Category: Walks.

The heat has arrived.

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From the window upstairs where I have my computer.

So the heat has arrived and so far I’m ok with it but I’m sure I won’t be tomorrow when it’ll be even hotter. 28C (82,4F) today, 30C (86F) tomorrow and 31C (87,8F) on Sunday. The hottest I’ve ever been through is 35,6C (96,08F) and that was in 2018. I really never want to go through that kind of heat again.

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It was quite nice in the early morning though, we were out on our walk around 4:30 am and the hot air was on its way so we had a thick layer of fog all over the village. It doesn’t last for long after the sun has risen so I thought it best to get outside as soon as possible. I doubt we’ll have any fog tomorrow morning though since the ground now will already be warm when the sun rise again.

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I watered the vegetables and potatoes as soon as we had come home and I must say we do have unusually many mosquitoes this summer. They all went to visit me as well and even though it doesn’t itch any longer the sound of them is quite annoying. I just heard one flying around my head when I was closing the kitchen door so I sprayed some insecticide towards it. I rarely use insecticides but fly season can be nasty here and suddenly those sticky fly papers can’t take any more flies and then I will use it. I now have two open windows upstairs and one downstairs, all covered with mosquito nets of course.

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I hope that will make the wind we have flow through my cottage and I will be able to sleep upstairs tonight. I do have the recliner and I do sleep very well in it but not as good as in my own bed. Then again there’s no place for dogs so I might even sleep better to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I also did my laundry, well some of it anyway, and it felt like it dried up even before I managed to hang it up to dry 🙂

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I’ve done very little besides that today, a lot of napping because of the heat and that I still have very little energy after that cold I had. I didn’t even have the tv on most of the time, summer is rerun season so they show very little I not already have seen or is interested in anyway. I have lots of dvd’s I haven’t seen, the latest ghost buster movie for instance so I mighty watch that one before going to bed tonight.

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Have a great day!

I think it hoped we wouldn’t see it :-)

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It hasn’t been as nice as they said it would be today but it has still been pretty nice weather anyway. A bit on the chilly side as soon as the clouds covered the sky. Those times were perfect to take naps on 🙂

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It is always interesting to watch how they change the weather predictions every day. Yesterday for instance they showed that we were going to get pretty unstable weather, lower temperatures and anything from a bit of rain to loads of it. Today they show that we’ll have pretty nice weather, just above 20C (68F) but no rain what so ever. It still looks though as the heat they have down in Europe won’t reach us but that can change any minute since it as usual doesn’t look as if they know what they’re doing 🙂 🙂 🙂

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As You all know I get my water from a neighbor around 100 meters (much the same in yards) away, if You draw a straight line between us. However the owner of the land between us back when they put down that pipe refuse to let them put it down the straight way, instead it takes a long detour so it is perhaps three times as long 🙂 🙂 🙂 No problem really to be honest and to be even more honest I doubt that anyone now days actually know where that pipe is placed 🙂 🙂 🙂 Anyway, I’m the only one using that water now days but the one having the pump on his property is kind enough to still care for the filter so I didn’t have to buy a new one and install it here.

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The path down to the island in the bog where we always walk. If the dogs and I don’t walk there the grass grows high, we are the only ones ever walking there except during hunting season.
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The same on the path to the peninsula. The cranes are nesting there now so we don’t walk down there until the younglings can fly away.
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Every time he fixes anything with that filter though some of what has been caught in that filter ends up in the pipe, can’t be helped and back in the days when we both used that water I never noticed anything because he then pour out that water into his garden through his garden hose. He can’t do that any more since he now have communal water and those water taps were closed. Now days it all comes to me 🙂 🙂 🙂 He always tells me when this is about to happen but I don’t use that much water and the pipes are soo long so I actually never can guess when it will arrive over here 🙂 🙂 🙂 It did that last Monday and as worst it looked like I was pouring out very strong tea from my taps 🙂 🙂 🙂

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There’s nothing wrong with the water, it is mostly rust and some silt but it really looks bad 🙂 So it has been a good thing that I’ve sowed a lot of seeds and that we didn’t get that much rain because to get rid of it and to get back my clean water I’ve watered a lot 🙂 In between when I have needed water I’ve just filtered it through thick paper but it is really nice to just be able to use the water out from the tap again 🙂 The seeds I’ve sown are finally showing up in my vegetable patch. I had to wait for them to so I then knew exactly where those plants were and how many that showed up in case I needed to sow again. As soon as the seeds I sowed today shows up I’ll be able to cover the soil with grass from the lawn mower.

