen down on the gravel road and also watering the trees and bushes with the big water pitcher. Didn’t that hurt You might ask? Yes like insanely but now in the early evening it feels much better 🙂 Tomorrow and several mornings ahead will be much the same but this will pass. I can’t take any anti inflammatory medicines because I destroyed my stomach with one of those, it was amazing as long as it lasted though 🙂

   

This little oak always have lots of acorns even when other trees haven’t.

I went outside in the storm yesterday just before it went dark. I already knew I had planted my Black walnut way too close to the cottage, I did that just because I never thought it would survive 🙂 🙂 17 years now and it still stands 🙂 🙂 However when we have winter storms it doesn’t move that much but with all leafs still on it it almost reached the roof of the cottage, not good! I really don’t want to remove it but I might have to in a year or two. What worried me more though was the two huge Birches over at my neighbors, if they fall half of my cottage will follow them to the ground 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I have home insurance so I’ll get another one built up if that would happen. The only thing is that my bedroom would be the first thing they hit 🙂 🙂 🙂

My Hardy Hibiscus finally shows the colors of the coming flower.
I seem to have autumn flowering strawberries, didn’t know that excisted, so I’ll pick each ripe berry when they are ready and put them in the freezer. 

A few Apples had fallen off as well so I bent down and picked them up, took a bit longer to stand up straight again 🙂 🙂 and went in and made an apple crumb pie, it tasted so yummy 🙂 I did add some coconut to it and that made a big difference.

     

It is raining outside, it isn’t supposed to but what does the rain care about that? It’s a misty rain, You know the kind that looks like mist or fog and that always eat its way through the clothes no matter how You dress. They’re guessing it’ll be like that most parts of tomorrow as well so it’ll be a perfect day to take a long nap 🙂

     

Have a great day!

I took this photo on my way to work one morning, nothing special a Roe deer in a field but take a look behind it.
I never saw the giant Red deer standing in the shadow by the trees just behind it 🙂 🙂 🙂

Walking in the village.

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The first hunter arrived at the same time we were going out on our morning walk, I had already planned for us to walk in the village. There were morning mist floating in the cow pasture outside my cottage so I have to admit that I felt a bit disappointed when I saw that there wasn’t any up in the village. Still cool almost cold morning and with some sunshine. Alma managed together with Malkolm tangle the leashes to a knot already before we got out of the garden and both behaved just as bad for almost the entire walk 🙂 🙂

     

Here in Sweden You can’t just buy a license and then go out and hunt anything. The land owners own the hunting rights and then rent out the rights to hunt to hunting groups (some big land owners also allow single people or small groups of people to hunt there, it’s usually trophy hunters who rent some time on those places). The hunting groups are well organized and the same people year after year so it can be hard for younger people to actually get a chance to join those groups. Also You must go through a course to even get a license and if You can’t pass You will not get any license. Back in the days lost of hunters were drunk and could shoot anything that moved but now days they aren’t allowed to drink alcohol. It is rare that humans get shot these days.

There’s a tiny dark dot just before the trees in this photo, that’s the deer I could see today 🙂
We have lots of stone age tombs around here. They aren’t sure if this is one, could also be stones gathered from the field to make it easier to grow crops in it.
This one however is one and as far as they know it isn’t looted.
The same with this one.

I remember one year when I was in my twenties and listened to the news that the custom service had stopped a van full with people with Germans. They claimed to have shot a herd of Moose, around twenty if my memory is correct. Well they didn’t have any license to hunt here in Sweden and also Moose don’t live in herd. Turns out they had shot a bunch of Reindeer. I think they shouted something about The right to public access (all mans right, a law that allows us to walk anywhere, pick berries, camp at least for 24 hours without having to ask for permission and much more as long as we don’t do it in other people’s gardens). They really should have learned more about that law 🙂 🙂

     

I did see a deer on our walk but it was far away and I also heard lots of cranes and geese in the air somewhere over the forest. Normally Nova would have been without a leash but since I knew hunters would arrive everywhere around the village and some drive like crazy, not the ones in my part of the village, they know they can meet all kinds of animals coming from our gardens at any time of the day, they drive really slow 🙂 🙂 so today she had to be leashed. She always show very clearly what she thinks about that 🙂 Today she stopped and sniffed on the ground for unusually long every second meter or so 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I haven’t done much otherwise but to water the new trees and bushes. Even though the ground water is just 2,5-3 meters down (much the same in yards) sand can’t keep water but instead dries up really fast. So even though I now have a lake behind my garage (it’s usually a swamp as worst) the ground in our gardens are now bone dry. Older vegetation manages this fine but plants that hasn’t grown here for two years usually struggles until the roots have grown down to the ground water.

