The hunters were out until just after noon so we could have a walk in the forest while there was daylight. Thankfully we have no wind now because it fell down to -15C (5F) last night, much less cold during the day though but the temperature will drop just as low tonight again.
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We went out to the bog and even though we didn’t see any animals we could hear what I think was a complaining wild hog while it ran away from us. No small birds or any birds to be honest. I guess the bigger ones stay close to the roads to eat what has been killed by traffic during the night and the smaller ones seems to be at my feeders 🙂
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The Wood Grouse might not be a Wood Grouse after all. People knowing birds better than I do says the coloring is wrong. It has the size of one though so until they can tell me what it actually is I’ll still call it a Wood Grouse. It can be a crossing with the Black Grouse though, they do look different in their colors. It is still around every day though and I’ve noticed that it hasn’t any tail feathers, a close call with a lynx perhaps?
A female Bullfinch, the bright red dot above and behind it is a male.The female have a more dusty mauve color.The Blue tit rather stays close to the peanut feederand so does the Great tit.
We also had a visit from our local fox last night, I had the camera up for three days and as long as it snowed it stayed away, cold weather doesn’t seem to disturb it though.
Alma is usually the one most caught by the wildcam but usually she’s so blurry that it’s hard to see what she is, that dog runs all the time 🙂One photo with the fox in three days.
We have lots of snow now, I can’t pretend to like it but the dogs are at least clean when they come in from being in the garden. we’ve had two really cold nights, -15C (5F) but mostly it has been between -4C to -8C (24,8F to 17,6F).
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There’s so much snow now that the forest birds have problems reaching their food so yesterday I saw the first Bullfinches. I didn’t get any good photos of them, the best is the one shown below. That is a male, the females are more towards mauve colored. I also have a, in this area, very rare visitor and she comes by every day, a Wood Grouse. The roosters can weigh up to 7 kg (15,4 pound) but the hen usually around 3kg (6,6 pound). I’m not sure what she is eating here, they usually eat pine needles. So my guess is that she eats buds from the lilacs and some of the seeds on the ground. We haven’t had a wood grouse in these parts since long before I moved here 23 years ago so it’s kind of cool that when one comes it chose my garden 🙂
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We went down to the creek this morning. The snow that the weather sites said wouldn’t fall started to fall already yesterday evening 🙂 It didn’t stop falling until we were almost at home again 🙂 Lots of tracks from animals in the snow, mostly from wild hogs, roe deer, hares, a fox (possibly the one visiting my garden every night and either a small mosse or a big red deer. Only one human had walked there since the dogs and I walked there last time and that was a couple of days ago. My guess is that it is the beekeeper who has made those tracks, very few other people walk there in winter.
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Alma was a bit impossible on our walk today so my back feels a bit sour. She has behaved so much better lately but today was a day when she just couldn’t. Turns out that she isn’t especially quiet at nights when I am at work so now I have to figure out a way to either make her quiet down or dampen the sound from her barking. I’ve ordered two sun powered lights that will shine as soon as she’s outside in the dog yard, if that doesn’t help I’ll have to put up a wooden fence instead. Turns out that she sometimes is so loud that she wakes up my neighbors youngest daughter. They are the kindest and best neighbors one can wish for so I wish they would have told me when this started. Well I’ll figure out something to make her at least not sound as much.
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I’ve baked a bread today, I checked recipes online and the recipes are either really complicated or they all use a ready mad mix. So I just checked how much flour/ mix they were using and tossed in what I had (in this case oat flour, sorghum flour and rice flour) in the same ammount 🙂 I haven’t tried it yet because as soon as the bread was ready I put in french fries and meatballs in the oven. I’ll have a sandwich with meatballs, christmas ham and beetroot salad after writing this 🙂 As worse it’ll just taste like the breads one can buy and they work if one toast them 🙂
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Hunters out in the forest tomorrow and I hope they will hunt for wild hogs because we have so many of them now. They are now slowly destroying the forest roads I usually walk on and it is hard to see where they’ve been now when the snow covers everything. It is very surprising when there’s a deep hole beneath my foot when I can’t see it by looking at the snow 🙂 🙂
-10C (14F) here last night but despite it being well below 0C (32F) all day it still was a pretty nice day. The sun was even so warm that all snow on the south side of the cottage roof melted away. It was the lack of wind that did the trick.
