I can not say I have not rested this vacation.
Growing on the beekeepers root cellar.
I had hoped I would be able to do a lot of things while being on a blog vacation but the weather hasn’t allowed any outside work and I didn’t receive the phone call I wanted either, I need new rims to my car so I don’t have to get the summer tires taken off so the winter tires can be put on. It is so much easier to have separate rims to them. I still hope for that call (from my work friend who has those rims and will help me to put on my summer tires on them) though because I don’t start working again until Monday.
Growing in my garden. The Siberian Hollyhock.
Day lily.
Honeysuckle.
I never remember the name on this one. Likes to grow where the ground is wet and spreads nicely if allowed.
It has been raining a lot here and thunder has been close even if it hasn’t been above my cottage. they believe that we’ll have much the same weather through August and that September might be warmer. Statistically it should be like that they say but I’m not sure statistics works any longer, the climate change sort of put all the old statistic in the garbage bin. Well I can’t say that I haven’t gotten enough rest this summer 🙂 It is more or less the only thing I’ve been doing 🙂
Bladder senna (Colutea arborescens).
Cercis canadensis (eastern redbud). I’ve sown it myself and it is quite tiny yet.
Autumn phlox.
A honey bee visits my Aron’s rod (verbascum chaxii )
We didn’t take any morning walk today, I was in no mood of walking in clouds of flies even if most of the biting ones are gone by now I still don’t like the others either 🙂 I do wear my mosquito hat most of the time while being out on walks but I’m still rather tired of them now. The dogs didn’t seem to mind that we didn’t take any walk either, the kitchen door is open all day so they can always go out into the garden whenever they like to.
We actually got sun for almost an hour the other day.
The colors on mushrooms aren’t always water proof. This one was red before the rain started.
My neighbor the farmer believes that I might have a badger’s set in my garden 🙂 I have seen the paths it has made here and it has tried to dig a hole just beside my patio but gave up that idea rather quickly. I guess three dogs is a bit too much to have that close even if they wouldn’t harm it in any way 🙂 I do have a lot of bushes covering those places it might choose as a new home so it is hard to see if it has dug a hole elsewhere in the garden. I’ll know better when winter comes.
I wouldn’t mind if it did chose my garden as a home as long as it doesn’t try to dig down beneath the cottage. So if I find that is has dug a hole in an appropriate place I’ll leave it alone, I’m pretty sure we’ll get along nicely as long as I can teach the dogs not to try to play with it 🙂 Orvar tried that once and I can say the badger wasn’t happy at all 🙂 It didn’t try to hurt Orvar because all it wanted to do was to get away from that crazy dog 🙂 I’ll let You know if I find anything.
I would never have seen it if it hadn’t landed on the pind while I was looking.
Himalayan Balsm (Impatiens glandulifera). It’s a beautiful weed that will suffocate any other plant trying to grow there it grows. It is an annual which would make it easy to get rid of one would think but it isn’t. It’s actually a road You’re looking at 🙂
We think that my neighbor the Bee keeper’s bee hives will survive. The queens haven’t come back as far as I know but he thought he could see that new queens were growing so he moved some of those cells to the second bee hive. There will however be no honey produced this year, they barely have enough to survive a mild winter to be honest. He will of course give them food during the winter so they aren’t dependent on what they can scrape together thankfully. Still, I don’t think we’ve had such a good berry summer for ages. I’ll get more blueberries on one bush than I’ve gotten in total all three years I’ve had blueberry bushes in my garden 🙂
This is the weather we mostly had this week.
It’s a good year for thistles.
It is time to make a pot of tea and after that a nap I think. I’m hoping that they today have developed the four film rolls I mailed last Friday but it is vacation time so it might take some time more.
Have a great day!
Lots of napping now.
It’s slightly warmer today but not much, just enough to wake up the flies so they can annoy us again. Â We had big clouds arround us when we went out to the bog an hour ago but I wore my mosquito hat so they didn’t bother me that much, the morning walk, when we walked in to the village however was quite nice. I think the horse fly season is over now even if there still will be a few around for a while more.
Besides being to the super market this morning I’ve done very little. I’ve napped for quite some time, watch some tv and thought about making some tea 🙂 The weather isn’t allowing much else to be done to be honest. It drizzles at the moment but I think we’ll get showers later on tonight. Tomorrow will be an all rainy day and so will Wednesday too.
For a while I thought both of them were dead but then the brown one moved his legs some 🙂
The old tombs.
Where goes the line bewteen tombs and graves? I guess these ones should be called graves.
Normally I take a blog vacation on my first week of vacation but this time I thought that as long as I don’t do much else I might as well continue to write. I will however take a short break until Friday. I doubt much will happen here since the weather is like it is.
It is time to feed the dogs and later on I might make some pancakes again. Or perhaps I should make some warm sandwiches, I have a few ripe tomatoes that I can pick and put on them 🙂
There were only a few flies around us when wew were out walking yesterday.
Have a great day and see You on Friday!
It feels like thunder.
I’m glad I mowed the lawn on Friday because it would have been rather messy to try to clean out the lawn mower after the rain we had yesterday. To be honest, we didn’t get that much but the showers that passed by was heavy and I’m glad we weren’t out walking when they came, we had just managed to go inside when they did 🙂
Today has started out rather calm with no wind and a cloudy sky, not even a drizzle here but that is about to change soon. The clouds are getting thicker and darker but I almost saw the sun for a few seconds ealier this morning 🙂
We might get thunder, the Norwegian site has predictions for it and the flies in the garden behaves rather nasty so I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened soon. This will in any case be a do very little day since the weather won’t be nice, with or without any thunder.
Magpies loves to play with anything they can find, both adults and younglings. The photos are a bit fuzzy since I took them through the windows.
It’s time for a pot of tea and after that a little nap perhaps.
Have a great day!
At least I got some mist.
I caught this one with my camera yesterday. All I can say that it is a species of Blue Winged butterfly but that’s it.
The early morning was so nice, rather chilly, misty and sunny. Well there was this one cloud as there always is that covered the sun big parts of our walk but today I didn’t mind that much, after all I had the mist for a while. Every now and again the cloud allowed some sunshine to peek through so I more easily could see the spider webs and dew drops in the grass. Not a single fly was up in the air and that made it even better 🙂
We did get sunshine for a while before the big clouds arrived and now I’m only waiting for the rain, it will rain for at least two days now and lots of it will fall they say, perhaps as much as we usually get the entire month of July normally. I can’t even pretend that the rain is needed but at least I won’t have to water any pots for quite some time 🙂 In fact, I have even repotted some plants I plant to bring when the plant swapping day comes and placed them on the lawn so they’ll get soaked 🙂
There was no wind what so ever this morning but now I can see the leafs on the apple tree moving, we’ll get strong winds as well they say so I guess the bad weather isn’t far away now. It will come from east in the beginning and then turn to west so I won’t notice much of it here in the hollow where I live, my neighbors however will notice it since their cottage is placed much higher than mine is. I’m so happy it is because it takes almost all wind when the storms arrive and it can be so bad up there that it is impossible to sleep when it is as worst.
We have very few Bumblebee beetles this summer.
I watched Enders Game yesterday and it was so good that I now feel I must find the book. The books are always better than the movies even if I have to say that the final fight between Harry Potter and Voldemort was much better in the film than in the book but I guess that was the exception to the rule. Otherwise the Harry Potter movies were so so to be honest.
I feel that today is a pancake day. I haven’ made pancakes in months now so it’s about time. I always make two pancakes to the dogs to share, I’ve always wondered if they actually can taste anything since they just gulp it down 🙂 I’ll also watch more dvd’s since the weather won’t permit any outside activities later today and I’ll take a nap after posting this. I woke up a few times tonight so I haven’t slept that well. My own fault, never drink a lot before going to bed and don’t have the window open if it is pretty chilly already when one is going to bed 🙂
First however I’ll make a pot of tea and have a bowl with yoghurt and müsli.
Have a great day!
A Zygaenidae moth, which one I can’t say until I can see how many red spots it has on its wings.
It is quite pleasant today.
Once again the Magpies have brought their young ones to my garden. I just don’t understand why since there are two cats and three dogs that would love to take them.
