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!
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!Â
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.
It is time to make something to eat and perhaps I should make myself a cup of cocoa. I know it isn’t cocoa season but why not 🙂
Have a great day!
A flavour explosion.
Most photos today are taken yesterday or a few days earlier, the clouds started to cover the sun just as we went out today.
I was waken at 1:38 am this night by a desperate dog and I was way to sleepy to get what was going on and had to pay for it rather badly. Hector has a bad stomach and it took me thirty minutes to get the floor clean and toss it all out in to the compost. So I bought fish to him and Orvar today because Orvar also has a bad stomach but not that bad thank god. The smell stayed much longer though even if IÂ used chlorine to clean up the mess.
Solomon’s seal in the forest. Can be invasive in the garden though.
He did what he could though the poor dog. I wish they didn’t eat everything nasty smelling they can find when we’re out walking. So I had to stop by the grocery store on my way home to buy frozen fish. The other healthy two did also want some fish so I poured the water in which I boiled the fish over their food so I had four happy dogs after their dinner 🙂 I boiled enough for tomorrow morning too of course and lost of rice. I guess I’ll have to continue with this for a while.
There is something very interesting down the slope 🙂
It is never easy to fall asleep again but eventually I did and when I woke up I wondered why my knee felt a bit odd, it turns out a tiny tick had found a nice place to drink my blood there. It was totally flat so I guess it just had bitten me when I found it. Naturally I now feel ticks all over my body 🙂 🙂 but so far this is the only one I’ve found on me. Nasty critters! not liked by anyone, not even birds like to eat them. It seems that the ticks single purpose in the world is to spread disease and death I’m afraid.
In my garden right now, Bleeding hearts. We call this one the Lieutenant’s heart.
Weeds are welcome in my garden if they are cute like this one, a Geranium (not the potted plant You English-speaking call geraniums).
Cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma).
It is time for something to eat. I could cook some sausages or I could make a few sandwiches. I baked a bread yesterday, in the electric oven and was rather successful. I’¨m not used to bake in that one, I almost always bake in the fire heated stove so I was a bit unsure how to get it right 🙂 I didn’t put chives in this one, instead I poured in rosemary, oregano and basil. It is a flavour explosion in the mouth 🙂
Have a great day!
Didn’t give any taste at all.
We’ve had a sunny but somewhat chilly morning, it would have been rather nice if the wind for once could  have stayed calm. The clouds are already starting to cover the sky but it seems we won’t get that predicted rain after all but we all know how accurate those predictions are 🙂 The temperature won’t rise above 10C (50F) and it looks like that actually might be right.
The first strawberry flower in the forest.
Nothing much has happened here since yesterday and so far this morning nothing has happened at all. I did bake some scones yesterday and put lots of chives in them but I must admit that I was a bit disappointed because I couldn’t feel any taste what so ever from the chives, I’ll put rosemary in them the next time I’m making scones.
This will be one of those day when it isn’t nice enough to do anything outside but it’s really not bad enough to stay indoors all day either. I could of course continue to clean up my home, I still have plenty to do if I so wish. I could read one of the two books my brother sent me last week or I could watch some dvd’s, I have plenty I haven’t watched yet and plenty I would like to watch again.
I think however I’ll start with a small nap, we went up almost as early today as we did yesterday, I am a morning person but this was a bit early even for me and I can’t blame the bird any longer, it has moved away to build a nest I guess. I’ll start with a cup of coffee though before I’ll do anything else.
Have a great day!
In my garden right now. This is some kind of Fritillaria.
I’ve never figured out what kind of violet this is.
Apple buds.
Ranunculus amplexicaulis.
Lonicera caerulea var. kamtschatica. Isn’t pretty and smells nothing I think but it gives edible blue berries that are quite tasty.
A bit chilly.
A filled Yellow Wood Anemone growing in my woodland.
It feels a bit chilly outside today even though it actually is just as warm but the sun doesn’t shine. It did for a few hours just as we were turning homewards on our morning walk though. We’ll get rain later on and I really don’t mind even if it had been nicer if it hadn’t come. There are other places on this earth that needs it more to be honest 🙂
I’m not sure how this one spreads but it shows up in spots some distance away from the original plant. It’s a name variety so seeds should not give the same kinds of leafs as the original one has and they all have them. Can’t find and roots travelling away either. The stinging nettle in the front is something that needs to be removed!
