We might get up to 80 mm or three and one fifth inches of rain this weekend (or possibly even more, it all depends on where the showers will pass). At the moment we’re having a nice gentle summer rain and almost no winds to speak of. The dogs won’t go outside in it but it’s actually quite nice.
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The morning weather was rather different though. Just below 10C (50F), ground mist and a rising sun. There are no birds singing any more unless one counts the trumpeting from Cranes. When we first hear them it’s a typical spring sound but now when we hear them it’s a typical autumn sound. Lots of them are heading south now together with lots of geese. Some will stay for much longer but those who plays it safe move south already now.
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No flies were around to annoy us thankfully. Well most of the forest flies are gone but it is worrisome that the moose flies already have arrived. They will usually stay until late October or early November unless the worst night frost that will come is nasty cold. It isn’t that many years ago that we didn’t have those nasty flies here but warmer and especially shorter winters have helped them to survive till next spring. We do have lots of spiders this year though and since there has been plenty of annoying forest flies (but actually not especially many horse flies) they’ve had plenty to eat.
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This weekend is the last one with summer temperatures they believe, already on Monday it’ll fall below 20C (68F) and it will stay like that for at least eight days. I don’t want summer temperatures for too long so I’m ok with it but I sure don’t want winter to start early either 🙂 🙂 A perfect climate would be a very long and not too cold autumn followed by a not too early spring, I really don’t mind us skipping winter even though that most likely would mean more ticks, horse flies and moose flies 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I’ve just watched the latest Ghost Buster movie, afterlife I think it’s called. It isn’t that bad to be honest. Sometimes a bit slow between when things happens but otherwise I think it carries on the tradition rather well. Later today I’ll most likely watch Spiderman: No Way Home. I’ve seen so many trailers from it that I feel I’ve actually seen it 🙂 🙂 🙂 First though I’ll need to feed the dogs and force them outside to make their businesses no matter how much it might rain 🙂
Yesterday evening they moved the cattle from the pasture beside my cottage to the one on the other side, beside my garage. Normally I really wouldn’t notice it but suddenly I heard the farmer calmly say no, no, no.
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I figured it was one of the cows that wanted to follow the road instead of crossing it so didn’t think much about it. Then I heard the same thing again and did think he sounded a bit to calm if it was a cow. So I just said Alma come back, and not especially loud and after that I didn’t hear any more no, no, no 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Nothing much has happened here besides that. We walked in to the forest as soon as I had come back home after work. We hadn’t walked far when we must have disturbed some wild hogs. Not that I could hear them run away but they do smell quite a lot and not especially nice either 🙂 🙂 so they must have left just seconds before we arrived. Sometimes it’s possible that it i a good thing I almost always have to scold Alma for pulling the leash, it would not have been fun to walk straight in to them, especially since the piglets still are quite small. There are almost no annoying forest flies left, instead we now have the horrible moose flies. I managed to kill the first one today, hurray.
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I’m boiling rice porridge in my slow cooker right now, I want some for breakfast tomorrow but it just takes too long to make it for me to do it first thing in the morning. This recipe has butter in it and I’ve never had that in my porridge before, I do hope it tastes nice anyway. I also found a recipe for rice pudding, I might try that next time.
I won’t plant any high annuals in the old wheel barrow next year. The Cornflowers suffocated almost all other flowers when they grew tall and fell over the rest when the wind and rain hit them 🙂 🙂 🙂..
It is still rather warm here, 25C (77F) and I can’t remember when we had this high temperatures this late in August the last time. It’s actually quite nice since we also have had a nice breeze blowing. It will continue like this until at least the weekend if they’re guessing right.