We’re having a pleasant day today, a bit windy, a bit sunny and almost warm 🙂 I better save this day in my memories since they say that we might get up to 70 mm (2,76 inches) with rain this weekend. It all depends on where the heavy showers go of course. So I have been a bit active this morning. First I drove to the super market, it’s no fun being on the roads if it rains that bad.
Not a cloud in the sky when we went out on our morning walk but there was a crane.
Of course I forgot the list I’d written but I actually remembered it all anyway 🙂 They had 70% of on all flowers but I resisted the temptation and just passed by 🙂 I just bought what I wanted and left, I was home again even before an hour had passed and it takes around 20 minutes to go there 🙂 I also put the padded envelope with four rolls of film in the mail box when I went in to the super market. We’ll all be able to see those photos next week.
I’ve also mowed the lawn this morning. I thought I just as well do it since it will rain more or less a lot these coming days. I have to say that I was surprised to see how much the grass had grown since last time I did it. The places I’ve looked at before mowing looked fine with short grass but most of the garden was otherwise 🙂 Long grass that didn’t dry up after the morning dew so it clogged up the lawn mower something nasty. Now it’s done anyway and hopefully I won’t have to think about it for another week.
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I have now watched two movies on dvd. Kingsman and Seventh Son. If You like 007 movies You will most likely like Kingsman! That’s all I’m going to say about that film. The Seventh Son, a fantasy movie was nothing I can recommend. Lots of good actors with lots of bad acting. It feels like they should have made at least two movies from this story, as it is now it’s just a waste of good actors. The special effects are good though and I think that one perhaps can enjoy this film a bit more if one has read the book/ books? before seeing the movie. Now I’ll find the book/ books? instead.
It is time for a bit of lunch and after that a walk with the dogs. I think the biting flies now are dying for this season (well the moose flies are still on their way later when autumn starts), I didn’t get especially much bitten while mowing. The most annoying forest flies however are still plentiful but I’ll bring my mosquito hat, I don’t get annoyed at them as long as they can’t get in to my ears or nostrils 🙂
Have a great day!
The first wild raspberries are ripe now and very delicious 🙂
Today it wasn’t the sheeps.
The morning is a bit crappy to be honest, cool but not chilly enough to keep the flies calm but I have to admit that most of the biting ones are gone now. It also rains every now and again but we were lucky to be rain free when we took our walk earlier this morning.
I didn’t take especially many photos today, too dark and gloomy because of the clouds.
This morning it wasn’t any sheep that was on the run, it was a bull calf 🙂
I got my dvd’s yesterday 🙂 I was actually worried that someone was stealing my mail for a while, I didn’t get any and usually that’s something I like, no mail no bills 🙂 But since I was waiting for the dvd’s and never seemed to get the bill for the developing of those film rolls I had in the Minolta cameras I did start to wonder. I can happily say no one is stealing my mail but we do have summer temp mailmen 🙂 They really don’t have an easy job out here at the outskirts of the world 🙂
It isn’t the first time that happens 🙂 Normally there are more than just one though.
I think he’s quite beautiful.
He was a bit stressed because the dogs and I stood at the place it normally gets in to the pasture again.
It calmed down a lot though as soon as we had passed and it could go back to the right spot again 🙂
They need to find their way in a huge labyrinth of roads, some leading nowhere some leading to places that isn’t marked on any map and the gps’s can’t find 🙂 Lots of mailboxes don’t have any markings or names on them. I think they must have that but tell that to someone who have lived all his life out here and never can understand how difficult it is to find any place here unless one has grown up with all those tiny roads and paths 🙂 I really don’t trust what a gps tells me because it isn’t that long ago they told me I lived several miles away from where I actually live 🙂 That’s because the addresses are slightly illogical.
The rest of the photos You’ll see today (except for the four last ones) are flowers in my garden flowering right now. This is a Hollyhock. This is if I remember right an Alcea froloviana, growing in Siberia. It is said to have pale sulphur yellow flowers but it is extremely pale to be honest 🙂
A Clematis I use as ground cover.
Aron’s rod.
Musk mallow.
For instance, my cottage and the cottage at the end of my road have the same address except for the numbers, the beekeeper has number one and I number three. Our neighbor in between however have a totally different address. That cottage has a much older address which they used over 25 years ago 🙂 🙂 🙂 It was the same where I lived before moving here. For some reason my closest neighbors there had a totally different address than I had, I had the same address as they had on the other side of a huge field several hundred meters (much the same in yards) away. Once there was a road between those and the cottage I lived in and the road stopped there. But that road became a part of the huge field and they opened up a road to the closest neighbors but kept the old address 🙂
The grafted rose died and this is what showed up instead. To be honest, I like this one much better 🙂
Day lily.
Lysimachia punctata. A true weed if anything is 🙂 Grows well together with the Blue Globe thistle, which by the way also is very weedy but very beautiful 🙂
It looks however as the poor summer temp mailman now finds his/ her way so I’ve gotten all the mail I’ve been expecting and it comes every day but very late. I guess the poor person will be just as fast as the ordinary mailman is the day the ordinary one comes back from vacation 🙂 I normally put letters I want to send in the mailbox if I don’t plan on going anywhere in my mailbox so the mailman takes it on the way back to the post office. I have four new rolls of film I want to develop but I’m not sure I dare doing that when we have temporary mailmen on the roads 🙂
Some kind of Veronica, spreads happily too.
Giant Seaholly.
Masterwort, Astrantia major.
A closeup on Aron’s rod. I think this one is Verbascum chaixii. Like most of its relatives it spreads happily too, almost like weeds 🙂
They say we’ll get sunshine today and perhaps even a temperature up to 20C (68F)! I can actually see the sun shining through the clouds right now so perhaps they are right? I’ll know better later after a pot of tea and some breakfast.
No it isn’t fog, it is rain.
Have a great day!
I had to turn on the radiators.
The wild Angelica (Angelica sylvestris) flower everywhere now.
I’m glad I wake up as early as I do because then I got the chance to be outside in a reasonable nice weather 🙂 Well it didn’t rain anyway and I almost saw the sun for a second before the clouds got too thick. I even think it was a bit warmer around 5 am than it is now 🙂
The fog was thick up on the mountain this morning.
I couldn’t hear a single bird sing this morning and even the sheep were unusually quiet. I’m not surprised about the birds being quiet, it is that time of year now when they stop singing because they are too busy raising their young ones and all birds know where the borders go between their territories. The sheep however are rarely quiet but I guess they could feel what kind of weather  we were going to get.
Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria. It can be used in many ways. It contains different salicylic acids and can be used against pain but one can also make lemonade from the flowers. Never tried it but perhaps I should since we have lots of it here.
Much of the Bulrush plant is edible like the roots but also the flowers part as long as it is green. I’ve read that they should be eaten like baby corn.
I drove to the super market this morning too, I didn’t drive there until after 8 am since most people around here have vacation and I’m not sure if the dogs bark when I’m not around. I’ve heard they only bark if they see anyone walking close to the dog yard, they want to say hi I guess 🙂 Today I didn’t buy just what I needed but also what I might need later in the week, lots of guessing with other words 🙂 But I really don’t want to spend a lot of time driving around just because I need something that I could have bought last time I was there 🙂
Well one of them did make a sound 🙂
The first flower on my squash plants. It won’t give any squash since it is the only one.
They have told us several times that rain is on its way but been wrong, not this time though. It started when I was on my way home. Just drizzle at first, then light showers now and again with long periods without any rain. Now it pours down, sort of thunder showers but I don’t think we’ll have any thunder. It is as cold as it usually is when thunder comes though so who knows. It is so chilly indoors now that I started the radiator in the kitchen just to keep the dampness out of my home. There will be no more walks until this calms down 🙂
My Hollyhocks are a bit over two meters high now (much the same in yards).
Some of the Aron’s rods flower now.
The following photos are from yesterday when the weather was a bit nicer.
So I might as well look at some of the dvd’s I have at home that I still haven’t watched. I’m a fan of animated movies so yesterday I watched The Penguins from Madagascar and I really liked it 🙂 Today however I think I’ll watch sci-fi movies. I had hoped the dvd’s I ordered last week should have arrived yesterday, they are Enders Game, Seventh Son and the seventh season of The Big Bang Theory 🙂 They were posted last Friday so perhaps they will arrive today instead, I do hope so because I really look forward to the big bang theory 🙂
It feels like I need to start the radiator in the sitting room too, I’ll spend lots of time there if I’m going to watch dvd’s and it isn’t nice to sit still and feel cold so I better do that. But first I’ll have a big pot of hot tea and something to eat.
