Category: Warm.

I’m finding potato plants everywhere now :-)

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

I think this is buckwheat.

   

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

     

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

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

 

Have a great day!

 

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

A bit too close :-)

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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 🙂

Have a great day!

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

   

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

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

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

 

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

   

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

     

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

Kirengeshoma koreana.

Hardy fuchsia.

Chinese catalpa.

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

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

   

Have a great day!

I forgot to take a nap!!

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I had been drinking a bit too much water last evening so I woke up in a panic that I wouldn’t make it downstairs to the toilet in time at 2 am 🙂 🙂 Normally if that happens I is to woken up to fall asleep again but last night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. That on the other hand made me sleep for too long so it was already too warm to have any walk. Nova struggled yesterday and today has been even warmer so we have stayed at home.

I’ve started to prune the Japanese quince so that the White Mulberry tree will have more space growing up.

I still don’t think this is a Creeping bluebell even though it’s quite similar. It’s much too high though, this one is higher than I and I’m six feet high.

Morus accidosa, Mulberry tree that’s very similar to the Black mulberry but much hardier. Gives smaller berries though but just as tasty.

Well Alma has paid visits to our neighbor but only to check when the kids have sounded like they were unhappy and also when their dog complained because they left him alone for five minutes 🙂 🙂 Nova has slept almost the entire time. We also were outside the garden, Alma, Malkolm and I and had a chat with the neighbors so both Alma and Malkolm had a chance to meet other people than me. Malkolm is a very different dog than Alma 🙂 🙂 He ran around happy greeting everyone and actually listened when we called for him 🙂 🙂 :-). I noticed how Malkolm walks like a rather big dog, sort of heavy instead of how smaller dogs walk, sort of tripping. He will grow higher until he’s around one year old so I do wonder how big he’ll be.

     

It has been so hot that the dogs only played for a couple of minutes each time and then went indoors and napped. Today is actually the first day on my vacation that I haven’t napped, feels like a failure to be honest 🙂 Instead I have pruned trees and bushes, mostly because I want more light coming down to the Pawpaw trees. It was so dark there so only the most stubborn weeds managed to grow there beside the Pawpaws. Still lots to do there but I need to fix my electric chainsaw before I can continue.It isn’t important to get sunlight down there just to make it less dark. So I have removed big parts of the Laburnum so that the Wisteria that grows there starts to grow upwards and not sideways as it does now 🙂 🙂

First time in years the light can reach the ground here 🙂

Malkolm followed me all the time and here he has found the darkest and coolest spot in the garden 🙂

Light’s coming down after I had removed much of the lilacs and some of the branches of the apple tree.

After.

I’ve also collected much of the grass still on the lawn, I couldn’t use the collector because the mower just clogged when the grass was both high and wet. I now use that grass to cover pots and the newly planted trees in the garden with that grass, it keeps the ground from drying out (a bit fun since it has rained constantly these last two weeks 🙂 🙂 ) and also that it fertilizes the soil when it is breaking down. Actually it is really good to grow vegetables in pure sand and cover the surface with cut grass, You’ll use less water and since the grass breaks down You’ll almost never have to fertilize it at all.

I think two of the Pawpaw seeddlings have died this summer but then again I was sure three had and now suddenlt that one has the beginning of a new leaf. I think the problem is that they germinated so late in the year that they actually are a bit lost when it comes to what season it is. Here You can see the grass on the pots.

  

We finally have a wind blowing so I have both windows open upstairs, the wind feels so nice and cool and I hope it continues all night so old Nova will have an easier time sleeping, well the rest of us as well of course 🙂 Also I will have a cup of tea after this but I will try to not drink as much this evening as I did yesterday 🙂

   

Have a great day!

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I had both windows upstairs open during the night and woke up in the middle of the night because I was freezing 🙂 It was only 8C (46,4F) outside and not much warmer in my bedroom 🙂 So I just pulled up the blanket and had a really good sleep until the dogs decided it was time to get up, around 4:30 in the morning.

