Category: Windy.

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Dark and grey again even though we almost could see the sun for a few seconds in the afternoon 🙂 We were supposed to have rain but it missed us. Perhaps a good thing because there’s so much water in the creek now that if we would get lots more it would overflow.

I could see a few ravens in the sky but no other bigger animals, they tend to stay where it is calm and today was nothing but. We did however see a big forest machine in the distance and the sound from it stressed Alma so much, she really doesn’t like strange sounds or any change what so ever. We managed to have a walk without her freaking out too much anyway 🙂

I realised how old I am now when I was on Reddit and looked at their different forums about aquariums. Back in the days when I was a kid I learned one way to have and keep an aquarium healthy and have never really changed my ways as it has worked well. Today having an aquarium is high tech! They fertilise the plants, use CO2 as well and they even use soil  and having soil in aquariums was something they always said was a big no no.

They also test for the, for me, most odd things like ammonium. Can’t remember that I ever had a problem with that, must smell horribly if that happens 🙂 🙂 I don’t however think necessarily were better back then but it sure was less complicated and less expensive 🙂 🙂 Anyway when I looked at those forums I started to remember all the old books I read until they broke and realised I don’t have any left and started to look on the net. So now I have two of those books I read and a third is on its way. These are of course old school because I’ll never start with any of that they do now days 🙂 🙂 The book that’s on its way is printed in 1938 so it’ll be interesting to see how things have changed since then 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. There’s absolutely nothing I want to watch on tv so I guess I’ll be reading those two books all evening long 🙂

Have a great day!

A new morning routine :-)

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We’ve had two really grey and dark days but today the sun suddenly appeared again (of course not while we were out walking) and it felt really strange 🙂 It didn’t give any heat away though so I guess it appeared just for show 🙂 Still we were in the garden enjoying it as much as we could. It is and has been very windy as well but no wind could reach us here in the garden.

Well I guess it’s a bit wrong to call it logs, they’ll grind it down and make pellets of them. So this is the place I let the mice free.

It was so dark for a while yesterday so I switched to black and white for a short while.

I’ve sort of started a new routine. Wake up and let the dogs out to the garden and when they’ve come in I go down to the cool cellar and check what the box trap has caught during the night. When it gets brighter outside I take the mouse/mice out to the forest in the travel box and let them out just beside a big pile of logs they haven’t removed yet and walk hone.

The clouds thinned out so I turned back to cooler again 🙂

When I come home I leash the dogs and out we go on our morning walk. They are really interested in the smells at that pile of logs 🙂 Alma seems to have understood that if she is quiet we will see bigger animals and two days ago we saw a big moose. Unfortunately just as it vanished in to the forest so I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. Lately I’ve driven to the different places where I can pick up parcels so we might have our walk after that instead, it’s usually brighter outside if we do it that way.

Thankfully I don’t have any more parcels waiting to be picked up so I hope I don’t have to go anywhere until Monday when I’ll visit my old work friends again and also do that last christmas food shopping. I need a small ham and mustard and I’ll also check what I need for making gingerbreads. It’s always nice to have some gingerbreads at christmas but the gluten free we can but are an abomination to the world but I’ve made this kind before and they are delicious but perhaps a bit strong spice-wise 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and most likely a slice or two of the just a few hours old Vörtbröd I baked today 🙂

Have a great day!

Only 13 more days till the winter solstice.

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So I had another little mouse in the box trap this morning, I do hope that’s the last one for this season 🙂 But just in case more will visit I’ve now bought a small travel cage for hamsters on our eBay called Tradera. So if they’ll get caught while it still is dark outside and to be honest it seems to be dark all the time now, I can put it in there until the daylight returns. I guess it’s best to give them some peanuts during the time they’ll be in the arrest 🙂

Today it was so dark that I had to put the camera on ISO 5000 and the photos still came out rather dark, so most of them are being brightened up. The colours did look a bit odd so I changed it to black and white as well (any coloured photo I might put in was taken yesterday). To make it even funnier it has rained all day.

