Category: Windy.

I forgot to take a nap!!

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

I’ve started to prune the Japanese quince so that the White Mulberry tree will have more space growing up.
I still don’t think this is a Creeping bluebell even though it’s quite similar. It’s much too high though, this one is higher than I and I’m six feet high.
Morus accidosa, Mulberry tree that’s very similar to the Black mulberry but much hardier. Gives smaller berries though but just as tasty.

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

     

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

First time in years the light can reach the ground here 🙂
Malkolm followed me all the time and here he has found the darkest and coolest spot in the garden 🙂
Light’s coming down after I had removed much of the lilacs and some of the branches of the apple tree.
After.

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

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

  

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

   

Have a great day!

I hope it starts to dry up now.

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

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

Have a great day!

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A storm passed by today and today it was noticeable even here in my garden, the strong ghusts shuffled the leaves in the trees pretty bad 🙂 The more steady wind was as always more or less unnoticeable here. They had guessed that we at least would have some sunshine in the early morning so I waited for quite some time before I gave up and we had our morning walk.

     

A good thing with the winds are that almost no flies are out and about irritating us 🙂 and if any mosquito had been desperate enough they still would have blown away really fast 🙂 Also pretty chilly for being a day in July, only 15C (59F) as warmest and that’s now in the early evening. I’ve noticed something, the dogs don’t like to be outside in the garden windy days like this, I think it is the roar from the wind blowing through the forest and perhaps they smell things from far away that they don’t like and believes what ever it is can be nearby.

   

I’ve been thinking about having a pond again but this time make sure no vole can chew through the rubber.

One being that I think exists all over the world is the Lantern man, When the day becomes night and one looks in to a forest or a bog one sometimes might see a flickering light, sometimes moving fast and sometimes really slow and if one is lucky one might even see the being carrying the light which is a small manlike being usually dressed in grey. It is the lantern man and quite often he tries to lure the human that see him out into the forest so they become lost. Sometimes however he lures them out into bogs or swamps to try and drown them. They will do the latter if they think one has been impolite or rude. However they can also save children being lost if one has been polite to them and also perhaps given them a coin or two (I guess that since silver always work with all other beings he would accept that too 🙂 )

     

They guess that he’s an evil spirit that, when he lived tricked others so that he made his property bigger at his neighbors cost, therefore he will never get peace after dying. He continues this behavior after death by moving property markings at nights, always saying this is wrong and that is right. The only way he can get peace is if someone follows him at nights moving back all the property markings he has moved. The thing is would one really follow someone that willingly would try and kill You just for fun? 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a cup of tea I think and then see what’s on tv.

Have a great day!

It’s raining, it’s pouring.

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Yesterday morning we all woke up pretty early and I thought why not stay up so I could have a really long and calm breakfast before going to work. I had just eaten breakfast and went to brush my teeth when I heard a loud crash. Malkolm had decided he should push down the glass plate I had my sandwiches on to the floor. So instead of having a nice calm morning I instead had a quite stressful morning going to work quite late instead 🙂

 

The cattle is in the pasture behind the Beekeepers cottage so that means we can’t walk along the creek because the path home is blocked with electric wires.
Can You guess what flower this is? I know You all know about it but perhaps never seen the actual flower. I’ll put the answer at the bottom 🙂

Now it’s Novas turn to have a bad stomach so I decided to boil more rice. I always put the pot on the stove and just barely let it start to boil before shutting down the stove, then put two handkerchiefs over the lid and just let it stay on the stove for twenty minutes, I made pancakes at the same time and put another glass plate beside the frying pan. The water just started to boil so I shut of that part and continued with my pancakes. Suddenly I could smell smoke and wondered what house was on fire when I realized that the handkerchiefs managed to reach down to the heat and had started to burn. The odd thing was that the water just kept on boiling harder and harder. That’s when I realized I hadn’t turned it off, instead I had started the stove top under the glass plate.

