Sometimes, well quite often actually, I wonder if our meteorologists actually get paid for their weather predictions or if they just are drunk and having fun every weekend 🙂 🙂 🙂 I must admit that they did get the raining we’ve had but today they said that we would have a cloudy day all day long. Is anyone surprised when I say that we had sunshine almost all day with the exception of the early morning? 🙂 🙂 🙂
We didn’t even get a good fog, just this meh fog...Lingonberries. I think lingonberries are the most important berries for us Swedes, we have lingonberry jam to anything and everything 🙂
We were out in the early morning and when we came home I tossed everything in the washing machine, I was a bit behind so I really didn’t have any clean clothes left. So as soon as the machine started working the sun broke through 🙂 🙂 Well since I didn’t have any clothes I really couldn’t mow the lawn so I’ll have to do a little every day after work next week instead.
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We’ve just come home after another walk and the weather was much nicer and the wind had helped to dry the high grass we walked in so for once my shoes are dry! They were soaking wet when we came home in the morning so I placed them in the sunshine so they could dry. They have been constantly wet the last week so it was a nice change 🙂
Much nicer weather later in the day.Still some Chamomile in bloom..
It feels like I’ve done very little today but I have actually been pretty active. I’ve done the laundry as I said, I’ve made dinner for next week at work. I’ve re-potted a lot of plants and checked the sowings of perennials I have outside. They’ll grow big enough to survive winter outside if it stays as warm as they say it will, just above 20C (68F). They’re guessing that we won’t get much sunshine but that it at least will stay warm. The hunting season starts on Wednesday and they’ll be out in the forest the week out so I hope that the pasture outside my cottage is open and animal free so we at least can take walks there.
..In the garden. Nasturtiums in bloom.I think the Sarracenia flower will open up tomorrow 🙂
It is raining and thunder is closing in as well. We didn’t have any thunder at all when the heatwave was here or when the cold weather started but now we’ve had it several times. I hope it won’t be as bad as it was the last time because it lasted for hours and sometimes the sound just kept on all the time because of all the lightnings 🙂 🙂
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We did have a really nice morning and up until just after noon though, mostly sunshine and actually rather warm weather, something we haven’t been spoiled with this vacation. Still I’ve had a really nice vacation and I am so relaxed that it will be hard to start working again tomorrow 🙂 🙂 I’ll have no problems waking up, I’ve woken up the same time I normally do when going to work the entire vacation 🙂 🙂
The ghost tree 🙂..
It was 6C (42,8F) when we went out on our morning walk today, perfect because there were no flies flying around and I only found two ticks in total when I checked the dogs and we had walked in pretty high grass quite a lot. Ticks normally don’t like temperatures around those degrees. The water level is still quite high in the creek and I guess that after these four coming days it will rise even higher, they’re guessing we’ll get up to four inches of rain.
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Four days ago I was stung on the backside of my ear by one of the wasps that lived between the roof and ceiling by my entrance door. I did swell a bit but not much, normally I swell like a balloon where I’m stung but I think it hit the cartilage in the ear. My ear has been aching ever since, it isn’t until now that the pain has gone away. It has been itching a lot and the skin started to sort of flake away 🙂 🙂 The ear is still rather warm though but that I can live with 🙂 🙂 It actually took three days until all the wasps were gone. I didn’t think that many actually stayed outdoors during longer periods. There’s still the occasional wasp flying there but they don’t even try to get in any more. I don’t mind wasps as long as they don’t attack me or the dogs, if they do it’s good bye!
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It looks like the thunder will continue along the mountain and go north but these last have sounded to be really close even though the lightning apps says different so I better stop for today.