     

I was a bit too slow though so by the time we finally started walking the flies started to fly. It was still rather cool in the shadows but the warmth had already done the damage. The only place where the flies didn’t do what they could to drive us crazy was actually by the creek because it was still much cooler there. Nova did have a difficult time every time we walked in the sunshine, she can’t take any heat now days, thankfully though most of our walk happened where trees gave a really nice cool air. She is after all a quite old lady so it isn’t surprising. She eats better than she has in ages though, she doesn’t leave a single thing in her bowl for the other two to fight about 🙂 🙂

     

I have an ant colony in one of my older composts and I noticed that the new queens and can we call them kings? started to leave their old home. I noticed that when I was about to put in more grass in the compost and there were ants everywhere 🙂 🙂  They seemed a bit annoyed with all that grass poured over them but it only took a few minutes until they had made new passages so that they all could start to fly away. I really need to pour in more water in that compost, just enough for the ants to find a new place to live, after that I can pour in a lot of water because since ants are living there they dry it out totally so the compost just becomes a storage place for dry grass and twigs 🙂

     

I can’t say I noticed especially many horse flies but at least some of them found me and now my right arm itches and I’m a bit swollen around my knuckles on my right arm. Still this is an amazingly good year for us warm blooded animals because there are very few of those biting nasties  (well gazillions of mosquitoes earlier this summer but not so many now). I do hope this also means that we’ll get much fewer moose flies as well, since it has rained this much so that we have more ground water than we have place for in the ground it might actually mean that the moose fly larvae/ pupas have drowned but it sounds too good to be true 🙂

   

I had forgotten that I can make additional pages to this blog and thought that I perhaps should make a new page and write down gardening tips for those of You that are interested. For instance what to do and not to do with invasive species, when and how to sow different seeds and so on, would that be of interest? I know I live very much far north than most of You but most of what I know could be adapted to warmer climates, just as long as You actually have some kind of winter even though it might be shorter than ours up here 🙂

The Creeping bellflower is pretty but it is also a terrible weed so today I had to remove all flowers because they had started to produce seeds and it can be bad enough with just all the roots 🙂
Looks a bit empty now but they will most likely start growing new flower stalks already now so I might get a second flowering from them.
Buttercup ‘Citrina’.
Finally the Californian poppies flowers too.

It is time for a last cup of tea for the day and then hope it’ll cool down a bit before we go to bed.

Have a great day!

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The first of my perennial Sunflowers are in bloom now, a bit early but I guess the hot month of May helped with that.

We didn’t have any sunshine in the early morning but it was cool and nice when we went out for our morning walk. I don’t think Nova thought it was necessary to have any walk because today she really waked slowly, it wasn’t until she realized that we were heading homewards that she had speed in her feet 🙂 Fewer birds are singing now, they know they won’t have time for more chicks so they stop singing and I can see in the sky that many now are preparing for the move south. Not that they will move any time soon but they are flying around in big flocks trying to find the best feeding places.

     

I went to the grocery store after our walk, I went to the one I always go to in the village where I work. It’s a longer drive but a more beautiful drive. They have less to chose from but I know what I want and I know where to find it and that’s important to me 🙂 I really dislike when I have to walk around for half an hour in a super market to find just one thing 🙂 🙂 Also I know all who works there, I’ve been buying my food there since I moved up here and that’s almost 27 years now. So instead of walking around trying to find what I want I instead have chats with those working there and it takes about the same time 🙂 🙂

     

I had a small hope that the grass in my lawn would dry up some today but that didn’t happen 🙂 Normally it takes around an hour or so to mow the lawn but today it took twice as long. The mower clogged up so badly that I had to stop mowing, turn the mower up side down and dig out the green goo and I really don’t like that. Lots of flies that for once wasn’t that interested in annoying me and one horse fly that I hit several times while it flew in front of me that I truly hope that it at least got a concussion. It did bite me once though.

     

I also stopped to drink lots of water while I was mowing, today has been warm and the wind I so desperately wanted to blow into my garden while I was mowing finally showed up just a moment ago, not much of a wind to be honest but it would have been better if it had blown earlier today. I still have the parts outside my garden but I’ll mow those tomorrow. It’ll be even warmer tomorrow and on Sunday if they’re guessing it right. On Monday it’ll cool down some and we’ll have rain again. The rest of the week will be warm but not hot and of curse it will rain some as well. June, July and August are the months when we get most Precipitation in the year so I’m not surprised about it raining but I am surprised about how much we’ve gotten. In some places, like here where I live we now have over full ground water deposits, that’s why I still have that lake behind my garage instead of a swamp.