The oak refused to break when bigger trees fell over it, now it’ll always have that bend 🙂

   

I was just about to remove the plate when it suddenly exploded 🙂 🙂 Thankfully this plate was of a more good quality so the pieces mostly stayed on the stove but some dropped down on the floor. So I had to pour out the pancake batter, clean the floor (vacuuming it) clean out the frying pan, all the dog bowls and restart with making a new batch with pancake batter 🙂 🙂 I’m glad I had enough with eggs because for some reason I decided yesterday not to buy any on my way home from work 🙂 🙂 Besides that we’ve had a calm day. We managed to take a morning walk even though the sun they said would show before the rain never did.

the first blueberries growing by the bog 🙂

   

It is pouring down outside right now and thunder is on the way, I’m not sure if it will hit this village or if the mountain will push it to the other side. Tomorrow will most likely be rainy as well and we’ll have an almost storm passing by as well. We’ve also had a long nap today 🙂 Nice to know I can have that the coming four weeks 🙂 and since the weather seems to stay like this I might even have the chance to have two naps each day 🙂 🙂

     

It’s time for a pot of tea and then perhaps watch the Eurovision Championship in football (soccer for You Americans :- )

 

Have a great day!

The flowers is a wild carrot 🙂

Väettir.

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Today is actually the real midsummer but they’ve made sure that it always is celebrated on the first Friday after summer solstice. Midsummer eve isn’t a holiday (Midsummers day is though) but most people working in factories and offices still have the day off and it’s also a payed free day. This is the last holiday we have before Christmas. I would say that it is as big or perhaps even a bigger holiday here than Christmas. The bad traffic started already today because everyone wants to be where ever they are supposed to be already today.

 

This is an unusual Plantago major since it is variegated. Normally they are seen as somewhat irritating weeds but for some reason they aren't when they look like this :-)
A variegated Plantago is really unusual and if I had liked them I would have brought this one home. Normally they are seen as weeds but for some reason not when they look like this 🙂 🙂

I’ll write more about the celebrations and folklore the coming days. Today I’ll tell You about Vättar (Väettir). They are usually small beings dressed in grey clothes but they can easily change to something else like toads or little mice. Like all beings they can be rather grumpy but we rarely know that we have them around us since they can change what they look like. There are several different kinds of Väettir, it all depends on where they live, like lake väettir, mountain väettir and forest väettir. It isn’t unusual that they live just beneath our cottages and if there are unusually many toads hanging around in our gardens it might be because they actually are Väettirs 🙂

Bumblebee beetle. Some years there are plenty of them here and some years one is lucky to see one.

  The Blue vetch grows everuýwhere here and I like it a lot. 

So if one lives a calm and orderly life and don’t disturb them they might become Your friend and then help you with the animals or perhaps give you and unusual amount of good luck. They really don’t like warm water so if one would toss out some from the home one should always warn them before one does. If one would meet a Väettir that needs help and help with what ever it is they usually give you a gift. It might look like an old pine cone or a stone, always take it and thank for it because they day after it can have turned in to gold or gemstones. If you don’t help them or disturbs them in any way they then instead might give You some terrible disease.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night by an awful screaming of fear (and the barking sound of an older deer), sounded like a small baby deer was attacked by something, probably a fox. I thought it must have been the young one that the doe in the cow patch was the mother too. I found the doe walking in the cow patch when I left for work and thought that she might look for her young one and felt so sorry for her.
She was still in the cow patch when I returned home (almost impossible to see her here) and she was completely calm. So either it was another animal screaming or she managed to scare what ever it was away 🙂

Väettirs are guardians of the area so I wonder if they live where gnomes doesn’t. Normally gnomes lives at farms while Väettirs seems to be more adaptable and live even close to poor people. They are my favorite beings to be honest just because they more often are kind than evil. Have I mentioned that there lives an unusual amount of toads in my garden? 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

Have a great day!

Don’t try to catch a hornet.

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The only photo I have of Malkolm today 🙂 He and Alma learned that it isn’t a good idea to try and attack a Hornet, Alma was limping for a while and Malkolm as You can see was stung on the back.

 

More mixed weather today than what they guessed yesterday. It was sunny and rather cool in the morning while we were out on our morning walk but the clouds arrived much earlier, so by the time we came home the sky had an evenly dark grey color.

No ALT texts today, too tired in my brain :-)     

With darker day comes the mosquitoes and once again they attacked my ancles when I was watering the newly planted seedlings. The Dahlias were still there so perhaps the slugs still doesn’t know they are there. The dogs really didn’t want to be outdoors even though it has been warm but I guess they too are a bit sick of the insects now.