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I think it hoped that we wouldn’t see it 🙂 Well the dogs didn’t but I did. It has a tiny pine cone in its mouth 🙂

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I’ll go back to work tomorrow. I can’t say I feel back to normal but I don’t have any fewer now. It’ll be a short week anyway. Friday’s off since we’ll celebrate midsummer and I’ll be at the hospital for my twenty years inspection of my right hip on Tuesday. I guess I’ll go back next year for the tenth (really eleventh) year inspection of my left hip. I wonder why they couldn’t do both at the same time, it would just take five more minutes to be honest. It really doesn’t matter, I’ll always enjoy a day off from work 🙂

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In my garden now.
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Have a great day!

Neither Albin nor Alma screamed??!!

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We did get rain last night, I woke up at some time hearing a shower passing by. We didn’t get especially much though, just enough so I won’t have to water the patches today. I still have some sowing to do so I’ll do that tomorrow morning I think.

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We weren’t supposed to have any sunshine this morning but the clouds would go away some time before noon. So I wasn’t the least surprised that the sun shone through big patches of cloud free sky already in the early morning 🙂 🙂 We had breakfast before we went out on our walk so the temperature was above 10C (50F) which means the flies are flying around. We have a really strong wind blowing though so I hoped it would keep the flies away. No it didn’t. I didn’t want to walk down to the creek because horse flies reign there at the moment so we went in to the forest instead.

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We swapped horse flies to forest flies and mosquitoes instead. The forest flies are still a bit shy so they just circles around the head and don’t aim for ears and nostrils so the walk was quite pleasant. We walked to an opening in the forest where they cut down the trees a few years ago. We stopped just where it opens up and the dogs were quite interested in something out there. If it hadn’t been for my tele photo lens starting to argue about where to focus I would now have been able to show You photos of adorable striped piglets.

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She isn’t that big thankfully, perhaps 50 kg (around 104 pounds ).

The lens calmed down so that I at least could take photos of one of the sows.  She had her eyes on us all the time and I think she didn’t care about us especially much because both Albin and Alma were quiet???!!! So we stood there for a minute or so but since I know wild hogs are fast and the boar must be around somewhere we slowly turned around and went back homewards. I have by the way bought another lens. I did it as soon as we came home. I went out to check our EBay, called Tradera and found a used Tamron telephoto lens. It has reasonable good reviews so I’m hoping for the best.

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My neighbor looked out the window when we were on our way out to the forest and I asked how she (well they because they are a family after all) was doing. Turns out that she got sick on Tuesday, her daughter just after and her fiance yesterday. All the symptoms are the same except for her, she has lost her sense of smell and taste. Could be corona but it can just as well be a normal influensa. I do feel better today even though I do cough a lot from time to time. I have very little energy so I’ll skip the lawn mowing until that returns.

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I may not have poppies around my garage but I do have buttercups, dog biscuits and stinging nettles 🙂 🙂 🙂

We’ve just had our dinner, well I had my dinner and the dogs had lots of my french fries :-). They’ll get their food as soon as I’m done here. I think I should have some dessert, ice cream 🙂 The banana split ice cream I bought is ok, too much chocolate sauce on it for my taste. It’s strange, I really like chocolate but have problems with chocolate sauce, it’s just sticky and way too sweet 🙂

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The roses are opening up.
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Flag Iris? The first one to open up.
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Rosa glauca.
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The Dog rose will soon be almost pink. The rose behind will open up a bit later. It is now well over 4 meters high (much the same in yards).

Have a great day!

I didn’t expect that :-)

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Took this when I woke up, view from where I have my computer.

We’e had a rather nice day again, mostly sunny till afternoon arrived but now a sheet of grey clouds cover the sky. It’s just above 20C (68F) with a kind lukewarm wind blowing. I’ve had the kitchen door open since early morning so the dogs have been able to go out and in as they’ve pleased.