   

Finally, the beans are flowering.

It is time for a last cup of tea before bedtime. The dogs are all sleeping here upstairs but I’m not ready to go to bed yet. I doubt that there’s anything worth watching on tv but I’ll take a look anyway.

     

Have a great day!

I hope it starts to dry up now.

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

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

Have a great day!

A morning I liked.

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

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

   

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

Have a great day!

     

There are places that need water, so why does all of it fall here?

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Now I know how effective that anti tick spray is, it is very much so. It had been raining all morning and I thought that since Malkolm would be so wet while walking around most of it would drop off pretty fast so I skipped it since he actually hate that smell. It’s a long time since I’ve picked so many ticks of any of the dogs who has lived here. Nova was the only one that didn’t have any and I guess it is because she walked after us all  after we just had walked there, so no more walks without it, no matter how awful it smells 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

My shoes hadn’t dried at all since yesterday so today I had to wear my winter boots 🙂 🙂 They are light brown but by the time we came home all the water had made them dark brown 🙂 My feet were dry though so 🙂 I placed my shoes towards the south heading wall and even after a day with at least some sunshine they still aren’t dry. I guess it doesn’t help when the humidity stays at 100% or just below 🙂 There will be even more rain tomorrow and much of the week. There are places on this planet that desperately need rain so why does it all have to fall here 🙂

Lots of Rowan berries this year, perhaps I should make some yelly or ade when it is time. They need a couple of frost nights to become less tart and then putting some honey in it will make them rather yummy 🙂

This is a rather unusual flower, it is a parasite and has no chlorophyll of its own. The Swedish name for it would be Pine wort in English.

I haven’t done much today, I was going to bake some bread but then I found two packages with hard bread I had forgotten so I skipped the baking 🙂 We did have our nap, I realized we napped for almost two hours but I can already say that it will not keep me awake after the usual bet time 🙂 Oh I forgot I also now potted some of the Quince seedlings. I must admit that I mostly had forgotten about them, so some have grown in a 90 degree angle, I’ll need to find some sticks so I can direct them in the right position again 🙂 Two more Giant Sequoia seeds have germinated as well but unfortunately none of the Dawn redwood seeds. Well they might need one more winter before they wake up, they do look ok when I check if they still exists.

Lots of lingonberries this year.

This one is rather delicious and it looks like it has a thick layer of clear coat put on it. It’s actually a thick layer of slime that protects it from pests, easily removed though and I usually pick lots of it.

It is time to go and look at at least the beginning of which team will be the European champions in football (soccer) England or Spain. I always hope for England but they have a tendency to never win when it really matters 🙂

I’ll get at least two pink poppies this year and if You look at the top of the photo You can see the leafs from the Californian poppy, no summer here without it 🙂

I wonder if he will continue to have that quilted fur in his neck when he gets older?

   

Have a great day!

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It has been a fairly nice day here, not much sunshine but warm. No rain so far but according to radar photography it’s on the way and we’ll get lots more both tomorrow and on Monday. It’ll stay fairly warm though so I won’t complain too much.

     

Lots of people in the village seems to have been busy today, I’ve heard hammering and lawn mowing plus what could have been someone trimming hedges. I haven’t done much at all, besides walks with the dogs the only thing I’ve done is to placed a “pot” (well it is actually an aluminium foil thingy for food 🙂 ) with Quince seedlings that needs to be re-potted. I have several more to re-pot but I need to buy more soil before I can do that. 

Lots of wild raspberries and they are so delicious!
The Shrike really like this area, so easy for them to see their prey.

   

The morning was quite nice, there was a bit of ground mist when we woke up and even some sunshine but as soon as we came out for our morning walk the sun was gone. Didn’t matter really because it was slightly cool and very few flies annoyed us while we were walking along the creek. We saw a hare running in front of us and two roe deer but that was it. In a way a bit boring but in a way quite nice since Alma has been reasonable calm for two mornings in a row and that’s pretty unusual 🙂

 

I think we might have beavers in the creek again. The water level is really high on one side of the road but rather low on the other.