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It is amazing how fast one can forget ones last work when one wants to 🙂 I had to go to my old work place for a while today and I managed to shut down the entire painting program and instead get out on the internet and I just couldn’t get back again 🙂 🙂 🙂 (to be honest, I didn’t even know we could reach the internet from the painting box). We had to shut down the entire box and restart it again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I even offered to do the cleaning program when we were going to use another color but they thought it best to let me do other things instead 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I went to the optician yesterday to ask if they could do progressive contact lenses. I had heard that they can do that now days and why not try it if they can. Turns out they can so I now have an appointment in September. I’ve had lenses before but had to stop when I started to work with powder paint. The pain when something as tiny as a dustgrain comes between the eye and the lens is horrible so it wasn’t possible to wear contacts when I worked there. So they’ll do a check on my eyes and after that I hopefully can have contacts again.
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I had ordered a hand chain saw so that I can trim some branches of my apple trees and also lots of branches from my lilacs. I’ve been waiting for it to arrive for over 14 days but today it arrived. Doesn’t any company have anything in stock now days? Several things I’ve ordered lately have taken around 14 days to arrive and I have been able to follow the order all the time. It also seems that anything one buys today comes from Yunnan in China, or Shanghai :-)Well the sofas did come from a place in sweden and the coffee maker from Germany but for some reason I think they most actually were made in Yunnan in China anyway 🙂
.Still some flowers on my Catalpa.Lots of seed pods too but they are usually too late to give any seeds that will germinate.
The weekend has been rather nice. Fog a big part of yesterday morning and sunshine in the afternoon. Today chilly and sunny in the early morning with just a tad of morning mist and this afternoon is just enough warm with a light but cool breeze. High humidity though and that sort of brings down it all a bit.
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The hunting season has started, they start with Roe deer bucks and it’s usually over after a couple of days. Here the hunters counts how many bucks there are and after that they decide how many they think can be hunted and usually the older and bigger ones are protected, just to make sure the most fit stays so the coming generation of deer benefits from it. No bigger animals are allowed to hunt yet except for wild hogs, they can be hunted all year long as long as it isn’t a sow with piglets.
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So we’ve mostly been out in the early morning. I hoped that we would see the wolf that walks around here but I didn’t have that luck I’m afraid. I haven’t seen or heard any hog since they saw the wolf so I think it still is in the area. Yesterday when I went to bed I also hoped that I would hear it howl, the sky was clear and the moon shone but it stayed quiet all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do have a camera in the car and I’ll have it ready just in case the wolf shows up on my way to work 🙂
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I did one big load of laundry yesterday and another one today. I also have the dinner for the coming week cooking in the slow cooker at the moment. It will be some kind of pasta sauce, well not quite because I’ll also have green curry, bamboo shoots, corn, haricots verts (from my own vegetable patch, squash also from my own vegetable patch and chard that also is growing there 🙂 and I’ll have it with pasta so I guess I can call it a pasta sauce 🙂 🙂 🙂
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WE had pancakes (thin European ones) for dinner and IU must say that my apricot and banana jam actually tastes better now. After this I’ll make an apple pie (well it will most likely be an apple crisp since I’m a bit lazy 🙂 🙂 🙂 and I’ll have both cardamom and cinnamon in it. and I’ll have custard poured all over it 🙂 I’ll either sleep like a baby tonight or my stomach will give me so much trouble that I won’t sleep at all 🙂 🙂 🙂
My new coffee maker. Finally I can get a decent cup (well two if I count my tea cup or eight if I count coffee cups 🙂 ) of tea...
Have a great day!
One of Albins absolute favorite spots in the garden, close to the gate on the north side of the cottage.
Yesterday when we were about to take our walk I saw a shower pass by, it didn’t reach us but I did feel a few drops hitting my arm.
I’ve survived the two first day back to work 🙂 It hasn’t been that hard to be honest and I’m not sure half of us are back yet. When I grew up all industries had the summer vacation period at the same time, four weeks so it was called general industrial holiday.
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Suddenly Volvo I think it was decided that we would be able to change that slightly so half of all working in the company could take two weeks earlier than the rest, then the factory would close for two weeks and then the ones that had that earlier vacation started to work while the rest had their vacation. They thought it would be a good idea to only close for two weeks so the production could continue without too much disturbance. Well that didn’t work because they forgot that if only half of the workers were aty work things would move very slowly 🙂 🙂
Even dead butterflies are beautiful.Copper lizard..
