Most of the plum tree is gone now. All I need now is a day or two with weather that dries up the ground so I can cut the rest with my chainsaw. After that I need to start thinking about what else can grow there instead 🙂
Lots of rain has been falling here today, from before I woke up until now at almost seven pm. I don’t mind the rain but it has stayed on the chilly side all the time.
One of four piles with twigs and branches from my two plum trees. I’ve started to cut them in smaller pieces so the wood chipper (compost grinder) will have an easier job.
I dug up the hardy hibiscus and thought the buds would fall off but here’s the flower. It was filled with petals before but now it looks like this to my great joy 🙂
So we haven’t done anything really, napped a short while and watched tv. All of us is a bit bored now because rain makes the dogs stay indoors 🙂 They only run out for a few minutes to do what they must and then indoors again. Yesterday evening, around eight pm it was anything but boring here. I let the dogs outside and then Malkolm came running back to the front door and Alma started to bark.
One of the five pawpaw seedlings. If winter doesn’t kill it I’m afraid the dogs will 🙂 🙂 They run fast and wild when they play and don’t even see trees in their way 🙂 🙂
I walked around the cottage to see if I could find out what it was she barked at. She stared towards a bush and growled so I told her to go back indoors and I pointed my headlight towards the bush and there it was, a rather big badger hiding behind it. Poor thing, it must have been so scared. European badgers has a reputation of being aggressive and dangerous but that’s just nonsense. If they can they rather run away than have to meet dogs and humans. The reason they are believed to be dangerous is because hunters. I think I also would become pretty aggressive if someone tossed down aggressive dogs in to my home and I too would attack the one doing it.
So tonight I’ll take a walk in the garden before I let out the dogs so it can be alone when it visits us. Badgers eat all those snails and slugs we hate plus a lot of other bugs and larvae we don’t want close to us. I think they also might eat apples from the ground and to me that’s positive since I have so many 🙂 It’s time for that last cup of tea and later tonight they show Elsbeth again 🙂
The morning started out much the same as they have been lately, a bit chilly and sunny. We walked out to the bog even though the grass was pretty wet with dew. No ticks on us today but I had to kill quite a lot of moose flies instead. I had hoped it would be a bit too cool for those flies but unfortunately not.
I hadn’t planned to do much in the garden today, just watering the dry sensitive plants I’ve kept on watering all summer and those I’ve just planted but found a few dead branches in the big apple tree that I used the new saw to remove. I also trimmed the Golden rain, Laburnum, and then I got the idea to start cutting down the wild plum tree. Its branches are full with big thorns and I have been a bit worried that those would injure us badly if one of those branches hit us so I had to plan every branch I would cut down so it wouldn’t fall the wrong way.
It almost went as I had planned except for one big branch that fell down over the strawberries and rhubarbs. No big damage but it made me even more careful with the rest of the branches. I guess it was just before 1 pm and I only had the top left to cut off when the thunder and rain arrived. So at the moment I have a rather long and thin and very thorny tree standing there looking really sad 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll use the chain saw to remove the rest as soon as the grass dries up.
I also planted the last Perennials I had in pots, well I hope they were but one never knows what is hidden in the flowerbed close to the entrance because there are so many self sown flowers there now that they can be hiding some pots I’ve forgotten about 🙂 🙂 🙂 So now all I have to dig down are two pawpaw seedlings and two quince trees, I think I know where the pawpaws will go but still can’t figure out where I should plant the quinces, I’m not even sure if they will survive the winter here.
It is still raining here, it’s so much that it looks like they have fog on the other side of the village, we need it so I’ll not complain. We might get a foggy morning and then towards the evening we might get more rain. In between we even might get some sunshine. I have that last cup of tea by my side and at the moment I’m waiting for the loaf of bread in the oven to get ready and so do the dogs 🙂 They always get a piece with cheese on it when the bread still is warm 🙂
We were supposed to have rain all day today, not much though, so I’m not the least surprised that we until 5:50 pm had sunshine all day long 🙂 A strong wind has been blowing and that kept the flies away and it has been warm as well.