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I haven’t done a single thing of what I usually do on Sundays. No dinner for next week, no laundry done and no vacuuming either which is really needed now. Then again the dirt won’t go away and now when it is as cold as it is none of us will bring in any more dirt anyway. The only good thing with these temperatures, even the dust has frozen to the ground 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I have done rice porridge but I forgot to start it in the early morning, I did it however early enough so that I could have some after a later walk 🙂 I was thinking, for a second, that I should decorate the tree as well but I’ll wait with that because the tree is nice enough with only the lights shining in it. The advent candlestick will have to wait since the snow covers all moss and lichens I would be able to find if there wasn’t any snow on the ground. The sad thing is that we’ll get more snow later next week so it’ll be even harder to find anything.
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I better go down and launder at least some t-shirts so I have anything to wear at work. I have enough of the rest to last at least until Thursday 🙂
I must admit that I was quite surprised when I peeked out the window this morning, the world had gone very white! I can’t remember anything like that when I looked at the weather sites yesterday. Still it is beautiful and i didn’t have to drive around in it today so I dislikes it just a little. The annoying thing is that it’ll stay for quite some time because it will stay below 0C (32F) for at least ten days, according to the weather sites and I guess that just because I don’t like this weather they will for once be right 🙂 🙂 🙂
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We had quite a lot of sunshine today but not while we were out walking and the wind that arrived with the sunshine was biting and nasty cold so I’m rather glad that we at least didn’t have that. No wolf around today because the dogs behaved normal, lots of tracks from other animals in the snow though, like hares, foxes, pigs and deer. I don’t know if the fox visited us last night because I forgot to place the wildcam and the dogs had been all over that part of the garden so no tracks were there by the time I was putting up the camera again.
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The snow really motivated me to bring up the yule spruce from the cool cellar. I’ve put the lights in it, I’m glad I bought two because the length of the light chains always sounds longer than they actually are 🙂 🙂 Still I almost wish I had bought three but I’ll rearrange them tomorrow to see if I can make them look longer. I put them on the back side of the tree as well and perhaps that’s a bit unnecessary. I’ll dress it tomorrow I think, for now the lights do the work 🙂
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I had planned to also decorate the advent candlestick today but the snow made it a bit difficult. Mosses and lichens are protected here so one isn’t supposed to pick any of it in nature. Well some moss can be picked with with the landowners permission and if lichens have fallen off the trees one can pick them as well but now snow covers it all. To be honest, I have lots of moss that has fallen off the roof so if I only can find it on the ground I can take that. It is still a week until the first of advent so I have time to fix it until then.
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We’ve had our pancake Saturday and I was thinking of making some rice porridge but I’ll wait until tomorrow. I can start the slow cooker when we go out on our morning walk and it’ll be ready an after after we’ve come home. the weather sites are saying that it’ll be just as or a even a bit colder than today and also that we’ll have sunshine so it’ll be nice to have some of that porridge after our walk.
Today has been sunny!! I can’t remember when that happened the last time. It didn’t look that we were going to have any sunshine when I woke up though but in only a few seconds all clouds went away and the sun appeared. I should have understood that we also had a rather strong wind blowing since the clouds moved away so fast. So even if i really enjoyed the sunshine it would have been so much nicer if we hadn’t had that wind. It also comes from the only direction where it can hit my cottage, so the kitchen and the room above are pretty cold but the rooms on the other sides are quite warm and comfortable 🙂
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I was quite busy the first half of the day. We went out for our morning walk as soon as we all had woken up. After that we had our breakfast and then I drove to the grocery store in Gudhem to pick up a package. I stopped on my way back at the Abbey ruin, the wind was nasty and bitterly cold up there. As soon as I came home we went out for another walk out to the bog, Nova wanted to walk there and I liked it because the wind wasn’t that bad in there in the forest. I’m pretty sure we had a wolf nearby because suddenly Alma started to behave, Albin looked concerned and Nova was in a hurry to get back home. As always I never saw one though.