Soon my neighbors root cellar will be covered in flowers.
The birds don’t seem to mind this weather though so who am I to complain 🙂 I guess the insects, of which we already have plenty, is easier to catch when it is chilly outside, they just can’t move around as fast as they can on warm days. We have lots of dung beetles around now and they are rather quickly taking care of what the dogs leave in my garden but they too get slow in this chilly weather, I like them so I hope they taste bad for the birds 🙂
I’ve replanted several quince seedlings this morning. Normally it is just the Japanese flowering quince that can survive in this climate but I’m trying a new species this year, the Sweet flowering quince (chaneomeles speciosa). All seeds germinated and they can be a bit tricky because they must never be treated warm if one wants them to germinate. They must be kept in cold water the first week (and of course it must be changed every day), so the best way to keep them is in the fridge. As soon as they are taken out of the fridge they must be planted and placed outdoors before they become too warm 🙂 I did it all right this time 🙂
Sometimes it looks like they are trying to kill each other 🙂
But they are having so much fun 🙂
I’ve had a tiny little bush in my garden for quite some time and have just not been able to figure out what it is (thank you magpies for nicking the name tags). This year it suddenly started to flower, no big flashy flowers though, it was pure luck I saw them. It took a while but now I know it is a Cherry prinsepia (Prinsepia sinensis). I thought all those plants I had died out long ago 🙂 It will get edible berries so if I am lucky I’ll get two berries this year 🙂 I have plenty of other plants to replant in bigger pots too, like my pink dandelion (well it has a yellow center but is pink around it). I could of course plant them on their spots already now but I have four dogs that loves to eat dandelions 🙂
Sune won this time 🙂
I think it is time for a nap, we went up already at 4:20 this morning. I might have a little snack first though. I was thinking of making a rhubarb pie but then I realised I have no custard or ice cream at home so that will have to wait because I don’t want to go to any store today.
Have a great day!
The European Jackdaws are family birds. First the father and a last year youngling comes to the chimney where they nest with food for the mother (and perhaps younger siblings but I’m not sure if it is too early for that yet).
Then a few other older younglings come to give more food for the mother. No risk of any babies starving to death 🙂
A bit chilly in the morning.
-4,4C (24F) here when we went out for our morning walk but the sun shone and the wind stayed calm so it was actually quite nice. The ground was covered in frost where the sun hadn’t reached and sparkles as if it was covered in tiny diamonds. Now it’s almost 10C (50F) and even nicer, the wind has arrived though but I hope it will stay reasonable calm today.
Serviceberry bushes are rather popular here even in no one knows how delicious the berries are. I’ve tried to convince my neighbor to taste the berries but I don’t think he dares 🙂
I have the kitchen door open and Nova sleep in the sunshine on the stairs while Sune sleeps just beside the stairs on the ground. The old boys prefer to stay indoors and the cats walk in and out every few minutes. I’m thinking of planting the potatoes today but I need to make sure I have something to cover them with if the frost turns up when they have started to show on the ground.
The Portal seen from another angle. It is getting green too now.
Every white flowering tree You can see in this photo is a cherry tree (well several in some places but they look as one big.
Cherry flowers.
The cherry trees flower here now and I can see lots of them up on the mountain, The land owner here have cut down several of the ones we had here in the forest but I could still found several when we were out walking. It looks as if he took the trees growing too close to the road, they are no problems right now but they will be when they are fully grown because tractors and cars will have problems passing. But You should see the mountain where the hospital is, the mountain side was almost totally white in big areas.
I drove to the super market this morning, I had planned to go to Falköping but if I had I would have had to go to several stores to get what I wanted and I would have to go later too, the super market opens at 7 am and not many people are out by that hour so we weren’t many in the store when I arrived 🙂 I finally found that black tape so I can cover the plastic container and ship away that film that broke in one of my cameras 🙂 I also found a plastic bucket with a lid, I was thinking of going fishing You see. I don’t want any food fish, instead I want what we call Mört (in English they are called roaches ). They are tough fish that I thought I would have in my water barrels this summer.
and in to the forest we went.
They’ll manage really well there and I’ll put them back before autumn gets too cold. They’ll be fat and jolly by that time and will most likely manage our winter better than those that still lives in the creeks and lakes 🙂 I would rather have some Rudor (in English Crucian carps), they are so closely related to the goldfish that they for a very long time thought that the goldfish actually was a Crucian carp. I don’t think we have any here in the creek though. We’ve now had two mild winters so we’ll get plenty of mosquitos as it is so I don’t want my water barrels to help them to become even more 🙂 We also have lots and lots of ticks now.
