If it isn’t the rain it is the wind.
The laundry is done and is now hanging to dry on the patio, the lawn is mowed (at least the parts in my garden, the rest outside I can take another day) so now I’ve done everything I felt I had to do before the work week starts again. We won’t get any rain today, according to predictions but instead we have a slightly insane wind so it was actually quite perfect to mow the lawn today. Most grass had dried up after all the rain that fell yesterday and the wind made it just enough cool so it still felt rather nice mowing.
This is one way to connect farming equipment 🙂
Greater Celandine.
We even have some sunshine today, the sun manages to peek through the gaps between the clouds every now and again and since the wind blows from the right direction I can have the kitchen door open if it isn’t cloudy for too long, because if it is it gets a bit too cold indoors. I really should vacuum and scrub the floors too today but the dust won’t go away by itself so I feel I don’t have to stress to get rid of it before it eventually would have walked away by itself 🙂
I sowed squash and pumpkin seeds a few days ago and now it looks as if all seeds have germinated. I would like to take them out already now but the coming week is the last one we usually get frost at night. So I keep them indoors until June seventh and hope that the frost stays away as it should but this year has been odd weather-wise. The warmest winter in ages and the coldest May in years. So who knows what will happen for the rest of the year 🙂
It’s a good thing I took some photos when we were out walking yesterday afternoon, because I only took the ones above this morning.
We had sunshine for around half an hour yesterday, just as we went out for a walk.
The first Buttercups this year.
I made some ice cream yesterday, I used pre made custard 🙂 Yes I know, custard is the easiest thing to do but i haven’t been i the mood to cook anything this last week. The ice cream turned out perfect! so I’ll do that today too, I still have half of it left in the package 🙂 Perhaps I should put some Aronia berries in the mixer and turn them down into the custard too? After all they worked great in the pie so why not in the custard ice cream. I better heat them up some first though, I think the heating of them actually make them edible which they aren’t as uncooked 🙂 🙂 Tart is a kind word to describe them as to be honest 🙂
But I’ll have something to eat first, then a short nap and after that we’ll take a walk before I make the dinner I’ll have at work next week.
Have a great day!
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Life goes on.
Yes it does even if it’s hard sometimes. I realised something was very wrong with Hector on Wednesday afternoon when I came home from work, he was always the first one to run out the door of the dog house when I opened it. He wasn’t there at all so I was just about to go out into the dog yard when he slowly came in from the dog yard and followed me out to the garden. He laid down in front of the entrance and wanted to stay there when we were about to go out on our walk.
He finally rose up and followed us after I had been talking to him for a long while. We walked very slowly and stopped many times so he could rest in the shadows. The other ones were far ahead of us but Bertil and I stayed close to Hector all the time. He stayed by himself all evening and didn’t want to eat when it was time, he did though just because he knew I wanted him to. That didn’t help the next morning though, he refused to get up at all and I could see that life just wasn’t fun any longer, so I had to take that hard decision, the one we never want to take. Now I worry that it won’t take that long time till I have to take that decision again but Orvar is fine at the moment and I hope he will be for a long time more.
This doe walked out just in front of us on the gravel road by the fields (two meters away from us). All dogs were unleashed, they looked at her for a few seconds and then they went on doing their own thing. It’s nice to know they don’t care about the wild life.
It will be an indoors day today, the temperature will rise to 9C (48,2F) if we’re lucky. They keep promising that the warm weather is on its way but I think we all have lost the hope that it actually will 🙂 If it isn’t rain that’s falling it’s hail. Thunder however has stayed away from this area but we might get some tonight. We actually had warmer and nice days during winter this year 🙂 The only thing that grows as it should in the garden is the grass and it grows fast. I can’t mow it though since it is so wet that it would clog my lawn mower and it’s never nice to drag around an electric cable on wet ground either 🙂
I think I’ll read a book and then tak a nap before thinking of even taking another walk today. My neighbor told me he found a badger’s burrow in the cow pasture outside my cottage. He knows I want to photograph them so I think I’ll go out by myself later on to see if I can find it. They might not show today due to the bad weather but it would be nice to know where it is when the new ones comes out to see what the world’s like. I want to thank You for Your comments in the previous post.