I gave the dogs their first raw hide bones today. Long time since that happened because Albin was allergic to everything so I couldn’t really give them that. Nova have had before but this was the first time for both Alma and Malkolm 🙂 Nova really didn’t want to chew on it so instead she hid it beneath her 🙂 Alma really liked it and so did Malkolm even though he was a bit slow chewing it. So in the end Alma stole all three and wasn’t the least ashamed of what she did 🙂 🙂 There is one piece left and Alma took a look at me and dropped it on the floor 🙂 🙂 Malkolm is now doing his best to hide it and every time Alma comes close he takes it and chews for a while again 🙂

       

It is time to give the dogs their dinner, I haven’t had anything either, well ice cream but I’m not sure that counts 🙂 Tomorrow I’ll start packing all the card board in the car so I can take it to the recycling center. I have so much now that the kitchen will look very different when I’ve removed it all 🙂 I have absolutely no space to have it in this cottage, I have one closet and this winter mice found it so now I need to find where they came in and try to block it, I also need to buy new clothes 🙂 🙂

   

The first time she stole the chewing rawhide.
The second time she made sure that Malkolm didn’t notice her leaving 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new compost.

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This morning was sunny and quite chilly with some morning mist hovering above the ground. It wasn’t supposed to be like that but since the sky was clear blue I thought I had some time before the more cloudy weather would start. It started as soon as we came outside the entrance door 🙂 The sun had evaporated the fog so it rose and then created a evenly grey layer between us and the sun. It had also warmed up the air a lot so the few flies we have here were really annoying.

     

All vegetation was soaking wet, both from the rain yesterday and the morning dew. So we just walked down to the creek, followed it up-stream and turned back homewards again. We did see a Roe deer and when we just had turned around to follow the creek down-stream again a wild hog gave us a friendly warning that it stood hidden on the other side of the creek and that we shouldn’t try to go over to that side 🙂 🙂 I never saw it though but it did sound as if it was big 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I had just done some laundry when a package arrived. It was the new compost I’d ordered, the one that looks like a tombola and that one shall spin every now and again plus it is supposed to stand in direct sunlight so the things inside it sort of get so hot that it in a way boils into compost. I was naive to believe that it would be put together already in the package but oh how wrong I was 🙂 I also believed that it as most would be just to sort of pop it together in to the compost. Turns out nothing of that was remotely close 🙂 The package was rather flat and when I opened it the first thing I noticed was a bag with a zillion screws and Screws and nuts. I have to say that they had packed it really nice and there were even some Screws and nuts extra so it didn’t matter that one of the screws was defect.

 

I think this is the first year that the Beekeeper will get cherries on this little tree.

So I unpacked it all and at that time it was cloudy and not too warm. I started to put the pieces together and I’m really happy that I am ambidextrous (for those of You who don’t know what that is, I am both right and left handed since birth) because I think it would have been pretty tough to reach all the screws from the outside to the bolts on the inside otherwise. So I stood there in a bad posture of course and then the sun broke through warming up the air even more plus trying to fry my back 🙂 I’m glad I remembered to put the middle piece in while I still could (a sort of wall in the middle to make two compartments, when one is filled but not really ready to use one has a second compartment to start to fill up), it would have been impossible otherwise.

They had packed everything really well and I now have more plastic than the world needs this year 🙂

Each segment had to be screwed on individually and overlapping the previous one with eight tiny screws and bolts. I also got a screwdriver and for some reason I just can’t understand a pair of very thin gloves that only would have made me drop anything smaller than a tea cup 🙂 🙂

In this photo I thought I would show the middle wall but forgot to brighten up the photograph 🙂 🙂 🙂

So every time one puts anything in the compost one is supposed to spint it a few times and one must also spin it around every now and again so it composts evenly. This one is supposed to be totally smell free.

The normal flies acted pretty calm while I stood there sweating like a pig and to my surprise only one horse fly tried to bite me! Last winter really thinned out the fly communities and also the ticks seems to have been culled hard thankfully 🙂 Still plenty of them around though but clearly fewer than before. I moved the compost to the sunniest place in the garden, just in front of the vegetable patch and put in the fruit peels and other things in to the first compartment 🙂 So all needed now is that the sun actually makes a try to shine for more than an hour a day 🙂 🙂 I’ll have some twigs as soon as I’ve started to prune the bushes that now have grown too much and removing small plants that has spread too well with their roots. I do have a rather wild garden but even I have a limit to how wild it can become 🙂 🙂

My garden raspberries aren’t especially tasty but the birds love them.

