Last post here, tomorrow I’ll be at the new place!
Not long till the sweet cherries are ripe now. I hope I can get some so I can sow the kernels because these grow on a tree which is less than 1,5m (much the same in yards) high and this tree is rather old so it won’t be any higher.
I didn’t wake up even once during the night 🙂 One could therefore presume that I would be fully rested but that would be too good wouldn’t it 🙂 I do however feel much better now so with a little luck I’ll be fine this last working week before my vacation starts. This will be one of the longest weeks in the year as it is even without this nasty cold hanging around.
The morning was truly wonderful, 8C (46,4F), sunshine and a weak breeze keeping those few flies, that was thinking of annoying me, hiding in the bushes. Very few birds sing now, to be honest I think I only heard one or perhaps two. Could have been the same bird just moving a bit. We walked in to the village, it’s been a while since we did that and it looked like it always does 🙂 I was enjoying the morning so much that I mostly forgot to take any photos 🙂 Still I took plenty yesterday so no shortage of photos today.
We barely made it home until the first clouds arrived and the weak breeze became much stronger. It is still rather nice outside but the wind is a bit too strong to have the kitchen door open. Thunder and showers are predicted to arrive around noonish but the weather will be rather pleasant both before and after it has passed. Most important is that the humidity won’t be sky-high any time today.
Most spider webs don’t look like this year, so far I’ve only seen three like this one.
Do You remember that I bought ten Dahlia’s for almost nothing at all because they had passed their best before selling date? I soaked them in luke warm water for 24 hours and then planted them in pots. I now have eleven since one root fell in to pieces so I got several plants from that one. The problem was that I didn’t know where to put them when they started to grow but the cats helped me with that 🙂 Do You remember that I sowed melon seeds? I planted those in a big wooden box and the cats found the brown soil to be rather pleasant to sleep on and while doing that they also killed the melon plants 🙂
We bumped in to this lady yesterday and we all got just as surprised. I told her to stand still so I could get some nice photos and she stood there patiently 🙂 The grass is so high that she had to jump away but she did so very slowly and in no panic.
I know have planted some of the Dahlia’s in that box and put up sticks here and there so tha cats won’t use it again 🙂 I also planted the rest in my old wheelbarrow, another place the cats slept and killed the plants. If You plants Dahlia roots and it only gives one stalk per root it’s possible to get many flowers anyway. Just cut off the top of the stalk above a pair of leafs and it will start to produce new branches which will give plenty of flowers, somewhat smaller perhaps but lots of them.
All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
I may not have poppies like the Beekeeper but I do have buttercups 🙂
One can also take cuttings and plant those to get more plants and they’ll all give new roots that You can plant next summer. Many believe that if one sows Dahlia seeds those won’t be able to survive a winter to be planted the next year but that’s wrong, they’ll be just as good as the ones one buy or perhaps even better. Very few Dahlia species are hardy enough to survive in the more northern hemisphere though so they must be stored in a cool but frost-free space during our winters in buckets with moist sand or soil.
I think it is time to take another walk with the dogs before the rain arrives. The wind is so strong now that I won’t get annoyed by any flies 🙂
It turns out that I now have used all free space here in this blog, it won’t even upload a single photo any longer! So this was the last post here! Welcome to my new place: The Cottage by the Cranelake. Still We Have Hope. ( Just click on the name and You’ll get there!)
Have a great day!
Raining.
Fire weed. All standing photographs are more manageable if You click on them.
It’s raining outside, it is one of those gentle summer rains that can be quite nice to be out walking in if one has agood raincoat or big umbrella. I have neither so I’ll stay indoors as much as possible as long as it continues. It started just after we had come home from our morning walk and will continue for several more hours they say.
It wasn’t the brightest of mornings 🙂
It looks like my coughing has changed character, instead of attacks it now sort of is there all the time but calm enough to let me sleep for longer periods. Still we were up at 4am, I didn’t feel there was any use in trying to fall asleep again. Instead I sort of slumbered in front of the tv the rest of the morning. They showed something called Lucky Dog, it’s about a man who rescues dogs from shelters and place them in families, quite often with special needs and I’m pretty sure all of You in the USA have seen or heard about that show.
He’s really good and I like how he works with the dogs but still I just can’t seem to like him 🙂 I don’t know what it is but there’s something about him that I obviously don’t like. That is very rare when it comes to me, that I just don’t like a person without understanding why. I could have understood it if there was something he did while training the dogs that I didn’t like but I think he’s great with them. Good thing there’s no risk I’ll ever have to meet him then 🙂
Today will be a do very little day, no use in mowing the lawn since the grass is soaking wet, I might do some laundry already today but that’s it. I di have several books to read and also several dvd’s I can watch if I like to. Nova and Sune wants to do things but as soon as I open the door and they see and hear the rain they turn right back indoors again, they are bored and they blame me for it 🙂
I’ll make a pot of tea now and perhaps I’ll make a sandwich or two as well, perhaps there’s something on tv worth watching otherwise we might go out on a short walk despite the rain.