Have a great day!
I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t dig beneath my cottage.
I must have had a fantastic dream last night because I woke up and felt disappointed that it wasn’t real 🙂 I can’t remember what it was all about, I seldom do but it must have been fantastic 🙂 One night when I just have moved here I woke up laughing like crazy, I have no idea what that dream was about but I continued to laugh for a very long time 🙂 I wish I could remember what I was dreaming, especially when I wake up either laughing or feel disappointed to wake up 🙂 🙂
I did use quite a lot of the water in the barrels yesterday, especially the tomato plants needed water,this morning the barrels were full again so it must have been raining quite a lot during the night. This morning isn’t especially chilly but it feels like it is because of the high humidity. We went out early as usual and there’s this one place where we need to walk through a cow pasture to be able to continue on the road on the other side and go homewards again. The cows haven’t been there for a very long time so we have been able to pass without any problems, cows with calves will try to kill you if you bring dogs. We had passed through half of the pasture when I suddenly heard something strange.
There we stood, looking at each other.
Yes, cows were in the pasture today 🙂 They got more surprised than we did so I managed to get the dogs out of the pasture before they came any closer and with no dogs no danger to me 🙂 They just stood there watching me and I was lucky because there were no calves close so I didn’t have to jump out of the pasture in a hurry 🙂 I even managed to take a photo before I too left the pasture. Nothing else happened on our walk though. This is the time of summer when birds stop singing so I only heard two birds this morning. They are all now just raising their younglings and after that they’ll eat as much as they can and fly south again.
They say we’ll get sunshine later today, strong winds and not especially warm. It looks as if we should be happy if it reach 17C (62,6F) and if that keeps the flies calm I won’t complain. Normally those biting flies would start to die out now but this cool weather we’ve had have made everything late, I do hope their time soon will be over though. I wonder if this means the moose flies will be late as well, I hope they will be so late that they get hit withy frost as soon as they hatch 🙂
I didn’t take any more photos this morning but I did take a few yesterday afternoon.
We have at least three nesting couples of Shrikes here. I think this might be a chick from this year or the female.
I planted some of my pink flowered dandelions in a flower bed some weeks ago and guess what happened? Yes my dogs ate them 🙂 🙂 🙂 I still have a few left though, I planted them in a big pot and so far they’ve been left alone by the dogs. I’m pretty sure a badger visits the garden during nights now, I can see tracks from them everywhere, they tend to walk the same way every time so they create paths rather quickly. One has dug very close to my cottage and that’s not a good thing. I’ve placed all kinds of things at that spot so if they come back those things will fall down on it and I hope it scares it from digging there again.
These two photos show the males from the neighboring couples.
I do like badgers but it is not a good thing if they think that it would be a great place to have a set beneath my cottage. I really need to get one of those wild life cameras now, I wonder what other visitors I might have here. I don’t mind if the badger like to dig in other places though, it eats slugs and all kinds of things we don’t want in our gardens and they love to eat ground-dwelling wasp nests. I’ve found several wasp nests on the road this last week.
If this weed had had bigger flowers it most likely would have been a popular garden plant. The flowers are tiny though, perhaps a gardener should try and make them bigger?
It is time for a pot of tea and after that a nap I think, I hope I’ll wake up to sunshine and less humidity 🙂
Have a great day!
They trust us that much now!
I didn’t wake up until 5:30 this morning, unusually late for being me and I woke up with a sore throat and stuffed nose. It isn’t fun to get a cold in the middle of the summer, they usually stay much longer than the ones we get in winter. But then again, it isn’t much of a summer when it comes to the weather so this might be over in a day or two 🙂 We’re having strong winds and sunshine between the clouds and it isn’t that bad to be honest 🙂 I know I tend to complain when we get weather like this but I think I’ve gotten so used to it now that this feels like normal summer weather, never above 20C (68F) that is 🙂 🙂
I wasn’t able to pick ripe tomatoes this early last year and they do say that this July is warmer than normal?! I guess that’s because nights have been slightly warmer and sort of evens up and a bit more the slightly chillier days. I really can’t compare to how it is here since I live in a hollow, it’s either colder or warmer here than it is elsewhere. That shows especially on hot summer days when it is a couple of degrees warmer down here or on cold winter days when it is just the opposite.
My neighbor the beekeeper  might have huge problems with his hives, the queens seems to have left the hives! The old hive could have swarmed when he wasn’t at home but they don’t usually do that unless there are more than one queen. Our best guess to this is that the old queen in the old hive got killed by a new queen and that the new queen went out to find a drone. That is most likely the case in the new hive and if this is tha case for both hives the queens should be back after a week. The hives still functioning well so we can just hope for the best. It has gone a week now so we’ll know soon enough.
The Deerstalkerand the doe waited for us but I think they got a bit surprised since we came from the other direction this time 🙂
Suddenly this little one showed up. I normally never see the younglings since I have my dogs with me.
But as You can see they aren’t stressed at all and are most likely trusting us totally.
It is a nothing much to do day today. I could mow the lawn since the grass is dry and the wind most likely will keep the flies away but then again, one shouldn’t do anything exhausting while having a cold 🙂 Instead I think I’ll nap a lot and have lots of tea with ginger 🙂
They got tired of us after a while and started to slowly walk away.
Have a great day!
Can’t notice any big difference to be honest.
This was the best I could do when it came to webs today 🙂
So I downloaded Windows 8,1 even though I’ve heard it’s even worse than the 8,0 but is needed if I later on wants to download Windows 10 (they have obviously skipped number nine for some reason). To be honest, I notice very little difference if any at all. So I’m sitting here wondering when if ever it will start to behave odd. This is just as annoying as the previous one but not worse in any way. I had to pull oot the modem and put it in again, it was impossible to go out on the net otherwise but that is prehaps not especially surprising. It also changed what site my internet will open up on but I found where to change it back so now everything is back to normal again.
The morning has been cloudy and the humidity is high but a rather strong wind make it feel rather nice anyway, ok everything feels a bit damp but I can take that as long as it doesn’t get warm and the predictions says it wont. I fell asleep to the sound of a gentle rain yesterday and woke up to a drizzle. It didn’t come much rain though, not even enough to fill up the water barrels that gets water from the entire roof. We don’t need any more though, the ground is still so full of water that the clothes will get wet in one stands on the knees while weeding the flower beds or is taking a photo.
We rarely see crows here since they don’t get along with ravens and we have lots of ravens.
The photos are a bit blurry but it isn’t easy to focus the camera at the same time one moves it 🙂
Scientists that study the sun says we’re about to have another little ice age, the last time we had it was in the late 16Â hundreds. This will of course not even be close to a real ice age but the temperature will drop considerable. The worst years the frost stopped in late June and came back in early July here in Scandinavia and lots of people starved to death. No risk of any starvation now though since we can buy food from all over the world. So why do these scientists say this? They can see that the sun is less violent on the surface and the less violent it is the less heat it will send to us. They think it will be as calmest around 2030 and that’s not far away is it. There is one thing though that might stop it, the green house effect!
The lambs who always are outside the pasture. They wouldn’t survive for a second if we had big predators here.
We got closer and closer but none of them noticed us 🙂 10 meters away (much the same in yards) and none reacts 🙂
Five meters away and suddenly they see us 🙂
It is kind of fun that the thing we all try to stop might be the thing that will help us through this little ice age 🙂 🙂 So let us all go out and start our cars for no reason at all, burn a lot of oil and help melting that permafrost up in the arctic so all that methane that is caught in the ice goes up into the atmosphere and helps us stay warm 🙂 🙂 🙂 Ok there are some problematic side effects to consider, the polar ice might melt totally and most of the worlds human population might drown but I will most likely get a beach property and that’s not so bad, is it  🙂 🙂 🙂 Perhaps it’s time to buy myself a sailing boat again? 🙂
Well, to be honest I don’t think there’s much we can do if nature wants to do something but I do wonder how much this greenhouse effect we’re creating will affect this coming little ice age. Will the climate change already be so strong that nothing can stop it? Perhaps this little ice age will slow it down some for a while but as soon as the sun gets active again things might be galloping away much faster than anyone can predict. No matter what, it might actually be time to get a boat 🙂
Have a great day!
