Category: The village.

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 🙂 🙂 🙂

Plum pie, is that a thing?

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My neighbor is working with what I think is a trimmer in their garden, could be a chain saw but the sound is to persistent for that. I guess the grass have grown very un-evenly so it’s easier to use a trimmer instead. Personally I would still have used a lawn mower, trimmers aren’t good for the back.

     

I have no idea if there have been any hunters out in the forest today, We have walked in the village instead. It was cloudy but the sun broke through just as we went out on our morning walk. Both Alma and Malkolm behaved much better today. I’m not expecting my dogs to walk right beside me all the time but I really don’t want them to run around like crazy or pull the leash like insane 🙂 🙂 I just want them to smell everything they can on the walk and not stress around. I do understand that all smells and scents are exciting but they are more or less the same we have all over this area, just other animals leaving them 🙂

   

Can You see those rocks just where the tree line is? Those are old tombs and I think they are from the Iron age.

The sun stayed for a couple of hours and then the clouds came back and for a while it looked like we would have rain falling but that never happened. I still went out to water all the new trees and bushes, no risk of over watering in sandy soil 🙂 My neighbors texted me to ask if I wanted some plums, so now I have a big bucket with plums in my kitchen 🙂 I really have no wish of get all those kernels out of the plums but since I can’t eat that many I’ll have to and then I’ll make some jam from them. Plum pie is that a thing? Because I’m not sure I have enough with sugar to make that much jam 🙂

   

I’ve done the laundry but I still have to do dinner for work next week. I’m not sure what to do but I have some sausages in the fridge, bacon in the freezer, eggs in the cool cellar and then perhaps go outside to see how many potatoes I can find or just have rise nudels, that works well too. Time for a cup of tea and then start with the food.

     

Have a great day!

     

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 🙂

The village.

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It’s quiet in the village. The only sound one can hear is the occasional pig up at the farm and a neighbor hammering on his house, they are making their kitchen bigger. Nothing wrong with that but they are making the most beautiful house in the village rather ugly, the extension of the house looks like a box and really doesn’t have the same style as the rest of the house. Well the main thing is that they will like it and that they get the space they need.

     

We had the most wonderful morning here today, 7C (44,6F), sunshine and no wind. Morning mist flowed above the ground but most of it was gone by the time we came out for our walk. Today we walked in a place we haven’t walked in over two years, we walked in to the village. Now when I say in to the village it doesn’t look like that there’s a village there to be honest 🙂 In the middle of this village is a rather big cow pasture and then there are cottages and houses scattered around it. There used to be lots of small homes here and every family living here worked at the castle, Bjurum castle. If the one/ ones living here stopped working in the castle they had to move. If they didn’t hire someone new those small homes were just left and fell apart. Now days there’s 22 homes here, well 21 to be honest as You’ll see in my photos, but once they say there were almost 60 homes here.

     

If one knows where to look one can see the old village road but it is unfortunately hard to get on a photo but that road is almost older than the village. This used to be a burial place since the stone age and one can find old graves since the Iron age, nothing from the viking age though. Also later on the had a church in the village so there should be Christian graves but most of them were covered.  For some reason they stopped using that church, they think it might be because the black death hit this area badly and they thought that it could be spread again from the graves. The church was demolished and the stones were used to build the church down by the lake. Two more churches were torn down to build that church. Unfortunately there’s almost nothing left to see from that old church.

     

The reason we haven’t walked there in such a long time is because of Albin and Alma. If they saw a deer or a flying bird or a car or anything that might possibly move like a leaf those two started screaming like insane 🙂 🙂 🙂 That most often happened when we passed a home and since we were out pretty early in the morning we always woke people up. Also lots of dogs here now days so I have been unsure of how Alma will react if they are outside. She would love to greet them but would she do that quiet? 🙂 🙂 🙂 She has however calmed down considerable since Albin’s not here any more and Malkolm is a really quiet dog. Nova? well she doesn’t react much at all and now days she can’t hear much with her ear and doesn’t see that well either 🙂 Today everything went well but a couple of dogs barked like insane when we passed their home, they were indoors and a window was open so they could hear us pass by. I’m pretty sure the people living in that house woke up while we passed 🙂 🙂 Alma however was quiet as a dormouse 🙂

   

This is what happens when there’s a family feud. The owner has always refused to sell the place so no one else that is supposed to be one of those supposed to inherit the place will get as little money as possible.

I think we’ll have the same walk tomorrow morning if the weather is just as nice as it was today. I like walking there, I’m not soaking wet when we come home, no flies unless the cattle are close to us and no ticks either 🙂 Couldn’t be much better to be honest 🙂

   

 

Have a great day!