I check the dogs several times every day now and Sune seems to be a magnet for them. But he has none below his neck, I guess it helps taking lots of baths every time we’re out walking 🙂 Soon it won’t be long until all the other nasty biters arrive, well a couple of months if we’re lucky but I’m pretty sure this will be a bad year. I can only hope that these winters also helped lots of insect-eating birds to survive 🙂 It’ll also be another good year for the predators, two mild winters have made lots of rodents survive too, the fox will most likely have no problems finding food for all the cubs.
I also bought two frisbees for the dogs, the frisbees won’t last long though since especially Nova tends to chew on everything she gets into her mouth 🙂 I once bought a rubber frisbee to Hector and Orvar, it lasted less than five minutes, both got a hold of it and refused to let god 🙂 I honestly thought it would hold longer since it was made for dogs and to hold longer 🙂
It is time for a pot of tea and something to eat. To day will be the last really nice day for some time they say so I intend to enjoy it to the fullest 🙂
Have a great day!
Long weekend.
Sunny and windy today. It feels much warmer than it is though.
So off to the hospital I went yesterday and in good time, I only had to stop at the grocery store to buy something so I could get coins to pay for the parking at the hospital and I had to stop at the recycling place to toss away some old newspapers and glass jars. I had also promised to show my old camera in the store to one who works there. The drive takes around 40 minutes now days since they have put up speeding cameras along the way, it went much faster when I worked in that town because there were no cameras along the way back then 🙂
I had to dampen the colors on this butterfly because it shone something amazing. The other side of the wings however didn’t look as if they were especially shiny though.
I had plenty of time to find a parking space but realised there was none! I circled around for 15 minutes until I was lucky to arrive just as another car was leaving! Perhaps I’m stupid but one could think that they actually would have enough of parking spaces at a hospital 🙂 So suddenly I started to be a bit late instead because it is a bit to walk to the orthopedist. Anyway, I hurried up the stairs just to find out that have changed the routines! I have always signed up and paid where the orthopedist has its area but no there was a sign saying I should do that by the main reception by the entrance, so then I had to run down two stairs, and sign in and pay and then running again up two stairs to wait in the waiting room 🙂
I had barely sat down when they called for me and I was sweating like a pig 🙂 My doctor said that the x-rays shows that the bone just by the implants might have started to erode some because of the higher levels of chromium and manganese ions one of the implants lets out into my blood. No danger though, he said that I won’t have to go for an inspection again until two years from now but I have to admit that it doesn’t sound nice when they say my bone has started to erode 🙂 The other leg that another doctor fixed is perfect still though and those implant has been sitting in my leg eight years longer.
Redberried elderberry bush in the forest. Take a look at this photo and the one l have in my garden lower down in this post. Not a big difference but there is a difference.
We worked today even though it is a holiday here but we prefered to work today and then have a three day weekend instead of being home today and work tomorrow (we worked the same time as we do on Fridays). Well to be honest, I don’t mind working Friday and stay home on Thursday since we don’t work especially long on Fridays. It would perhaps have been better since most places were closed today so I need to go to town and do some shopping either tomorrow or on Saturday anyway.
In my garden now.
It is time to give both me and the dogs and cats something to eat, I am a bit tired since I got up at: 4:20 today and I also mowed most of the lawn when I came home, I still have some to mow outside my garden by the road and the dog yard but I’ll take that tomorrow.
This is the redberried elderberry bush I have in my garden. It is a sun´bspecies to the wild ones and this one is said to have edible berries which the wild one doesn’t have.
Have a great day!
My annual inspection.
Grey, dark and rainy and ISO 4000 on my camera 🙂
It has been raining almost the entire day but has been fairly warm, so I came home to two dry small dogs and two big wet and muddy ones. I didn’t think it was any idea to dry them up before we went out on our walk so I just connected the garden hose to the kitchen tap and showered them in the garden 🙂 It is strange, they never argue if I shower them in the garden but it can be a full war if I want to do it in the shower, both times the water is luke warm so it can’t be that.