     

It is time to go downstairs to have a last cup of tea for the day, there’s nothing worth watching on tv so I’ll probably fall asleep in the recliner and wake up with an aching neck 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally the Lupinus texensis looks like they do in photos, my first ones only had one or two flowers and they were also white.
The Hardy Fuchsia likes how much more sunshine it gets after I thinned the Golden rain (laburnum)
One Honey bee, one spider and one species of Hymenoptera. Could be that the tiny hymenoptera actually is after the spider while the spider is after the honey bee. The honey bee managed to escape though.

My Butterfly bush finally shows buds 🙂

Insurance companies aren’t there because they love to help, they are there for the money and nothing else.

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No it didn’t look like this her this morning but it’s the test photo and it looks so much better than what it did in the real 🙂

Sunshine in the early morning and lots of wind so almost no insects around to annoy us 🙂 Nova have had a really good day again, healthy appetite and lots of energy so we walked down to the creek and followed it down-streams. She walked unleashed so sometimes she was far behind us and sometimes the opposite 🙂

   

There are three fields with buckwheat, first time I’ve ever seen buckwheat like this.

No Red deer today but perhaps wolves was close, hard to say when the wind is strong and carries smells quick and far away. Alma kept on looking around us all the way down to the creek but after that nothing like that at all. The only animal we met (excluding birds who flew high above us was the Fox we meat quite often and I think it is the same fox we can see sometimes in the cow pasture outside the cottage.

     

It rained some just before we came home and the weather has been mixed with some showers, lots of clouds but also lots of sunshine. Always a bit tricky to be outside when the weather changes so often and quickly 🙂 So we’ve only been outside for short moments and since Alma is in heat I really don’t want her to be outside if I’m not there 🙂 Thankfully still no signs that Malkolm has any interest in her in that way. I really should have neutered her long time ago but I need to take a week off from work so I’m with her while she is healing. After that it’ll be Malkolms turn.

Lingonberry.
The first Hedgehog mushrooms, they are just as delicious as chanterelles.

 

Like always I let Malkolm off the leash the last part of our walk and he is really good in coming when I call him 🙂 Unfortunately I had to leash him because of a cat from the farm up the slope. I really don’t want him to chase it and get hurt by that cat, they are all semi wild and know how to defend themselves so Malkolm wouldn’t know what hit him and I really don’t want to go to the vet during a weekend, emergency vets costs a fortune even if they really don’t need to do anything because it’s a false alarm 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

The fox sat there and just looked at us 🙂

Almost all animal hospitals here in Sweden have been taken over by venture capitalists so costs has sky rocketed and since the insurance companies get their money anyway they don’t complain. It is actually cheaper for us to travel a week to Spain for a week and get the procedure done than to do it here. People complain of course but since the insurance companies walk hand in hand with the venture capitalists nothing happens. Just remember that insurance companies aren’t there because they love to help, they are there to make lots of money and really doesn’t care about anything else. That’s why I have put aside money for my dogs so I don’t have to deal with insurance companies that always find ways to not have to pay anyway.

     

It is time for something to eat and perhaps a last cup of tea for the day 🙂

Have a great day!

The first autumn colors. This maple always starts in the middle and sometime those leafs fall off before the rest of the tree get yellow leafs 🙂
I walked up to my mailbox and said hello to this pig 🙂
A Kestrel.
The church in Vilske-kleva.

If I’ve learned something today it’s that it is always best to be patient :-)

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I managed to take two photos of the morning mist from the window upstairs.