She will become 17 years old next month 🙂Albin’s only 8 🙂 and Alma a bit more than two years old now.She and Albin loves to eat the Japanese quince fruits. I can’t understand that because they are hard as rocks 🙂 🙂
We haven’t had much rain this week, a shower now and again. The weather has been very much the same each day though, lots of clouds, sunshine in between. Rather chilly when cloudy but really nice when the sun shone. One day it did reach above 20C (68F) but mostly it has been lower than that. Sunshine in the early and cool morning so not many flies or mosquitoes annoying us while having our morning walk.
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The Norwegian site says it will be warmer than the Swedish one but then again they say we’ll get more rain. I looked at the weather sites early this morning and none of the sites said rain tomorrow, they do now. So I sort of regrets that I didn’t mow the lawn today while it was quite windy and the grass was dry. Well we know how great they are in predicting the weather over here so it might be sunny and warm all day 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I have gotten the carpet/ furniture cleaner but I haven’t tried it yet. So I guess I’ll try it tomorrow if the rain actually arrives. I think I’ll start with something not as thick as the big cushions I have on my sofas, they will after all have to dry up before I can put them back on the sofas. I have a couple of those thin mattresses on my bed, I can easily sleep one night without one of them.
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It was quite nice when we were out walking early this morning. No wind but cool enough so that most flies stayed calm, at least until we came closer to home and the sun had warmed up the air. Nova decided that we should walk along the creek again. We have lots of morning dew here right now and there’s a lot of relatively high grass along that way so we were soaked by the time we came home. What surprises me each time we’ve walked there is how few ticks I need to remove from the dogs. It should be tick paradise there and lots of animals full of ticks walks there as well but each time I go through the dogs there are just a few. Well I can’t say I feel sorry about that 🙂
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Nothing much is happening in the garden right now. My Persimmon seems to do very well, my Pawpaws grow and look healthy and so so my Ginkgos. The English walnut still grows but it is hard to see it since the plant in front of it is so big that I barely can see it 🙂 🙂 🙂 The last two Nectarine kernels that I’ve had in and out of the fridge finally started to germinate this week. Mostly it’s enough with one round to the fridge to make them start but these two needed several times in and out. I think that means that they come from a tougher area (climatewise) and that their spring can be as treacherous as ours, like really warm and sunny in early March but then full blown winter in April 🙂 🙂 🙂 The Apricots are growing fine and the biggest ones are now over 30cm (one foot) high.
Finally, the Nectarines germinated. They are now planted in two small pots so cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs for good luck 🙂The Apricot trees looks fine.The Sarracenias do their job well 🙂The Bittersweet continues to flower.
I think I’ll make myself a cup of tea even if it is well after 4pm. I have vacation, it doesn’t matter if I can fall asleep normal time or not 🙂
The Teodor rose 🙂I’ve planted one of the Cherry plums on the north side of my cottage, close to the gate. I’ve put a bottomless tub around it so that the roots can’t spread and give new Cherryplums. I’ll plant one on the other side of the gate when I can find another tub I can remove the bottom from.The Hazelnut bush has also found a place not far from the Cherry plum.The House sparrow fledglings learns how to fly under the roof of my old patio, which I haven’t used in over twent years. Now some are daring enough to fly outside it, a whole meter (a yard) out to my Apricot tree 🙂 🙂
I’m not sure if we’re having a storm but the winds are strong and the gusts roar through the forest. The winds even reach my garden and that’s unusual. We had rain almost all morning, except for when we were out on our morning walk, it started shortly after we had come home so I took a long nap while it continued to rain for a couple of hours 🙂
Some of its flowers have opened up now..I don’t know why but the strawberries are finally in bloom, very late and the Magpies takes all the berries 🙂 🙂I’ve bought two Hardy Hibiscuses. They should be planted in early spring so it has time to establish itself. They aren’t that hardy to be honest so they also need the best spot in the entire bgarden to survive the winters here.
After that we’ve had sunshine, some showers and grey skies so one can’t say that the weather has been boring 🙂 More rain is on the way and it’ll pour down tomorrow plus the wind will stay they say. I really don’t mind to be honest, I can’t do anything outside so I’ll nap instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 Alma is bored though, especially since the little girl next door also stays indoors during this weather.