Wolf willow, Elaeagnus commutata. We call it Silver bush.
Aronia melanocarpa, Black chokeberry
Rosa glauca.
Have a great day!
The first tomato! The plant grows in a tiny pot by my kitchen window. This tomato is called Vilma and You can also see the sticky fly paper I have on the glass 🙂
Hector † 2015-05-28
My special guy isn’t around any more.
I’ll stay offline for a few days, there’s really noo need to comment today.
The last photo taken yesterday.
It’s only Tuesday!
It’s only Tuesday but it feels like I’ve been working a year without any weekend at all. I shall never stay up that late again unless I take a big nap the day after 🙂 It doesn’t matter what I need to do, I’ll take that nap anyway 🙂
Oak.
It’s really green now!
Nothing much has happened today, I worked in the neighbor factory for a few hours and time flew by when I was there, because I can’t see any clock and it is just too much problem reaching my phone to see what time it is since I have protecting clothes on so I know nothing about how fast time pass by or not while working. Unfortunately I see the clock ver well at my ordinary job and just couldn’t keep my eyes from it 🙂
Look how cute I am 🙂
Thunder did pass by here at home during the day, I saw that on the net but the sun shone most of the time. Now the rain is pouring down and the wind is hard so I guess we either get thunder again or hail. I don’t want hail now, it is so depressing to watch the ice on the ground 🙂 I guess I should be happy about the rain helping me watering al the seeds I sowed yesterday but to be honest, rain is nothing we need at all at the moment. The ground is still so wet after the previous rain showers we’ve had so I get soaking wet if I go down on my knees to take a photo.
The rain comes from west so the east side of my cottage is dry, so now I have bumblebees resting by my window during the shower. I wonder if it is one of those that has a nest inside my southern wall, they build a nest there every year and since bumblebees don’t destroy anything when building a nest or living there I always let them be. They do so much good in the garden by pollinating my fruit and berry plants.
Whitebeam.
It is time for something to eat and perhaps a cup of cocoa.
Have a great day!
In my garden right now. This is Sorbus domestica, we call it apple rowan or pear rowan.
My hand fan-shaped apple tree, here hidden behind the Aronia bush. I sowed it several years ago and it gets the most delicious apples there is!
Sorbus koehneana. I sowed that one around eight years ago. The climate is too tough for it here so it freeze down some every winter.
The apricot tree survived but even this mild winter was tough on it 🙂
Primula auricula.
Pre-summer doesn’t want to start.
I didn’t take many photographs today, so most of them was taken yesterday. I did however photograph this male Shrike today.
Another nice day here, fairly warm and weak winds but the pre-summer (as we say when spring is over but summer not really has started) warmth hasn’t arrived and won’t for at least a week or so. tomorrow will stop at just above 10C (50F) if predictions are right. I guess we expect more now when the winter was so nice and mild. The only thing we got from that was lots of ticks and possibly a nasty fly and mosquito year 🙂
Lots of pollen from the pines but still less than last year.
Yesterday was so nice that I decided to sow some seeds in my big box outside my kitchen. I decided to sow three rows, one with carrots (several colors on them so I hope I got a good mix with orange, red and white ones), One row with red onions because it’s smart to sow both onions and carrots together because the onion smell will confuse the carrot fly and the carrot smell will confuse the onion fly 🙂 Well that is what we all hope every year anyway. I also sowed one row with broccoli.
The Cuckoo is hard to see and even harder to photograph, they are usually very shy. It looks like a small falcon when it flies around.
I’ll sow more broccoli later on in my vegetable garden but I’m afraid the ground still is too cold for those seeds, the box keep a much higher temperature and that’s what’s soo good with raised gardens. Later on I’ll sow broad beans in the vegetable garden. I also sowed some pumpkin seeds and squash seeds but those will have to stay in my kitchen until after June sixth which usually is the last night with frost here.