Much the same nice weather today as yesterday but with stronger wind so the flies kept calm even in the forest. There was morning mist left when I woke up but it was all gone by the time we went out on our morning walk. We might have a chance of morning mist at least tomorrow and possibly on Saturday but they’re guessing it will rain on Sunday.

     

I went to the hospital to get my new shoes and insoles today but first I had to drive in the opposite direction to get a package in Gudhem. I had had a pot of tea before I drove away and I also bought a soda in the grocery store. By the time I came to the hospital I started to feel the need to find a toilet but every time I went there it was occupied so I thought to myself that it wouldn’t take that long to get to the village where I work to find a toilet I could use.

     

I didn’t think of all the harvesters on the road now so it took much longer than I thought it would, so suddenly I felt rather desperate. No one at work today but I have the keys and the security code for the alarm. Then I had this genius idea to loosen the belt because it pressed towards the stomach. I want to teach You one thing while I’m on this little planet of ours, never do that!!! It was like opening a dam. Well I almost made it to work when I finally couldn’t hold it any more 🙂 🙂 🙂 I rushed in to a little wooded area beside the factory 🙂 It wasn’t that horrible because when the pressure became less I could hold it in but I still had to go inside the factory to clean up both me and my clothes 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

So have I learned something today? Yes never drink too much before going somewhere, be patient and wait so I can use the toilet where I am and I’m not young any more because if this had happened when I was in my twenties I would never have shared that with anyone 🙂 🙂 🙂  Besides this very little has happened today, I did however get a bag of plums from my neighbors. At first I thought I would make jam from them but then I tasted one and now I have no left, tomorrow will be a day spent not far from the bathroom I think 🙂

Finally! One of the Texas lupines that looks like it is supposed to, all the other ones has had just a few flosers at most except one that only had one flower. So I’ll make sure to save the seeds from this one and hope that the seedlings will turn out as its parent.
I’ve always believed that all strawberries were spring flowers, my starts now 🙂

 

Nova has finally gotten her appetite back and today she even spent some time with the rest of us in the garden 🙂

I think I’ll skip the tea tonight 🙂 but I think I’ll have some yogurt or quark with vanilla taste, it’ almost as good as ice cream to be honest and since I’ve eaten the last ice cream and the ice cream lorry doesn’t come here until next Wednesday I’ll have the quark 🙂

Have a great day!

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Through my kitchen window early this morning.

We didn’t get a morning with cool air and morning mist, instead we had fairly warm morning with a thick layer of clouds above us. So instead of having a really nice and cool walk we had a walk in the forest where flies and mosquitoes reigned.  Still we’ve had worse walks so I’m not complaining too much 🙂

One of the cats living at the farm next door.

   

I think there was just one horsefly flying around and it found my hand so now it itches something nasty. Another one found me when I mowed the outside space but that one will never bother anyone else any more 🙂  To be honest this year has been pretty good when it comes to flies, with that I mean fairly few. If we get in to an area where suddenly lots of flies fly around it means animals are close, most likely wild hogs because there are always many together and therefore draws more of those annoying insects.

     

I had to go to the store in Gudhem today because the package with the Red Mulberry tree had arrived and it was just in time, the soil in the pot was so dry that I had to put it in a bucket of water as soon as I opened the package. As soon as the soil was wet I planted it in a bigger pot and I think I’ll keep it like that until next spring, down in the cool cellar. Now I have three different mulberry trees. This red one, a white mulberry with tasty berries and one called Mulle which is a Morus accidosa. I can’t find any info about M. accidosa so I think it must be some kind of hybrid. It gives black berries, really tasty ones, but they are smaller than the ones the Black Mulberry tree gives. So lets now hope we get a mild winter so that they all survive plus of course the Pawpaws and persimmons 🙂

 

Snails and slugs live in paradise when they find my Root zone.