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Nova wasn’t allowed to walk along the creek this morning because we would have been soaking wet after just a couple of steps, so instead I told her that we would continue on the gravel road. She didn’t like that at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 and when I noticed that her knee support had broken and I wanted ti fix it she just refused to come to me, even started to run away from me when I tried to fix it. So the little lady is pretty cranky, has been that all day 🙂 🙂 🙂 Albin on the other hand is sad because I scolded him. If was after we had come home and I had to clean his ear.
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I know he hates that but I really needed to do it since he shook his head all the time. I poured in the cleaning fluid and started to massage the ear when he just had to shake his head violently. I really tried to hold him still but he’s strong 🙂 🙂 🙂 Now my entire kitchen is full of oily drops and his entire head is too. He always get sad if I scold him and has continued to stay that way all day. So one angry old lady, one sad old man and one really bored girl have been rather annoying all day 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I think I will take one more walk around the garden before the next rain arrives. The coming week will have some rain but it’ll mostly be sunny and around 19C-20C (66F-68F) and that sounds rather nice 🙂 It looks like we’ll have a normal Swedish summer for once 🙂
I was trying to photograph my Persimmon tree when Alma thought she would be in the photo as well 🙂The Persimmon tree to the right seems to like where it’s growing. It stands too close to the peach on the left and it does so because I was pretty sure the peach tree would die already this summer. I sprayed the peach tree with sulfur before the leafs started to grow because peach trees are always hit with curled leaf disease and sulfur is said to be the only thing that can kill that fungi. So I was disappointed when all leafs it had started to curl. To my big surprise the tree started to grow and get new leafs instead of slowly dies as they always do. I have no idea if it is because of the sulfur or anything else but now I’ve started to believe it will survive anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂Something that didn’t survive the drought was the App,e rowan. It was sad already after last years drought and this time it couldn’t manage it any more. So now I have a new spot for another tree 🙂
Magpies, funny birds but also bl…y annoying 🙂 🙂 🙂 They can terrorize an entire neighborhood and attack cats and dogs and are really intelligent.
The weather has been rather mixed this first week of my vacation. Everything from sunny and hot to a bit chilly and heavy raining. Today is really nice though, mostly sunshine, a nice breeze and around 20C (68F). It was supposed to be like this yesterday but like always our weather service managed to miss that we would have rain almost half the day 🙂 🙂 🙂
The rain started quite nice on WednesdayThen it got worse.A little lake was growing by my gate.Another one on the back by my kitchen door. It needs to be a lot of rain to create a lake there because it’s only sand and runs down through the sand as soon as it hits, normally that it 🙂 🙂
We’ve gotten well over two inches of rain this week and nature loves it. Well I don’t complain about it either to be honest 🙂 Unfortunately the ticks loves it most of all. After every walk I’ve picked over twenty ticks from Alma while the two others have had perhaps five together. I have no idea why Alma is such a tick magnet but they do seem to love her. Nova decided that we should walk along the creek this morning so I was a bit worried that they all would have lots more walking around on them but to my surprise they had just a few, not even Alma had more than six walking around on her.
Yesterday morning felt quite chilly so not a fly was flying around annoying us.
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The weather has made it more or less impossible to do anything outside and it has been perfect 🙂 🙂 🙂 I can’t remember when I slept this much before. The heavy rain day I must have slept well over six hours during the day (mostly with the window open so I could hear the rain hit the ground and cottage, until it changed direction and it started to rain in through the window 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) and I still fell asleep at my usual hour and sleeping all night without any problems. I guess I needed it but have no idea why 🙂 🙂
We could pass this doe without Alma screaming like insane 🙂 🙂..