The little creek up by the bog is almost dried out oddly enough since it has been raining so much but the ferns shows where it usually flows.

 

Besides doing my chores it has been a rather uneventful day, perfect really 🙂 I’ve watched some football (soccer) and we took a nap, shorter than I had hoped for because a friend called on the phone. At least I didn’t sleep for too long so that I can fall asleep tonight 🙂 I have a short work week ahead of me because on Friday it’s Midsummers eve and that’s a big thing here.

   

To be honest I think it is even bigger than Christmas here and even though the church tried to make it a christian holiday (John the Baptist’s’ Birthday) it’s all pagan here to be honest 🙂 According to the folklore it’s a day when the Beings are out and about a lot and if we do it right we can keep us all healthy during winter and also see the future if we want to. For those new to this place but have been following me on post I think I’ve told You about the trolls and perhaps gnomes but there are a lot more to tell. I’ll start telling You more about the beings and how we celebrate Midsummer over here from tomorrow.

     

I have re-potted the Guava trees today. I think they have been a bit confused with the weather because first it was hot as h..l here, then almost autumn weatherwise plus all the rain, so they haven’t been growing that well, especially the roots have stopped to grow. I can only hope they’ll start growing again now when it has become a bit warmer. All apricots, peaches and pear trees are now re-potted as well.  and I had a few seedlings from the Lemonquat seeds I sowed just before the warmth arrived. It takes far less time to get a seed sown Kumquat, limequat, lemonquat and what ever other quat there is out there 🙂   than it takes for orange, lemon or lime trees sown from seeds. For those it can take up to ten fifteen years before they flower but perhaps, with a bit of luck, only four to five years for the quats. It is time for a cup of tea so I don’t fall asleep in front of the tv later. Only four more days before long weekend again 🙂

I totally forgot that I also planted the last potatoes in pots today. The sprouts were so long that I made them follow the inside of the pot 🙂
The Guava trees has changed color to red, normally a sign that they stand in too much sunlight but these doesn’t so I have no idea to why they’ve done that.
I hope the old Pawpaw tree that survived winter here also speed up the growth of the new leafs now when the warmer weather return.
Perennials and trees can take years to start germinate so I’m quite pleased that I now have Giant Sequoias growing.
The Himalayan Cedar is coming fine 🙂

 

If You want a flower that will keep on flowering until autumn, smells really odd and would spread like wildfire this is the one for You, Nepeta sibirica, Siberian catmint (our name for it is Siberian dragon flower). It is 5 feet high and smother any other flower to death within a year 🙂 Only just as invasive flowers can keep it in control 🙂 🙂 It is beautiful though.

Have a great day!

It is at least warmer again.

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Misty morning looking up the road before leaving for work.
No the coming photos with morning mist isn’t from today, I had those in my car camera.

It is raining outside, a nice gentle summer rain and the temperature rose up to 18C (64,4F) so it’s quite nice outside. It looks like Malkolm doesn’t mind rain after all, he’s the only one of them that willingly goes out no matter how much it is raining, Nova and Alma just stand by the door opening looking at him 🙂 🙂 I’m still trying to figure out what kind of dog he will be as grown up, when it comes to behavior I men. There are no signs of herding characteristics, not good at fetch but is truly gentle and like rain.

Fur photos taken in the village on my way to work when we had a few misty mornings.
My work friend once said that this isn’t a village but a wasteland 🙂 Big open fields in the middle with a few groups of houses and cottages spread here and there around it 🙂

   

That sort of fits with both Cockerspaniel and Golden retriever. Border-collie isn’t a retrieving dog so that fits with him, then again no herding 🙂 So it will most likely be something towards the golden and spaniel . All goldens and spaniels I’ve met have loved water 🙂 I tried to see how high he is now and he’s somewhere around (he wouldn’t stand still 🙂 🙂 ) 42cm-44cm (16-18 inches) high. That’s actually higher than what a Golden should be at that age?! He’s still the little guy here, Nova is 52 cm (almost 21 inch high) and Alma is 70 cm (28 inch high).