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Took this and the next one a few minutes later when the sun just had started to rise above the tree line and with another camera.
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We had our first walk this week, I finally felt enough well to do that. The sun was shining and the temperature well below 10C (50F), so none of the flies annoyed or bit us. Yes the fly season has started. Still mostly biting flies and they are annoying enough but still not as many as the overly friendly forest flies who seems to have only one wish in life, to take a look inside our ears and nostrils 🙂 🙂 🙂

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I bought a garden hose yesterday and today I used it to water my now showing vegetable plants and potato plants. I also now have the cleanest kitchen floors in the world, why You might ask? Well because the hose I bought turned out to be a dripping hose. It has loads of tiny holes in it so that while I water where I want to the hose also water gently where I place it, like in my kitchen 🙂 🙂 🙂

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We only walked down to the creek and turned back again. The grass is filled with dew and most likely with ticks as well.
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The thought behind it is that if one place it strategically in the vegetable patch (or inside a green house) one just plug the end of it and the water will then gently drip out of the hose, a perfect way to not waste water. So now I really need to buy a new hose long enough so I just put this “leaking” hose in the two patches and let it slowly water the ground. To be honest not what I had planned but kind of right anyway. This time I think I’ll order the hose online. To be honest I also totally miscalculated how long the hose needed to be and it should have been at least twice as long as I thought 🙂 🙂 🙂

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I also bought a toy for the dogs, well at least Alma and Albin. Nova doesn’t play that much any longer. It’s a big Cotton? rope. They had fun with it for around five minutes and then they left it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is still fun if I throw it up in the air and one of them catch it. Then they play with it for five more minutes 🙂 🙂 🙂 Those dogs don’t seem to be the toy kind of dogs, they’re more in to chewing bones and preferable hard ones that will take a year or so to chew through.

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Rain is on the way and for once I really hope we’ll get lots of it. The creeks is getting narrower and narrower and the swamp behind my garage is no more. Ok we’ll get fewer mosquitoes if it is dry but we’ve gotten unusually little rain this spring and early summer so the vegetation really needs it. Back in the days June, July and August were the most rainy months we had. Still it’s much better than down south in Europe, It isn’t that nice in big parts of the US either to be honest. It’s time for something to eat and perhaps a cup of tea.

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In my garden right now.
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Blue Irises are in bloom in my root zone.
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The yellow ones aren’t far behind.
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Grapevine flowers aren’t pretty to be honest 🙂

Have a great day!

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If You ever are about to buy a new garden hose, don’t buy this black one 🙂 🙂 🙂

It’s always fun to get a summer cold.

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I sound like I have been drinking whiskey and smoking twenty four seven for the last thirty years 🙂 My throat hurts and it feels like fever comes and goes as it pleases. I did feel a bit off yesterday but thought it was just being Friday and I’m getting up at 3:30 am in the morning.

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So I haven’t done an awful lot today but I have actually vacuumed all floors. The dogs do drag in a lot of mud and sand but I have contributed to it a lot as well since I didn’t remove my shoes after working in the potato and vegetable patches.

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I’m going to x-ray one of my hips next week so if I’m not better on Monday I won’t go to work. I really don’t want to risk being stopped just because I have a cold and I do need to do this next week because I’ll go to the doctor for the hip check up the week after and then those x-rays are needed.

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I do have a lot of honey so I think that at least my throat will feel ok pretty soon. I’ll also drink a lot of rose-hip soup, I always do that when I have a cold 🙂 Too bad that I don’t have any ice cream or ingredients to make som myself but I guess one can’t have it all. It’s time to make that soup 🙂

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Edible but not yummy. Very early this year.

Have a great day!

Much the same this morning as yesterday.

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Taken with my phone early this morning.

Today started much the same as yesterday weather vise here and it was just the same as I reached the lake and the weather became just dull. I didn’t mind since I was going to work anyway and the birds sang just as much as if we would have had a sunny morning.