I didn’t look outside the window when we went up this morning and since I do have a rather high lilac hedge around big parts of the cottage I missed that we had morning mist. I did notice it before it evaporated though so there was still some left when we had our morning walk. A walk in a sunny, misty and cool morning is better than most things in life to be honest. Small birds were flying around everywhere, Jays argued somewhere in the tree tops and I could hear some animals trotting away from us.
The ground is drying up again so I still need to water the most vulnerable trees and perennials and I do that either just before we’re out on our walk or just after. Today I once again had to pick up a parcel, this time it was a LED light bar. The old fluorescent lamp I have down there is long gone, I’m not even sure if one can get parts to it any more. During winter I always have plant lights on but now one of those broke as well. I’ve put the new one up and almost regretted it because now I can see the mess 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll need to clean it all up before I start taking down the trees I must have indoors during winter.
I haven’t done much after that, we did take a long nap though but I’m not sure that can count as doing something 🙂 🙂 🙂 Isn’t it strange that the phone can be quiet all day but as soon one is falling asleep the entire world wants to reach You 🙂 🙂 🙂 and then as soon as the nap is over the phone gets quiet again 🙂 🙂 🙂 Mostly it’s telemarketers so I’m happy to say that they now are discussing a new law that forbids telemarketers to call privet persons unless we specifically have allowed them to 🙂 This is a law I’m really looking forward to!
The Dahlias I sowed had only bright yellow flowers in the beginning.
Then some showed some orange as well.
Yesterday morning I found this bud.
And today it opened up bright red 🙂 Dahlias are supposed to have migraine-inducing colours according to my taste so this one I like 🙂
I is time for that last cup of tea for the day. To be honest I think I could drink an entire pot without having problems to fall asleep because I’m still just as tired as I was before the nap. 🙂
They finally got it right, we have rain. Most of the time it’s nice summer rain but every now and again heavy showers and we’ve even had thunder passing to the west of us. I’m so annoyed that I haven’t found the jigsaw because if I had I now would have had three full water barrels, all containing around 300 litres (79,3 gallon US) each. They’re guessing we’ll have rain all weekend so if I just find it I’ll be able to open up the third barrel that’s just waiting to be opened up.
From the window beside the computer upstairs.
The morning walk was quite different though, slightly cloudy but with huge gaps between the cloud masses and enough cool top have morning mist, something I really like to see. t was more or less vanishing by the time we went out but there were places it still lingered. Jays were arguing loudly but besides them it was quite quiet. Alma and Malkolm behaved so well and it was cool enough to keep even the moose flies calm. So far I haven’t seen many of the moose flies and I do hope the drought has killed most of them.
We woke up rather early, even for me, at 4 am so I opened the door for the dogs so they could do their business. Well that didn’t happen because Alma found some animal in the garden and started to bark like insane. It was so dark that I couldn’t see anything but I’m pretty sure it was the badger again 🙂 🙂 🙂 It has now dug a hole beneath the fence to my neighbours, I found it yesterday. She (I think it’s a she because of the size) hadn’t been able to get in to my garden for a while, instead she has dug her small holes in the ground around my garden just beside the fence. It does seem I have lots of things she likes to eat here, frogs, slugs and snails (and fallen apples on the ground) so she decided it is worth the risk of meeting fierce Alma 🙂 Malkolm was smart enough to stay by my side instead of joining her 🙂 🙂
So I think it might be time to put up that wildlife camera again. I hope the batteries still work because I really don’t want to have to drive away just to get batteries. If it catches any nightly visitors I’ll of course show them here. I know the fox tends to visit us as well and lots of cats of course 🙂
It is time to have that last cup of tea for the day, after that I don’t know what to do. I actually have lots of things I can do but for some reason I don’t want to do them and I don’t mean chores but old hobbies I used to have. I guess I still have those hobbies but at the moment I just can’t get myself to start with any of them 🙂
Looks like the cold weather scared som cranes to move south, usually they don’t do that until mid or late September.
Another cold night so I’m glad I covered the more sensitive plants. Yesterday we had several thunderstorms passing by and we had hail falling in at least three of them, there was even some hail left when we went out in to the garden when we had woken up.