The rain intensified when we went out to the forest and calmed down when we came home 🙂 Bertil joined us when we passed the old stable and he didn’t seem to be bothered by getting wet at all. He is however when I try to clean him here at home though 🙂 He can be mean normally but that’s nothing compared to when I want to clean him up 🙂 Today he didn’t even care when I suddenly walked on his tiny feet, I didn’t notice that he suddenly stood in front of me when I had stopped to take a photo.
I’ll go to my doctor tomorrow for my annual hip inspection 🙂 It’s in the middle of the day and the totally opposite wat from work, so there’s no use in going to work before I go to the doctor. I’ll bring one of my old cameras with me and I’ll stop at some places to take photos on my way home. I won’t bring any digital one though, I don’t want to leave any in my car while seeing the doctor, I just don’t feel it’s a good idea to bring too many cameras with me in to the hospital and his office 🙂
It is time to make something to eat and perhaps a cup of tea too, I won’t have to go to bed early since I can sleep a bit longer tomorrow morning, Not that sleeping longer ever will happen but I might have time for a short nap after walking with the dogs in the morning 🙂
Have a great day!
A bit blurry but You can see what’s happening 🙂
It wasn’t that bad.
Today I had an inventory of my sewer system, strange name for it because they already knew what I had, well more or less because it was a t-pipe in it they didn’t know if it was there or not. Please don’t ask me what a t-pipe is because I actually don’t know more than that it is looking like a T 🙂 I had that but I don’t have a sludge bed (I hope that’s the right name because that’s what Google translate gave me 🙂 So what to do since my sewer system isn’t up to standard.
Early morning snack 🙂
I knew that it wasn’t so that was no surprise and I had the papers so I could apply to change system. At first I wanted a composting toilet but there was so much paper work to do and I would have to build a special compost to take care of my residues 🙂 So I changed my mind and now wants a incineration toilet (I do hope that’s its name too because that was what Google gave me 🙂 ) With other words it burns it all to ashes and then I can spread the ashes around my berry bushes.
No problem they said but what to do with the water from when I shower, do the dishes and the laundry. I said that since there are two cow pastures just beside my cottage and my neighbor has municipal water and sewer it shouldn’t be a problem. They didn’t think like that at all 🙂 We were all in a good mood so there was no arguing, instead they told me that I could get something we call Filter box in Swedish. It is a big filter that can stand on the ground (or be dug down) outside my cottage.
There are at least two different kinds and my guess is that they’ll only agree to the more expensive one 🙂 It is filled with some special kind of peat and the water will then drop down through it, the water that comes out on the other side is then so clean that it can run out in the ground in my garden and my old sewer system will no longer be needed. I’ll have to change the peat every now and again and put it in a compost so I later on can use it in my garden.This will be expensive of course (sort of I’ll cry for a short while expensive 🙂 🙂 ) but still cheaper in the long run than both making a sludge bed or having municipal water and sewer.
Sally decided she wanted to reach the sky yesterday.
and how close she was 🙂
Redberried elderberry flowers. We call this bush grape elderberry because the berries hang together like grapes.
I can buy it in cash but then I’ll have no buffer for unexpected costs, I can buy either the toilet or the filter on credit or I can go to my bank which I more or less despise 🙂 well there are two persons there that I actually respect so I can talk with either of them and perhaps take a loan for it all or for one of the things. It is nice to have that buffer after all. I think I’ll do that last and talk to the women at the bank and see what they have to say about it all. So all in all it wasn’t that bad and even though this visit will cost a lot it was worth it because now I know what I can do, it isn’t that clear when just reading all the papers one can get 🙂
My dogs liked this day, we have been on more walks than we normally do and I was away to work for just a short while 🙂 It is time to make me something to eat and then watch some tv.
I have blue Forgetmenots in my garden.
And white and also pink but I didn’t see any yesterday.
Have a great day!
This mess I call home.
Bertil followed us as always.
Teodor woke me up at 4:20 this morning, he was shouting so loud that I thought the cottage was on fire. He just wanted to go outside and I think it was he who had thrown up on the kitchen floor. He was nice enough to do it where I wouldn’t walk, something my dogs wouldn’t care about at all 🙂 There was no use in going to bed after that, it was already rather bright outside.
We just looked at each other for quite some time, I doubt the dogs even noticed that she stood so close to us. I had to brighten up these three photos quite a lot because there was no time to adjust the camera.