Nowdays it varies slightly, at my work place we can have one week before they close for three weeks or one week after. Also one can work during summer if there’s anything to do if one want a later vacation, so some people only have three weeks vacation during summer and take the last two weeks later if they perhaps wants to travel somewhere. I always take four weeks in the summer and save one for christmas. If we’re lucky those five working days together with the holidays can make that one week up to almost three weeks vacation 🙂 🙂
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Yesterday was on the cool side, today was more towards early summer warm. Tomorrow will be vacation warm and after that it’ll be nasty hot if they’re guessing right. The weekend will be the worst and Monday as well but they’re guessing it will start to cool down after that. I don’t mind if autumn waits a bit before it arrives but I really don’t want another heatwave again. I guess however that it’s better than what happened in South Korea yesterday. It fell well over a foot of rain during one hour!
So today is the last day of my vacation, tomorrow is just an ordinary weekend. One could say that the vacation actually goes on until Sunday but I prefer to feel that Sunday’s just another Sunday and the day after is a work day, feels less dramatic that way 🙂
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Still I could win the big winning in the lottery but I would still work that month that we are supposed to just so that they’ll get a chance to get someone else to continue after I’ve left. It is very easy to be generous as long as that winning actually hasn’t happened 🙂 🙂 We were supposed to have a sunny day here with a temperature around 20C (68F). They have actually gotten the temperature right but the sun has been absent most of the day. It showed itself a short while in the morning but very little after that.
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Yesterday was very different though, we had sunshine now and again and the temperature was nasty high as also the humidity was. Rather unpleasant to be honest. Then the rain and thunder arrived. I have to say that it was a magnificent thunderstorm and it continued from around 5pm way in to the night. Strong winds created havoc in some places in this region and what the wind didn’t destroy the hail did. The wind didn’t do anything here but the hail perforated all bigger leafs it hit. I looked at my lightning app and it showed that at one point we had more than 500 lightning hits between Skara and Falköping, I live exactly in the middle of those towns. I can tell You that there’s no need to water anything today, on the contrary, I’ve needed to empty almost all pots I have 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I really should mow the lawn before I get back to work. It isn’t particularly high yet but with all this rain falling I can already see how it is growing. I’ll use all that cut off grass to cover the ground in the vegetable patch. It will keep the sand moist at the same time the mouldering grass will fertilize the ground, a win win situation 🙂 Also after doing like that a couple of years I’ll have more real soil than sand in there. I still only have male flowers on my squash plants, a bit annoying but there’s still plenty of time to get some squashes before autumn arrives. The beans are flowering and I have plenty of lettuce and chard growing. The cabbage is struggling though, I do remove any eggs and caterpillars I find but something is still eating those cabbage leafs. I also think we now can start to pick up potatoes 🙂
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It is time to give the dogs something to eat, no rush really because they’ve all had one pancake each already 🙂 🙂 Yesterday, when it still was nasty hot but the thunder was on its way I made some jam. I had some apricots that were too old but not really enough to make jam from it, so I tossed in a couple of mashed bananas too plus a pinch of cardamom. To my very big surprise it turned out really well 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s actually quite tasty so I had that on my pancakes today 🙂 I should perhaps have put in an apple or two from my crab apple tree because those apples contains lots of pectins that will stop the jam from being a bit runny. Still it runs very slow so it’ll work on toast as well 🙂
It rained during last night and it was quite nice to step outside when I let the dogs out. We didn’t get especially much though but any drop helps.
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We didn’t have any morning walk today because I wanted to go to the pet store and buy that spray that ticks don’t like. I guess there would be loads of them since they like when it’s a bit wet in the grass. I doubt that I would have managed to make the dogs go outside anyway 🙂 I went to the pet store and bought another spray with much the same content and I also bought a sort of collar for Albin. It really smells of lemon and that is a small ticks are said not to like. After that I went to the super market and the last thing i bought was a soft ice cream with tiny marshmallow topping 🙂
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The rest of the day has been rather nice, sunny and just enough warm. We only took a short walk since I wanted to see how the spray would work. Last walk I picked lots of ticks from mostly Alma but also Nova directly after the walk and I continued to pick even more until early this morning. It was different when I had sprayed them, so far I’ve picked five in total, three from Alma and one each from Nova and Albin. I’ll continue to check them all evening and I do hope these are all there were.