Not far from frost.
I have a few big flies flying around in my kitchen, all they want to do is to get out and leave me alone so I have tried to help them out. As soon as they fly to the windows I’ve opened them but it seems they just don’t get it. I leave the window open with the risk of getting in more flies, they fly to it and then in panic it seems turn around and fly away again. Why? I mean they must feel the wind so they must understand it i open. After all they have tried their best to fly out through the mosquito net because they can feel the wind blowing through it!
Really chilly mornings usually means lots of mist but I was a bit disappointed with only this little of it and it was even less by the bog.
I have occasionally managed to scare them out through the open window by chasing them with a news paper but really! I don’t think it should be up to me to do that for them 🙂 They don’t care about me at all but I’m getting tired of their sound now, so if they don’t leave by their own choise I will scare try to scare them to fly into the spider webs in the hall 🙂 After all, my spiders need something to eat too 🙂
I did bring one of the older cameras with me and I’m looking forward to see if I managed to adjust it so the photos look like this, more or less anyway 🙂
It was a rather chilly morning, the temperature dropped to 4,5C (40,1F) but the sky was clear and the sun was on its way up so I only wore a fleece sweater when we went out. I noticed that there was one big cloud up in the sky and naturally it flew so it came in the way for the sun! and it also had the direction so that it would continue to cover the sun for quite some time since it flew very slowly. It is so typical and it annoyed me so much since I wanted to get some photographs taken towards the early morning sunrise.
This was more or less the only mist I could see out on the bog.
We walked in to the forest and out to the bog since it was as chilly as it was and when we reached the bog the sun finally got rid of that cloud 🙂 We did see some mist but not as much as I had hoped, I love walking out there in the cold mist when the sun rise and the flies still stays calm. Still it was quite wonderful out there and I did get some photos by the fields too even if it was a bit late. Well, late is perhaps a bit wrong because I don’t think it was 5:30 am yet when we came home again 🙂
I went to the super market too, not that I really needed to but I figured out that if I didn’t go today I would have to go on Sunday and I really don’t like going there on weekends. It doesn’t matter that I have vacation, a weekend is a weekend 🙂 I might as well have waited because we’ll get at least ten more days with low pressures coming in so perhaps I just should have stayed at home to enjoy this day to the fullest. But then again, I had to mow outside my garden today so they day got sort of destroyed anyway 🙂
So out to the fields we went again. The dogs did look confused when we went out there again 🙂
  I’ve just downloaded windows 8,1, I just did that because I need to if I later on will download windows 10 which is supposed to look very much like windows 7 which is the one we all want back 🙂 It took a very long time to do it and so far I can’t say I see any difference. It did however change what site I want to open up when I start the internet and now I can’t find where I can change that back again 🙂 🙂 Well, life isn’t supposed to be easy I’ve heard 🙂
It is time to see if I can find out how my computer works now and I think I’ll need a big pot of coffee while doing that 🙂
Even I could hear the mice in that high grass. I thought they were more careful since they are eaten by most predators.
Have a great day!
Today he had company.
They predicted lots of sunshine for today and to my big surprise the sky was cloud free when we got up this morning and went out for our morning walk. 7,5C (45,5F), no wind and not a single fly in the sky. I’m not surprised that the sky now is covered with clouds 🙂 They had by the way predicted lots of rain yesterday and we got one shower for around 10 seconds 🙂 The day was actually mostly rather sunny, something they hadn’t predicted 🙂
I took a photo just like this one with my old Hasselblad camera, it will be fun to see if I managed it to look similar 🙂 It’s hard to know since I use a different ISO on the digital camera.
Anyway, it was so nice being out walking without getting bit by the lately totally crazy flies. This isn’t the worst year when it comes to biting insects but it’s not one of the better either. I feel when the bigger ones bite ant it itches a lot after those bites but I don’t even react to the smaller ones any longer. The dogs however scratches themselves so much sometimes that I wondered if they had gotten fox scabies but I found those nasty bites they were scratching on. Fox scabies isn’t that bad any longer, they get at least two shots of something and then it’s usually gone. Back in the days it was a nasty shampoo that smelled like death and was quite nasty in all ways and it had to be used more than seven weeks I think it was and it didn’t help every time either. It’s only pure breed Collies who still needs to use that, they tend to go insane if they get those shots.
They aren’t especially worried to be that close to us as You can see 🙂
We walked by the fields and met our stalker, the deerstalker again 🙂 This time he wasn’t alone, a doe was walking beside him. He wasn’t that obvious in the stalking today so I only saw him a few times before we turned and walked in to the forest. I had hopes to see some mist rising in the sunshine but I only saw it in one place and it was impossible to get a good photo of it. The sun had by then warmed up the air so much that a few flies tried to annoy me but they were still so slow that they never will try to annoy anyone ever again 🙂
I bought an older tripod for my old heavier cameras yesterday, they had sent the package by bus so I had to pick it up in a petrol station in Falköping. I picked it up and since I was in Falköping I stopped at one of the bigger grocery stores there and bought some things, like lots of minced meat for Orvar. They had some minced beef that they had lowered the price with 30% so I bought a lot of that. I think I could go back to normal dog food to be honest but his stomach is so much better now that I will keep on making his food myself until the day he doesn’t need any food any longer, because he’s worth it as they say in the commercials 🙂
The tripod is much better in some ways than the one I already had, it is much steadier than the one I already have, it’s also rather easy to make longer or shorter. It is heavier though and there’s no quick hitch so it does take some time to put it on or take it off. Well one can’t get it all in life, can one 🙂 Yes of course one can if one is filthy rich 🙂 I like this old tripod though so I’m happy with it.
It was just as sunny yesterday morning but slightly warmer so we never went in to the forest.
I don’t use the macro setting on the tele-photo lens especially often because my hands shake a bit too much but sometimes it works just fine. This spider is tiny!
I think it is time for a small nap and hopefully I’ll wake up to a sunny day, as they had predicted 🙂 🙂 🙂 If not I can always bake a bread or something or perhaps take another nap 🙂
Have a great day!
A new rose in my garden and I have absolutely no idea what it is 🙂
It looked healthy otherwise.
It is quite nice outside today, not warm perhaps but warmish 🙂 I’ve worn a fleece jacket both times we’ve been out walking and it was needed. The weak wind we have makes it a bit colder than it really is but then again most flies stayed calm even in the forest. I’m thinking of mowing the lawn today but we will have rather nice weather the coming days, sunny and sort of warmish they say. I can do it tomorrow after I’ve been to Falköping to pick up a tripod I bought. I have no idea if it is steady enough for my old cameras but it is older and sort of fits well to my older cameras when it comes to how it looks 🙂 The one I have is no good for heavier cameras and I doubt this will be any worse.
These lambs wouldn’t have noticed anything if a wolf had been nearby, We were so close to them when they finally understood we were there that a wolf had killed them all before the sheep in the pasture would have warned them. They are cute though 🙂
We went out for our second walk quite early, it can’t have passed more than an hour and a half after we came in from the first one. I just got the feeling we should so we walked out to the bog and it was nice since the flies stayed reasonable calm. For some reason, I’m not sure why, we took the exact same road back again and that is unusual but it turned out to be a good thing. We had almost reached the field where the beekeeper lives when I saw what I first thought was a deer. I stopped and thought I would take a photo like I always do.
I guess this is what we’ll see of the sun today.
It was no deer at all, it was a fox 🙂 I think it is a male fox since it was rather big, almost as high as Nova. The fox males are dedicated fathers so I’m pretty sure he was out hunting for the cubs but I did think he walked bad an it turns out he was limping rather badly. Otherwise he looked fine though and I couldn’t see any swelling in his leg so I hope he just have sprained it. He did see Nova quite early but didn’t seem to care too much about her, he just kept on searching for mice and voles.
The rose in the hedge.