Now You might wonder what happened to that ice cream I was going to do? Well it happened 🙂 The thing I bought isn’t really an ice cream machine to be honest, I still have to mix everything together and the bowls must be kept in the freezer at -18C (0,5F) so what I really bought is a slow going electric whisk 🙂 the cold bowl freeze the ice cream batter and the whisk turns around the batter so everything gets frozen. The first one I made was with gooseberry jam and some cardamom and it was rather nice but I used too much jam so the taste got too strong.
Rosa glauca in my garden.
The second one was a big success though, rowanberry jam and cinnamon! It turned out just perfect! But I don’t like whipped cream and I’m not sure if I did something wrong (I should perhaps heated up the batter a day before I was going to make the ice cream? but this recipe didn’t say anything bout heating it up) but the cream sort of stuck in my mouth as a thin layer, I almost had to use the toothbrush to get rid of it. I need to find a recipe that doesn’t have especially much cream in it or even better none at all. So despite that it was a really nice thing to do!
It is time to make something to eat, today I think I’ll grill some Wiener sausages and put them in hotdog breads 🙂
Have a great day!
So we won the whole shebang.
So we won the whole shebang yesterday in the Eurovision Song Contest 🙂 yesterday evening. Of course I’m happy but to be honest, my favorite was the Australian song and I know it’s very popular here since they got the maximum twelve points from us and they also gave us their twelve points 🙂 It seems that Australians have loved Swedish music since Abba won it all 1974. It looked like Russia would win for a very long time but suddenly a few countries didn’t give them a single point but gave us plenty so we passed and won with lots more points. (here’s a link to our song on You tube: Heroes) This year also China showed the show live, that means the show had a potential one billion viewers! I guess we’ll know how many it really was in a day or two.
It feels a bit ironic that the Russian songs always are about love and world peace when Russia itself doesn’t have any problems invading a neighbor country. But the Russian artist sure could sing and the song wasn’t that bad. I don’t think the quality of the competing songs have been this good in years. I did have some trouble understanding why the Italian song was so popular though, three young men looking and sounding much the same as Il Divo but with a song that was a bit old-fashioned. They sure could sing great though.
According to weather predictions yesterday today was supposed to be cloudy and grey, they’ve changed that to sunny and fairly warm instead this morning 🙂 still a bit windy though but since I’m going to mow the last part of the grass, the grass outside my garden, I won’t mind. Lots of flies around already but just the slightly irritating kinds so some wind will just be nice. I started to clean out the wood shed from old blankets and rags I’ve had in the dog house so they would have something warm and nice to sleep on if they so wished. They rarely wish that by the looks of it, it is amazing how many small pieces they can make from a small blanket 🙂
Flowering spruce.
Squirrel berries (Maianthemum bifolium) soon to open up its buds.
After I’ve cleaned the wood shed I started in the garage. I had filled the trash bin though so I just took the worst in the garage and now have three big sacks of trash that I’ll put in the bin as soon as they’ve emptied it on Friday morning. Lots more in there though, Nova and Sune have done their best to spread things around and tear it all up in small pieces 🙂 I’ll do the laundry too today and after that I must take a nap because I didn’t go to sleep until 1:30 am and woke up as always just after 5 am 🙂
One of my favorite birds, the House sparrow. Can’t sing especially well, have no colors to speak of but is usually unafraid and some even fly to pick food from our hands.
A pink Spanish bluebell in my garden right now.
This predator bird passed us yesterday on our walk.
It is some kind of Buzzard. Either Common Buzzard or Honey Buzzard.
It is time for a pot of coffee and after that I’ll better get started.
Have a great day!
I better wear breathing protection.
The wind turbine that never worked. I’ve lived here for fifteen years now and that has never moved in the entire time 🙂 You can see Tunhems church to the far left in the photo.
I’m wearing one black and one grey sock today and the grey sock has a big hole in it just beneath my big toe. I really need to find Sune’s stash of socks now, I barely have any left 🙂 I think there was some kind of challenge on facebook a while ago that wanted us to wear different colored socks to celebrate differences between us. The one starting it have a sibling with down’s syndrome. If anyone should see my socks I can always say I’ve joined the cause 🙂
The horses and
their carriage.