The rest of the day has been really nice though. It was so cold on our morning walk that not a fly or anything but migrating cranes were moving in the air. Well a couple of Jays flew around screaming, most likely warning about us walking down the gravel road. The sun shone almost the entire walk and has continued to do so with the exception of a few clouds passing by. The clouds weren’t big but manage to pass the sun in a place so the sunshine couldn’t reach us. It has actually been enough warm to have the kitchen door open almost all day.
When there are like two or several individual mist clouds we’re saying that the Elves are dancing. Normally we see this in fields and usually in a ring formation. One doesn’t want to interfere in it because it usually means the end of life is here. These two however let us pass without being punished 🙂 🙂
It should have been open all the time if it hadn’t been because of Alma, she is now in heat. Malkolm is still chemically castrated so no such problems but he still behaves like a bewitched teenager 🙂 🙂 🙂 Almost all female dogs that have been living with me has done that every six months, not Alma though she does it every fifth month 🙂 which is at the time rather good because I was unsure for how much longer the chemicals would work on Malkolm.
Most spiderwebs had been destroyed by the heavy showers of rain and hail.
Some had however managed to build new ones.
I’ve planted most of the sown coneflowers (Echinacea) today. I really like them but for some reason I have never had one, bought or sown, surviving the winter here and that’s not because they aren’t hardy enough and the sand in the ground here should be perfect for them. The only one that I actually had for several years was the pinnate prairie coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) but those were slowly pushed away by some wild roses I used to have 🙂 🙂
This is a rather nice tasting mushroom and it grows in my garden.
My bigger citrus trees, smaller this year due to frost and my four Pawpaw seedlings. Two from last year badly damaged by mice and two from this year.
The coming three days will be much like today they’re guessing but after that we’ll get clouds and rain but at least not as cold as it washes last days. The tea is waiting and perhaps I’ll have a sandwich or two 🙂
Malkolm looking slightly ashamed all the time now 🙂 🙂
We didn’t have any frost yesterday night, clouds arrived just in time so instead we had a rather warm night. Today however the temperature had fallen down to 3 C (37,4 F) and mostly we haven’t higher temperatures that just below 10 C (50 F). It dropped down even more when the first thunder approached.
We did manage to have a rather nice morning walk. It was pretty chilly and cloudy when we started, rather late for being us, and on the way home the sun showed it self and in the forest it became warm enough where the sun reached so that some flies started to annoying us. Just a few though but sometimes those can be even more annoying than if there were a whole bunch of them 🙂 🙂
It didn’t take long before we heard the first thunder lazily rumbling from a distance. It never came especially close but we did get the rain. It was too cold to be outside in the garden and after a while I became bored so I baked bread (turned out great and when it was done I let the heat out from the oven and it filled the cottage together with the smell of newly baked bread :-). I had just tasted the first slice when the second round of thunder arrived and this time we had both rain and lightning and with a bonus gift as well, hail 🙂 No damage from it thankfully.
I’ve gotten a couple of warnings from the lightning app later on but by then the sun finally showed itself again and it did at least feel warmer. I even put on two radiators to keep the cold humid air outside. I’ve already covered the most sensitive plants outside, the web sites doesn’t show that there’s a risk of frost but if it is 6C (42,8 F) here at 10 pm and we don’t have any clouds the temperature most likely will fall down below 0 C (32 F) before the sun rise the day after.
I must admit that this hanging pot hasn’t impressed me this year. It is now finally starting to grow in it.
The butterfly bush is so close to open its flowers, I do hope there are plenty of especially butterflies left to visit it, normally there should be.