Malkolm yesterdxay when I had come home from work. The big package behind him is the dog food and toys I had ordered :-)
Malkolm waiting for me to walk in with him and as You can see the dog food and toys I’d ordered had arrived.

Buttercups, in the real those flowers are slightly tinged with green, really hard to get in a photo.

The haunted tree.  Still can't remember the name on this one :-)

Our morning however was rather wonderful! Sunshine and cool enough to keep all mosquitoes calm but not cool enough to keep the flies calm. Still it was enough to wear a hoodie to keep them away from bot nostrils and ears 🙂 Later on a strong wind arrived so that kept most of the flies away as well. We walked down to the creek and Nova sort of thought that was a good idea, not great though so she did walk more slowly than usual 🙂 The only animal I could see, besides birds, was a deer. I had hope that we would meet the foxes again but perhaps tomorrow, They’re guessing that we’ll have much the same weather tomorrow, cool and sunny in the morning and warm but rainy in the afternoon. They are guessing much of next week will be much the same 🙂

Down at the creek, lots of flies there but surprisingly few mosquitoes.     

I let both Nova and Malkolm walk without a leash on the last part of our walk, turns out Nova had quite a lot of speed in her legs 🙂 🙂 She did stop and look after us every now and again but we were never really close to her until we came back to the gate 🙂 🙂 🙂 Malkolm followed her for a while but decided to run back to Alma and me. He is very slowly accepting the smell from the anti tick spray and I could only find one tick on him when I checked him before I let him go inside. Alma had five and Nova only one.

  Quite often we meet a fox here but I guess she has learned when we come by :-)  I'm pretty sure that if the deer hadn't moved I wouldn't have seen him at all but they are more cautious now when we have wolves here. 

Besides that I haven’t done much today, I did plant the dahlias I’ve sown but I don’t think they’ll last for long. Lots of hungry snails and slugs now when the weather is like it is. We don’t have the feared Spanish forest slug here, it behaves like a forest machine when cutting down trees, it eats anything and everything in its way but our native slugs and snails are enough as it is. One advantage we do have here though is the Panther slug, it eats other small slugs so we take really good care of those 🙂 🙂 So to be honest, it could have been much worse.

Nova and Malkolm walking ahead of us.  She did stop every now and again to check where we were :-)  Malkolm stopped and waited for us. 

Time to go down to the tv and watch the European championship in football (soccer for You Americans). I’m not a huge football fan but I do like to see these big championships 🙂

Malkolm then decided he wanted to walk with me and Alma.     

Have a great day!

I had forgotten to bring in the water bowl and (lying inside the bowl) the treat cup yesterday :-)
The water bowl I forgot to bring in yesterday 🙂

The dog yard fence is now slowly covered in Boreal vetch (and stinging nettles) on one side and

One neighbor once threw away hops he had in his garden not knowing how great it is at surviving. Male plants though so nothing to use for either scent or beer making :-)
hops on the other.

It isn’t the printer that doesn’t work as I want :-)

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I’ve been trying to print out some documents and it has been so annoying! It’s actually not the printer that makes me angry, it’s the Open office documents I at the moment put all my hate towards 🙂 🙂 I use an old laptop and don’t have a mouse to it, so I use the touch sensible thing on the laptop. As soon as I have managed to get it just like I want it and have saved it and by accident touches that area  it suddenly totally changes the look of the document, doesn’t matter that I’ve saved it. So then I need to go though it all again, fix all that has changed and ever so carefully try to print it out.

   

The Iceberg lettuce and also the Chard is growing fine.

It is quite often not enough to be ever so careful, so I’ve printed out three pages at least five times now 🙂 🙂 🙂 The last copies came out alright, not perfect but close enough to just give up and accept that the universe hates me 🙂 🙂 🙂 The strange thing is that the printer always works as it should!!?? Normally printers die just when one need it the most but not this one. I’ve started to call it the old faithful 🙂 🙂 🙂

   

My first strawberry 🙂

The weather has been really mixed, well the temperature hasn’t been mixed at all, 10C (50F) or just around that. Lots of sunshine but even more clouds, rain and thunder plus the addition of strong winds. I guess the relatively low temperature has kept the grass fairly calm and I haven’t had to water anything 🙂 Now I can start using the vegetables I’m thinning out on especially sandwiches 🙂 The tomato vines have stopped growing though, too chilly for them I’m afraid. Also I think me melon vines dies, it looks like they have though 🙂 🙂 🙂

My Pawpaw seedlings are a bit confused I guess because they never experienced winter but it was cool in the cellar and then were tossed out into hot summer just to be thrown in to chilly weather again 🙂 but they all live and only two of them refuse to let the old leafs drop 🙂

My Mango tree has just been re-potted.