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He didn’t bother much when he saw Sune too but I think it was a bit too much when he saw Orvar and me too 🙂 He was in no hurry but slowly disappeared into the high grass and stayed there. The first thing I thought of when seeing him limping was that I wanted to go home and see if I had any pork chops to give him 🙂 I’m pretty sure he will manage to cope anyway though. I am gad however that he went away because we met the hunters on our way home, they are building new hunting towers and a sort of hunting lodge just beside that field. They would not want to feed the fox, they would want to shoot it so it wouldn’t suffer. I can understand how they feel but since the fox seemed fine otherwise I think it’s best to live and continue to catch moles, voles and mice 🙂
I remembered when Orvar and Hector were puppies and Hector became friends with a fox cub 🙂 They played every time they met and the other dogs just wondered why 🙂 It lasted for quite some time but one day the fox wasn’t there any more, perhaps it had moved or perhaps it had learned that dogs and humans could be rather nasty? Hector would have loved to see this fox and he would most likely have run down to it no matter what that fox would have thought about it 🙂
I just saw something brownish move in the field.
He jumped up as they do when hunting but I couldn’t see if he caught anything. He might have swallowed it directly. It looks like he has no front legs at all 🙂
It is time for me to have some breakfast, I’ve been up since 4:30 and still haven’t had any and right now the clock is 9:21 so I do feel a bit hungry 🙂
Here he sees Nova but I guess he thought she was no threat,
Here he saw the rest of us.
Have a great day!
I guess that three dogs and one human just was too much for him.
High humidity never feels good.
I did see the sunrise even if the clouds were rather thick.
It doesn’t matter what kind of weather you’re having, high humidity alway make it feel worse 🙂 If it is col outside it feels colder and if it is hot it feels like walking around in a steam bath. Today is slightly chilly here with a high humidity and it doesn’t feel nice, well it is better than walking in a steam bath but still it isn’t nice.
It was misty up on the mountain this morning.
Bulrush.
Still no sign of that plastic bag when the dogs do their business so I think I’ll have to assume that none ate it and that I will find it tucked away somewhere. I doubt the dogs would tuck anything away but I just can’t find it 🙂 All dogs eat with a healthy appetite and none has a bad stomach now so I feel that I can start to relax some and not have to fear a vet visit with an eventual surgery.
I’ve been to the super market to get that thing I always forget, toilet paper 🙂 I have actually had notes with me every time I’ve been going there but why read them 🙂 So now I won’t have to think about that for at least a few months 🙂 The only negative thing by living in a village at the outskirts of the world is that it takes 20 minutes to get to the store when I need something. A good thing is that it takes 20 minutes to get to the store because I don’t go there unless I really need something really bad 🙂 Besides most things can be bought on the net now, even food.
I didn’t take many photos this morning but thankfully I have lots of older ones to show 🙂 This is the rose that the birds won’t eat the hips on. Even though almost all other wild roses have stopped to flower this one will go on for quite some time, it still has lots of buds waiting to open up.
Flammentanz.
I do buy a lot of things on the net now days, just because it is too far to any store or that the things I want, like film rolls to my cameras are hard to find elsewhere. When I do I rather pay via an invoice they’ll send to me but lots of businesses won’t do that any more. Sometimes they might send me their bank giro number so I can pay via the internet bank. Mostly now days however want me to pay via my bank card/ credit card. I just hate writing down those numbers on the net because even if they have a safe site I still might have a virus in my computer that will save those numbers and send it to someone who will use them to buy things himself. Still I have two different anti-virus programs so I should be rather safe. I still don’t like it though. Every time I have to do that I check how much money I have in my account several times a day for several days. If someone will use my numbers I will at least be able to stop it quickly 🙂
My Black Walnut. Grows slowly but it does grow 🙂
I think I’ll start watching some of all the dvd’s I’ve bought but still haven’t watched today. The weather will be less inviting they say so I might just as well watch movies. I would have already a few days ago but I never brought down the dvd player after bringing down the tv and for some reason that has been something I’ve forgotten to do ever since then 🙂 Yesterday evening however I did it so now I can start watching and fall asleep much more comfortable in my sofa than I did upstairs in the armchair 🙂
Have a great day!
Sorry Mona! No photo of Bertil today but You did get two with his brother Teodor 🙂
So where is that plastic bag?
The only photo I took today. The group of sheep outside their pasture is now getting bigger, I saw at least eight this morning but they all ran in to their pasture as soon as they saw the dogs and I.
I bought a big loaf of bread when I was at the super market yesterday. I remember picking it up from the bag and putting it on the kitchen counter. I can’t find it now! I’ve been looking everywhere since yesterday when I couldn’t find it. It was placed so that only Orvar would be able to reach it and it was placed in a thin plastic bag. I really don’t care about the bread, I can bake bread if I wish too, the problem is that I can’t find that plastic bag anywhere!
normally when the dogs take something they leave traces of evidence but there isn’t a single piece of either the bread nor the plastic bag! The thing is that when this happens (not especially often now days) the culprit usually gets a very upset stomach but none of them have. I am worried that the plastic bag would get stuck in the stomach but they are all eating with great appetite, no vomiting and show now sign of problems. I couldn’t find any traces of the plastic bag when they pooped either. I have checked the entire cottage after traces or if I placed the bread elsewhere than I thought I did but no, it has just vanished from the earth 🙂
I never lock the door when I’m around so anyone could of course have walked in to my home and nicked it but it is a bit far-fetched to think that someone would nick a bread and then walk out again without taking anything else 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I’ll just keep on looking at my dogs when they poop and hope for the best. I’ve even checked the garden if I could see the plastic bag there but nothing so far.
Today feels much chillier than yesterday even if it actually are a bit warmer but the humidity is high and clouds cover the sky. I only took one photo on our morning walk and that’s quite unusual 🙂  but I have plenty to take from earlier days this week. The weather isn’t especially inspiring and I’ve been more concerned about that plastic bag. All the animals are asleep and I think I’ll join them in a while, normally I do laundry on Sundays but it’s vacation so it can wait 🙂
Have a great day!
My first almost ripe tomato! Naturally the birds pooped on it 🙂
The sunset yesterday.
A rather chilly morning.
I woke up a bit later than usual so the sun was already shining when we came out for our walk. It was only 5C (41F) and we could see our breaths when we were breathing. There was one big cloud in the sky and naturally it had to move so the sun got covered just as we were starting our walk. I got really angry to be honest 🙂 One cloud and it had to cover the sun when it for once actually shone 🙂 Normally I can’t hear any man-made sound that early but the first thing I heard, to my big surprise, was someone playing music really loud and the sounds echoed over the village.Â
Guess on what side of the sky the sun was 🙂
I have no idea if it started just as I opened my door but I guess it woke up any neighbor living close and the sound suddenly stopped in the middle of the second song 🙂 I guess I’ll be hearing about this during the week 🙂 We walked down the road we usually do early mornings, I wanted to photograph spider webs but I could find very few since the high grass the spiders love now is either eaten or trampled by the cattle walking in that pasture. But what I found was a bit better and it happened just as the sun started to show again, I saw a dew covered dragonfly (or Troll spindle as the Swedish name is) and just beside it was a spider.
It took a while before I saw that spider 🙂
I was wondering if the spider would try to get the dragonfly or if the dragonfly would try to take the spider as soon as it had dries up. I think the spider is too small to take a big dragonfly though and I’m not sure if dragonflies eat spiders, they eat insects but I’m not sure if they eat arachnids. We continued out to the bog and I think it must have been even chillier out there. I didn’t mind though because the air was totally fly free 🙂 We saw a tiny fox from a big distance but it was too quick to run away before I managed to focus the camera.
I had planned to go to the grocery store in the village where I work, I like that place and I really didn’t feel like going to the super market today but I changed my mind, I wanted to see what kind of hedge shears and grass trimmers they had. I prefer to buy Bosch when it comes to electric machines and they had the trimmers of that brand but not the hedge shears. So I need to find a place that sell Bosh hedge shears because I don’t want any other brand. I could of course by a petrol driven one, they don’t cost especially much more but to be honest, I would only use it every five years so I doubt it would be worth it. Petrol driven machines needs to be used otherwise they quickly give up. Electric machines usually don’t have that problem.