I’ve started to cut down the Grape elder and cutting back the rose behind it. So many thorns 🙂 🙂
There’s a hint of orange in the dahlia flowers so I hope that if I save the seeds I’ll get more orange or perhaps even red flowers from them.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and since I don’t think there is any re-run on tv that I want to watch I’ll reed a book instead 🙂
I can hear thunder in the distance but I’m not sure if it will come our way or not. I wouldn’t mind if it did. It’s just as hot here today as it was yesterday and the dogs only wants to stay outside for short moments before they give up. Today my neighbours little dog decided to take a walk by himself so I was about to go out and help searching for him but just as I was on my way out a villager had found him and called my neighbours 🙂 He had just walked the same way they always walk in the village 🙂 🙂
We were out on our morning walk the same time as we were yesterday and it was slightly cooler today, still no flies oddly enough. I don’t miss them but they are important for all the birds so I do wonder what has happened to them. I wish this was a sign of the coming maps fly season but I’m pretty sure those nasties will be as many or more than usual 🙂 🙂 🙂 It was so cool and nice but like yesterday the heat arrived before we reached the cottage, the difference today is that a cool but weak wind is blowing and it helps a lot. Even if the ground still is slightly wet after the thunder day I still watered the plants I planted this spring plus I gave a little extra to those I planted last year. Almost all plants that were damaged by the last frost now have new leafs, all but one red mulberry tree. It’s alive and well but just refuse to grow new leafs and I have no idea why.
I’ve also started to look at seeds now for next year. Some businesses have already started with the sales but the ones selling the seeds I want haven’t 🙂 They might be offering free shipment but that isn’t much. Then again if I wait for too long the seeds I want might be sold out before I can order them 🙂 Damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation 🙂 🙂 🙂 I also picked up my first potatoes today, quite a few but mostly small, those are on the other hand the best and I like frying them hole. I had some for dinner today and the rest for dinner at work during next week.
So I’ve done the dinners and also the laundry, like always but I really should have vacuumed upstairs as well but it is so hot now that I really need to put a limit to how much I should do in the heat so I skipped the vacuuming 🙂 🙂 🙂
Have a great day!
The younglings have left the nest. I hope the doves comes back again next spring.
We had thunder all day yesterday way in to the night and torrential rain as well and I loved it, especially since none of the dogs are afraid of thunder. Instead they insist on going out and only rain can get them to quickly go indoors again 🙂 🙂 The monsterkitten didn’t seem to mind either, she even went outside when it rained 🙂
So yesterday was hot and sticky but today was and still is way worse and we also have sunshine but that actually makes it feel less horrible, it sort of dries out the air so it doesn’t feel like living in a sea, bath 🙂 Still it’s so hot that the dogs gave up on playing after just a few minutes and now they’r sleeping on the floor beside me. It has been horrible at work just because of the heat and we’re all drinking water like we were elephants 🙂 I must say it is an odd workplace in so many ways but they do make sure that we all get as much fluid replacement as we need. It doesn’t matter what taste those pills have they all taste awful but they do help and that’s the important thing.
I have at least three different Bluebells in my garden now.
A primula has decided it’s spring again 🙂 🙂
I now have a memory foam pillow and I slept so well that My neck didn’t hurt this morning. I also got my winter duvet, a warm one according to the seller that specialises in beds and sleeping. Some time after week 32 I’ll get my new mattress pad but yesterday I got something I realised I need. I realised that when I baked bread when it was 27C (80,6F), it isn’t nice to bake bread in that temperature, so I bought a bread baking machine 🙂 I would ahem liked to tell You that the first bread was a totally success but it wasn’t 🙂 🙂
Normally strawberries gives berries in spring, I got a few but that was it. However for some reason I do get berries from now on and until the frost stops them. I have never heard about autumn strawberries but I’m not complaining 🙂
The machine has a gluten free setting so that wasn’t the problem. I need to either use the bigger loaf adjustment or less water because it hadn’t baked properly in the middle. Worked great to toast though. Unfortunately it take much longer to bake it in the machine than if I do it with the old oven, almost twice the time, so I’ll use it on Fridays and the weekend. I’ll let You know how the second loaf turns out as soon as I’ve baked it.
My Chinese Catalpa have buds now. Unfortunately the flowers will be at the top of the tree and they are rather small and yellowish.