So we had our breakfasts and went out on a walk. There are a few Black Grouse roosters still out there trying to impress the ladies even though that season is over now. The birds were singing of course and the one that has been waking me up every morning has now changed its tune, it sounds like a woodpecker and it is loud too. I do like starlings but this one is just crazy and I doubt any female like his song 🙂
It was rather nice outside, slightly above 10C (50F) but since there was no wind it felt much warmer. It is still around that temperature and it would have been just as nice and I would have had the kitchen door open if it wasn’t for the rain that comes and goes. I watched a few episodes of a Star Treck series, can’t remember the name, and then I started to clean the cottage.
The floors are scrubbed and vacuumed, I’ve started to throw away old clothes I can’t wear any longer, they have been worn at least one time to many so I can’t give them away to charity. It is starting to look rather nice in my home now but I still have a long way to go until I’m finished. I’ll just have something to eat, a pot of tea, another walk with the dogs and then I’ll continue to clean up this mess I call home 🙂
Leafs on an Elm tree.
I actually managed to catch the rain drops in this photo 🙂
Have a great day!
My neighbor the beekeeper made the beehive bigger yesterday. I stood at a safe distance taking photos with my tele-photo lens 🙂
We all survived :-)
We’re having a rather wonderful but perhaps slightly chilly morning here. No wind and sunshine but it will not last for long, clouds have already started to arrive and we’ll get rain later in the evening. I just hope the lawn dries up enough so I can mow it before the rain starts to fall. There were still some frost on the plants when we started walking this morning and I heard the Cuckoo for the first time too (I don’t count that time a few weeks ago when I thought I heard it, if it had been here I would have heard it many times since then but I haven’t).
It looks as if all new kittens at the next door farm get long fur now days.
The road association meeting was just as bad as I had feared but only in the beginning. The laws here are quite strict so I really can’t say who did what so they are recognisable. But the “wrong” person started like always and we all soon got tired of him but then our hero stopped it all 🙂 I must say I admire him because he has the ability to insult a person in a way that the person thinks it’s funny and finally actually give up and stay calm the entire time the meeting continues 🙂 To be honest, I don’t think the “wrong” person understood a thing but we got the result we wanted 🙂
This doe did feel a bit trapped when we came closer to her. She’s just too heavy now to jump fences, so we stopped and waited until she had found a way out and walked away far enough into the forest to feel safe again.
This “wrong” person had a few days before the meeting called the chairman of the association screaming something about a musician we have in our village and complained about the sound from the instrument, that it was disturbing the entire village (no one understands what this has to do with the road since that part of the road doesn’t belong to the road association but is private and still it has nothing to do with the road at all!). Now I pass that home every day and the only time one actually can hear the instrument is if You actually stand close to the house walls 🙂 and it is a classical instrument so there is no amplifier connected to it. Talk about making oneself a fool 🙂 The “wrong” person must have been standing in the garden to be able to hear it especially well and therefore broken a law or two and is stupid enough to talk about it 🙂 🙂 🙂
After that we walked in to two other deers and these know us so they didn’t exactly hurry away 🙂 Still I didn’t want to come too close so we had to walk very slowly untill we had passed them 🙂
So the meeting only took 1,5 hours 🙂 If we actually had just kept to what the meeting was about and also just accepted what the association had decided years back it would have taken 15 minutes. I did however get a good amount of gossip and actually some good totally true information as well 🙂 so the evening wasn’t a total waste of time after all and the coffee and pear juice was delicious as well as the coffee bread (as we call pastry here).
In my garden right now.
This is some kind of serviceberry. I have two different in my garden but the other one is much smaller yet and its flowers aren’t open yet. Delicious berries that the birds take before they ripen!!!
It is time to go outside, Nova is waiting by the kitchen stairs with her punctured foot ball (soccer ball for You Americans 🙂 ) and Sune with at least one stick 🙂 Nova gets it that she has to let go of the ball so I’ll be able to throw it away again, Sune however is still rather hesitant of leaving the stick to me 🙂 He just circles around me wanting me to throw it but as I say to him, I really need to get it unless he wants me to throw him too at the same time 🙂 He’s just too heavy to do that though 🙂 🙂
Buds on my peach tree. A few had already opened up and gotten destroyed by the frost but there are still a few unopened so I might still get a peach or two with a bit of luck.
My neighbors honeybees loves my sloe bushes. I’m glad they get some of their nectar from me since I do get some of their honey 🙂
I think this daffodil (or easter lily as we call them) is a Rip van Winkle.