I wanted Orvar to turn around when I took some photos and since he’s slightly deaf I had to shout out loud. There wasn’t a single animal left in the forest after that 🙂
Yes it was a bit chilly 🙂
The weather will be rather nice today, sunny and up to 19C (66,2F). Tomorrow will be quite the opposite so I better enjoy this weather when it’s here. First however I need a pot of tea and something to eat, after that we might as well take another walk and perhaps I’ll bring one of the old cameras with me 🙂
Oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare. Growing in the forest.
Squirrel berries, Maianthemum bifolium.
Can’t remember what this one is called, grows everywhere here including my garden 🙂
St. John’s wort.
Have a great day!
I think I’ll join the animals in a nap.
Those tiny rain drops sure knew how to eat their way through the clothes yesterday. Tiny but oh so efficient 🙂
We woke up as usual around 4:30 and went out for our morning walk, clouds covered the sky but i could see some gaps here and there so I did have high hopes.It wasn’t even 10C (50F) so I thought it would be nice to take a walk in the forest since no flies, not even mosquitoes would be flying around. We could hear lots of animals moving around but couldn’t see any, not even any birds were moving around but some did sing despite the cold air.
The sun did show when we were almost at home and suddenly the heat filled up the world and it almost felt like summer again. I should never have turned off the radiators when I came home because it didn’t take long until the sky was covered in clouds again and the temperature dropped. I had to close the kitchen door and start those radiators again. I now sit with a thick sweater on and have a cup of tea with ginger in it thinking about taking a nap, today will most likely be an indoors day again even if we won’t get any rain, we got stronger winds again instead.
I could see Troll Butter everywhere this morning. Sloppy trolls!
No use in complaining and I hope that this will kill most of the biting insects before they lay any eggs, not even the cattle seems to be bothered by them any longer 🙂 This also makes it nicer to walk where they usually are so plentiful that it is impossible to walk there during summers otherwise 🙂 There’s nothing bad that doesn’t bring anything good with it 🙂
The ice cream truck came yesterday and I got really surprised since it usually comes here on Fridays, I guess they change the timetable during high season. I asked him if he would come every week or every second week and I got the answer it depends 🙂 He didn’t say what it depended on but I guess it could depend on if he had anything to sell or not because some things I wanted yesterday were already sold out and he was here rather early. I bought a box with mixed ice creams from him. Some cones and some aith sticks and a few ice cream sandwiches. I must say it is a good mix 🙂
This is the same rose that I have in my hedge. It is actually the exact same rose since I gave my former neighbors a piece of its roots years ago.
Some colors really pop out when it’s getting darker.
Nova has gone upstairs to nap in my bed, Teodor, Sune and Orvars sleeps here in the kitchen and Bertil in the sitting room, this is not a day for action it seems. I think I’ll join Nova as soon as I’ve had the cup of tea I have by my side. It will get warmer again and we will see the sun again even if it will take its time 🙂
Four Minolta XGM photos.
Have a great day!
A Minolta XG1 photo. We had to take shelter in the old stable one day when we were surprised by a heavy shower.
It is a hot cocoa day!
 
It is 13C (55,4F) this morning and this is as warm as it will be, from now on it will only go downwards. We can be happy if it doesn’t get colder than 9C (48,2F). It will rain all day but I hope it won’t be like those heavy showers we got yesterday, we happened to be on a walk when it suddenly started pouring down so heavily that I had to hang all my clothes to dry because they were dripping of water when we came home. We were a bit too far from the old stable this time that has rescued us so many times before.
There he stood again, our stalker 🙂 WE had to wait for quite some time before he finally walked in to the forest and we could pass. The dogs are so used to him now that they find the sheep in the pasture beside the road far more interesting 🙂
I went to the super market early this morning, they open up at 7 so I thought I better do it early so I could stay at home for the rest of the day. I chose between the one in Skara and the one in Falköping and unfortunately went to Falköping. Well it wasn’t such a bad decision to be honest but I had planned to renew me lottery tickets but it showed I would have to wait for over half an hour before they opened that part of the store, that would not have happened in Skara. But instead I got the chance to buy new wiper blades for my car, both the ones in the front and the one in the back. I’ve needed to change those for quite some time but haven’t come close to any petrol stations that weren’t unmanned.
So now I need to go again to get those renewed, next time I’ll chose Skara so I know it’ll be done. We went out for a short walk as soon as I came home again and it felt quite nasty even if there was very little wind but it rained and it was that kind of rain that gets in everywhere and since it isn’t especially warm it chilled us down considerable. I’ll stray indoors for the rest of the day and I have turned on my radiators again to keep the humidity outside. It will get warmer again already tomorrow though so they won’t be turned on for especially long.
I wish I could say it was a foggy morning but that is rain.
It is time to make some breakfast and today I’ll make some cocoa, hot cocoa because it really feels like a cold autumn day now. Thankfully I managed to mow the lawn before the heavy raining started but that only means that the dogs and cats bring in lots of cut grass 🙂 But there are worse things in life than cut grass on the floors 🙂
We did get some sunshine between the showers yesterday. This is the first strawberry in the forest and it was delicious.
Have a great day!
Today I love the wind.
The clouds flew fast across the sky and every now and again a gap in between them allowed the sun to shine through. It changed later on though so it has been mostly sunny all day.
It is strange that I can almost hate the wind all year but just love it after a heat wave 🙂 I don’t think we’ve reached 20C (68F) today but the sun has been shining most parts of it and the really strong wind has both dried up my lawn and keep the flies away. It felt just amazing to be able to mow the lawn without getting bit by any flies 🙂 We could even walk into the forest without getting specially disturbed by them. The wind didn’t blow especially hard in there but I guess it was enough to make the flies think it was best to stay where they were.
These lambs have been escaping the pasture since they were almost newly born, they don’t go far though 🙂
For the horses.
I have cherries on my two tiny Sand Cherry trees! Not many but there are cherries 🙂 So Now I’ll place the chicken net over them so the birds won’t be able to reach them. This kind of sand cherry doesn’t get higher than half a meter (much the same in yards) but the brancj´hes can be longer than that but they tend to follow the ground instead. One need two different plants to get cherries and that is exactly what I managed to get when I sowed the seeds a few years ago. I’ve read that these cherries will be rather tasty so I really hope that’s true 🙂
There are lots of butterflies flying around too now but it is still so warm that they never sit still long enough to become photographed. I did get one on photo yesterday though and I saw a photo of it with its name written beneath it but I just can’t remember it 🙂 It seems that this place is amongst the few where butterflies still are common and that’s of course because all farmers around here are organic farmers, no pesticides allowed at all.
It is time to see if the mail has arrived, it is probably the most exiting thing that happens here in the village. That and when the ice cream truck comes 🙂 I really have no clue to when the ice cream truck comes but I think it might be on a Friday and most likely when most people work. I don’t think children can go to the ice cream truck to buy just one ice cream here like I know they can elsewhere, it is a package of it or nothing. They sell other frozen things too so if one have nothing to have for dinner and the ice cream truck comes it can save the day 🙂 I’ll keep my ears open so I don’t miss that most annoying tune it plays when it arrives. It is so annoying that the poor divers have been threatened and the tires have been cut with knives when it stand still. I know it is annoying but cutting tires won’t help, then they can play that tune until they get help and that can take hours 🙂
Have a great day!
Some plants I’ve sown are just a bit more thorny than others 🙂 This one has thorns even on the leafs 🙂 and they hurt bad when getting stuck in the hand 🙂
Can’t remember the name on it though, think it grows in Canada if I remember right.
Bertil has found a new favorite spot to sleep on. It’s just where I need to point the remote control and as long as he stays there I can’t change channel 🙂
It is cooling down.
The temperature outdoors never dropped below 18C (64,4F) and that is very rare here, they say we have tropical nights if it doesn’t fall below 20C (68F) during the night so we were close this time. But then the heavy rainfall started and now it’s so cool and nice outside that my head ache is gone and life feels fine again 🙂 I refuse to complain about the heat but yesterday wasn’t nice at all, we reached 31,4C (88,5F) before the sun hit my thermometer on the north side of my cottage so I can’t say how hot it finally became.
This rose grows in the Lilac hedge and I’ve dug it up several times and given roots too people who wanted that rose, still it grows up again every time 🙂 I need to give it support when I cut down the hedge.