Lupinus texensis. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed when the flowers became white instead of blue but now I at least have lupines here 🙂

I’ll get new working hours, again 🙂 , from next Tuesday but this time they’ve only changed it from 6:20 am- 3:20 pm to 7 am- 4 pm. I’ll be a resource person that they can put in anywhere in the painting department because I know it all. I would have preferred to leave the painting department for ever but for some reason they’ve decided that I’ll stay there till I die or retire 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

I think my cold is calming down now, I’m really sure it isn’t pollen because after all this raining there can’t be any pollen left in the air. Lots of tea with sliced ginger in it and I think the ginger has helped but then again i really like the taste of fresh ginger so if it hasn’t helped it did at least make the tea delicious 🙂

Have a great day!

A day with warmth and sunshine, it’ll rain tomorrow.

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Every year since long before I moved here poppies have grown outside the Beekeepers garage.

I have two really happy dogs beside me right now. Warmer weather and no rain so now they’ve been playing outside all afternoon/ evening 🙂 Also a short walk after I had come home was really liked. Unfortunately the Forest fly season has started so after walking to the bog we all hurried out of the forest again 🙂 These flies are really harmless in all way but they always try to get inside the ears and nostrils and if they can’t they just walk around on the hair. So annoying!!! So I better find my mosquito hat otherwise I’ll refuse to take any walk after it becomes warmer than 10 C (50 F).

Clouds missing my village, they pass south or north of us :-)

This is some kind of Lathyrus, Sweet pea relative and it grows along the gravel raod.
I can’t remember the name but this is a close relative to Sweet Pea. Could be Spring pea perhaps ?

The first wild strawberries, they grow all over the forest and in to our garden :-)
The first ones for the year. I didn’t eat any because too many dogs walk by there and god only knows how many pee on them 🙂

They’re guessing that it’ll stay this warm tomorrow again but with rain and thunder. After that a few days with lower temperatures again and then up to summer temperatures and with rain almost the entire time, I guess the mosquitoes will be happy about that 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it might be time to go fishing and put what ever I catch in the little lake behind my garage, a few fish can eat a lot of mosquito larvae 🙂

White beam, not especially common growing in the wild outside this village. Whitebeam isn't rare here normally but I can't find it anywhere in this area except for in this forest.
Whitebeam.

The Birch wood on the way out to the tip of the peninsula in the bog. 

Lots of butterflies here now :-)
I’m not good at butterfly names 🙂

I found a new anti tick, horsefly, mosquito spray in the pharmacy last Friday. The last one I had smelled like really bad deodorant, the kind of buy while being abroad somewhere warm and wonder why one never find something like that at home and when You do come home fully understands why not 🙂 🙂 This one doesn’t seem so bad to be honest, it smells like a very flowery perfume older ladies used in the sixties. Sort of discrete but powerful. The thing is that it sticks around and if some of it has hit the floor or a wall that discrete smell sort of grows and fills the entire home and in the end forces You out of Your own home 🙂 :-)Nova doesn’t care much, Alma shows her displease and Malkolm starts to roll around in anything that might smell so bad that it at least kills the flowery smell 🙂 🙂 🙂

The bog.     

It’s supposed to be for humans as well so I sprayed some on myself as well. That smell has now followed me at work and it’s really hot where I work and I can tell You that heat really make this smell grow thousandfold. The bottle is new and it seems to do the job so I’ll keep on using it until I find something else 🙂 Can’t they come up with something that works but at least doesn’t stink so much 🙂 🙂

Maianthemum bifolium, relative to Lady in the valley and smells really nice.
Maianthemum bifolium, the Swedish name for it is Squirrel berries and I have no idea why 🙂

   

I won’t write anything tomorrow, too much to do but I’ll return on Thursday. I used to take Wednesdays off from the blog when I helped my friends daughter with her French homework and that continued even after she left school for good but instead of Wednesdays I’ll have a break every Monday, I never seems to be able to do what I should on Mondays any more 🙂 It is time for a cup of tea and perhaps something to nibble at as well 🙂

I guess You want a photo of Malkolm 🙂

Have a great day!