Black currants behave much like weed here, so this is a self-sown bush that has almost ripe berries now. Much smaller berries but with lots more taste.
Have a great day!
My neighbor asked me if I was feeling any better and laughed when I answered I live.
Bertil has started to follow us on our walks again.
The fever is gone now but the coughing still stand strong, it woke me up at 4am and it’s no use to even try to fall asleep again so we went out for a walk. The morning was so nice and cool! The flies stayed calm and the birds were singing, lot fewer birds singing now, they are raising their younglings and have no need to sing any longer.
It wasn’t that bad working today, mostly because I worked in the neighbor factory. The paint box has a constant temperature of 20C (68F). The air I breathe however is cooler and much drier. I thought that would make me cough a lot but it didn’t, instead I barely could talk at all when I was finished for the day 🙂 I was badly hoarse before I started to work but that was nothing compared to after 🙂 It was nasty warm at my ordinary workplace though so I’m pretty glad that I’ll go to the neighbor factory tomorrow too 🙂
I do hope I can sleep an entire night soon, it’s ok in the morning but it doesn’t take long until one starts to feel like a zombie. I can’t hear properly in either ear, it sounds much like how the tv used to sound when there was nothing on back in the days 🙂 My nose is stuffed most of the time too but those things I don’t get so bothered about, all I want is to get a good nights sleep 🙂
The first of the annuals I sowed to open up, the cornflower.
It isn’t big but it has now survived two winters here, my Cercis canadensis. The Eastern Redbud.
It is time to make a pot of tea and I’ll put cough drops in it and hope for the best 🙂
Have a great day!
I got to sleep a few hours last night :-)
We’re having a rather wonderful morning here, a bit warm perhaps but a cool breeze helps make it all feel very comfortable. It wasn’t that nice while we were out walking early in the morning though, cloudy and the temperature was actually much lower but the humidity was so high it felt nasty just standing still. As soon as the sun started to show the humidity fell and now it’s just right.
In some places it was quite successful.
In other places not so much.
I did get some sleep last night, only woke up twice to try and cough my lungs out 🙂 I had fever again last evening but today it was totally gone again. I guess the same thing might happen again today but I can feel a big change now. Yes I’m tired and I still cough some but it doesn’t feel like death would be a nice alternative 🙂 🙂
A few cranes flew by.
While photographing the other cranes I suddenly had to cough. I didn’t know I stood beside all these ones 🙂
Yesterday Great Britain voted to leave the EU, today loads of people say they wish they hadn’t voted like they did, a bit late to change ones mind the day after, isn’t it 🙂 600 000 people have signed a petition that they should get the chance to vote again and that will of course not happen. Donald Trump made himself even more unpopular in Scotland than he already is (which is extraordinary since he really is very disliked there) by saying the Scotts had voted to take back their own country by leaving the EU. The nut head hadn’t checked the Scottish results at all, 60% of the Scottish people voted to stay in the EU 🙂 🙂
The first Bumblebee beetle for the summer. I have no idea what the bronze colored one is called but it can be found everywhere here.
I can fully understand why people want to leave the EU. There’s no transparency in how things work, The entire state machinery is fully corrupted even if it has become slightly better now days but they still give lots of EU funded jobs directly to organized crime. The ones working in the parliament, a place which has very little power at all, make more money in a month than most people do in a few years and very few of them pay any taxes at all. They only have to report to the parliament that they are there and they’ll get paid even if they don’t show up anywhere. Most rules to get EU grants are based to how things are in Southern Europe and not at all to how it is up here in the north, so the EU are now destroying the Swedish cow pastures, they say we have too many trees in our pastures and must cut them down. We’ve always had lots of trees here, it gives shelter for the animals for instance, it keeps the soil erosion at a minimum too and the trees give fire wood for the winter.
Last year I got two flowers on my Alstroemeria, this year it will be covered with them 🙂 Two mild winters in a row was just what it needed. If it likes the garden it is said to be a nasty weed, who cares it is beautiful 🙂
Delphinium oxysepalum.
Nettle butterfly.
Nettle butterfly larvae. It feeds mostly on nettles and it is more than welcome in my garden 🙂 I hope they’ll eat them clean!!!
Britain will of course not perish because they’ll leave the EU and since this won’t happen over a night we’ll all get used to the idea and things will run as smoothly as always. The EU however might not be the same after this, suddenly people all over Europe demands to have a right to vote about membership too 🙂 I like the idea of a united Europe but since the leaders seems reluctant to fight corruption and to make changes so that it gets more democratic the best thing would perhaps to let it die and to build up something else and actually try to get the people in Europe to like it too 🙂
Two days ago the first of the fragrance peonies opened up.
Yesterday the second one did.