So this is the last week on my vacation and I’m desperately hoping for that lottery winning 🙂 🙂 🙂 I wouldn’t hesitate to quit my job immediately even though that is frowned upon (I really don’t hate my job but I’m not crazy in love with it either 🙂 🙂 ). Normally we have one month to work after we’ve given notice but since I wouldn’t plan on going back to work again ever so why bother 🙂 🙂 🙂 However until that happens, most likely five minutes before I leave this earth 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will have to keep on working, at least until I can retire and I think I’ll start with part time retirement when I’m 64, just a few years left 🙂 I think I would be really pi…d if I died before I could retire 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and later on I’ll watch Midsommer Murders, unfortunately they show Death in Paradise at the same time in another channel but since I’ve watched all the murders in Midsommer from the beginning the choice is easy tonight 🙂

     

Have a great day!

I’m finding potato plants everywhere now :-)

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We’ve had so much nicer weather than they guessed yesterday that we would get, as best we could hope for smaller gaps in the clouds where the sun might get a chance to shine through. Instead we’ve had plenty of sunshine since just after we had come home from our morning walk. We’ve also had a wind blowing, not strong but enough, so I’ll probably be able to mow the lawn tomorrow without the mower getting full of green gunk 🙂 I checked the new compost and I must say when the sun shines it works really fast. It was packed full just a week ago and now almost all of its contents has sunken down to just some left at the bottom of it! I’ll continue to fill it and see how it works but at the moment I’m impressed.

     

Autumn is on its way now, no it won’t happen for some time but the signs are there. Almost no birds sing here any more and every evening I can hear the Cranes gather in bigger flocks. Now I’ve seen the older ones mix with the newcomers out in the fields and it’s the same with the geese. Some of them will move south as early as they can but lots will stay until they are forced to move by the weather. The trend is that they stay longer and longer now because of the late start of winter. 

     

I still have small trees/ bushes to plant in my garden and I had, of course, to buy another little tree this week. A Red Mulberry tree 🙂 🙂 I already have problems finding out where I can plant those things I already have here but it looks like my English walnut died some time during this summer, have no idea why because it started really well after surviving the cold winter we had. I’ll try to reach it and take a closer look at it but if it is gone I will have space for the Red Mulberry 🙂 🙂 The perennials will be easier though because of the old vegetable patch that now is where I wanted wildflowers to grow but failed miserable 🙂 🙂 

     

I’m also thinking of getting rid of my wild grape vine, I don’t think I’ll get a single grape this year and it has been cheap with giving any at all. The easiest way to kill a grape vine is to cut it off just above the ground in spring, it’ll bleed to death quite quickly because they really don’t heal well at all. I’ll also most likely strip off the bark at the base of my plum tree, Google and other translators says it’s called to ring bark and it is the same name we use. The tree has to stand for two years before one can remove it but by doing like that it will not give any root shoots. I can always plant a climber beside it so it doesn’t look too awful during that time. It only gives a few plums every year and I only got it so that my neighbor would get plums on his tree. My “new” neighbors are thinking of getting rid of theirs so then there’s little meaning to keep mine. The space will soon be used for something else though 🙂

I think this is buckwheat.

   

At the same time it really hurts to get rid of a tree but not even the birds or rodents have any use of it since it doesn’t give fruit for them to eat. Well I still have to start with the mowing 🙂 I can find more and more tomatoes now but the bell peppers still only have buds, I guess it has to do with all the raining and relatively cool weather. They say this is the warmer weather since they started recording the climate but I’m pretty sure that next time they show that map of the world where it shows the average temperatures in anything from blue (colder than normal) to deep red (hotter than normal) the Nordic countries and perhaps Britain will be colored light blue 🙂 To be honest I do prefer that than deep red and now there’s no risk of forest fires anywhere in that area. 

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for today. I might turn off the tv and start listening to the radio because I don’t have the channel that shows the Olympics but I can listen to it on radio and also do something else at the same time 🙂

Four of my Giant Sequoia seedlings.
Now all they have to do is to start getting red 🙂

 

Have a great day!

 

Some of the Aaron’s rod becomes pretty high, I think this one just about touches three meters (much the same in yards) 🙂
I had forgotten that I put down potatoes here and there in the garden and now I can find them all over the place 🙂 🙂  

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Nothing much has happened here in the village since Sunday, just as I like it to be. We’ve had our walks, no morning walk today because I had to go to the town Lidköping. I have needed new insoles for my shoes and since they are custom made for my feet I had to go to the hospital to have them make new ones.