We did get thunder in the evening but I can’t say that it was much of a thunderstorm and it didn’t cool down much either to be honest but the humidity rose 🙂 I know some of You have had much higher temperatures for a long time and I understand better and better why You all have ac units in Your homes 🙂 It isn’t common to have anywhere in Europe, especially not here way up north but perhaps we must start having that if these higher temperatures will be more common. At least the older ones should have it.
Our weather will stay unsteady for quite some time they say and You’ll soon read about me complaining about how cold and rainy it is again but for now this is just what I like, even if it is impossible to mow the lawn while the grass is so wet. The biting flies however will most likely calm down some with this cooler weather and that is something I really like 🙂 I have two photos here below that shows one of the nasty biters, it’s almost 1,5cm (0,6 inches) long and You can see those two razor-sharp fangs it has, it cuts through most anything we wear and in to our flesh. Hurts like h… and itches even worse afterwards 🙂 If the sun hits the eyes in the right angle they can shine in all kinds of colors, green and orange is most common and it all depends on the species.
Nasty fly! These flies aren’t just blood thirsty they are also the fastest flies there is, I’ve read they can reach 60km/ h (37,2 mph) and keep that speed for a long time!
Nice fangs, aren’t they 🙂
I went to the super market at 7 am and I did buy all I needed and some that I wanted but forgot to check a few other things, like a grass trimmer and hedge shears. Well I need to go there later this week anyway so that really doesn’t matter. To be honest I just wanted to go home again because the rain started pouring down heavily on my way there and it felt like thunder might be nearby and I’d rather be at home with my dogs if it started. Turns out when I came home none of that rain seems to have fallen here 🙂 The bog creates a kind of pressure during a heat wave and that actually press the worst rain away from this area. We can see how it rains all around us but not a single drop falls here 🙂 Only happens during the summer months and hot autumns though.
This is the rose the birds refuse to eat the rose hip seeds from. It flowers for long and this one still have over two thirds of its buds still unopened.
I think this white Foxglove look much more beautiful than the completely white one.
Time to get something to eat and then see if there’s anything on tv. We’ll get sunshine later today they say so if it stays cool we’ll take a long walk in the forest. I will bring a mosquito hat though, the flies usually stay calm if it is cool but one never knows.
Scarlet flax, Linum grandiflorum flowers in my garden now.
Nepeta sibirica. It starts out nice and gentle until You relax and then it hits! I’ve dug it up several times all over the garden but it still just keep on showing up 🙂 LIke it a lot anyway and bees of all kinds love it. Smells a bit strange if You touch the leafs though.
This peony hasn’t flowered in years so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it looks a bit like it just woke up 🙂
Looks like tansy (but with white flowers), smells like it and spreads like it too 🙂 This is a Tanacetum macrophyllum, also called white-flowered tansy or rayed tansy.
Have a great day!
Joy to the world!
Yes that it how it feels when looking at the thermometer in the morning and it shows 10C (50F) and when looking out the window one see that mist is covering the ground. Yes that is how one feel when walking in that cool air, in the mist and no horse flies bite and no forest flies annoys 🙂 Today might be the hottest day for this time and tonight a cold front from north will reach us and give us both rain and thunder. I won’t however say the same thing on Thursday when all weather sites predicts we only will get 14C (57,2F) but it will only last for a day they say, with my luck it will last longer though 🙂
Yesterday we had a weak wind helping us through most of the day but today the Norwegian weather site says we most likely will have no wind at all big parts of the day. I did the mistake to take a walk yesterday when the wind suddenly stopped to blow and it took hours for Orvar to get back to normal after that. Well we all were quite beaten after that walk and none of us moved for a very long time 🙂 I refuse to complain about the heat though, the spring and early summer was so cold that this was what I longed for and finally my vegetables have started to grow and the first tomatoes have started to change color from green towards something yellowish 🙂
The birds don’t sing as much any longer and soon the mornings will be totally quiet again, except for the twitter they always have during the rest of the year. I saw the first formation of geese this morning, they won’t head south yet but it is a sign that times have changed and autumn slowly will come closer. I also heard a lot of cranes in a field not far from here so now they too gather in groups to eat as much as possible before the move south. Today I also heard the funniest sound from a bird, at first I thought it was a cat fight going on but suddenly I heard the most beautiful song strophe and it was the same bird making both sounds. Normally my guess would have been a starling but this was a lonely bird (starlings are never alone) way up in a tree and it was impossible to see it. I do wonder what it was!
It is a semi bad year when it comes to horse flies and their relatives. I’ve been through much worse but this is bad enough. I’ve read that dark clothes will keep those nasty flies away (and white clothes to avoid mosquitoes but they don’t bother me that much) I can say that it isn’t fully true, I got bitten several times yesterday so here it is thick clothes that keeps them away, so thick they can’t get through it that is 🙂 Several of those nasty buggers have found their way in to my cottage as well but so far I’ve managed to kill them all without anyone of us getting bitten by them. I know they are great food for birds but I really don’t care 🙂
I have way over 100 photos I could show You today but that’s not gonna happen 🙂 But I’ll save the left overs for a rainy or perhaps a snowy day. It is time to have some breakfast, as always all the others have already gotten theirs. I’ve done the laundry so now I have no chores to do when the heat hits properly, it is still only 23C (73,4F) and quite lovely outside, even the flies are reasonable calm right now. They will get insane the closer we get to that eventual thunder though, they always do.
Looks like this spider got lots to eat during the night.
Have a great day!
She took a look at us when we passed and she wasn’t an especially stressed mother to be honest. This is I guess one of our deers 🙂
A few flowers, a bird and a katydid from my garden right now. This is the flower of the rose the birds refuse to eat the rose hips from.
I think this is Delphinium oxysepalum.
My red leafed elderberry bush flowers now with pink flowers. Too few to make any lemonade from I’m afraid.
Red leafed Ninebark.
Californian poppy, self sows good here which I like a lot.
Peony of some kind, smells wonderful. Not all of them do, some smell just awful 🙂
A young Katydid, this one was tiny and these grow rather big and can bite really bad.
This is bought as an Alstroemeria litgu but it might actually be a A. aurea. In milder climates than here this can be a terrible weed, beautiful weed though 🙂
The hot weather doesn’t allow much action.
I had planned to mow my lawn today but I’m not sure it is such a good idea when it is way over 24C (75,2F) already at 7:30 am 🙂 It was so warm in my cottage last night that it actually feels chilly with 24C 🙂 I have to say that I slept rather well though, despite the heat and woke up as I always do around 4am not feeling tired. I do now though so I’ll take a small nap after writing here.
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It was so warm outside though that lots of flies already were up and about and one big cloud covered the sun most of the time sort of destroying my morning walk because it was a bit tricky to get those towards the sun photos I like to take 🙂 I’ve gotten a few mosquito bites by now so the immunity to the itching has started to set in, too bad it doesn’t work on the horse flies, it hurts so bad when they bite and after it itches like crazy.
Suddenly he just looked up above the high grass, my old stalker 🙂
He still hung around when we walked back the same way we came.
My first single-lens reflex camera was a Minolta XG1. I was around 20 and asked my friends to follow me down to the camera store (I don’t think kids today know that they actually existed once upon a time, today they buy their cameras via the web or in any electronics store), they were so much more experienced than I was and I didn’t want to be fooled by the clerks in the store to buy something I really didn’t want or need. We went down and the first camera I looked at was this Minolta. My friends explained the pros and cons with the camera and was ready to check some others when I said I wanted it 🙂
I was just about to take one of those grumpy Bertil photographs when a horse fly suddenly bit him bad on his leg.
Still a few dew drops hanging on to the grass.
These two were my very best friends and both should know how I was thinking and how I would react when they followed me to the store, one did but my other friend got really angry at me 🙂 You can’t just say that this is the camera You want when You haven’t looked at any others he said 🙂 Up to this day I think he’s mad at me for not looking at other cameras 🙂 The other one whom I spent almost every day with since we met at school just smiled as I remember it, he most likely knew this would happen 🙂 He was/ is a Nikon guy and so am I too today since they don’t make Minolta cameras any longer.
Rosa nitida, a really small rose rarely higher than 30 cm (14 inches). This one is a bit paler in its colors than they usually are.
Filled Rosa majalis.
Jacob’s ladder, the blue one.
Astrantia major.