It is fun really, I used to suffer from arachnophobia before I moved out to the countryside, now I love them. Well not the big black hairy ones that sometimes crawl up from the shower, they are just creepy 🙂 This is the female.
Because this one is smaller and therefore most likely the male and possible lunch for the female 🙂
Have a great day!
It’ll most likely be a long night.
I’ve mowed half the lawn and the parts I usually mow outside my garden too, like around the dog yard and the tiny piece of road that ends in a fence towards the cow pasture. I thought that if I at least did that it wouldn’t take so long time tomorrow if it would start to rain later in the afternoon. They say it will be sunny but I really don’t believe that until I see it 🙂
The swallows have arrived and I tried to get a photo of them but this predator bird came in the way.
Do You see those slightly brighter dots at both sides of the photo? That’s swallows 🙂
Green everywhere I look now.
It is a rather nice day today as long as one stays out of the wind, if one does it’s so warm that a sweater might be just too much to wear. It wont feel that tomorrow morning though because we’ll most likely have frost tonight, so I better remember to cover those plants I had in the cold cellar during the winter because it would be just sad if I managed to kill them now before summer arrives 🙂
I’ll do nothing but watch tv until I’m off to the old school in Bjurum for the road association meeting. I know one of the “wrong” people will turn up and I know there will be lots of troubles just because of that and I don’t think anyone that is a good mediator will come either 🙂 I hope at least that only the road issues will come up on the agenda but I know that it would be like hoping for the big lottery winning 🙂 May god have mercy on our souls 🙂 🙂 🙂
It is time for something to eat and a pot of tea, the night will most likely be a long one anyway 🙂
Have a great day!
Cowslips grow everywhere here.
It has already started.
We were lucky and had some sunshine on our walk today.
Tomorrow is the  day we’ll have our road association meeting and the screaming and arguing has already started, oh how I look forward to it 🙂 They never scream at me though, they aren’t sure of how I am since I’ve “only” lived here for 15 years and I don’t think they can find my phone number either, it is for some reason hard to find 🙂 It’s funny really, it is the people who lives at the beginning of the road and only use a few hundred yards of it that screams the most 🙂
The mushrooms started early this year.
Rainy once again here but it seems the worst missed us. I wrote the other day about that huge thunderstorm that reached from northern Denmark to northern France, it turns out that it was so bad that they actually had a real tornado in Denmark! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a big one in Europe before, we have smaller ones though that we call tromber. Lots of damages where it had passed but no one died. That is one result of the climate change and it will most likely become worse.
It is very windy here too but not even close to how bad they had predicted, for once it’s nice that they don’t know what they are doing when they make those predictions 🙂 They had also predicted summer temperatures here but I can’t even pretend that they came close to that 🙂 It’s not like I’m freezing but I would cry all summer if our summer temperatures weren’t warmer that 14C (57F) 🙂 🙂 🙂
It’s time to make something to eat and after that I’ll see if I can find anything worth watching on tv. Tomorrow I’ll start one hour earlier (and stop working at noon) so I’ll go up half an hour earlier. I’m pretty sure I won’t need the alarm to start because every morning this last week a bird has been screaming from my neighbors birches at just the exact time every day, 4:40 am. I wouldn’t have mind if it had sounded beautiful, this is just one low whistle (too kind to cal it that but I’m not sure what else to call it) and one high-pitched and it just goes on and on and on and ….
Pentecost lilies.
We just call these Narcissus.
There are color variations in my checkered lilies.
Have a great day!
I have the white ones too.
Sloe.
Paeonia vetchii
Lilacs.
Sloe flowers.
It finally did what I wanted :-)
Only older photographs today.
The wind is strong and every now and again the rain pours down, not the nicest of weather but I guess it somehow is good for nature 🙂 So no walk today, I didn’t feel like getting soaking wet and we didn’t take any walk yesterday so the dogs aren’t too happy. Well Nova doesn’t mind, she stood waiting by the door as soon as she came in to the garden when I came home from work. They can go out any time they want to but so far none stands by the door 🙂
The big tree peony have a few buds now.
Even the one that has problems surviving in this climate gives me one bud this year. It needed two mild winters to be able to do that.