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From my wood shed.
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In the village.
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I finally called the bank to which the one who put in money by mistake? on my account and they couldn’t find anything wrong so today I finally payed him back his money 🙂 🙂 It took him a month to ask via his bank if I could send back the money so I didn’t hurry in any way. I really didn’t want to become a victim in a scam. The things was that he had texted me some spam texts earlier and the name he gave couldn’t be attached to the address he gave. The last thing could be because of many different reasons but I called his bank anyway just to make sure. So now I don’t have to think about that any more.

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I haven’t done much after coming home after work. We’ve had a walk and we’ve all eaten our dinners, after that I’ve mostly been half asleep in front of the tv 🙂 My old camera is slowly giving up I think. The auto focus has behaved oddly for quite some time. Every time I’ve wanted it to focus the lens has mor or less went in and out until it finally managed to focus on anything. Today it stopped focusing at all. I turned it off and on again and after a while it managed to focus again. It’s not that there’s a lack of cameras in my home but this one, the Nikon D5100, has always been my favorite. I have the D5300 so when this one gives up I’ll just continue with the 5300.

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Then again I do now have a reason to look for another used camera and perhaps a slightly newer one as well 🙂 I have had some films developed and two rolls had damages. One is because I had to change camera after putting in the film so some light reached the film while I was swapping cameras and the other one I’m not sure but I think some water or the humidity has managed to get inside the camera. All but one photo are quite ok anyway.

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Wild gooseberry.

It is time for some rose-hip soup and after that doze off in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

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Garden gooseberries. These will become red as ripe.
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The potato plants are beginning to show 🙂
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Hungarian lilac. Smells less and spreads less, much better in all ways than the common one :-)

Today I paid for it.

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Sunshine, water drops hanging on my Amur grapevine. A rather nice view from my kitchen window.

The sun shone and there was a beautiful layer of fog above the ground when I left the village to go to work and I thought that it was typical that we would have such a wonderful morning when I’m working and can’t take a walk in it.

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I’ve taken a photo like this loads of time but can You see the difference from before?
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This is the difference, they cut down almost all trees.

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Turns out that it only was here that we had that wonderful morning, As soon as I came to the lake I met a grey sky and some rather boring fog, sort of being there but not really hiding anything. It was like that all the way to work. The finishing of the potato patch and vegetable patch finally caught up with me so today my body has been aching, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to get out of bed 🙂 🙂 🙂 So since The things I have to paint at work were in no hurry to be painted I instead went home after lunch. I thought I might as well stay that long since I had ordered lunch and didn’t want to reheat it when coming home.

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There are two oaks in this photo. One is growing between the pine trunks and one to the left of them. Both are much the same age, perhaps around 25-30 years old. One grows like a tree and one is more or less the same hight it has since I moved here, it’s more like a bush.
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I don’t think it helped that I decided to start sowing some things in my vegetable patch in heavy rainfall yesterday either 🙂 🙂 🙂 The day was warm but the rain pretty cold but now I at least have started. I had ordered a new hardy kiwi vine since one of the ones I have seems pretty dead and it arrived today. The problem was that they had delivered it to my neighbor instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was surprised that they actually had done that since I’ve had plenty of packages delivered to my home. Also they delivered the package to a road where there are three houses and I don’t think it is common for the middle house to have the number 3 as home number 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It’s a good thing I’m so good friends with my neighbors because technically I’m not sure I’m allowed to walk in to their property to get my package even if it delivered wrong. I planted the vine and then we went out for a walk. Alma behaved pretty well, I was so glad she didn’t see the deer in the field. The first annoying forest flies have arrived but they were so few that I didn’t care. We still have plenty more mosquitoes but I’ve been bitten enough times now so it seems I’m immune to the itching again 🙂

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Besides this nothing much has happened. The company I’m working at is going so well that they now will make a new storage building so we finally can have the space we have in the factory for working spaces we really should have already. They’ve also rebuild my old painting department so that most people will be working outside the nasty hot and humid paint department. I’m really happy for my work friends because that hot department made me hate warm weather, instead i enjoyed walking outside in my t-shirt when it was below freezing temperatures outside 🙂 🙂 🙂 Now when I don’t work there I hope I’ll go back to liking warmer temperatures again 🙂

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Rowan tree flowers.
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It’s hard to see but here’s my new apricot tree.
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I threw out seeds all over and around the upside-down lawn pieces and now small seedlings show here and there 🙂
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I’ll grow melons in this one 🙂

Have a great day!