The flies have calmed down because they’ve now cut down all the grass and made silage balls of it. That always happens when they do that so I guess that flies prefer to stay in high grass instead of trees during nights and perhaps even during days and when it’s gone the flies go to? Well there’s plenty still but not near enough to what we had before. I don’t even bring my mosquito hat on our walks, it’s enough with a hoodie. Alma has calmed down even more now, she still pulls the leash but the screaming when seeing anything move is almost gone! So now days we even see the odd deer again, still hares do make her a bit too excited but we’re working on that. The sitting down until she’s calmed down seems to work pretty well 🙂
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I’m waiting for the package delivery car to come. I’ve ordered dog food and I have almost no dog food left so these packages will arrive just in time 🙂 🙂 I’ve just recieved a text message that they are on the way. So anytime from now until 5pm I’ll need to stay at home. Just a few weeks back they changed it to that packages below 20Kg ( 44,1 pound) can be delivered without me being at home but above that I need to be at home to recieve it. I’ve just bought a new kind of food for Alma and Nova because they didn’t really like the one I had and they have been a bit wobbly in their stomachs since we started with it. So today I’ll get one package that weighs well over20Kg and one well below. Does that mean they then would deliver the lighter package while bringing back the heavier if I weren’t at home? 🙂 🙂 🙂
Nova can be the most stubborn dog in the world 🙂 🙂 I called for her because she went away on her own and to a road we weren’t going to take. She could hear me very weel and she knows the sign for coming back and she just didn’t give a crap 🙂 🙂 🙂After around five minutes she slowly came towards us.Then she stopped again and just stood there for another five minutes 🙂 🙂 🙂 She finally started to walk towards us again but refused to go all the way and instead went to where we were going to walk but through bushes and high grass instead 🙂 🙂 🙂
Have a great day!
Not much in bloom in my garden at the moment but the Creeping Bellflower has opened up. It’s voted to be the worst weed one can get in a garden 🙂 🙂 Here it has to fight with other plants almost as bad as itself so it’s no problem here.A Perennial Sunflower is almost as bad as the bellflower.The Nepeta sibirica or as its Swedish name is Great Dragon flower can also compete with it.the Large yellow loosestrife isn’t much weaker.Hotas are however not a match and would lose the battle fairly quick 🙂
Vacation time and I won’t have to go to work for four weeks 🙂 I must admit that it feels rather good 🙂 The day did move slower than frozen molasses though 🙂 I had things to paint all day and time should have flown but I guess that I longed for vacation too much 🙂
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Three days ago Albin started to throw up all that he ate at breakfast, he still was quite happy but he has never done that before so I was a bit worried but he wasn’t too keen on eating a treat and that was the thing that worried me. Alma is known for stealing the diapers from my neighbors new born daughter so I was worried that he might have a bit of diaper stuck in his stomach, so I even went home a couple of hours early just to check on him. He was just as always so I started to boil fish and rice for him to eat. Then yesterday he could barely walk on his left front foot.
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He gladely shows that he has a problem but always refuse to show where the problem is 🙂 but I think I saw a grumpy face when I for the tenth time pressed one of his toes. So I thought he might have broken it when playing with Alma because those two play tough with each other. Today he had no problem at all so we could take a walk after work like always. I really don’t understand that dog sometimes 🙂 🙂
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It isn’t such a bad fly year as I thought it would be, I guess the drought managed to kill off lots of fly larvae. There are the biting ones but still fairly few as well. We had a couple of really big ones and they pestered the dogs for a while but then just flew away. The smaller ones flew around me instead but after I managed to kill one of them before it managed to bite me the rest sort of just gave up. I do hope this is how it will be fore the rest of the summer 🙂 🙂
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My neighbor had ordered three hoodies to her boyfriend and ordered the same size as always but they aren’t sure what size they actually got 🙂 So they asked me if I wanted them instead. I’m both taller and much fatter than my neighbor so I didn’t think they would fit me but they are actually perfect 🙂 They didn’t want anything for them, they were on some kind of mega sale so I said I would by them a big melon instead (well I’ll buy three different but they don’t know that 🙂 )Their daughter loves fruit and vegetables so melons should be perfect 🙂 It is the same daughter that I can hear on weekend mornings shouting: Yohoo Amma which means she wants Alma to come over 🙂 The girl is very happy today because she now knows I’ll be at home for four weeks and that Alma then can come over all day if she wants to 🙂
The Venus Flytrap has also been growing rather slow. I still have two left from last summer and the second one grows even slower.