   

The Troll grapes are slowly but steadily getting that deep blood red color I like so much. Seems to be pretty unusual, most becomes just bright red.

Back in the days one had to stand in some kind of clay? so they could make molds so they could make those insoles. Now days they just scan the feet and viola the machine makes new ones. Especially my right foot had changed quite a lot and is now rather flat. While I was there I also had a look on their shoes and they picked out two that would fit my feet much better than the ones I can buy in the stores. Even though both looked like some kind of running shoes one of them, looked like old people shoes 🙂 🙂 🙂 I know I’m getting old but I don’t have to advertise it 🙂 🙂 It was quite wide and the soles were not flat to the ground but instead sort of bent upwards at the front.

None of the dogs saw him and he didn’t see them because of a few dense and low pines. We looked at each other for a while and then he trotted away.

 

The other shoe was perhaps the same with the bending of the sole but not as wide and looked more like a “normal” shoe. Plus they are black and less visible to the world 🙂 and more expensive. The insoles are for free because I really need them but I’ll have to pay for the shoes (ok not as expensive as they really are but still) aren’t necessary for me to be pain-free. It’ll take a week to make those insoles so I’ll go to the hospital again on August first. Next time I’ll bring a camera because Lidköping is a really nice and beautiful town and is places at the shore of our biggest lake, Vänern. It is the third biggest natural lake in Europe. I live just as close to our next biggest lake here in Sweden to to the opposite side, Vättern. It’s Europe’s sixth biggest natural lake.

   

Many years ago the politicians in that township did some smart financial decisions so it’s a well of town where everything is nasty expensive and even the rough areas looks like people living there are quite wealthy 🙂 🙂

     

WE went out for our first walk as soon as I had come home again, I had stopped in Skara to buy soil at a sort of Garden center. I write sort of because they have no space outdoors to grow anything but lots of what You would find in a garden center indoors. They had lots of trees and bushes on sale but I actually resisted to but a Magnolia stellata and lots of carnivore plants to have in the big pot outside 🙂 I must have to admit that if they had had a magnolia seiboldii I might have fallen and bought it 🙂 🙂 I’ll spend money on Thursday instead, I’m going to a pet store that still sell aquarium fish. It is getting pretty rare over here now days, from what I’ve heard they have new rules that acquires them to take training courses to get a license to sell aquarium fish and from what I’ve heard it’s bl…y expensive. Also it isn’t allowed to sell cats or dogs in pet stores, don’t think it never have been allowed to since they opened up pet stores.

Kirengeshoma koreana.

Hardy fuchsia.

Chinese catalpa.

This is a common weed around here, easy to keep in control though so I have a lot in my garden. The flowers are quite small but just look how beautiful they are. I sometimes wonder why they don’t try to get them to grow bigger flowers so it fits the flower beds instead of always use the same flowers for our gardens ?

Any way I’ll try to remember to bring a camera then. Well it is time to stop writing, have a cup of tea or two and later watch Midsommer Murders, I really like that series and it took me quite some time to understand that Midsommer is a huge fictional county, not a small town as I thought 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

Have a great day!

I hope it starts to dry up now.

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Lots of butterflies and dragonflies on our way to the creek today and also a few Damselflies down by the creek.

I hope I can mow the lawn tomorrow because today has been both reasonable warm and sunny plus we’ve had a wind blowing helping to dry up the grass. The early morning wasn’t that fun though, misty rain and so warm that the flies behaved like crazy so we never came out for a morning walk. We waited to have any walk until the weather became much more pleasant.