At the beginning just drizzle but after a while we had heavy rain instead plus a small storm was passing by. Didn’t notice much of it here in the garden though, the neighbours cottage and garage plus the forest took all of it instead 🙂 That wind did bring warmth with them so we might even reach 10C (50F) on Wednesday.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I have a slight fever and a slightly sour throat now, Don’t know how I got it since I barely leave my home. I noticed my neighbours were at home as well today so I guess they have it too. It doesn’t feel like an influenza thankfully t I’ll drive to the supermarket tomorrow morning and buy some ice cream and rose-hip soup 🙂

Have a great day!

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A slow day, windy and cloudy and some drizzle in between. I did almost see the sun for a second though 🙂 Not especially cold but not close to be warmish either. Mostly a meh weather day with other words 🙂

So close to actually see the sun shine 🙂

Thankfully for me the only sport I like to follow, Biathlon, season has started so I could at least watch that for an hour or two. It’s too early to start the winter sowing for those plants that either need a cold period to germinate or a longer warm one for the same reason. This year I have seeds from two different bananas 🙂 Both will have a slim chance to flower and give edible fruits so why not try them 🙂 I also have seeds for two different passion fruits and since they tend to start growing quickly it’s way too early to sow them.

I have however slowly started to fill the new aquarium with water and today I moved three smaller plants from the bigger tank to the new one. They have plenty of time to grow big before any fish will live in the aquarium but it does look a little poor at the moment 🙂 🙂 At the moment I can only find an extension cord with only one socket so at the moment the filter is doing its job and later on I’ll have the light on instead. Without any fish in it there really is no use for a filter running. I can of course find the extension cord I know I have somewhere so I can have both on at the same time but I think You all now know that I will not find it when I look for it, it sort of must happen by chance if it ever will turn up again 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll most likely fall asleep in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

I used my headlamp to be able to take this photo 🙂 The water looks a bit hazy so that’s why the filter is running instead of the light but I sort of like how it looks 🙂

Warmer again :-)

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They come to the feeder long before the daylight arrive.

The weather has changed rather dramatically from freezing cold to rather nice and warmish. 7C (44,6F) as highest so now everything is muddy again 🙂 The wind has stayed though. One good thing is that the water barrels all now has thawed so I can bring in water to all the potted plants. It seems that most of my potted plants either wants slightly acidic water or rainwater. Actually, my aquarium fish are just the same so I do need more rainwater than I actually thought I would 🙂

It will stay much like this weather-wise the ten coming days but with some rain every now and again and more or less just as windy., no sunshine though. We all know how wobbly these weather forecasts are so things can change in seconds 🙂 🙂 🙂

It would be great if the temperatures could stay up for at least ten more days because I’ve ordered two peonies and really want them in the ground as soon as possible. They are potted so I can have them in the cool cellar but it’s always best to plant them as soon as possible. You can plant anything this time of year as long as You can make a hole in the ground because most plants should have lost their leafs by now and will be resting and will not be disturbed by being dug down in a new home. It works just as good if You live further south and You still have leafs on everything but then You will need to water for a couple of days to be sure the plant won’t dry out. Doesn’t matter if it rains because the soil the plant comes in will dry out really fast if You don’t.

We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here and I guess that’s a good thing, one less holiday where families starts war between them because of no reason at all most of the time 🙂 🙂 🙂 First of advent is on Sunday though and that’s quite important though but not like families gather but more like having Julmust (a very Swedish soda) coffee and gingerbreads while lighting the first candle. That’s when Christmas starts here. Many have already started the decorating with the electric advent candlestick in the windows, the advent star as well and many have their first christmas flowers in the windows as well, like hyacinths (now days usually without any scent since many can’t take that) and Poinsettias (we call them Christmas stars) and of course some kind of light in the gardens.

Back in the days people would start with the cookie baking but I think most people just buy the cookies now days. I will bake gingerbreads for the first time in. ages because the gluten free ones one can buy taste like poison 🙂 🙂 🙂 They are truly horrible so if I want any I better bake them myself but that won’t happen until much closer to Christmas, they wouldn’t last a minute otherwise 🙂 🙂 🙂 I guess it is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I think I’ll have a sandwich or two as well, I have some blue cheese I really need to eat now 🙂 (have You tried blue cheese and gingerbreads? really yummy 🙂 )

Have a great day!

I guess he was hungry.