Really mixed weather here today, very windy, sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy and a lot of the time rainy. Most of the times a nice gentle summer rain but every now and again heavy showers. It’s exciting to stay outdoors because one never knows what will happen 🙂 🙂 The weather was stable when we had our morning walk though. I did bring the mosquito hat but only used it once while we walked along the creek because the wind couldn’t reach us there. Still not so many flies anyway but they still have time to show up before their season is over.
..I wanted to continue this waybut Nova wanted to go this way instead.
Nova is the one who chose where we’ll walk every day and I had preferred if she had chosen only the gravel roads but she wanted to walk along the creek so that’s where we walked. The grass was wet and high so I feared that I would have ti pick ticks until late night but to my surprise I only found two in total!? It should have been perfect for them along the creek but who am I to complain about the lack of ticks 🙂 🙂 While we walked there I checked after dragonflies and damselflies. I did see one dragonfly but long before the creek and only one damselfly along the entire creek. Perhaps I’m too early to lok after either? I have seen both earlier but there are always a couple that show up early.
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My dinner for work next week is boiling in the slow cooker. I made it easy for me by making meat sauce and I’ll boil the pasta before going to work. I’ve also done the laundry and we’ve had our pancake Sunday as usual. I will however, unlike a neighbor somewhere, not mow the lawn. That persons lawn mower must be a mushy mess when it is over 🙂 🙂 🙂 I don’t think it is fun to clean the mower on a normal day but it is awful on days when the grass is long and wet.
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I’ve also planted two of the Chicory seedlings I have, a third is on the way but they can be slow to germinate. It’s a perennial and its leafs look surprisingly much like dandelion leafs so I better remember where I planted them next spring 🙂 🙂 I also had several bell pepper seedlings. It was so hot when I sowed them that nothing happened until it started to cool down and then it went hot again so they barely grew at all. I don’t expect to get any bell peppers from them but since I had the space in the vegetable patch I planted them there anyway. I’m pretty sure they’ll start to grow good now when it will rain until Thursday and stay cool as well. After that they’re guessing the heat will come back again on Friday, my last day before vacation starts 🙂
.I’ll get lots of plums this year.A golden fly, have no idea what it can be called.This is one of the coolest beetle I’ve ever seen I think.
It rained quite a lot here this morning and it has also cooled down considerable so it feels like life is back on track again. It has also blown quite a lot so the walk after work was really nice since both flies and mosquitoes blew away from us 🙂 🙂 🙂
Lots of apples on the crab apple tree in the forest, They are red and rather yummy 🙂.I actually chased away the bumblebee before it came too close to the white spider. I do feel the spider is worth its meal but I prefer if it eats flies 🙂 :-)Bumblebee beetle.
I have two big water barrels in my garden and those are mosquito larvae heaven but what the mosquitoes don’t know is that those larvae are fed to the fish in my aquarium 🙂 🙂 🙂 My Platy loves to eat them and all larvae are gone within minutes but just in case someone of them would survive I cover the holes in the glass lid so that none can escape in to my living room 🙂 Also it looks like there’s spiders living in the thin space between the lid and the water because every time I feed them flakes some of those flakes get caught in the spider web 🙂 🙂
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We’ll have this cool and rainy weather for five days they’re guessing but after that it looks like the warmer weather will come back again, just in time for my vacation. I’m not sure I like that at all to be honest. Then again if I don’t work in the heat I might like it a bit better 🙂 🙂
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It is time to go to bed and I’ll have no problems at all to fall asleep, well I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, because today I’m so tired after this unforgiving hot work week. I’ll just check for ticks on the dogs again. I missed one walking on Alma because she just laid her hed towards my arm and when she walked away I could feel one walking on my arm, felt horrible!