The pure white Foxglove. It is rare that they don’t have those spots inside but many of my ones are without any spots.
Anyhow, I used that camera for years and liked it a lot (I never say I love things, after all they are just things) but after having it in a garden center for several years and the rise of the digital cameras I sort of forgot about it and moved on to the digital side in life 🙂 One day I found it again and after cleaning it up as good as I could I still had one big problem, there a rather thick line of algae in the viewfinder 🙂 It covers about a third of it and it makes it hard to focus on what I want to photograph. So I thought I would open it up and clean it out but I was worried that I might not get it together again so I wanted a similar camera that I could use if I wanted to if this one never would become a working camera again.
Here are the first photos in years taken with my old Minolta XG1. It was difficult to focus because of the algae. The film also gives nature slightly different colors than a digital camera would.
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So what to do? Well I took a look at the Swedish eBay, called Tradera. I couldn’t find that camera at the moment but I did find the one coming after mine, the XGM. They work very much the same but the m variant had one thing that made it even better than my old camera, when using it in manual mode I still could see what time the camera would use if it could choose. Both cameras are half automatic, one chose the aperture and the camera chose how fast it would be. In my old camera I would have to check what the camera would choose and then change it to what I would like it to do, with the xgm I can see that already in the viewfinder while having it in manual mode and quickly just adjust the time to what I want it to be.
I really like this one! My favorite for today!
The only problem was that the seller had put in two more different Minolta camera bodies and I thought that would rise the price and I really didn’t want any of the other two 🙂 But the beginning price was really low so I placed a bid and won, once again the package fee was almost as big as what I bought the cameras for 🙂 It stood in the add that the person didn’t know if any of the cameras worked so it was a gambling to buy them. I have only checked the XGM and the only thing that one needed was new batteries, it works perfectly! So now I can pick my first camera apart to clean it up and even if it would be sad if I couldn’t put it together again I still would have an almost similar camera left and my old one would look nice as an ornament 🙂
So what about the two other cameras? I’ll most likely just put them away since I didn’t want them in the first place, I feel that I have enough cameras now 🙂 I know some may wonder why bother with these old cameras, are they better? NO, the digital cameras are better in all ways to be honest but I like that I have to think before taking a photo because I can’t just delete a photo when it is taken when using film. So I really need to get it right immediately. Much also depends on the film, like how colors shows in the photo, the film doesn’t always give the correct colors and that gives the photos an old-time charm no digital taken photo does unless it is heavily edited.
The rest of the photos comes from my “new” Minolta XGM.
It is impossible to have too many photos showing that root cellar 🙂
Also, one more thing! How many of us actually print out or order photo copies of our digital photographs now days? Most save them in an extra hard drive and almost never look at them again. I miss the old days when we bought a good-looking album to put our photographs in, I still open up my old ones and look then through every now and again. I almost always delete my digital photos, I only order them as paper copies when I use them to make Christmas cards. Even if I don’t order paper copies of my film photographs I still have the negatives so I can do it whenever I want to.
It is time for a short nap before it gets too hot, this will be a day of watering tomato and passionfruit plants and relaxation. The hot weather doesn’t allow us to do much more to be honest. It is vacation and I love it 🙂
There was a unsused roll of film in the camera when it arrived and of course I used it but it looks as if it was damaged by something and I’ve picked out the two I like most from that roll of film. This and the next one, I might show more from that roll later on.
Have a great day!
Vacation time.
I’m not happy with my photos today, it was just too hot and too many flies around to concentrate enough. This is Rosa glauca.
I think it might be even hotter today but it is impossible to say since the thermometer just now shows how warm it is in the sunshine on the north side of the cottage 🙂 We’re all rather calm and most sleep on the spot they find coolest, well not all because Sune sit in the sunlight out in the garden 🙂 He had a bath in the creek to be honest so I guess the remaining dampness in his fur might cool him down still. Either that or something must be really wrong in his head 🙂 🙂
I have several wild roses in my garden and most of them look very much alike.
But then again, I saw a neighbor mowing grass when I came home after work, he didn’t have any shirt on and was slightly brighter than the sun 🙂 I guess he’ll have some problems tonight when it starts to hurt in his skin because he must have burned himself rather badly in this heat and sunshine. We walked out to the forest on our walk because there’s much more shade there but not only that, there are also one zillion flies, so many that even the dogs just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. Very few biters though thankfully.
We heard the most strange sound out on the bog while we were there. Have You ever heard a Harrier plane take off? It sounded just like that but quieter. Both the dogs and I tried to see what it could be but saw nothing. Bertil refused to follow us to the bog at all which is even just as odd. We couldn’t stay to investigate what it was because of the flies, I’ve seen strange things out there but this was the first time I’ve heard something strange.
I mailed three films to get developed on Thursday and today I got the photos on their website. I used my old Minolta XG-1 and another Minolta which I will tell You more about tomorrow, I’m just too tired and too warm to write all that today 🙂 But most photos actually turned out quite well this time, I have missed my old Minolta 🙂 So I’ll sit down later to make those photos smaller and edit them some if needed, I might turn down the highlights some since some are over exposed.
I brought home Hector today and he came in a very nice looking wooden urn. I thought he would come in a paper box or something like that. So he is at the moment standing on the linen cabinet and I’ll give him a better place when I have cleaned up my sitting room properly.
My neighbors two hives 🙂
My Bladder senna ( Colutea arborescens) flowers now.
It is time to feed the dogs and to give me something too. Today was the last working days before vacation starts on Monday but to be honest, it does feel like vacation started today 🙂
It is more pink than it shows here, the shadow made it look strange in the colors.
Rosa rugosa.
Big betony, Stachys macrantha. Many relatives to this one are terrible weeds, this is just very much a weed 🙂
Mock orange.
Seed sown Iris.
Have a great day!
What goes in must come out :-)
I woke up in the middle of the night, yesterday was quite hot so I kept on drinking lots of water and drinking lots of water means one must let lots of it out too 🙂 It was actually quite dark and I was surprised to see that the moon was full, so naturally I had to bring out the camera. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well after that, I rarely do if I wake up like that. The morning was quite wonderful though, no clouds and only 4,6C (47,5F), they had said it would be a warm night but I’m glad it wasn’t, our cool mornings are the only time we are fly free now 🙂
The temperature had risen to almost 20C (68F) when I drove to work and it just kept on rising, it was 30C (86F) by the time I drove homewards. I really can’t complain about it finally getting warm but it is quite b´nasty to work beside a hot oven and a huge hot washing machine all day when it is as warm as it is now. The humidity itself is so nasty that we try to go to other places in the factory where it isn’t so warm. I suddenly remembered that the AC unit in our office is working all day long, so I sneaked in there a couple of times to cool down some. Too bad that one must go out to the heat again 🙂
I did worry a´bit about the dogs because they never drink any water when they are in the doghouse/ yard. I don’t know why, they have two big bowls and it is the same water as we have here in the cottage, they drink a lot of water here but never in the doghouse/ yard. Well, they were all fine when I came home so I guess they drink just enough here in the morning before I leave for work.
There’s really no need to water anything in the garden just because we’ve had a few days with warm weather but I have some annuals that grows fine and thought that since I still had to water the tomato plants I might as well water them too. I also have a few passionfruit plants that should love this heat and I better water them today when I actually think of it than tomorrow morning when I most likely will forget about it 🙂 I was hoping to see some flower buds by now but I guess it hasn’t been warm long enough for that to happen. Even the squash and pumpkin plants refuse to grow.
We’ll have this wonderful weather until Sunday but on Monday it will cool down again, it won’t be cold though, around 20C (68F) and that’s more my kind of temperatures 🙂 We’ll get some rain too they say but it is still too long into the future to believe 🙂 The evening is quite wonderful now, warm with a weak wind. The sheep calls to each other but the cows are quiet. This is how summers always should be 🙂
Tomorrow I’ll go to the vet station to bring home Hector, after that I’ll go the opposite direction to get Orvar’s medicine in Falköping and as soon as I come home it will feel like vacation time even if it doesn’t start until Monday to be honest 🙂 I might go to the tea and coffee shop to buy some tea and a big ice cream :-)They don’t have many flavors but the ice cream is so delicious and the cone is sooo big 🙂
The cottage by the Crane Lake, life goes on. 
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