     

Instead I started to collect all cardboard boxes, breaking them down in to smaller pieces and then loading it all in to the back my car trunk. I still have loads to pack but it is almost completely full there now 🙂 My big problem is that if I have an empty box and I have something in my hands where I don’t know where to place it it goes down in the box 🙂 All but one of all those boxes are now in the car but I still have several big ones that needs to be unpacked and find somewhere to place what’s in them. I have almost no storage space in this little cottage, I have the cool cellar but I need that space for my plants that need a cool but not cold space to spend winter 🙂

     

Yesterday I went with my neighbor to a vintage shop, I’ve wanted to go there for a long time so yesterday my neighbor brought me there, turns out it’s her brother in law that owns it. I really lied it and found lots of things I would have liked to buy 🙂 I did come home with an old kitchen scale. There were a couple of really old ones but one need counter weights to make it work and those are always missing, so I bought a not so old, made sometimes in the late 1900’s. I have an almost new digital one but it eats batteries and it can change how much something weighs if I weigh the same thing again 🙂 I’ll take a photo of my new one if I remember it 🙂

     

We walked down to thew creek today. Still lots of puddles in the gravel road but the grass bushes along the creek were almost dry, the sun and the wind had done a great job there. For You living where temperatures around 22C (71,6F) is almost chilly this time of year 🙂 my dogs didn’t think it was 🙂 Totally ok while walking in shadow but coming out in the sun made them pant an awful lot. Alma always pant so I can’t say much about here 🙂 but Nova slowed down considerable and also Malkolm was less energetic. So I let Nova of the leash already when we were down by the creek, none of the dogs have show that there are wolves around so I felt it was safe to do so. I let Malkolm of the leash at the usual place and I must say that he’s really good at coming back if I call him.

     

So it’ll be an early walk tomorrow while it still is cool after the night because tomorrow will be warm, Scandinavian warm that is 🙂 25C (77F) and that will be too much for my Swedish dogs that are used to much lower temperatures 🙂

     

It’s time for a last cup of tea and then see if there’s anything worth watching on tv, I doubt that though.

Have a great day!

A morning I liked.

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The morning was almost perfect here today, only almost because as usual the vegetation was so wet that Malkolm was soaking wet when we came home even though he barely walked in the high grass today. It was cool, morning mist and the sun slowly rising. We skipped having breakfast before going outside hoping to be in the fog as much as possible. The mist actually stayed our entire walk so I was more than happy 🙂

I went up to the mail box before we went out on our walk, back in the days I would have had all dogs with me, unleashed, because they would stay close to me. If I tried that today Alma would be all over the place, most likely chasing cats at the farm, Malkolm would follow her and Nova would have turned back home again 🙂

   

I did hope that we would see some bigger animals since the sun just had started to rise but we only saw one and that was a wild hog down by the creek. It was passing the gravel road perhaps twenty meters ahead of us (much the same in yards). At first it stood still just watching us but decided to pass since we had stopped only looking at it. The thing is that wild hogs never comes alone and I had no idea if this was the first or last of them I decided to turn around and walk back home instead.

     

It is getting more tricky to have our walks now days. Nova is old and I’ve noticed how much slower she is compared to just a year ago. So it is a bit tricky to understand what speed we should walk in. First we have Alma who most likely would love to run around as fast as she can, last is Nova who now days mostly enjoys to just walk really slow sniffing on everything she can find on the ground and Malkolm in the middle 🙂 Malkolm is more like Nova, more interesting in smells than speed so it is Alma who has to adapt the most and adapt is not her strong side 🙂 🙂 She too can find smells interesting but can’t concentrate for more than fifteen seconds, I’ve actually measured the time and it’s rare that she can be interested in anything for up to twenty seconds 🙂 🙂

     

She did behave pretty well when we met the hog though, I must give her that! The weather after that was rather nice, lots of sunshine and just a weak wind blowing. the rest of the walks she behaved really well. I thought of mowing the lawn but even though it was fairly warm and the sun shone the grass was still soaking wet, no mowing tomorrow either because it has just started to rain again and it will most likely last until early morning tomorrow. One newspaper shouted out that after this rain we’ll get higher temperatures again and lots of sunshine so I checked the weather sites. Yes we’ll get one day with high temperatures and then it’ll drop down to 20C (68F) again 🙂 🙂 They always do like that when they know most people are desperate to at least get some sunshine before work starts again 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and then bed I think. I guess it’s stupid to hope for another morning like we had today but I’ll be happy if it is cool and with some sunshine 🙂

     

Have a great day!

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