.I think this is a male Adder because it was fairly short and thin. The females carry the eggs in the body and the babies aren’t born until later this autumn, so if it had been a female one it should have been much thicker..
Nova was, as always, walking a bit ahead of us when we were out walking and just before we left the forest I noticed something on the ground. It was an adder. Nova must have walked straight over it but I managed to keep both Alma and Albin away from it. To be honest they never noticed it at all 🙂 🙂 The Adder is the only venomous snake we have and as long as dogs (or cats) aren’t bitten in the foot or leg they usually just swell up badly but nothing worse. It’s a good idea to go to the vet anyway because the bite can give infections.
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I’ve had two dogs who were bitten by adders and both swelled up badly but nothing worse. They did react with panic every time they saw anything that remotely looked like snake after the bite though. I’ve lived here for 22 years now ans so far I’ve only seen two live snakes (I never saw the one that bit old Erna) and one that was run over by a car. We must have loads of snakes here but mostly they stay in the fields where all rodents live, so I was surprised to see this one in the forest where it is much cooler, especially after the rain. It was still lying completely still when we left it.
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It is time for a last cup of tea and after that I need to check the cabbage leafs for butterfly eggs or caterpillars.
Nothing much has happened here. Yesterday morning started out much like the previous one, cold and sunny, so the morning mist was just starting to build up when some clouds came and destroyed it all. They prevented the heat from the sun to evaporate the cold morning dew so no morning mist.
...The Chamomile still flowers.
This morning had no clouds but it was too warm (over 10C (50F) ) so no mist today either. I really didn’t want to take a walk because of the constant war between me and Alma but I had noticed yesterday that the new harness actually does make a difference. I can attach the leash on the front and since it’s fairly low every time she pulls the leash she turns around because the leash moves towards her front leg and disturbs her balance. So far she hasn’t figured out a countermove but I can see that she’s trying 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It was warm enough for flies to fly around but not especially many did. I’m not sure if the fly season now is over, which I hope, or if they were busy elsewhere. It could be that they all are in my garden though because there’s no lack of them here 🙂 🙂 🙂 There’s absolutely no lack of ticks though. After we came home I combed Nova and took two from her. None was caught from Albin or Alma but then suddenly I saw plenty walking around on Almas head and also one on Albins. I don’t know where the one on Albin hid because he has plenty of white on him so it’s hard for a tick to hide. All in all I picked seven more from those two.
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I had hoped the pet store would be open today but during summer he tends to have Saturdays closed. He sells a anti tick spray that is made only with scents ticks hate and it works pretty well. Albin is allergic to it but I can use it on the other two. It is after all so much easier to have to go through only one dog with extremely short fur 🙂 🙂 I can also spray it on my trousers. Pretty expensive though but it is well worth it. I’ll go there first thing on Monday morning instead. They even get them here in the garden and that’s because a deer seems to be visiting us when it knows we’re all asleep. I do like deers but I wish they could wait to visit us until the tick season is over 🙂 🙂
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I think it is time for a cup of tea and after that perhaps a nap. We’ve been up since before the sun rose and since I still am on vacation a nap sounds pretty nice 🙂 I do have some ice cream in the freezer and I think that would go nicely with a nice tea 🙂 Today I’ll only do one thing, every now and again I’ll go out to the vegetable patch to check the cabbage for butterfly eggs and caterpillars. It is amazing how fast even the tiniest caterpillar can eat those leafs!
The new harness, it is called “Military harness”. I have no idea if they used something like this in the army anywhere but it sort of looks like it. The leash can be attached at her back but also in the front which the next photo almost shows 🙂..