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I put some french fries and two wiener sausages in the oven when I came back home and after eating that (the dogs got their share of fries 🙂 🙂 ) I took a long nap in the recliner with an around 60 pond pitbull sleeping on my chest and stomach. I couldn’t feel my legs when I finally woke up after a couple of hours 🙂 🙂 I slept for too long because I’m still rather tired. I’ll make a pot of tea after this, with my working hours I really don’t have to worry about not falling asleep early in the evening 🙂 🙂 🙂 and after I get the new ones I definitely won’t have to worry about that 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I would love to have some cookies right now but I don’t have any so I might bake some or a sponge-cake, I made a sponge-cake a week ago and even though it takes much longer to make a gluten free one in the oven it turned out really well. I had cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cardamom as spices in it and yes I did get christmas feelings 🙂 🙂 🙂
Blue tit. I’ve seen people asking where all the Blue tits have gone when looking on the net, it used to be one of the most common birds by the feeders. They’ve always been around here until this year. It wasn’t until yesterday I saw the first ones by my feeders so they are becoming more rare. I did read however that they are the tits that most common migrates during winter so I do hope that’s the reason we don’t see them as much now days.
I woke up way too early today, just before seven am but I’m still not tired so I do hope the tiredness doesn’t come too early because I need to stay up quite late since I’ll be working tomorrow. We had a rather nice morning here today, no wind, just below 0C (32F) and almost sunshine. We walked down to the creek and Alma behaved pretty well for most of the time.
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Nova on the other hand is still pretty annoyed because she’s leashed and she really don’t like that. I’ve told her that if she can’t behave and come when I call her (and sign for her to come, I’ve always learned my dogs signs for different things since many of them lost most of their hearing when going old) she will be leashed whether she likes it or not 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It is winter so I thought I should make lots of rice porridge, so I put the ingredients in the slow cooker and it was ready to eat when we came back from our walk to the bog later on. It takes around three hours to do it in the slow cooker but the risk of the porridge being burned is almost none to nothing. It takes at least an hour if doing it on the stove and then it just takes one mistake and the porridge will burn 🙂 🙂 I made the porridge a bit sweeter today because I was also longing for cookies 🙂 🙂 To make it even sweeter I also put some jam in it just before eating it, no craving for cookies after eating that 🙂 🙂 🙂
..The sun, so close but still so far away 🙂
I have however not done the laundry and no dinner for next week at work. I just didn’t want to to be honest. So I’ll do the laundry tomorrow before work and I’ll see what I can find in the freezer, I think I have meatballs and sausages in there and I can add an egg or two and perhaps some pasta or potatoes as well. It’ll be exciting to see how many that will turn up to work tomorrow, there are still a few people that weren’t sick last week so it might be their turn now.
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The fox came for several visits last night again. I did cheat and put out some dog food but it still moved a bit too fast so most photos were blurry. I’l see what I can do about that tonight, I’ve placed the camera a bit lower this time and I’ll place the dog food in one place and not just throw it out like I did yesterday. The reason I just threw it yesterday was because I had two dogs that would have loved to eat it and I had to do it while they were busy with other things 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I talked with a friend on the phone today and told him about my new hours. He has been a boss in several big grocery stores and he said those hours sounded horrible and only people one want to get rid of would get hours like that 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well at least I don’t have to work Fridays when it starts 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve polished the lens on the camera today so I hope that will help with the blurriness..Nothing will help when it comes to Alma though 🙂 🙂 🙂
A bit difficult to see but there’s a Blackbird sitting on a branch in the photo.