It could have been a rather wonderful morning but the wind destroys it completely once again. It is bitterly cold and a bit too strong. It has calmed down some or perhaps changed direction because I can have the kitchen door open right now. It helps to dry up the grass before I mow it though so perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much. The sun is shining and there are a few clouds in the sky but no rain is predicted for today so I wouldn’t be surprised if it started raining within an hour or so 🙂
The Portal, the trees are a bit late in getting their leafs there.
I met my neighbor, to my big surprise when we were going the last hundred meters of our walk this morning. He’s normally not a morning person but today he was going to Gothenburg, my old home town, to run the half marathon they have there every year. I think it is the biggest half marathon in the world when it comes to how many who participates in it. I told him that by the way he sounds he really shouldn’t run at all today, he has a cold. It is never good to do anything exhausting if one has a cold, especially not if one has to run 21 km (13,05 miles). I do hope, if he starts running, he knows when to stop in time if he gets worse.
Lily of the Valley.
I’m thinking on cleaning up the garage, or shed as I call it now days since I can’t have my car there because mice eat all the cables in the engine room 🙂 I had a few bags of newspapers I wanted to go to the recycling center with but then Nova dug her way in. I now have millions of tiny pieces of newspapers spread all over the shed floor 🙂 I also have a lot of torn old sweaters, blankets and other cloth things that one or all of the dogs have torn to pieces that needs to be taken care of. I will wear a breathing protection since voles love to dig around in things like that and voles spread a for humans serious disease, vole fever (Nephropathia epidemica), that actually can kill us.
It is a coffee morning today, I have a head ache that now slowly is dying out with the help of strong coffee. It’s instant coffee after I had poured in the powder or what ever one calls the instant coffee into my big tea-cup I was going to pour some milk in it before the hot water. So I was on my way to the fridge with the cup when I saw something outside that I wanted to photograph. What ever it was had naturally disappeared when I arrived by the kitchen door so I left the camera on the kitchen table. It took a while before I started to wonder why I walked around in my home holding my tea-cup with just powder in it 🙂
Have a great day!
Could it be genetically?
Oak leafs.
Sune just can’t stay still right now, I’ve just boiled some beef for the older guys and the smell drives Sune slightly insane 🙂 He won’t get any beef himself but I will pour the water the beef was in over his food so it’ll taste a bit like beef 🙂 The others don’t seem to care about the smell though, they just lay on the floor sleeping.
Grey and dull today but nature is so full of colors now that it didn’t matter.
It is a cloudy and windy day here, perfect for mowing the lawn but I just don’t have the energy. The sun will show tomorrow so I’ll wait until then. I think however that I will go outside to pick some rhubarbs and then make a pie. I was going to buy blueberries on my way home but on my way to the vegetable section something caught my attention and the blueberries vanished from my mind 🙂 Well a common rhubarb pie isn’t that bad either even if I would have liked to try that combination but there are still a long time until the rhubarb season is over.
Our song is now in the semi final in the Eurovision Song Contest. It is the huge favorite amongst the Europeans they’ve asked but that doesn’t mean it will win. The big finale is tomorrow night and the biggest opponents are Italy, Russia and Australia they say. My personal favorite is Montenegro, I tend to like Balkan ballads and have always done even before I learned that I’m a quarter Serb 🙂 I wonder if taste can be a genetic thing? My all time Eurovision favorite is actually a Serbian ballad they competed with 2004 called Lane moje (click on the names in red and a new window will open with that song on YouTube.
And yes all songs sound more or less the same every year 🙂 It is hard to do much when You only have three minutes to fit in a song 🙂 It is time to give the dogs their dinner and the cats of course. I’ll have to wait until they have eaten and been outside for a while. I better get out and pick those rhubarbs too while I still remember it 🙂 I think I’ll have some cardamom in the pie too or perhaps cinnamon? No ice cream though, I’ll make that tomorrow. I’ll have custard to the pie 🙂
Have a great day!