Winds, rain, thunder and cold.

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Too tired for ALT text today, this cold is slowly killing me I think :-) :-)
Good thing I still have lots of photos from earlier 🙂 So this is the same fox I showed yesterday.

I know I’ve said that I really liked that it had cooled down a lot but I didn’t mean it should cool down so much that I almost have to start the radiators again! 10C (50F) outside today, heavy showers on and off plus really strong winds really isn’t what I want in June. On the other side all these clouds that covers the sky does keep the night frost away and we normally have our last night with frost around June sixth. So nothing bad that doesn’t bring something good as well but to be honest we could have had the same weather but at least 20C (68F) so we at least could go outside in between showers 🙂 🙂

(more…)

Long weekend.

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The clouds have come and gone since noon today but it was mostly sunny after I came home.

It rained in the village where I work but I could see no signs of any rain here in the village. The creek was really full though so the rain must have been heavy there. It was also slightly warmer today than they guessed yesterday but it still didn’t rise above 16C (60,8F) and it sounds as if we all love it at the moment 🙂

Buttercups. Can't remember the name on this one but I think it grows in North America as well.

I’m not a fan of spruces in our forests butt they do look great when the new growth comes.

I noticed that the dogs loves it as well, even old Nova had much more energy today and isn’t as badly bitten by mosquitoes as she was yesterday. We have also had a really strong wind blowing and that if anything helped a lot with those biting little nasties, they aren’t strong enough to fly around in such a strong wind 🙂 I noticed that they still sell annual lupine seeds (in this case the Texas lupine) here so I ordered some yesterday before they forbid those as well. I sowed some early this spring directly in the ground and they do germinate but rather unevenly. The biggest I have now will son open up the flowers but the latest showing is barely 10 cm (4 inches) high.

  I was hoping that I would see damselflies down by the creek today because I've seen planty of dragonflies in the air now but had no such luck,    The little Forest star thrives down by the creek.

We walked down to the creek after I had come home after work, as I wrote the creek was really full of water but the ground barely damp, They’re guessing that we’ll have much the same weather for at least ten more days and even though I feel sorry for those having vacation and wants warmer weather and sunshine I really have nothing against cooler weather even if it also means more rain. Then again I don’t have to water anything during that time 🙂 🙂 I do need to continue to water those trees I’ve planted though and will have to do that all summer because it takes so long for the roots to grow out into the soil. The first thing that will dry out is the old soil that was in the pot the tree came in so it is important to help those trees until the roots have started to spread underground.

This is what curled leaf disease looks like. Normally if it is this bad the tree will die rather soon but I did spray it with sulfur like last year and new leafs without the fungus are showing.

Sally and Salmiak sitting at the end of the road.   

This is a weed extraordinaire :-) I thought I had managed to remove it but four years after the last I saw it came back again :-) Beautiful but invasive and the berries are either crap or taste nothing :-)
Flowering raspberry.

Malkolm is sleeping by my side and so deep that he doesn’t react when I scratch him, Nova is snoring so loudly that it actually should wake her up 🙂 Good for her that she’s almost deaf 🙂 🙂 Alma is almost never sleeping especially deep, thew slightest sound will make her run up from where she is and then she’ll run down the stairs 🙂 🙂

Yellow flag growing in the root zone.

It’s still hard to get photos of the tiny new leafs of the old Pawpaw 🙂

I used tto have lots of Foxglows in my garden when I moved here, suddenly they were gone so I sowed seeds last year to get them back :-)
Foxglove.

I’m not sure the dogs like the new toys I bought 🙂 I bought two “tennis balls”, They aren’t but they look like them but are bigger and there’s a kind of rubber guard around them. They play with them but as soon as the squeaky thing in them gives out a squeak the dogs get scared and leaves it alone 🙂 I also bought a ball looking like a small orange american football. There are places all around it where one is supposed to put treats in and then the dogs are supposed to chew on the ball so the treats sort of falls out. The problem is that Malkolm has figured it out but he isn’t strong enough to chew out the treats and Alma still can’t figure it out so she doesn’t tough it 🙂 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for a cup of cocoa and then to bed, they day has felt twice as long as it has been and I’m so glad that I now have a four day weekend 🙂

Have a great day!