The weather report on tv yesterday said sunshine over almost the entire south of Sweden today, so I wasn’t the least surprised that it snowed when I woke up 🙂 🙂 🙂 No big flakes, just tiny ones so it created a thin dusting on the ground. Just enough to make it feel a bit christmassy and not so much that it annoyed me enough to hate winter even more 🙂 🙂 It also made the hunters out in the forest to give up quite early in the day so that made it even better 🙂
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I’ve been at home this week because I had fever and was tired all the time. Turns out that 21 more at work (I think we’re slightly more than 50 people working there) had the same thing, most likely the covid. Some had high fever, runny noses and lots of coughing and the rest of us were hit with milder symptoms. I didn’t have any fever yesterday and since I knew there weren’t lots of people working I thought I just as well would go to work. Good thing because without me there would only have been three people working 🙂 🙂 🙂
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We did what we could with only four people but then we came to the things we need lots more people around (masking and de-masking things), when we normally would have to be at least seven people there we couldn’t continue and since there was nothing else to do we all took the rest of the day off 🙂 So it wasn’t that bad to go to work when having the long Friday to work 🙂 🙂
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A work friend called me the same morning and told me that seven people have to go after the new year has started and they’ll stop having a night shift as well. I still have a job and will be a resource person. Jumping in at any place if someone is sick or do jobs on the side of the line. Don’t mind that but I can’t say I’m happy about the new working hours, I’ll start working at 3:25 pm and continue to work until 1:55 am. I will not work a single Friday though so I guess that’s ok but I also know that if I don’t sleep for as long as I must I will sleep all Friday instead. I guess I’ll get used to that as well but it doesn’t sound fun. The dogs will be fine though since they most likely just will continue to sleep since it is dark and the world will be quiet.
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The new working hours will start at week 50 so I’ll start with one week before christmas vacation starts. I do hope this only lasts for a short while since inflation has sunk and the Riksbank will most likely not make the interest rates higher so most likely people will feel a bit of hope again and start building new homes and buy new things so that we soon will be needing those people who can’t stay. It’s a horrible world really when we need people to spend all their money so that other people can get jobs and by doing so also make the climate crisis even worse.
...I wanted to post a video here with the fox passing by but now days I can’t since I need to pay for Premium to be able to post videos so I say to WordPress Up Yours!
Lots of birds at the new feeder and I also got a few nice photos of the fox that visits us almost every night. I accidentally had made the camera take videos the first nights so there’s one video as well showing the fox. I also have some photos of Albin pooping and Alma running around like crazy mostly looking like a blurr 🙂 🙂 🙂 The fox looks healthy and I was thinking of placing some dog food in front of the camera so I could get more nice photos of the fox and possibly the badger if it comes again and hasn’t started its winter sleep. I’ve learned that badgers doesn’t hibernate but instead just sleeps, oh how I wish I was a badger 🙂 🙂
Greater Woodpecker.House sparrow.Field sparrow.The rest of them show Great tits..
I woke up at 6:30 this morning when I heard Nova running down the steps, that’s never a good thing to hear. The old lady prefers to sleep until it’s almost panic to get out to pee 🙂 🙂 I really think I rushed down the stairs fast enough but she had already peed in the living room. When she does like this she always do it in the same spot so I know where to clean it up. She has done this her entire life here so it isn’t because she’s sick because of old age. She just likes to sleep for as long as she can and probably think it is my fault for not letting her out when she wants to only because I’m sleeping 🙂 🙂 So I’ll force her outside late tonight, something I didn’t yesterday because she wa sleeping so nicely and for that I had to pay today 🙂
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The weather has been just as boring today as it has been earlier. We didn’t get the fog they said we would but we did get the rain they said we shouldn’t get 🙂 Also I almost saw the sun for several seconds before the gap in the clouds flew elsewhere. Still the morning walk was rather nice, especially since Alma almost behaved today 🙂 She has a high pitched whining that cuts like a knife and today she quieted down pretty early, the pulling the leash idea she has were much less annoying as well. It goes up and down with her behaviour though, some days she’s rather good, other days she’s worse than usual. It can even be worse the second or third walk, one would think that she should calm down when we’re out several times in a day 🙂 🙂
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I was thinking I would buy myself a terrarium, not to have any reptiles in but the bottom third as an aquarium and the two top thirds for plants. I found one really nice and it does cost a small fortune. The thing is there isn’t ant table that goes with it. I did try to find anything but the tables I did find almost cost half as much as the terrarium and then the small fortune would become a big fortune 🙂 I can’t use any table since it weighs quite a lot. To be honest shouldn’t they also offer some kind of table that fits what they are selling? I became so annoyed that I decided I won’t buy a terrarium 🙂 I will however buy the biggest tin with Quality Street bonbons, almost 3kg (6,6 pound) 🙂
We had thick fog once again this morning but since hunters were out in the forest, one can wonder why because they really couldn’t see anything out there 🙂 🙂 🙂 , we couldn’t enjoy it. We might have fog again tomorrow so I hope it lasts long enough for us to have a walk in it.