Another one.
Before the thunder arrived.
I had another tick on me this morning, I didn’t know it until I scratched myself on my back at work. The residues of it was tiny and flat so I guess it hadn’t been there for long. I think it’s the cats that bring them indoors because I go through the dogs thoroughly every day but the cats come and goe as they wish without me doing much. I need to go to the pharmacy to buy those anti tick drops for them.
Salmiak sitting in the middle of the road.
Today is sunny, bright and fairly warm (it is colder than normal though. I’m not surprised since the entire winter and early spring was much warmer than usual so why should we get a nice spring 🙂 ) but yesterday was rainy with thunder storms passing by. I arrived home just in time to bring the dogs into the cottage when one storm passed by, as soon as it has passed we went out and had just arrived to the bog when the next one came closer rapidly.
We did get a few seconds of sunshine in between though and most photos today comes from those few seconds yesterday 🙂 The first thing I did after work today however was to spray both the dogs and me with anti tick spray. It is made from herbs and lemon I guess and at first the smell is kind of nice but it is awful after a few minutes 🙂 It works rather well though, as long as the dog doesn’t take a bath in a muddy creek that is 🙂 Sune did at least not dive down into it today so he smells like mud on his stomach and legs but this anti tick spray on the rest of his body 🙂
The Eurovision Song Contest is this week and the first semi final was on Tuesday. I can’t say I was impressed by any song. Today is the second semi final and our song will compete for a place in the big finale. They have very strict rules to how long the song is allowed to be, 3 minutes, so there is a special sound to this music that doesn’t exist outside the Eurovision. There are so many countries that wants to participate that they need to have semi finals 🙂 I think there is 26 songs in the big finale on Saturday. Five countries don’t need to go through the semi finals because they pay so much to the European broadcasting system (or what it might be called) and this year we have Australia in the competition too 🙂
The water kept on dripping long after the raining had stopped.
The Australians are invited to participate because the Eurovision has its 60th? birthday this year and the Eurovision contest is extremely popular in Australia. I can’t say I like our song especially much but it was still way much better than the other crap that participated in our competition 🙂 It is however the big favourite and most Europeans believe it will win the entire thing. Russia is also popular so if the Russians don’t invade another country before Saturday it might win too. One never knows about the Russians though, if the country is small and with a weak army they might invade it and risk not winning the Eurovision even if they take this competition even more seriously than us Swedes 🙂
It is time for something to eat and then I think I’ll read a book, I might listen to the semi finale for a while before I go to bed though.
Have a great day!
Rice and fish do the trick.
It is amazing how great dog stomachs respond to fish and rice, we had a calm night and they were ok already this morning. That however doesn’t mean they are ok yet so we’ll continue with this for a few days until we switch to boiled minced beef and then slowly add their normal food. Sune and Nova wants boiled fish too so I pour the hot water over their food and that seems to be enough for them 🙂
The ditch where the beavers like to hang out.
I’ve never seen this deep blue violets in the wild before.
We were supposed to have rain all day here today and it sure looked that way when I drove to work this morning. But is anyone of You surprised if I say that it almost didn’t rain at all and now we even have sunshine 🙂 It did rain some just after we came back from our walk though, it almost got wet on the ground but only almost. I’ve gotten my first mosquito bite now and the little devil must be somewhere here in my cottage. I also killed my first mosquito for the season when we were out walking by the bog today.
The rest of the photos show flowers in my garden right now.
I would like some rhubarb pie now but I’m just too lazy to go outside to bring in any rhubarbs, I actually have everything else here in my kitchen 🙂 I would also want to have some ice cream and I’m thinking I should try to make some this friday. I have all the ingredients for that too. The only problem is that I don’t know what kind of flavour I want on it 🙂 Cinnamon or cardamom, would that taste nice in ice cream? Rowan jam, it has a bitter-sweet taste to it so I wonder if that would be yummy 🙂 Well I have until Friday to decide 🙂
The flowers on the apple trees open up now.
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