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My little peach tree. The thought of this placement is that if it survives and gives peaches in the future my neighbors will just have to reach over the hedge and grab as many as they can. I have great neighbors and they’re worth that.
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More seedlings.
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Blueberry flowers. I have neglected my blueberry plants for years now but they still give me plenty of berries. I think it is time to actually care for them now.

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So nice day!

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I really can’t complain about anything today to be honest. 23C (73,4F), sunshine, a weak but cool wind blowing and Alma has behaved all day! There was this one deer that refused to move out in a field but Alma didn’t see it and only pulled the leash forward. It’s when she suddenly make quick turns that my shoulder gets worse.

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The first horse flies have arrived, still they aren’t too bad, just annoying by circling around showing they are here. Well I think one bit Alma because most of the day she has been chasing everyone of them that has been close to her. These look like wasps so I’m a bit worried she will try and catch one of those, a sting in the mouth isn’t a good thing. I can also tell already now that it’s a wasp year, long time since I saw these many as I do now.

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I’ve finally done the potato patch 🙂 I haven’t placed the last pieces of lawn over the stinging nettles yet, I was so tired and my body hurt so much when I was done that I decided to do that tomorrow. It was so fun because every time I went away for a short while small birds landed in the patch and took any maggot, larvae and worm they could find. Some were even so brave that they came down while I still was working there. I’ll rake the place tomorrow before I put down the potatoes so they’ll have another chance to find food. There is this larvae (who eventually will become some kind of beetle) that feeds on grass roots, when the grass roots no longer is there they will go for the potatoes so any of these the birds will take is a good thing.

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Tomorrow I’ll start with the vegetable patch and do the exact same thing there. I’ll have some very well fed baby birds this summer 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think there are lots of birds nests in the garden this summer because I could hear when they fed their younglings. It’s amazing how loud they are, especially since there are so many who would love to have them as a snack. I don’t have any cats now but the neighbors have plenty but they are of course not in my garden if I and my dogs are there.

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Tomorrow is our national day and that’s a day very few actually celebrates here. Most of us didn’t want it to become a holiday because we knew they would remove another holiday we had if it did become a holiday. The one they removed was Whit Monday. No one did celebrate that one either since no one actually knew why we had it as a holiday 🙂 🙂 The thing was however that it always was on a Monday so we all knew we would get a long weekend.Our national day can come any day since it is a fixed date. So since no one actually wanted it both the employers and the union agreed on us getting eight hours of compensation time every year it happened on a Saturday or Sunday so that we actually could take a long weekend anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂

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I can feel I have drunk way too little water after working in the sun all day so now I’ll have something to drink and I will also open a tin of canned peaches because I feel I deserve it 🙂

Have a great day!

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Tiny little spiders who are all ready to start to eat each other 🙂
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Finally I’ve mowed my lawn.
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The potato patch. I’ve planted three hardy kiwi along the fence. It looks like one might be dead or on its way to so I’ve ordered a new one.
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I’ve made a path for the dogs with the cut out pieces of lawn.
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This is a male plant of the hardy kiwi. It’ll get small beautiful white flowers. None of my female plants will give any flowers this year so I’ll have to wait for a chance to eat the berries.

The first potatoes are in the ground now.

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I can barely see my gate during summer 🙂 I like it any day as long as it hasn’t rained. The slightest touch and all rainwater on those leafs will fall down on me 🙂 :-)

 

We’ve had such a nice day here, sunshine for half the day and it reached almost 18C (64,4F). Very little wind and the wind we had was lukewarm 🙂 Quite chilly in the morning (almost frost) though but with the sun shining it didn’t feel that bad anyway.

