Category: Wildlife.

The last of the nice days, for now.

April 22, 2023 · 4 Comments ·

a (1)

Another rather wonderful day, the last one for a while they say. It does however look as that they now are guessing that it won’t be that cold as they first guessed so I guess they were right the first time they guessed 🙂 Even nights will be fairly nice the coming days so that means I don’t have to cover the potted plants I brought up from the cool cellar. They have been though and that saved them from as low temperatures as -6C (21,2F) several nights. The meat eating plants I bought last spring have also survived and are now moved outside. Anything that eat flies are friends of mine 🙂

a (4) — There was still frost on the ground when we were out on our morning walk.

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A week ago I started to cut down a part of the garden that mostly consisted of thorny wild roses and thorny sloe bushes. They spread way too fast and it was impossible to pass without getting caught by all those thorns. It was a paradise for birds and other small animals because no predator could ever reach them in there. Still they had to go but the birds and all other small animals can still enjoy the protection of the thorns because I placed all those thorny branches in a big pile beneath the apple tree. They’ll stay there until next year when I’ll put it all through my compost grinder. It really doesn’t work well with fresh branches so it’ll have to wait a year.

20230416_140402 — Two thirds of what I was cutting down left here.

20230416_140338 — The first pile of thorny branches.

20230422_121329 — Two more piles that were moved to the first one.

20230422_121341 — This is the result. One rose is left and I do hope I saved the right one, the one that doesn’t spread via the roots 🙂 To the right, beside the blue large pot, You can see sand cherry trees. They are actually quite long but tends to follow the ground instead up growing up towards the sky. Gives delicious berries 🙂

Now I’ll have to continue to mow that area no matter what weather we’re having so that no new shoots can grow up again. Either that or cover the area with a hug and rather costly tarpaulin. I used my the little hand chain saw I bought last year and even though it works well the batteries don’t last for long but takes hours to recharge. Now I’ll need to sharpen the chain because sloe is really hard and wears down the chain pretty quick. I have one more place I need to cut down, new bushes grew up in the middle of one of my gooseberry bushes so now there’s very little gooseberry bush but lots of other things instead 🙂 I also mowed the lawn for the first time today and I think I was first in the neighborhood. I’m not that keen to do it as often as the neighbors though 🙂 🙂

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Alma has now adopted my neighbors and is over there just as much as she is here. They thankfully like her a lot, especially since she’s so calm with their older daughter?! She’s never calm here but as soon as she jumps over that fence she the calmest dog in the world playing nicely with a 4 year old 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s good to know she’s welcome though, otherwise life would be so much more complicated.

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Have a great day!

Easter continues.

April 8, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0004 (4) — Not the first butterfly for the year, I saw some in February when it was a bit warmer than now but it was the first one I managed to photograph. Lots of other ones were flying around but they refused to stand still so I could take a photo of them 🙂

So easter continues and today most families gather for easter dinner (well could be lunch as well, the thing is that relatives who can’t stand each other normally now do and after this they usually don’t meet until midsummer again 🙂 🙂 ) Like always we swedes eats loads of pickled herring, personally I can’t stand it but I belong to the very few who just refuse to eat it. They will also of course eat pickled salmon or cold smoked salmon. We who don’t like food that isn’t cooked eat meatballs, sausages, oven omelette with a stew made of chanterelles, lots of eggs and now days also easter ham. Easter ham is the exact same thing as christmas ham but they’ve changed the name so it fits the season 🙂 🙂

DSC_0014 (3) — I manage to distract Alma and Albin so they nere saw the deer 🙂

DSC_0016 (2) — Wild hogs at work during winter. Doesn’t look that bad but they can dig down to half a yard deep but it can’t be seen in this photo.

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Since it isn’t especially dry in the grass or the ground there will be lots of bonfires burning, to scare away the witches who now flies home after the party on Blåkulla. This tradition is strongest here in the southwest and out on the islands outside of Gothenburg, the town I was born and raised in, the tradition has gone a bit out of hand.They are, since at least 100 years back, competing in what island has the biggest bonfire. I’ve heard stories about how they go over to other islands and steal what ever they can to make their own bonfire bigger, including old tires and christmas trees. It will burn but they are also polluting both the area around the bonfire as well as the ocean surrounding the island. Now days it’s so bad that they call in extra polices to keep it reasonable calm.

p (16) — The Honeysuckle is always early with new leafs.