The old wheel barrow looks fairly good despite it drying out once.I have four Hawthorn bushes to plant somewhere. The berries they give tastes delicious, something like passion fruit and oranges.I have also a Hazelnut bush I need to plant somewhere.The same water as they have indoors and still they prefer to drink it from this bucket 🙂
The thermometer said it wasn’t that hot today, 23C (73,4F) but the dogs said otherwise. The cool wind should have helped one could think but it didn’t. I mostly hid in the shadows so to me the day has been pretty nice 🙂
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It was rather cool in the early morning though and it seems the mosquitoes like that too, so we had company the entire walks 🙂 🙂 Still I’ve now been bitten so much that I really don’t feel the itch any longer. Still just a few horse flies and their relatives and I know it’s useless to hope that it could stay that way but I can’t but hope 🙂 🙂 Besides walking with the dogs, making my lunch and watering the vegetables and potatoes I really haven’t done much today. I did take a nap as well though. Time has just flown away but I guess that’s what happens when one feel good 🙂 🙂
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Mowing the lawn isn’t something one should do during a drought but I had to today. Only the part where the thorny roses and slow and the false spirea grew because those shoots were growing rapidly now. Isn’t it strange that when most vegetation struggles with no or very little water in the ground those things we don’t want just shrugges and keep on growing 🙂 🙂 I keep on pulling up their roots but there are so many and they are so twined that the majority of them stays in the ground. I have however no problems what so ever with the vicious roses on the other side of the garden, they behave nicely 🙂 🙂
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There’s nothing I want to watch on tv so I could read a book or perhaps bake bread for the coming week but I have no energy to do either. I guess it’s the pollen that sort of slows down my brain but keep the will of not doing anything well alive 🙂 :-)I could go outside and scare away all the magpies because they have now kicked out their younglings from the nest, always before they can fly, and now they protest loudly every time they think the young ones are in danger and it sounds like they always are 🙂 🙂 The Jackdaws have built a nest in my neighbors chimney so they’ll have to remove that before the fire in the stove season starts. They don’t have the hearts to do it now 🙂
I bought three Sarracena plants the previous weekend. This one had a too small pot so I planted it yesterday, the other two will be planted tomorrow. They are almost hardy enough to survive a winter here but these will be wintering in my cool cellar.
So yesterday when I came to work I noticed something fluffy and white lying in the middle of the road without moving. It didn’t take long before I saw that it was a cat. For some reason no one stopped to check on it and at that time there’s a lot of traffic. I parked my car, went out and stopped the traffic because I thought that it at least should be moved to the grass beside the road. I realized that it still was alive when I picked it up.
Yellow flowers towards a light green background doesn’t work in cameras 🙂Missne in my root zone.The dog rose is opening up.Rosa glauca, Red leafed rose, too. Pink flowers towards red leafs doesn’t work either 🙂 🙂Â
The poor little cat started to purr as soon as I held it, not because it liked it but because it was scared and injured. It didn’t have any visible injuries and was so clean it looked like it just had been washed. It did feel pain when I held my hand towards its ribs and the gum was totally white, so even if it hadn’t been run over the risk of really bad injuries inside it was most likely. I sat down on a park bench we have outside the entrance door and was just about to leave to go to the vet with the cat when the owner came out from their house (my work friend recognized the cat and knew it came from the rather big house beside the factory).
Nova decided that we should go the shorter walk today, so we went down to the bog. The gravel road was lined with Chamomiles.Forget-me-nots..