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So it is warmer but instead we got a wind that makes everything feel colder. The dogs and I have been in the forest mostly so we haven’t felt much of it to be honest. Nights can still be a bit chilly so the ground is frozen when we get out first thing in the morning.

I drove to the supermarket in Skara this morning, the big road was just fine but the smaller one just outside my village was a bit scary to drive on 🙂 I always do a test brake when I drive out on it now when it’s  cold in the morning and even though I have really good winter tires on the car still slid around as if it was drunk 🙂 🙂 So all the way to the big road I wished no hogs or deer would jump up on the road 🙂 🙂

We haven’t seen much of the sun except for when the clouds were so thin it shined through them. We walked down to the bog and out to my favourite island and walked in the forest there. I could hear one hunting dog bark in the distance , last time they were all over the bog. I couldn’t find a single track from wildlife oddly enough, not even from the wild hogs that I know are plenty out there. I guess the wind and generally cold weather made them stay in the thickets until they really needed to eat something.

Now when all the leafs have fallen down we can hear the traffic on the big road but out on that island it’s totally devoid of traffic sounds. Mostly because most of the trees there are spruces and they’re so thick that not even sounds go through. It is a nature reserve so no one has cut a tree there since I don’t know when. The thought is that when these trees have fallen more “natural” for this area trees will start to grow there instead. I guess the idea is nice but since 70 years back nothing than spruces have grown there there will also be lots of spruce seeds just waiting for a chance to grow up 🙂 🙂

Every time I see this old tree I start to think about the monsters in the movie Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children 🙂

There was a small Sparrow hawk sitting on the table in front of the bird feeder this morning just waiting to have a small bird as breakfast. Well the small birds were nowhere to be found oddly enough 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it must have been a young male (because of the size, males are smaller) and that he hasn’t figured out that being seen by his food is not a good thing 🙂 🙂 Beautiful bird and even though I like the birds by the feeder I do hope this one will survive the winter.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then watch some tv if I can find anything that interests me, which I doubt.

Have a great day!

The photo was taken with my phone camera through a not so clean window 🙂

Nasty wind.

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I doubt the monster wanted the bird seeds 🙂

 

Less cold today but we’ve had a nasty, bitterly cold wind blowing almost all day so it has been rather unpleasant to be outdoors. It was totally calm on our morning walk though so that was nice. I think I might have a fever now, I woke up last night felling awfully hot but my bedroom is anything but and today I’ve had a slight fever and sneezed a lot all day. I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself though but I do hope this isn’t the beginning of something worse like what my neighbours had last week.

Nothing special is happening here at the moment.  I have been thinking on Christmas decorations for some reason. I haven’t had a lot of that because cats and having rather big dogs that picked anything in their reach and chewed on them if they liked the taste 🙂 🙂 I do have a nice plastic Christmas tree and I’ve used it for two years but now I have a cat again 🙂 🙂 I do remember having a nativity set back in the days that I liked a lot but then one day I couldn’t find it, turns out my mother had given it away without asking me, quite common behaviour from her I’m sorry to say.

So I went online to see what they had there. Lots of different ones and they cost a fortune! Some I think I would be able to do better myself to be honest. I did find one I liked meant to be hanging on a wall I guess but it is oddly enough supposed to be filled with water?? Is it a kind of snow globe perhaps and every time one shakes it snow will fall down over the people? 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest, I have seen worse and I think that one would be the one working best because it would hang like a painting on the wall and the monster wouldn’t care about it. I’ll better check it once again 🙂

I took an extra look at it and no there’s no snow in it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s called a lantern with LED lights in it but why the water? Also rather expensive to be honest. Well I’ll keep on looking or perhaps I should try to make one myself even though making the humans and animals will be very tricky 🙂 🙂 I do of course have the advent candlestick I made from clay last year.  It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen but I did it myself, perhaps I should order some clay again and make the nativity set 🙂 🙂 I will at least have lots of fun making it 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then go out on the net to see whether I’ll buy some clay 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Still raining.

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We were lucky today to have our morning walk before the rain arrived, well sort of because it did start to drizzle on our way home but drizzle doesn’t count 🙂 It has continued to rain all day and still does. Now even all those wood chips seems to slowly sink down into the mud beneath so even if I’m not happy about colder weather coming it will at least freeze the ground some so that it is walkable again.