So I woke up to e clear sky just before the sun started to rise and we went out for our morning walk as soon as I had put on my clothes and the dogs their harnesses. I did take a look at the thermometer before we went out and it showed 4C (39,2F). It was wonderful to take a slightly longer walk in that temperature because not a fly or mosquito were around to bite and annoy us 🙂
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Alma had once again decided that she would be impossible but she did at least not scream loudly when we passed our neighbors and Albin didn’t even look for Salmiak. Salmiak however is totally ok and it might actually be that Albin never tried to bite him but just push him down with his nose but as I said to the beekeepers I’m not willing to try it again just to see if that’s the case 🙂 🙂 🙂 Anyway we walked down to the creek and followed it down-streams. Alma was everywhere as usual and when Albin wanted to walk out on one of those small bridges that cross the creek she naturally had to follow and since Alma is like she is she then fell down and in to the rather muddy water 🙂 🙂 🙂
.Those three trees are the last ones in the WOW trees 🙂.
That didn’t calm her down especially much and we had a full blown war between us all the way home. It’s fun but as soon as we pass the gate she calmes down and becomes that wonderful dog she is here at home. She smelled of mud and rust, lots of rust in the waters here so I had to shower her. I could have and should have done it outside with the garden hose but instead decided I should do it in my tiny bathroom. I decided that she would follow in her own pace and everything was going fine until both Nova and Albin decided they too had to go in to the shower. Well I did manage to get in there but she wasn’t happy. At least until she realized it wasn’t that bad, perhaps even rather nice 🙂
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After that I had to go to the store. I decided I should go to the one in the village where I work, mostly because I needed duct tape. They are the only ones I know that sell a kind where one can split it in half and get two thinner strips. All other ones are difficult to do that with. So off I went. At the same time I got two text messages that told me I was going to have two packages delivered to my home but I didn’t need to be at home at the delivery. Just before I left the store I also got a text message that Almas new harness had arrived and that I could pick it up in Gudhem. I could have waited but thought I really want to try it as soon as possible.
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When I came home again my neighbor told me that a guy had been here to deliver my packages but went to them instead. My neighbor told him to leave the packages with him or just put them in my garden around 20 meters beside. No problem the delivery guy said, tossed the packages in the car again and drove off??!! I then got a message that the packages had been delivered but I didn’t have them and my neighbor hadn’t either. So I called our postal service and was pretty angry, asked something about if the driver possible had some mental challenges or other problems (I’m not proud of that) (I did say to the girl in the phone that I wasn’t mad at her but she was the one who unfortunately had to take my anger). She fully understood and after perhaps ten minutes waiting she then asked how my neighbors house looked like. The delivery guy had told her he had placed the packages close to the post boxes (around a 100 meters, much the same in yards)Turns out that he had placed my packages at the farm up the slope!
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I know I have a high hedge but my cottage is very visible when driving down the slope so I have no idea why he though my neighbor next door meant the farm up the hill??One package weighs 20Kg (44,1 pound) and the other package was very big but not heavy at all, so I had to go back home and take my car to get it back home 🙂 🙂 🙂 On the other side, I did get my neighbors mail in my mailbox instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well everything was solved and now I don’t have any more packages so everything is as it should but if I can chose who will deliver my packages in the future it will never be our postal service again!
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Have a great day!
If Albin doesn’t want to play Alma is fully capable to entertain herself with an apple 🙂 🙂..
So we went out for our morning walk and while Alma was quite calm yesterday she today had decided not to be. It went fairly well to be honest but as we were passing the beekeepers home I was more concentrated on keeping her quiet since she has a tendency to start shouting when we pass that place.
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So suddenly Albin jumped to the side of me and went for Salmiak who happened to be in the grass beside the gravel road. This time it looked as if Albin actually managed to get to Salmiak. I managed to lift away Albin and Salmiak ran away. So I went home with the dogs while scolding Albin and then went back to the beekeepers cottage starting to look for Salmiak. I also phoned the beekeeper to tell what had happened. So we all walked around to look after Salmiak and it took some time before I could find him. He was of course not happy seeing me but he looked ok but went and hid elsewhere.