I do however have plenty of wild raspberries, they truly behaves like weed 🙂 The wild one are probably the most delicious berries we have this far south in the country. We have even more delicious berries up far north but they can’t give any berries this far south.

The Elderberry tree suddenly started to flower 🙂

The dogs are sleeping deeply right now. Malkolm on my left side and the other two in my bed. They’ve enjoyed a sunny afternoon being outside playing but quite often come in to drink lots of water. The weather will be mostly rainy this weekend but they’re guessing that our early mornings will be almost cool and sunny, so I better get up and go outside with the dogs as soon as we wake up 🙂

Doesn’t Malkolm look worried here? Two seconds after I took this photo he attacked Alma 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

Have a great day!

I slept away an entire day.

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I normally don’t have fog coming in to the garden unless it is pea soup fog and it was that today.

I think we all now are getting rid of our ailments. The dogs stomachs are much better and I finally woke up without a sour throat. I was really tired yesterday so both the dogs and I slept almost all day. The morning was quite nice and cool with some sunshine so we could have a nice walk before the rain and thunder arrived. I’m not sure for how long I slept but it was several hours and I woke up an hour before my usual bedtime and went to bed again and slept the entire night 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think the dogs slept the entire time as well but My sleep was so deep that I didn’t hear the thunder at all so they could have had a party while I was in the land of dreams 🙂

Most of it was gone before we went out though.

   

I was oddly enough really tired when I woke up this morning so I didn’t have the energy to go out with the dogs while we had a really nice and thick fog, we even had fog in the garden. We’ve only had one short nap after that and I woke up to heavy showers and thunder. As I woke up I remembered that the kitchen door was open so I had to dry the floor from the little lake that had formed in the kitchen 🙂 🙂 🙂

 

Still some visible water in the tarn but it is a deep hole so the grass is actually growing on roots coming from the vegetation around it.

The morning wasn’t especially cool when we finally went out for our walk so the flies were quite happy to greet us in the forest. To be honest there weren’t that many out there but the ones that were annoyed us enough. There’s unusually few flies flying around this summer, not that I mind but we do need these flies so the birds will have enough with food to raise their young ones. I remember not to long ago when one had to stop at petrol stations because the windshields were just disgusting covered with dead flies, so far this year I’ve had one fly crashing in to the windshield. It is nice to have clean windows on the car but something are clearly wrong out in nature now days. To be honest though, I have so many in my garden that it might be that they all have moved here 🙂 🙂

   

I drove to the big grocery store in Falköping this morning. I don’t live in a tourist area so there weren’t many cars on the road. I bought what I had forgotten to write down on my list last Tuesday 🙂 and then some 🙂 I tried some new gluten free cookies they had gotten and I must say they were for once really yummy. If it is something I’ve learned since I got to know I can’t eat gluten is that most baked things taste like shit so even though I was hesitant I bought two different cookies and to my really big surprise they didn’t taste disgusting 🙂 I’ll see if they can get them in my usual grocery store because what they have are abominations to mankind 🙂 🙂 🙂

My first hazelnuts 🙂

My Himalayan Cedar looks great.

My Gardenias seems to like staying outside and this is the first flower to open up.

The perennial sunflowers are early this year.

They are guessing that we won’t have any rain tomorrow and 20C (68F). No sunshine though but they said that about today as well and we had plenty of it in between showers. They’re also guessing that the three days after that will give plenty of rain but mostly after noon each day so we’ll be able to have our morning walks without getting soaked. Well the grass will be dripping of both rain and dew so my feet and Malkolm will be really wet. Malkolm won’t mind though and Nova will walk after both him and me so she’ll mostly be rather dry when we come home.

     

It is time to go downstairs and watch the English Antique Roadshow. There’s always someone there who had an old aunt that was a Russian grand duchess or similar and they always pretend that they are so surprised when the jewelry they brought are worth a small fortune 🙂 🙂 🙂 Ours is so much more dull when it comes to that and sometimes the owner of the object tells from the beginning they already know the value of what they’ve brought. To be honest if I had something worth loads of money I wouldn’t want the world to know, it would be just like asking to be robbed one day 🙂 🙂 🙂

A cat from the farm was visiting the Beekeepers so I guess both Sally and Salmiak were indoors 🙂

Have a great day!