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I have continued to remove the lawn in my new potato patch and it does take much more time than one might think, especially since I want to remove as much soil from it as possible. I now have removed half the surface from grass and I’ve also put down the first potatoes. I know it’s good for my body to do things like this because moving my body is the only thing that actually keeps my rheumatism in place but I can tell You that it won’t feel that way for a couple of days from now 🙂 🙂 🙂 If the weather permits I will continue to remove the rest of the surface the coming days. After that I’ll have to do the same with the vegetable patch I’m planning 🙂

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Clouds are now covering the sky and every now and again I can hear some drizzle fall from the sky, not enough to actually call it a rain fall but I do like the sound it makes when hitting the leafs in the lilac hedge. Also so little that having an open window doesn’t even making it wet 🙂

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I’ve picked up the last plants from my cool cellar and turned off the lights until next autumn when I’ll move those plants back again. I’ve realized that I’ve sown loads of clementine kernels last autumn and most of those tiny plants have survived, both those who stayed in the kitchen during winter and those living in the cellar. Can’t say I can see any bigger difference in size between them but I guess that if it matters how they stay over winter I’ll most likely see the difference after this summer.

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It is time for a last cup of tea for the day. I’ve tried not tro fall asleep in front of the tv all day so I’m so tired now that I doubt that any ammount of tea or coffee would be able to keep me awake during the night 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

Lots of tea :-)

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The leafs are finally growing on the Ash trees. They are the last to get them but the first to drop them. My black walnut are just slightly behind them though 🙂

Now I know that it wasn’t my next door neighbors who was visited by Alma, so my guess is that she went up to the farmer next door instead. Well one can always hope they believe it is either a fox or perhaps wild cats that has gone through their trash 🙂 🙂 🙂

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The weather has been a bit mixed today. Cloudy all the time but sometimes it’s just been raining, some times the sky has opened up totally and sometimes actually not raining at all. We’ve even have had some occasional drizzle. It was mostly just raining or drizzling when we went out on our morning walk and since the forest kept most of the wind away from us it actually wasn’t that bad. We followed the creek up-streams and Nova sensed something that she didn’t want to meet. The other two sensed it also but they sure didn’t hesitate to meet what ever it was 🙂 🙂

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My guess is that they could smell wild hogs because they tend to be around the creek a a lot and that’s where we’ve seen them most times but it could have been moose or red deer too. It could also have been a wolf, lots of sightings of wolves in this and neighboring counties lately. I think it is a lone wold that walks around and as long as I have the dogs leashed I don’t worry about them. Besides how would a wolf react to two screaming dogs where one sounds as if he would like to tear what ever we meet apart and the other one as if something actually is tearing her apart 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think the wolf just would feel very sorry for me and walk the other way 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Alma did behave pretty well for being her on the other half of our walk. The first half not so much though. She does however listen very well to me when we’re in the garden now. She stops and turns back every time I tell her to just before she will jump over the fence. The last times I’ve opened the kitchen door today, when it just drizzled, she didn’t walk or run that way at all. Instead she stayed on the other side of the garden. Perhaps there actually is some hope that she one day before she dies actually will behave really well 🙂 🙂 🙂

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The weather hasn’t allowed us to do much else today. I’ve tried to nap but every time I do one of the dogs has come and wanted some belly scratching or to be just a bit annoying 🙂 🙂 🙂 We’ve had pancakes for dinner and I’ve had lots of tea. Right now the sun does its best to shine through the clouds and even though it actually isn’t especially successful it does get a bit brighter outside. they’re guessing that from tomorrow we’ll get no more rain and that temperatures actually will rise to just below 20C (68F). Tomorrow will be sunny and the rest of the week a sky full with clouds but actually some sunshine as well.

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Well I’ll believe it if it happens. Time for more tea and to give the dogs their food.

Have a great day!

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It is hard to shout quietly :-)

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The tree stump from the old crabapple tree. I would like to cover 99% of that big hole so that wild bees could move in. I’m pretty sure it is thick enough so bees would survive there during winter.

It has rained off and on all day but I didn’t care that much. I’ve been busy napping since I came home early after work. I woke up at 2:20 am to the sound of a dog vomiting. It wasn’t anything more than a ball of grass though so easy to clean up.

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We were walking down to the creek when I noticed that they’ve closed the road so that the cattle could walk over to another pasture. I really didn’t want to try and pass there with my dogs who are terrified of those electric cables, so we had to turn back again.