I went and visit my friend with the garden center. No I didn’t bring any camera, I’ll do that when the spring season has started. Easter eve was pretty calm back when I had my garden center, most people had already bought the flowers they were about to give away, so I was happy to see they she had lots to do today. So I had some time to walk around and I always like to see what they have hidden away. I found a Calamodin, a citrus relative that gives small orange looking fruits. They taste bitter sweet with emphasizing on bitter. It works great for marmalade though. All leafs were gone but it looked really healthy but she was going to toss it away, so now it stands in my cottage 🙂 My guess is that it was hit by cold air and didn’t like it so it dropped all the leafs. Takes too much time to come back for a garden center but I have all the time in the world 🙂

A15264_002A — These three photographs were taken with a Minolta X700 but it broke down after that so I moved the film to the Bessamatic instead.

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The day started boring and grey but it was at least above 0C (32F) but later on teh sky cleared and we’ve had sunshine all day long after that. Tonight will be a bit chilly, well almost warm after previous week but days will now be at least around 10C (50F) so I’m planning on bringing out some of what I have in my cool cellar to slowly get it used to be outside until the frost comes back in autumn again.

A15266_010 — And one from the Flexaret VI.

Have a good continuing of easter!

Happy Easter!

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0002 (2) — I stopped by the lake Wednesday morning. The sky looked amazing so I took a few photos. Later that evening a new sow storm passed by but all of that latest snow melted away already on Thursday 🙂

So easter has begun, well at least the holidays because I guess one really should say that easter started on Monday. Weather has been so nice the week that no big amounts of cranes has gathered by the lake. twelve thousand as most but there’s still a wall of sound from the lake while they all trumpet like crazy. Instead they have now started to fly to the fields and meadows around the village. For some reason I think it’s more fun to see them here than standing by a fence down at the lake looking at them walking a couple of meters away and loads of them as well.

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This week another neighbor than the usual gave me a call at work telling me that Alma had escaped the dogyard again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really don’t understand why she keeps on doing that since she’s miserable when she can’t get back in again. She is however very happy to see me coming back home again though 🙂 🙂 I stayed at home a bit longer this time, the weather was so nice so I made myself a pot of tea before I drove back to work. Alma has been pretty impossible on our walks this week, that is until this morning when she suddenly remembered how to behave. Well at least until we came close to some cranes and she started screaming like obcessed for a while.

a (3) — I looked up in the sky yesterday to see if I saw any witches up there but all I could see was more cranes on their way to the lake.

Today I saw what we call song swans and in America is called Trumpet swans.

Yesterday evening all witches flew to Blåkulla to have a party with the devil. There are a few places that is supposed to be Blåkulla and I think all of them are remote islands out in the ocean. More close to the ground however yesterday is the day when kids dress up as witches (and now days warlocks) and walks from home to home begging for candy. It is sort of our Halloween. This custom almost died out but has become popular again. But since yesterday was a work day for most of us they might do it on easter eve instead. I don’t think anyone will come here since I have Albin here but perhaps I should buy some candy just in case, it won’t last for long if no one should come anyway 🙂

We came pretty close, they didn’t care about us at all. That is until Alma started screaming as if she was possessed.

I’ve a bread in the owen and the smell has spread in the entire cottage. The kitchen door is open because the sun shines and it gets so warm towards the south heading wall that the radiator in the kitchen is turned off. We’ll have another walks as soon as the bread is out of the oven because they’re guessing we’ll have a cloudy afternoon. From tomorrow we’ll have 10C or over (50F) during the days and a day after or so we will also have above 0C (32F) temperatures during nights 🙂 It does feel like spring has sprung after all 🙂

A15266_007 — Two taken with the Flexaret VI.

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Have a great day!

I didn’t know they were on.

October 9, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

d (1)

So the moose hunt has begun so we can’t take our walks in the forest today (nor yesterday). Well they left pretty early yesterday so we might be able to go there later today but the lovely sunshine will most likely be gone by then. The temperature fell down to 0C (32F) this morning but the sun shone so it was still pretty nice to stand on the kitchen stairs and drink a cup of tea.

d (5) — There’s an old well behind the fence.

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I would have loved to take a walk in the village but since Albin and Alma behaves like they do when ever they see anything moving or a cat or dog sitting still it really is impossible to do that any more. They scream and howl and Albin gets so excited that he ends up biting Alma (well once he bit my knee 🙂 🙂 🙂 He doesn’t bite hard, sort of nibbles but if some skin gets caught it leaves a bruise). Then again Alma is pretty though towards him and I do find marks all over his body when they’ve been playing in the garden.