...We call these (well the entire bush) for Goat apple. They are poisonous for us humans and I have no idea why they got that name 🙂 If one for some odd reason would eat those berries one would pee red.
So I’ve put up the new bird feeder and I do hope Alma won’t try and take it down 🙂 The House sparrows and the Tree sparrows are so used to me that they don’t care that I stand on the other side of the window. The Big tits however are more suspicious and flies away as soon as they realize I’m there. So I had to turn off the lights in the kitchen so they couldn’t see me as well and then they came to the feeder. I still haven’t seen a single Blue tit and that’s odd because they used to be the third most common bird around my feeders.
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Nova wanted to go out to the bog today but when we reached the peninsula we always walk out on she suddenly didn’t want to. Neither Alma or Albin showed any reaction so we continued out anyway. Turns out that someone had been riding there and Nova has never been particularly fond of horses so I guess that was the reason. Today was supposed to be rain free so I wasn’t the least surprised that it rained every now and again 🙂 🙂 🙂
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We had our Saturday pancakes when we came home and even though the dogs had their pancakes Albin still complained when i didn’t give him any more 🙂 🙂 Yesterday I had pommes strips for dinner and the dogs got their fair share of them, besides Albin drooling so much that I had to clean the floor afterwards he still complained when there were no more strips left 🙂 🙂
Still some color in my garden..I need to dig down the pots with plants in the ground since I don’t have space for them in my cellar.This is how much of the ground in my garden looks like now. Even though the surface is just an inch deep with soil and beneath it it’s just sand the water doesn’t go anywhere.
The weeks when I have a long weekend feels a bit odd. Today was the second day I was at home and it felt like I needed to prepare for working tomorrow 🙂 🙂 It’s around the same time every second weekend, just after noon, that happens 🙂 I guess old habits die hard 🙂 🙂
I’ve placed on of my Camellias in the coolest spot I have in my cottage and now it shows lots of buds. Camellias are picky primadonnas and I really don’t know why I don’t just throw them away, make one mistake during the year and they won’t flower and most likely die as well 🙂 🙂 This one however is at the moment showing lots of buds, it might flower around Christmas if I’m really lucky...
It has been raining so much lately that I slid on flat ground yesterday and fell to the ground like an axed tree , it’s so wet that the grass no longer can keep the soil together. The fog arrived already yesterday afternoon, sometimes it was so foggy that I didn’t know where I was 🙂 🙂 To my big surprise we still had fog when I woke up so I hurried the dogs and myself so that we would have a chance to have at least a part of our walk in it.
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Turns out that I hurried unnecessary, the fog stayed all day even though it became less thick just before the sun was on its way down 🙂 🙂 The cold that never breaks out really worn me down this week, so as soon as we had come home and had had something to eat I decided that I should have a nap in my recliner. Just as I had covered myself in a blanket Albin decided that he should join me in a nap, on the recliner 🙂 So for an hour and a half I had a 60-ish pound pitbull sleeping on my chest and stomach 🙂 🙂 I can tell You that I really didn’t need that blanket 🙂 🙂
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I bought myself an Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) this week. I haven’t had one in over a decade if I remember right. I just picked one up without checking what color it will have on its flowers, turns out it is going to be white. That surprised me a bit because around here white flowers means death since they only have them when it’s a funeral. I have nothing against white flowers though but those labels are quite often wrong, so to be honest it can look very different to what the labels shows. I’ll put it out in the garden when spring arrives and with a bit of luck I’ll remember to bring it in again when autumn arrives, I tend to forget and that’s the reason I haven’t had an Amaryllis in over a decade 🙂 🙂 They are easy to sow though but it takes at least three years before it’ll give You a flower.