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They did find Salmiak after a while but he didn’t have any bite marks and they have kept an eye on him all day and if Albin had managed to injure him he would have shown signs of that by now. Also I checked Albins mouth to see if there was any cat fur in there but couldn’t find anything. So either Albin never bit but instead just pressed poor Salmiak to the ground or Albin just missed. Anyway I’m so happy that Salmiak wasn’t injured!
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Besides this rather awful start of the day the rest has been pretty calm thankfully. Windy and rather cool day with little or no sunshine. I must admit that I’m enjoying these cooler days because one never knows if we’ll get another heat wave before summer ends. It doesn’t look like it now but one never knows 🙂 Almas new harness has now reached the Netherlands so with a bit of luck it might reach us before Friday 🙂 🙂 🙂
.A Marigold with a Berry fart resting on it 🙂 Berry farts are relatives to Stink bugs.The Venus flytrap will soon flower 🙂Something has been eating my carnivorous plants! It might be the deer that Alma scared away from just outside the lilac hedge.
It is time for us all to have something to eat. Tomorrow morning Albin will have a short leash so he can’t jump anywhere, I’ll still try and keep Alma calm and Nova can walk without leash, she never does anything stupid so I don’t have to worry about what she wight do 🙂
Finally the rose on Teodors grave is in bloom.
By the way, I think we had well over an inch of rain yesterday 🙂
We’ve had a rather nice day here. According to the weather sites it should have started sunny and pretty early on slowly turn towards cloudy, so I wasn’t the least surprised when it started cloudy but then slowly turned towards sunny 🙂 🙂 🙂 We had a few hours of sunshine and the temperature rose to around 20C (68F) quite perfect really 🙂
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I didn’t need to water anything today because yesterday night we had some rain falling and since it was as cool as it was the ground still was pretty wet. I do however need to check anything cabbage because now is the time that both the Cabbage butterfly and Cabbage moth lays their eggs on anything that is cabbage or in that family. I just scrape off the eggs laid on the undersides of the leafs and I also spray water mixed with soap so that any egg that I might miss will be covered and therefore will suffocate because the soap won’t let any oxygen through.
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We walked sown to the creek and a bit up stream but stayed away from the high grass and bushes because this is a tick year. Albin rarely have any but both Nova and Alma are tick magnets, so the first thing I do when we come home is to comb through their fur with a very dense comb almost like a louse comb. None today but there’s always one or two that I miss so I’ll do it again later today. Nova is back to normal again after the ear infection but I must admit that I was worried there for a while.
..They’ve now removed almost all branches and twigs after the deforestation.There’s still some logs left but the big pile will become pellets and briquettes fore fire heaters.
We’ll have a couple of days with below 20C (68F) temperatures and tomorrow we’ll also get lots of rain, if they are guessing it right but one never knows about that. They have risen the amount of rain for every update but right now they’re guessing we will get an inch of it. I don’t mind at all but I do hope it starts out gentle so that the ground gets moist first and therefore can let the rest of the rain actually sink down into the ground and not just run away in to creeks and ponds/ lakes (or in my case the bog/ swamp behind the garage).
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I ordered a new harness for Alma, she’s becoming too big for the one she has and I did it the 17/7. Normally it will take five days or so to get it delivered but this one takes its time. I can check the status of the order and it turns out that the one I buy it from buys it from Canada. They however order if from China. So I have now been following it as an order from Sweden to Canada, then the order went to Shanghai where it finally was packed. Now it looks like it’s shipped to Canada and after that to Sweden and hopefully me 🙂 🙂 🙂 It says something about it arriving in seven days 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest I thought that the seller at least had a couple of each size in stock but oh how wrong I was 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve found even more grapes to be 🙂.This is a kind of Lime tree where the fruits doesn’t give wedges but instead it looks like some green kind of caviar 🙂 I almost killed it last winter so I’m just happy that it has survived 🙂
We were supposed to have sunshine from the moment the sun rose but it tok quite some time before the clouds thinned out. It was so dark actually that I needed the camera to be set on ISO 1000 (One only need to use ISO 100 on a sunny day so it’s a big difference).