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So anyway, yesterday I thought it would be a great idea to walk out in the empty cow pasture just outside my garden. It’s fairly big and usually free from any wildlife during the days as well. Plus I was a bit curious about what walks there at night. Two nights ago Alma (and Albin too for once) barked furiously towards something walking there. It was pitch black so I couldn’t see anything at all. My close neighbors and I wondered if it possibly could be wild hogs. So in we walk and no signs of any pig activity, not even from the piglet that always escapes from his enclosure.

d (14) — Apples growing on my seed sown apple tree, they are delicious.

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What I did see though was what I call badger paths. Badgers tend to walk the same route every night and after a while they have made clear paths on te ground. So my guess is that it is badgers they’re barking at. We walked around in the pasture a while and went back home again. We did the same routine in the afternoon too. What i didn’t think of the first time we walked there was that there are two metal wires on the ground. I might have gotten caught in one of them but wearing rubber boots I didn’t notice anything. We did however notice it a lot when we went in the second time, there is electricity in them!

d (28) — Well sometimes there’s a deer in the pasture during the day but this one jumped away quickly.

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So when we went back to walk home I wasn’t sure how to pass them without the dogs getting electrocuted by them again. So this time I just dropped the leashes and let the dogs run fast and jump over them 🙂 🙂 No problems at all but I doubt that I’ll be able to make them walk in to that pasture willingly again. I could bring something to cover the wires but Albin and Alma will most likely panic and refuse to walk on what ever I place above the wires. So today the dogs will have to be content with the garden unless the hunters leave early. The hunting group here has two areas not far from each other and they do quite often divided the time between them, half day here and half day there.

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The laundry is done and it is time to start making dinner for next week at work. This week I’ll have thick ribs 🙂

Have a great day!!

New lenses.

September 22, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

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Once again I had to scrape ice from my car before leaving for work, I really don’t like it 🙂 Still it doesn’t seem to have been that cold in the garden because nothing looks frozen at all. I guess that my high hedge and the fact that my cottage and my neighbors cottage stays warm enough during the night to keep the frost away until the morning comes.

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I left work a couple hours early today. I went to get my new contact lenses and wanted to try them for a couple of hours today so I would know what they were like. I don’t think it would have been a good idea to put them on tomorrow morning and then drive to work 🙂 🙂 These are test contacts, just to make sure they’ve made them right and I’ll have them until Monday two weeks when I’ll go to the optician again so we can see what I think of them.

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They aren’t perfect, I can see clearly from about 60cm (15 inches) to around 3 meters (much the same in yards). Then there’s a long distance where everything is slightly blurry but I could see the trees on the mountain very clear 🙂 (a mile or so away). It can depend on the light because the lenses are most sharp for shorter distances like reading in the middle because when one reed there’s brighter light and the pupil will become much smaller. The sun shone really bright today so I guess my pupils were quite small all the time. It’ll be exciting to drive to work tomorrow morning when it still is quite dark 🙂

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The lenses work really well together with the camera though, everything is sharp no matter what distance it is from me and the camera. I have no problems putting in lenses in my eye, old habits die hard or what they say but I did have huge problems getting them out 🙂 🙂 🙂 No matter what I did those lenses sat on the eye as if they were glued, no risk of them falling out by accident though 🙂 🙂 🙂 Then I remembered that one should always look up when picking them out. Didn’t take more than a second when I remembered that 🙂 🙂 But I think I need to buy eye drops because the air in the factory tends to be rather dry, except beside and inside the big washing machine and I’ll be working inside it tomorrow afternoon 🙂

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I think it is time for a big cup with hot cocoa and perhaps a couple of digestives. I’m really tired today, don’t know why, so it’s a good thing I took out those lenses because the odds of me falling asleep in front of the tv are pretty low 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

It’s warm on the sunny side.

September 18, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

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The sun has mostly shined all day but the temperature has barely reached above 13C (55,4F). It does feel much warmer in the house on the southern part of it where the sun hits than it does on the northern side (and I mean indoors). So while I’ve been able to have the kitchen door open for quite some time today I’ve still had the radiator on in the living room where there isn’t any window on the south side of it 🙂

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We were out in the early morning and for once we actually saw a couple of Roe deer. Alma went nuts as always but Albin did actually stay quite calm. I did manage to calm down Alma after a couple of minutes but she refused to stop looking at the point where she last saw them 🙂 Too many scents after the wild hogs all around us though so she was still all over the place when we were walking. I brought a plastic bag with me and I did find some mushrooms, not the most yummy but they are perfect if one wants to make a mushroom sauce.