There are two mushrooms on that tree stump and they’re both well over 30 cm (a foot) long.

Today the second package with an aquarium arrived and this one was actually not broken by our postal service 🙂 I was pretty surprised about that 🙂 🙂 🙂 They always wants us to grade how they did and possibly write a comment as well. So I wrote that perhaps they should teach people not to put other heavier packages on the ones having stickers saying Fragile on them 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think they truly dislike me at the postal center in Falköping because I once threatened them by calling the police on them if they didn’t stop placing my packages anywhere where I don’t live 🙂 🙂 🙂 That is however a non existing problem now days 🙂 🙂

It’ll be fun for those driving to work tomorrow morning when all this rain that has been falling turns to ice. We will have below 0C (32F) in the morning and it will not be that much warmer during the day. I’ll need to drive to a grocery store (and also a petrol station) tomorrow but I can do that later when the ice is gone. I could wait until Saturday but even if I don’t have a job to go to it still feels wrong to do that on a Saturday or Sunday 🙂 🙂

I have forgotten to make any dinner today 🙂 🙂 I was thinking of making pancakes but I’m just not hungry. So I’ll make them tomorrow instead. Yesterday I thought I went to be at normal time but I must have seen wrong when I walked upstairs because I had a text message that I thought arrived after nine but today when I checked the time it says it arrived at 8:30 pm 🙂 🙂 🙂  I did think it took some time to fall asleep 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that perhaps watch a dvd.

Have a great day!

So dark and dreary.

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Even darker today even though it did light up some every now and again.

Rain all day except for in the morning plus strong winds blowing so we’ve mostly been indoors today. Still rather warm for this period of the year but what good does that make when we can’t be outside enjoying it 🙂 🙂 Still, the morning walk was nice since the wind hadn’t reached us yet.

The aquarium I had ordered arrived yesterday and as soon as I saw the package I guessed that it was broken. Too bad I was right. No real damage to it but one could see that they had placed other heavier packages on it because that is what one does when the package is more or less wrapped in red Fragile stickers, well that is at least what the Swedish postal service think is the right way to do it.

Lots of glue and tape and it might become a mini greenhouse 🙂

So I mailed the business I bought it from and they shipped away a new one as soon as they saw the photo of the damages and it will arrive tomorrow!! They didn’t want the broken one back so with some glue and tape I guess I will be able to use it as a mini greenhouse 🙂 I do wonder about our postal service though, back in the days even if a letter had the wrong address they still managed to get it to the right person but that a package marked fragile isn’t supposed to be placed at the bottom with other packages on to of it seems to be a mystery for them 🙂 🙂 🙂

Also a couple of years ago the constantly placed my packages at the wrong places even though they said they used the GPS. In the end I had to threaten to report it to the police as a harassment if they missed one more time. Haven’t had the slightest problem with that since then 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is so muddy now in places we walk all the time in the garden that I started to pour out those wood chips I got after I’d cut down all those branches from the trees.
It works really well and I have more chips to use in other places 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll watch a dvd I think. I have so many but no place for them 🙂 🙂 Storage units is nothing I really have in this small cottage. I have one closet and mice went in there and chewed on all my clothes 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

It could have been so nice if it wasn’t for the biting cold wind.

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This could have been a really nice day if it wasn’t for the wind that has been blowing all day long, a cold biting wind that made it hard to stay outside for any longer period of time. Not even the dogs wanted to stay out for especially long and kept coming to the door to go inside again.

Cold and frosty in the morning and despite the sun hitting my car I still had to scrape ice from the windows at 9:30am, not a favourite thing to do 🙂 🙂 Still the morning walk was quite nice because the wind hadn’t arrived yet and the sun still giving some warmth. We walked out to the bog and while we stood at the end of the peninsula we could hear something walking towards us. We never saw what it was but it did sound relatively big, like a red deer or perhaps a moose.

The dogs didn’t really react to it more than that they stared in the direction the sound came from and looked curious 🙂 It was impossible for anything to walk silently in the forest because of all the frozen leafs on the ground, it sounded like we all were walking on cornflakes spread on a hard floor 🙂 🙂 🙂 I went to the supermarket after we had come home because I had very little to eat in my fridge.