I don’t know if the cat survived but I hope I’ll meet the owner again. I really can’t walk up and knock on the door and ask if the cat still lives, especially since their children love that cat. Today the summer vacation starts so it would be a terrible start of it if the cat didn’t survive. What I can’t understand is how all those cars just passed it. The one hitting it might not have noticed that they hit a cat since it wasn’t run over but everyone else that just passed it? The least one can do is to move it to the grass because lorries and tractors drive often on that road and they might not see it before it’s too late and no one want to find what’s left of their cat in the middle of the road just outside their home.
Otherwise it’s been a nice week with lots of sunshine and a bit too warm. My garden is usually the last place that dries out when we’re having a drought and now my garden is drying out. The grass doesn’t grow any more, which I don’t mind at all 🙂 So I water my vegetable and potato patches every day now and I also support watering all the trees I’ve planted this year. The rest must manage to survive anyway. It’s only three meters down to the ground water though so if we’ll get some rain in the coming ten days most plants will survive. 2018 was so bad that even bigger trees died and I do hope it won’t be that bad this year. I will however pack what I call a panic bag. Clothes and what ever I want to save if we would have a forest fire. I started doing that after we had a fire in the bog after a thunder storm.
These are two examples of the same kind of cameras, Twin Lens Reflex cameras. Many using TWL cameras wanted to be able to use 135 film (the one we had in almost all cameras back then) so Agfa decided they would do a SLR sized one. One look down through the view finder in both cameras so the angle of the photo is a bit different from the SLR’s. The problem was that it is almost impossible to focus with the little Agfa Flexilette 🙂 🙂 🙂This was taken with the Rolleicord. I rarely use this camera since I prefer my Flexarets.This was taken with the Agfa Flexilette. The lens and camera is pretty good but the camera never became any hit and not many were made.
It is time for a cold drink of some kind and then see if there’s anything good on tv.
My seed sown Gardenia (one of four) shows its first flower. Unlike the ones we buy these flowers are single, like they are in nature. The ones we can buy are always totally filled and looks almost like a rose. It smell just enough strong and the scent fills up my kitchen. Two more flower buds and then hope it’ll, and the other ones, will do it again next year.
-1C (30,2F) here last night and the frost damaged my Amur grapevine. Most other plants, except for my tomatoes seems to have made it through without too much problem, even the small pear tree seedlings I replanted yesterday evening. Tonight might be even more cold so I’ve covered most of the plants that I still haven’t planted.
If one see lilacs somewhere one knows it once was a cottage there. Lilacs are weeds but they rarely spread far when the cottage is gone.Paris quadrifolia, Lover’s knot, is a favorite of mine. It should really have problems surviving here but it looks like it is spreading instead.Squirrel berries.Still going strong 🙂
Today was just as chilly and windy but with full sunshine as yesterday. The temperature barely rose to 14C (57,2F) but as long as I could stay out of winds reach it still was pretty nice. I am a bit tired of the wind now but it does at least blow away all the mosquitoes we have right now and we might have more forest flies than I noticed because of the wind as well. I had hoped the forest flies would take some time more to arrive, they really don’t do anything like bit but they hover around the head and every now and again they tries to get inside the nostrils and ears. I truly hate them for that.
In my garden right now. I can’t remember sowing this but I think it is some kind of sage.Frozen grapevine.Ginkgo.Geranium that I also have in white and pink.
I found a tick on my thigh the other day. It couldn’t have been there drinking my blood for especially long since it was almost totally flat but I am now of course feeling all the diseases it might have given me. To be honest I’m feeling fine but it does itch a lot where it bit me, just lime it would if it had been a mosquito. Still nasty animals and I would not have minded if they just died out, who would miss them? Most animals won’t even try to eat them unless they are starving badly 🙂 🙂
The three Venus Fly traps I have survived the winter in my cool cellar 🙂 Also two of the pitcher plants but two died. I hope they sell more so I can fill up the big pot. Anything eating flies is a friend of mine 🙂Lots of poppies in the old broken wheel barrow.Columbines all over the garden now.The small pear tree seedlings.