Cooler days and soon long weekend :-)

· 6 Comments ·

Old Nova, she's 18 years old now and still going strong :-)

It is finally a bit cooler outside. Not so much when being in the sunshine but a lot when staying in the shadow. I had to water everything when I came home yesterday and suddenly it was evening and time to go to bed, so that’s why I didn’t write anything. Today the ground still was damp so I only watered the trees and bushes I’ve planted in the garden this spring. Well to be honest we haven’t had much of a spring this year, it went from winter to summer in a day or so 🙂 🙂

More and more wild flowers flowers now.  Cooler and nicer in the forest but oh so many biting insects.  The Swedish name for this flower is Hags' tooth.  On our way out on the peninsula out to the bog.

Something is chewing on the new beans, have no idea what it can be but oddly enough only the ones sown in a straight line, I had a few beans left so I just put them down close to the fence and those are untouched. I also had a few peas left so I sowed those in the old broken wheel barrow, they seems to grow even better than all other plants I’ve sown this year 🙂 🙂 Lots of potato plants showing up in the vegetable patch I don’t use this year, I have instead sown seeds (not too successfully I might add) I haven’t had potatoes there for three summers and they still pop up 🙂 🙂 Can I cal them hardy now? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Despite the harw wind this place was packed with mosquitoes, that sort of dampens the joy of having a walk even in plsces where one loves to walk otherwise.    The bog is now full with Hare tail cotton grass.  They are already releasing their seeds now.

Yesterday we had a strong wind and walked out to the bog, normally that ,means the mosquitoes and flies will stay away from us, now we have so many mosquitoes that we were attacked badly when we arrives at the Birch woodland. So today with less wind we stayed at home, Nova is once again so badly bitten all over her head that I thought it would be cruel to bring her out to even more biting insects, it’s bad enough here at home to be honest. It’s a price we have to pay for having so many trees and bushes in this little garden of mine.

Malkolm grows so fast now.

Alma reacted as if she had injured the ball when it started to squeak, I don't think she'll touch it again until I've removed the squeaker :-)
Alma with the new toy, she loved it until it in, her ears, started to scream 🙂 It’s a squeaky thing in that ball and neither she nor Malkolm liked that 🙂 🙂

Those two are playing all day 🙂

I had a little walk in the garden before the mosquitoes chased me indoors. The Black Walnut is flowering, the English is living and now have two branches. The trees I plated this year all look great and the Pawpaw from last year now have green small dots all over the branches, even the ones I thought had frozen. The green dots are tiny, tiny leafs. Also the Persimmon hybrid that dies but where the Persimmon root (Diospyros virginiana) now creates at least eight new branches 🙂 I’ve read that it’s fairly easy to take some of those branches to create new trees from. Well they will. technically all be the same tree but I did also buy a new real persimmon this spring so I hope that at least that I’ll get both male and female trees from this.

This is a favorite in parks and everywhere really, Rose rugosa. It is now seen as invasive and I have no idea how they'll be able to remove them all, especially since it does spread like wildfire :-)
Rosa rugosa, the Swedish name for it would be something like Grumpy rose 🙂

We call this Iris for Swords lily.
Yellow flag.

See all those new branches the Persimmon tree creates now when the hybrid is dead :-)
Lots of new growth from the roots of the Persimmon tree 🙂 The inoculation dies during this winter but the Persimmon root survived and now gives lots of more branches 🙂

I found Morning glories, peas, poppies and Californian poppies growing here now. The poppies refuse to grow in my garden but always grow well in the wheelbarrow for some reason and no summer without Californian poppies at my home :-)
The old wheelbarrow will look good this year 🙂

Tomorrow will be the last working day this week, we have our national day on Thursday and I took Friday off. The weather will be cooler as I’ve already said and they are guessing we’ll get rain as well. I don’t care as long as we at least have sunshine when we’re out on walks, the rest of the time will be good napping times 🙂

Have a great day!