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No need to make dinner for the coming week at work today, I did that last week and since I’ve been at home all week I still have it in the freezer 🙂 Today I also tried cooked food for the first time (well unless one counts toast as cooked, it is after all sort of fried) and so far so good 🙂

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Economists are surprised that we have stopped to buy other things than necessities much earlier than they anticipated. I wonder why since they’ve scared the crap out of people telling us that electricity and petrol prices will be insanely high the coming winter. Also all the central banks have raised the interest rates to stop the inflation, which has no effect on the electricity and gas prices what so ever, making the living costs insanely high as well for lots of people. So how can they be surprised at all? Of course people will stop buying things they really don’t need when they’re told the coming winter will be as close to harmagedon as possible without actually go through Harmagedon for most people 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Well nothing much we can do about it anyway to be honest , all we can do is to hope it won’t be too bad. It is time for a cup of tea and some toast and after that it’s time to give the dogs their food too.

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Have a great day!

Good bye forest flies, welcome Moose flies.

August 25, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

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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.

DSC_0018 (12) — 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 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Have a great day!

Busy day.

August 21, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

c (6)

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.

c (14)

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 🙂

c (18)

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 🙂 🙂 🙂

c (1) — 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.

c (4)

Have a great day!

DSC_0001 (5) — One of Albins absolute favorite spots in the garden, close to the gate on the north side of the cottage.

Another heatwave on the way.

August 9, 2022 · 2 Comments ·

DSC_0002 (3) — 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 🙂 🙂

DSC_0012 (3) — Even dead butterflies are beautiful.

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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 🙂 🙂

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!

Have a great day!

I’ve failed the only goal I had :-)

August 3, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

a (1) — These photos are from yesterday.

I’ve failed the only goal I had for this vacation and it was such an easy goal to reach to be honest. I had decided that I should take a nap every day all four weeks but I’ve only really done it since last Friday 🙂 🙂 🙂 (I don’t count dozing off in front of the tv though).

a (6)

It wasn’t the nicest weather when we woke up today, not especially chilly but the rain was pouring down. I really didn’t mind the rain but I had to force the dogs outside so that they would do their businesses 🙂 🙂
The rain has come and gone every now and again the entire day and it stayed on the cool side, it was quite nice being outside to be honest. Then the sun suddenly showed itself and when it did it suddenly became rather
warm and with the high humidity it went from nice to rather nasty. I looked at the weather sites and yesterday they showed that it would stay on the cool side today but now they suddenly show that we’ll have temperatures
up to 27C ( F). It’s just for on day thankfully, already tomorrow evening a cold front will pass by with lots of rain and most possibly thunder as well.

a (14)

It does look as if the anti tick spray works pretty well. Neither Nova nor Alma have had more than a couple of the nasty buggers walking on them. The lemon scented collar on Albin is harder to say anything about. I have
found a couple on him but he rarely have any walking around or biting him anyway. Flies are biting them all though so neither the spray or the collar helps towards them I’m afraid. I guess it’s the same insects that bite me when I walk
barefoot on my lawn. It itches for a short while and the red markings that show also disappears pretty quick but it had made me not walking barefoot outside before going to bed 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (21)

I went to buy groceries and pick up a package as soon as the stores opened today. I had ordered a new filter for my aquarium. The fish I have (platyfish) likes it so much that they are too many and it takes no time at all before I need to change the water. It is nice that they like it there but the joy of changing the water quickly fades off 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do use that water in my vegetable patch though so at least I have some good use for it. I haven’t picked it all together yet though but it will be up and running at least tomorrow 🙂 I really would like to have a 600 liters ( 158,5 gallon US) like I once had but I doubt that the over 100 years old floors here would managed to carry that kind of weight 🙂 🙂 🙂

a (26)

It is time to have something to eat and after that most likely fall asleep in front of the tv 🙂 I haven’t checked but I doubt they’ll show anything interesting on any channel, summer is re-run time.

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Have a great day!

DSC_0012 (1) — My Black Walnut tree looks pretty good. It seems to fight the tree cancer with good results, I haven’t seen any new damages from that disease.

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It could have rained a bit more.

August 1, 2022 · 4 Comments ·

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.

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 🙂

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.

Have a great day!

Neither Albin nor Alma screamed??!!

June 18, 2022 · Leave a comment ·

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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.

DSC_0027 (4) — 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.

DSC_0039 (4) — 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 🙂

f (5) — Flag Iris? The first one to open up.

f (9) — 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!