It was a costly trip, much more than I had expected 🙂 I did buy everything on the list but I also went in to the pet shop (can one say it’s a pet shop supermarket because it’s really big that store?) I found a prefect food for my aquarium fish and it costed a fortune but then again the fish are few and will eat very little so it might last for the rest of my life 🙂 🙂 Also I bought two new ceramic food bowls for the dogs, Malkolm seems very unwilling to eat from his old one made from some kind of metal. Those weren’t cheap either but oddly enough didn’t cost more than the fish food 🙂 🙂 🙂

After that I went to the Dollar store just around the corner and bought seeds for the wild birds in the garden. They also coast a little fortune but compared to any other store they were cheap 🙂 🙂 I don’t want the birds to stop eating what they can find in the nature so I’ll only feed them when I know nights will be frosty. They still need to know how to find food if I for some reason can’t help them. They have noticed that birds who live in areas where lots of people feed them forgets how to find food elsewhere and even what things they can eat. I also only give them seed mixes even though they all most likely would love to just have sunflower seeds for much the same reason. We have very few sunflowers flowering here since those who do comes from either what we sow in our gardens or from bird seeds that birds brought with them from the feeders and dropped them on the way to where they can eat them safely.

It is time for a cup of coffee I think, it’s way too early for that last cup of the yet. I actually bought peanuts for the bird feeder by my kitchen window, I know mice climb up and eat those peanuts but that was before the little monster moved here 🙂 She’s outside most nights and I’m pretty sure the mice soon will stop eating the peanuts because she’s a really good mouse hunter 🙂

I have now two bigger and four smaller apricot trees in my garden and this is the only one giving me autumn colours.

Have a great day!

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They are slowly ripening 🙂 I had to take this photo with a flash so the colours aren’t quite right. They are turning towards a very dark red colour.

For a while in the early morning it looked like we were going to have sunshine while we were out walking and we did for around twenty seconds 🙂 Then the rain arrived, no heavy showers but either a steady but calm rainfall or misty rain. It wasn’t until just after noon the sun made a come back and now three hours later I can see that the rain is falling again.

The rain on the mountain missed us but another one came a short moment after.

So I haven’t done a lot today, mostly drinking tea and watching tv, well I wouldn’t be able to tell You what it was I looked at because mostly it was pretty boring and nothing I really wanted to see. When the sunshine finally arrived I’ve mostly been throwing away what I’ve had in pots and poured it all out close to where the plum tree stood. I dug up all the dahlias and for the first time in my life only one can be saved till next year, I have no idea why they didn’t create root lumps like dahlias always do. Could be that I’ve watered them too little.

No signs of any wolf still staying around, they rarely do to be honest. I did see some tracks from moose though and they looked really fresh, if they had been old the rain would have wiped them out. To my very big surprise I finally found my jigsaw!! and it was pure luck because I can’t really understand why I had placed it there, beneath the entrance stairs??!! It must have been that a shower passed by and that was the closest place I could find, otherwise I have absolutely no idea 🙂 🙂 🙂 Thankfully it is in a sort of plastic suitcase so no water from the latest rains had managed to get to it. So it still works and soon I’ll be able to have that third rainwater barrel 🙂

Well the weather doesn’t seem to become any nicer again so I guess I better make a pot of tea and perhaps doze off in front of the tv 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally the storm has passed, it’s still raining though.

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Just a short one today. The greenhouse still stands, I went out several times to check how the anchors and pegs were holding up and they show no signs of even moving the slightest. The only thing that did was the broken golf club in front of the door, so I pressed it down in the ground in another place and much further down and it is still standing 🙂

The dogs barely went out to do their business because the wind was fierce and I must say I didn’t think a tree could bend that much as my Chinese catalpa, any normal tree bending so much would have broken in two 🙂 🙂

The badger visited us in the late morning, I was surprised it even had went out on a day like this. I was outside just minutes earlier to check the greenhouse and went back to let the dogs out. Took a bit longer than I expected so by the time we came out the badger had left us again 🙂 They dig mall holes searching for snails and larvae to eat and they weren’t there when I was out earlier 🙂 So everything has went well and we’re all sitting in the cottage enjoying not being outside 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that it feels like an early night is the right thing to do 🙂 Well I’ll watch the news first just in case something has happened in the world 🙂

Have a great day!