Oregano in bloom. If You once plant or sow Oregano You will never be without it 🙂
No tea today, it’s just too hot but thankfully I have water or lots of milk so I’ll have that instead 🙂 🙂
I’ve had a really nice day, the morning was rather chilly, only 4C (39,2F) and there was a layer of clouds early showing the sun, so the first thing we did was to jump in to the car so I could deliver invitations to the road association meeting we’ll have next Saturday. We drove away at 6 am so there wasn’t a car on the roads outside the village. The castle has properties in the village so they need an invitation as well, and not a single human could be seen in the village 🙂
Alma didn’t like the drive at all even though I drove so slow that she had the time to see everything happening in the village and outside as well. It wasn’t until we came back towards home that she suddenly thought it was a good idea to take a nap in the back seat 🙂 🙂 🙂 The sun did eventually show itself and we had a really nice weather until around 5 pm when clouds arrived and rain with them. Mostly it was a nice summer rain but every now and again torrential showers passed by, I had small lakes even in my garden despite the ground mostly contains of sand.
It’s a short work week once again because we’re having our national day on June sixth. They do try to make us a bit more patriotic so that we like in so many other countries go out and celebrate it on the streets but most of us just take it easy, perhaps having a barbecue or a picnic. If we do feel like having a small celebration we’ll watch what they show on tv, there’s always some show on our PBS (the biggest network we have) where the royal family sits in the audience 🙂
It’s a bad aphid year here.
I better stop here because there’s a massive thunder front coming this way, I just heard the rumble and it’s not many km or miles away now. First thunder for the year here and I do like a good thunderstorm 🙂
So all the photos comes from the folder “For a rainy day”.
I think I’m about to get the cold so many around here already have had, it seems to have gone away after three days so it really doesn’t bother me that much but I sneeze all the time, my entire body hurts and I’m unusually tired all the time.
I’ll have a vacation day tomorrow, I’m going to get x-rayed so they can see if there are any kidney stones left, I really hope there aren’t because I never want to go through that kind of pain again 🙂 🙂 It’s in the afternoon so I could have gone to work if I really wanted to but then again this is my last week there so I took a vacation day instead 🙂
We had lots of thunder and heavy showers yesterday and both my water barrels that can take up to 325 liters (85,85 gallons US) are now completely full again. More rain is on the way and for a couple of days the temperature will stay around 15C (59F) and then rise slightly again. I have really enjoyed these low temperatures again buy I won’t mind if it goes up a degree or two again. It is however supposed to rain again tomorrow and that’s too bad because I was thinking of bringing a camera to show You what the town looks like, it is actually quite beautiful.
It’s time for a last cup of tea and perhaps an ice cream before I fall asleep in front of the tv 🙂
I always take test photo before we walk away and today this was the one.
I’m baking bread, well not yet it’s still rising and will do so for an hour more. Most of the gluten free recipes seems to be for tiny breads that’ll last for a day or so. A bit annoying because they won’t go bad so quickly, so I tend to double it all. I never have the right ingredients either so I just take what I have. In this recipe I should have had potato flour and brown rice flour, I had neither. So instead I had normal rice flour, oatmeal flour and since I didn’t have enough with rice flour I also put in Sorghum and buckwheat flour 🙂 🙂 They all react very different so one never really knows what the dough will be like 🙂
I was mixing it all and it behaved like concrete, that’s when I remembered that I hadn’t doubled the amount of water, slightly stressed I poured in cold water and less of what i should have, really glad that I didn’t take all the water I was supposed to because if I had done I would have been able to pour it in baking tin and this one isn’t supposed to be poured 🙂 For some reason they always want the dough to rise in a separate bucket and when it is ready one should just place it in the baking tin. Why? One isn’t supposed to do anything with it after it has risen. So I just put it in the baking tin from the beginning so there isn’t any risk that I press out the air in the bread while doing something unnecessary.