The potatoes are growing in the potato patch but also those sprouts that always break off from the potatoes when trying to untangle the potatoes from the net bag they put them in. I planted those in pots and buckets and so far they’ve shown above the surface in four out of five pots/buckets. Now I’ll continue to cover them with soil until they are almost completely filled, the more of those sprouts that are covered by soil the more potatoes I’ll get. I need more soil though so I’ll most probably go to the store tomorrow to buy more.
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I’m having a long weekend again 🙂 It’s our national day on Tuesday so I took Monday off as well. I’ll get a package on Monday and I must stay at home to recieve it otherwise I would have waited until Monday to get more soil I have bought an interesting book about our folklore beings and I’ll tell You more about it when I’ve read it through.
We once again woke up just before the sun was about to rise above the mountains and it felt really cold for the first time in a long time. To be honest it wasn’t that cold, the thermometer said it hadn’t been colder than 9C (48,2F) and warmer than that is still fairly uncommon here at nights. But the sky was cloudy and we had a rather strong and chilly wind so I guess the wind and the sky sort of made me think it was much colder 🙂
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It took quite some time before the sun showed itself so we didn’t go out on our walk before 6:15 and I guess that’s why I only saw two deer (the dogs only noticed one of them thankfully) but we heard them run away from us in the forest so Alma was a bit annoying big parts of our walk. The cold feeling has stayed for most of the day but I refused to close the kitchen door where the sun shines (even though we’ve had lots of clouds today). It is however amazing how fast it gets warm indoors again as soon as doors and windows are closed again, The sun is really warm now.
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I have been quite active again today, never thought that ever would happen 🙂 🙂 I have a part of the garden where I’ve had a woodland area and I have neglected it for several years. Once Trilliums thrived there and even self sowed, now I have one or two left and most of the ground was covered in either Wood avens (Geum urbanum) or Solomon’s seal and in early spring different wood anemones. The Hungarian lilacs had spread out and covered the air of over half the surface and an old apple tree that is slowly dying covered the rest. I guess You all by now know what I think of lilacs, so I just broke off lots of the branches, They seem almost impossible to kill so they’ll survive. I also broke off all dead branches of the apple tree.
A few of the branches I just tore off.Now finally there’s light in the woodland again.The tiny Pawpaw is said to like growing beneath bigger trees, at least as young, so while it slowly will grow taller the apple tree stays.Albin always look a bit grumpy. He doesn’t have that pitty smile.
After that I tore up all Wood avens, we have plenty left all over the garden and I also ripped up some of the Solomon’s seal. Now that little place is more open and some sunlight can reach everything growing closer to the ground. I already have an Ginkgo there but it has had a tough time and grown really slowly so I hope this will help a lot. I then planted the Pawpaw tree (well tree is a bit much to call it, can’t be more than a foot high 🙂 🙂 ) where I once had another apple tree that had to go due to tree cancer. Tree cancer is a fungi attacking the tree and it is almost impossible to save the tree once it gotten it. There’s also a rhododendron Catawbiense living there and I think it too will love a bit more sunshine. I also tossed out peat since both it and the Pawpaw likes a bit more acidic soil.
Nova might almost be 17 years old but she still plays with the other dogs every now and again.Alma is so much more careful when she plays with Nova, like when she plays with my neighbors daughter than she is when she plays with Albin. Sometimes it looks and sounds as if they are trying to kill each other 🙂 🙂 🙂.
I’ve also made dinner for the coming week and of course the weekly laundry. I have however not baked any bread and since that will take more than two hours to do I’ll just bake some scones. I haven’t been too successful in my previous tries but I’ll keep on trying till I get it right 🙂
In bloom in my garden right now, Columbine.Japanese quince.Bleeding heart.Aronia.
The Cottage by the crane lake. 