They had predicted that we would get really warm weather already today but that doesn’t seem to happen at all, it will get better though but there won’t be any record-breaking temperatures 🙂 I was looking at the real-time lightning site today and there was a huge thunderstorm area from northern France in to the Benelux countries, Germany and Denmark. lightnings hit the ground every minute when it was as worst. I do like a good thunderstorm but that was too much even for me 🙂
I finally managed to convince my printer to print the text in black and it managed to print out the text I wanted and then I ran out of black ink 🙂 I don’t have Word in this laptop where I have the document I wanted to print out so I tried to change the text to blue (because it continued to refuse to print with black ink in the beginning) but since I don’t have Word I just couldn’t change the original text to blue and the printer refused to write anything else than black. I even tried to change places with the two colors but they had made that impossible, of course 🙂 Now I must remember to buy black ink before I need the printer the next time.
It is time to make me something to eat and then I think I’ll see if there’s anything to watch on tv. I told You I had Fox channel for free at the moment so I guess they’ll show an old episode of Numb3rs (as they write the name) but I also got a channel called Investigation Discovery. How odd it is, they only show murder investigations 24/7!!! It was interesting the two first episodes but after that it really just was gross 🙂 Are people that interested in murders and nasty details of how they were committed and how on earth was the relatives thinking when they accepted to participate in a program like that?
Have a great day!
It is Monday.
Young ant queens and males are getting ready to leave the home.
And I’m even later than usual, I haf to sign papers and talk about road association meetings before I could do anything else 🙂 So I’ll skip writing anything more today and see You all tomorrow.
Yesterday was sunny every now and again, today it rained and it filled my 200 liter, 55 gallon, water barrel totally 🙂
Have a great day!
Lots of birds.
Some frost on the ground today too.
The kitchen door is open and I can hear all the birds singing in y garden and by the field outside my fence. It is a truly wonderful but slightly chilly morning but the sun is shining straight towards the door so it neutralize the cold a lot. Today is the opposite to how it was yesterday and how it will be tomorrow. We’ll get rain but much warmer weather from Tuesday according to predictions and no one will believe that until we see it happen 🙂
It was foggy outside when I woke up but too cold to take a walk, I just didn’t want to be freezing that early in the morning 🙂 I doubt it was much warmer when we went away but at least the sun reached us most parts of our walk 🙂 Not a man-made sound could be heard, just the birds and breaking of twigs when animals moved around to avoid us. I wish You all could follow us those mornings just to listen to all the sounds. I know that won’t be happening so I found a site where the bird songs can be heard, so I’ll post links to some of those I hear here every morning in spring and early summer. There are of course plenty more but these are the ones that sort of are characteristic for areas like this.
I see more and more Marsh marigolds now.
Something has opened up this bird house, my guess is a marten or squirrel.
This violet only grows where it is very wet, unfortunately it was the road we were walking on 🙂
Too bad the weather wasn’t as good as this yesterday because I had planned to go to a place where they have lots of old stone age tombs, in a sheep pasture 🙂 But that will have to wait until it’s either foggy or I will pass the area anyway. These tombs are unlike the ones we have here not covered with soil so it is easy to see how they were built, There are also a few menhirs that I’ve never taken a closer look at. There’s actually an old stone ship/ ship setting on my way to work. Every time I see it I’m thinking I must bring my camera one day to take a few photos of it when the sun is rising, I never remember to do it though 🙂
Some of them had already started to flower too.
I have brought home one (will bring home one more) plastic barrel (200 liters/ 55 gallons, that I will make a compost tumbler of. I can’t remember how I found this site on the net but it seems to work and I’ll give it a try, I can get the plastic barrel from work for free since they will be tossed away otherwise 🙂 This one is meant to be standing in the sun, the warmer the better it seems. The only thing I need to do now is to build a scaffold for it, no problems for a handy man like me 🙂 🙂 🙂 Well I hope it will hold together for its first year anyway 🙂 If it works as I hope I then can make as many as I feel I need and since I only have almost sand in the ground this compost will be welcome to mix down into it.
A male Lemon butterfly had decided to rest during the night on the ground and path, it was pure luck that the dogs didn’t walk on him. The females are more green in their color.
A tree has fallen and suddenly the sun can shine down on the ground.
It is time to make a pot of tea and after that I think I’ll take a tour in the garden.
Have a great day!
Sune and Nova running around chasing each other 🙂 I think Sune needed that after taking a bath in the really cold creek 🙂
The cottage by the Crane Lake, life goes on. 
Recent Comments