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I decided to let them outside before going back to bed again. So naturally Alma decided to jump over the fence and go god knows where. It’s so fun to have to shout as quietly as possible in the middle of the night to get that dog back home. Well someone had left a trash bag outside their door and Alma had gone though it. She smelled so wonderful and I was so upset about her that I couldn’t go back to sleep 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is never a good idea to put out a trash bag here, even if one perhaps doesn’t expect a dog to go through it at night, because magpies will tear it open as fast as they can and then spread the contents all over the area. I’ve done it once and I’ll never do it again 🙂

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She was also impossible on our walk so she is not on the top ten list of things I like at the moment, not even on the top thousand to be honest.  So now she’s not allowed to be outside without me being there too and she really doesn’t like that 🙂 🙂 🙂 She knows that she isn’t allowed to do most things she does and doesn’t even have the decentness to look guilty when being discovered 🙂 🙂 🙂 I looked at a tv program with a dog expert who dealt with dog behaving like Alma and turns out they actually do the same things I’ve tried with Alma and sometimes without any good result either. So I guess I’ll just have to keep on trying until we either get it right or we both die trying 🙂 🙂 🙂

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They are now guessing that we’ll get rain tomorrow but actually sunshine all Sunday. It would be nice if they get the temperature right so that I finally can turn off the radiators. They work all night here and even if I don’t have them on high temperature they will at least keep the humidity outside, we’ve mostly had a humidity around 90% to 100% lately and it does it its way through the walls. The vegetation outside loves it though so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Have a great day!

Lots of rain and looong naps :-)

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Through my kitchen window early in the morning.

It rained half the day and now we have sunshine but also a really strong wind blowing. I must say I do prefer the sunshine and wind because it’ll dry up lots of the water that fell from the sky the last day. Also the humidity is finally going down again. We’ll get plenty of more rain the coming days if they’re guessing the weather right.

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The Cuckoo bird is rather shy and hard to see but I just had one siting in my lilac hedge so I guess now some of the smaller birds nesting in my garden will have an egg added to the ones they already have and that one will hatch much earlier and then toss out the other eggs so that it will get all the attention and food. Nature is really only nice and relaxing for us humans since we are top predators, for the rest of the animals and plants it’s really a battle ground.

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We managed to take a walk in between showers today. It stopped just before we went out and we even got some sunshine. It started again as soon as we had come home 🙂 I really didn’t want to do anything today so except for walking the dogs I’ve napped and napped for hours 🙂 🙂 I do hope I can fall asleep tonight because I’ll get up at 3:30 tomorrow morning 🙂 🙂 Not a lot of people will work tomorrow since today is a holiday and who wants to work on a Friday? So I’ll stay for a couple of hours just to check te huge washing machine after they’ve poured in new water and chemicals. I’ll do some testings to see that it doesn’t change too much before I go back home.

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I’ll do some more sowing of flower seeds later today. I’ll sow the seeds where I’ve put all the lawn I removed. I hope that when these seeds germinate and grow they’ll make it much harder for any of the stinging nettles to grow back up. Futile I know but one can still hope. Perhaps I at least will get lots of flowers in between the nettles 🙂 🙂 I found to my big surprise that my honey suckle had died, I didn’t know they could 🙂 🙂 🙂 Quite often when someone wants to get rid of honeysuckles they still grow back every year, so it was quite surprising to see that mine was totally gone!

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Tomorrow after work I’m planning on going to the pet store to buy some fish to have in my water barrels. I don’t think I’ll have goldfish this time because they grow so big but there are alternatives. Water barrels without fish in them are mosquito paradise and even though I don’t mind mosquitoes that much I still don’t want them to have that while they still are alive 🙂 🙂 🙂

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It is time to go out and sow those seeds and after that I think I’ll check for other seeds from flowers who like dry conditions, I only have sand beneath my lawn and that dries up quickly no matter how much it rains here.

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In my garden right now. Lilacs and lots of them unfortunately.

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Strawberries.

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Sand cherries.

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Japanese quince.

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We call these Troll grapes. These ones will get deeply red berries later on.

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Have a great day!