It has been hot here today, Scandinavian hot that is, 28C (82,4F) and it isn’t nice at all. No problem at the beginning of it though because we had a strong and cool wind blowing but when the wind died out so did our energy 🙂 Alma tried to be full of energy for as long as she could but even she had to give up in the end 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tomorrow we’ll most likely reach 34C (93,2F) so I’m not looking forward to that at all. It’ll only last for three days, on Friday it’ll get much cooler and we’ll have loads of rain if they are guessing it right.
.They are now gathering all twigs and branches in big piles, they’ll make pellets from it all so that we can buy that and use in our heating systems..
Like on me Novas joints don’t like the hot weather at all, she has problems walking up the stairs now, while she in the cool and early morning had no problems at all. She has been a bit spoiled now when she has been feeling bad because of her ear so I’ve added something she likes (well both the others likes it too), Tuna 🙂 Now she refuses to eat at all unless I put in tuna or something else she really likes 🙂 🙂 🙂 So this morning when there wasn’t anything extra in the food she just sniffed at it and walked away, she ate almost twice as much as she usually do when I had added tuna to the food this afternoon. Hot temperatures really didn’t affect her appetite for something she likes 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Fewer and fewer birds sing during the days now, they are doing what they can to secure the future for the younglings they have now rather than prepare for another batch of them, instead katydids have started playing, and loud as well especially in the evening. I do like to fall asleep to the sound of playing katydids. Especially hot days like this one can pretend that they are rather quiet cikadas 🙂 🙂 🙂 We don’t have cikadas here so it’s easy to let the imagination fly free 🙂 🙂
This one used to belong to the Corydalis family but they split that family up. No idea what it is called now though. I think it is annual and really grows as much as the weed it is. It is a favorite of mine in my garden.Lots of blueberries in the one bush I still have left.Perennial sunflower.The Sweet William grows here and there in my garden.
22 new species are added to the list of invasive and forbidden species here in the EU. From the previous forbidden species we already had around half of them growing in the wild but so I’m not sure if forbidding them actually will help anything. My guess is that since we have problem enough as it is, like the drought most likely will reduce the harvesting to around half of what they normally can harvest and the war in Ukraine will reduce that perhaps even more, the will of killing of plants and animals that shouldn’t be here might be a bit low. I was surprised that the The African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) actually is seen as a threat here, our winters are after all still quite chilly in periods.
.It is hard to see any apples in my Aroma apple tree but it doesn’t look as a successful year for that tree.However it’s a totally different thing when it comes to the tree I once sowed from an Aroma apple kernel. The apples on this tree are delicious but they tend to be hit by rot and fungus easily.Lots of small fruits on my Japanese quince bush too. I’ve never made jelly or jam from these but I have from it’s relative the real Quince and it was delicious. It is said these will be just as good to use but they aren’t even a quarter of the size from the real quince.
Lots of garden plants are also forbidden now, even though we seems to be allowed to still have them in our gardens but they are not allowed to be sold or spread by humans. Last year they tried to have a “Kill all Lupins” day here in Sweden and I think zero people cared about it 🙂 🙂 🙂 We love our lupins and really don’t care what authorities says about them. Do You know why they are seen like a problem? It’s because they start growing in places where very few other plants will grow due to really bad soil. When they start to grow someplace they actually make the ground much better and plants that can’t compete with other plants where the ground is good will then die instead.
..This is now the first thing I see when I start my mobile. He does look a bit grumpy, doesn’t he 🙂
I’ve baked another bread in the slow cooker and it turned out even better than the first one. I really can’t understand how people can fail baking bread in a slow cooker. Just do as always but instead of letting it rise the second time just put the dough in the cooker. The temperature is so low that it’ll have time enough to rise before it starts to being baked. For once I even took a photo of the bread. It is up side down so the top is pointing downwards and that paret is very light but the rest is just as brown and crispy as one wishes 🙂 the “folds” on the surface of it are prints from the baking paper (parchment paper).
The Cottage by the crane lake. 