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I’ve baked some french rolls today. They didn’t turn out like rolls though, they sort of flattened out instead 🙂 🙂 Instead of rice flour I used oat flour and it turns out that one need much more oat flour than rice flour, otherwise the dough gets too sticky and soft. I haven’t tried them yet but they smell really nice and I’m pretty sure they’ll taste really nice as well. Last week I hung out a net with peanuts for the birds outside my kitchen window. It tok a while before the birds found it but it became pretty popular after a while. One morning the net was gone and I knew they couldn’t have finished it so fast. At first I thought it was Magpies that had removed it but I think it was too heavy even for them. Then suddenly one of my dogs (I won’t say her name but she’s big and looks like a German shepherd) farted really loud and there was a tinge of peanut in the smell that followed 🙂 🙂
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It is time to try that bread and after that I’ll most likely fall asleep in the recliner in front of the tv. I do hope this is the end of that cold, it has stayed for way too long now.
We actually had sunshine for a couple of hours here today!! but since the hunters were out in the forest all the time it shone we couldn’t enjoy it on our walk. Isn’t it typical that the one day the sun shines they’ve decided since long that they should be out hunting 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really can’t complain about them because I they haven’t been out there especially much this autumn, bit it is still annoying 🙂
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Nova is quite angry at me today. Isn’t it strange how a dogs hearing can change so much as it does sometimes? yesterday for instance I very quietly opened a box with toffee and she could hear that even though she was sleeping upstairs in my bedroom. Today however she couldn’t hear me calling her when she was two meters ahead of us when I wanted to take a detour on our way out to the bog 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I leashed her as soon as we caught up with her and she’s been really angry since then ,even though we’ve had pancakes for dinner after our walk 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will continue to have her leashed for a while because if she’s a bit too far away from the rest of us and a wolf is nearby it might be the last thing she’ll do. I guess that a lonely old dog is way to tempting for a wolf to just let got.
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Besides that very little has happened. I’ve made dinner for work in the slow cooker but I haven’t tasted it yet 🙂 I’ve also done the laundry so now after this I’ll bake some bread. I have a cold that doesn’t want to break out so I hope it will go away by tomorrow because I feel tired all the time. Either that or break out so I can get rid of it that way 🙂
Long working Friday means slow Saturday. I really can’t understand the genius at work who thought it would be a good idea to make the last working day in the week also the longest (start earlier in the day and stop one hour later in the night). Ok it’s only every second week that happens but to be honest that idea is really stupid 🙂 🙂 🙂 A good thing is that we don’t work the Friday before the christmas vacation starts 🙂
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It was so foggy when I drove home last night that I sometimes had no idea where I was. Not even when I was only a few hundred meters (much the same in yards) away from the village 🙂 🙂 I was of course driving really slow and since there were so many Roe deer on and beside the road I most likely would have anyway. I had hoped that there would be lots of fog left when I woke up today but by the time I got up the fog was already on its way to dissolve. I was going to fetch a package at the grocery store in Gudhem so I did that as soon as the dogs had had their breakfast, so I also missed the sunshine we had those few minutes I was away to get that package 🙂
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Still it was still quite bright when we were out walking and since there was no wind what so ever it really was quite nice. No bigger animals out in the fields so I was pretty sure no bigger predators were in our part of the forest, deer and other bigger animals tends to go out to the fields when predators are around, so they can see them earlier and therefore flee in time. We did hear some walk away when we passed them on our walk though, running in a dense part of the forest isn’t something one does quiet 🙂
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Hunters will be out in the forest tomorrow if the weather isn’t too bad and when looking at the different weather sites it looks like the little rain we’ll get will come in the afternoon. They usually never stay for long though so I guess we’ll have our first walk for the day rather early anyway. It’ll stay fairly warm the coming week and that means it’ll also rain some every day and it doesn’t look like we’ll have a day without rain for at least a week. I must admit that I’m really tired of the rain now, even my sandy soil is now constantly wet and muddy (which is really hard for sand to become 🙂 🙂 🙂 ). I guess however that I wouldn’t like snow and cold weather any more so let the rain come 🙂
The Cottage by the crane lake. 