We walked out to the bog this morning and the flies were quite nasty. They behaved like we might have thunder but there were no signs of that. Turns out that there has been thunder but it has been everywhere around us but not here. I got warnings on the lightning app all day long but here the sun has been shining the entire time. I can’t say I’ve done a lot today, mostly listening to the radio and the Olympics. Had a short nap but was woken up by a text message and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I have also planted some perennials, Six Coneflowers (Echinacea). I put them in the old vegetable patch where I was hoping our meadow flowers would like to live but only a few showed up 🙂 They’ll look amazing next year. Since they grew in a pot I’ll need to water them every day because since their roots isn’t attached to the soil yet the old soil in the pot will dry up much faster than the ground surrounding them. I’ll have to keep an eye on them until late autumn even if it will rain a lot. It’s the same with trees and bushes, they need lots pf extra water the first year.
I just took a look at the bread and it is rising a bit too good 🙂 🙂 Looks like it will over flow the baking tin 🙂 🙂 smells really good though!
It is time to go down and put that bread in the oven and I’ll also have a last cup of tea for the day. I might go to the grocery store tomorrow but the one thing I need to do is to mow the lawn, I might wait another day to mow the parts outside my garden, after all I’m still on vacation 🙂
This one is from yesterday, the dogs have mostly been close to me all day so it was a bit difficult to get a good photo 🙂
100% humidity, no wind but towards the cool side should still make a rather nice day but both the dogs and I thought the humidity was just too much and that it made it feel much warmer than it actually was. We walked down to the creek in the morning when it still felt a bit cool but the flies were nasty and there were a few horse flies that tried to bite me. Oddly slow so now there are fewer horse flies to worry about 🙂
Winter food for the cattle. Lots of beans in it this year, they’ll cut it down and make silage from it.
I think we were close to wild hogs because Alma became a bit excited and looked straight at the point where we met one last week. We didn’t see or hear anyone though, I guess they too thought it felt a it nasty with the humidity and kept as still as they could to avoid the attention of the flies. We did see a Roe deer though but now Alma rarely cares about it. She has become so much better on our walks now and I do hope it continues that way 🙂
Roe deer don’t eat the beans, they only eat the most delicious herbs, that’s why they have problems surviving the old fashioned winters when the ground used to be covered with snow.
I got warnings from the lightning app when we had our nap but since the sun shone I really didn’t think much of it. Not even when the rain started to pour down because I really couldn’t hear any thunder. The dogs wanted to go outside so I opened the door so they could see how the rain was pouring down it was even too much for Malkolm. Just as I was about to close the kitchen door the lightning hit. I was close to peeing in my pants if I should be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I saw how it came from the mountain and passed my neighbors cottage rather close and hit the ground around 100 meters (much the same in yards) behind out cottages 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m so glad that I had almost closed the door because it is amazing how much it sounds 🙂 🙂 🙂
No rain tomorrow they’re guessing but the humidity will stay at 100% or close to it. Almost no wind but a bit of sunshine so I guess it will feel like living in a steam bath tomorrow. Well I’ll go to the pet shop tomorrow and will be closer to the big lake so I hope that helps some.
I took a look outside my bedroom window and realized that almost the entire eastern top half of the apple tree is covered in white bryony (Bryonia alba). It’s a poisonous vine that when it’s older can cover entire trees. It’s something I never would bring to my garden and it isn’t native here but back in the days people thought it was a great vine to cover big areas. It spreads easily with birds since they eat the berries. I did taste one berry when I was a kid and it tastes horrible 🙂 🙂 🙂 So even if one can die from eating the berries one need 40 of them and I’m pretty sure that no one can come even close to do that 🙂 🙂 This one is a young plant and only had three vines growing up from its root, still it managed to cover so much of the tree. They always grow where it is the hardest to get rid of them.
So we haven’t done much today, even before the rain the dogs preferred to stay indoors. Sunshine at the moment but still a chance/ risk of more thunder. I don’t mind thunder as long as I’m not caught outside when it arrives. I have had to chose between being the highest point in the fields or hiding beneath tress, a sort of choice between having plague or cholera 🙂 🙂
Ten seconds after I took this photo the lightning struck 🙂
The smell from the Woodland tobacco is wonderful but it only smells in late evenings and nights.
I took a photo from below on the bryonia, we call them dog turnips 🙂
It is time to have a last cup of tea for the day and perhaps I’ll have a couple of oatmeal cookies 🙂
Then some showed some orange as well.
The Cottage by the crane lake. 