My woodland has now grown outside its area. It is very hard to see but beneath the rhododendron leafs two Aralia relatives grow now. One thorny as hell and one without thorns. Naturally I can’t remember the names on them 🙂 It doesn’t help that I have sown them myself either 🙂 Both are bought from my favorite seed seller Garden’s North in Canada.
It is time for a pot of tea and then a nap I think, I have lots of sleep to catch up after this cold from hell.
Have a great day!
A rather perfect morning.
From the Gevabox.
We’re having a rather wonderful morning here at the outskirts of the world. Sunny, warm and with a weak wind just enough cool to make it even more pleasant. Always flies in the air but still unusually few and even fewer ticks of which I’m thankful.
On the way to the bog.
To get even further away from the world we took our morning walk out on the bog. We were actually there already yesterday afternoon because my neighbors had been there and told me it was so dry out there that it was possible to walk around without sinking anywhere. I did hesitate a while because I thought there would be lots of ticks, mosquitos and midges there but then again it is voles and mice who spreads ticks more than other animals and voles would drown if they tried to dig in the ground out there and mice stays mostly on the islands so we avoided to walk there.
I just wore ordinary shoes while walking out there. The Cotton-grass likes it on the bog as You can see 🙂
I climbed up one of the hunting towers in the hope of seeing some wildlife but except for small birds I couldn’t see anything but trees and cotton-grass. To be honest it was enough for me that there were no biting insects and hardly any other flies either 🙂 They all seems to have moved in to my cottage instead 🙂 I really need to buy more sticky fly paper again.
Not an animal to be seen anywhere.
Well, two dogs were there of course 🙂
I better go outside to water the pots now since we’re going to have sunshine all day and after that I’ll have a pot of tea, one can never have too much tea in life 🙂
Lots of cloudberry leafs but no flowers or berries yet.
All standing photographs are more manageable if You click on them.
On our way home again.
Have a great day!
Four photographs from my Kiev 4.
The little calf You can see here was born not many minutes before I took this photo.
Still a bit chilly.
Taken with my mormors old camera, the Gevabox. I forgot to adjust the distance 🙂
We’re having a chilly, windy but mostly sunny morning here. It is sweater weather even if one walks in shelter of the wind but kind of nice anyway. It is however not that nice that I’ll keep the kitchen door open for more than a few seconds. I guess that’s why the dogs wants to go out and in all the time, when it stays open all day they usually don’t feel the need to go in and out at all 🙂
No big plans for today. I might go outside and sow those last vegetable seeds I still haven’t sown. A good thing I didn’t since we had frost the other day. Sometimes it pays off being lazy because they had not survived such a cold night 🙂
The hunters have cleaned up the path along the creek so we finally can walk there without risking a fall and a broken leg. Too bad the ones owning the field beside this part now will put up electric fences to keep away the wild hogs. They keep the fence so close to the creek that it will be impossible to walk there again. It is most likely against the law “right of public access” but I do understand them because the hogs do destroy the fields totally.
Perhaps I finally will watch one of all the dvd’s I’ve bought. I still haven’t watched the last Hunger Games movie or the latest Star Wars movie and I have continued to buy dvd’s so I have plenty to watch when I finally start :-)I also have several books that I’ve bought but not come around to read.
I just couldn’t figure out what animal it was we were looking at from a distance.
I can always do the laundry but that can wait until tomorrow or I can do some today and some tomorrow. All these choices and still nothing to do as I so often heard when I was a kid 🙂
We came really close and they weren’t especially bothered by us at all. Three roe deers just having a nice morning.
We came really close and they weren’t especially bothered by us at all. Three roe deers just having a nice morning.
I do know however that I will drink a big pot of tea very soon and I might watch some tv while I’m drinking it. I still have that extra channel for free and still without any sound 🙂 but comedies with subtitles work anyway. The rest of what they show is pure crap though so I don’t watch that channel especially much anyway 🙂
Three from the Hasselblad camera.
It is time for that pot of tea and after that a nap perhaps. I will set the alarm though because I tend to sleep for way too long and when I do the entire weekend gets messed up.
I had the Kiev ¤ camera in my car most of the late winter and early spring and stopped to take photographs whenever I could. The last photos were taken just a few eeks ago.
It was so foggy at work that the huge silo behind my work place couldn’t be seen.
Have a great day!
These four are from the Balda Jubilette. This one was the first photo on the film. It could work as a post card where I could write something on the front of the card, something I’ve noticed they often did back in the days (early 1900’s that is).
The best ever!
We had our annual road association meeting yesterday evening, something we all fear will drag on and on until we all think bad thoughts about what we want to do with the person/ persons who are responsible for just continuing talking about other things than the road. It was the best meeting ever 🙂 We were just five people there, we agreed on everything and I think the meeting took around ten minutes, we had coffee and cookies for an hour after that 🙂 or as we call if we had a fika 🙂
I woke up to a nasty cold world at around 4am this morning. Nova is not a cuddly dog anytime really but she has decided she will be that around 4am every morning. I really can’t get angry even if I would wish that she could be it slightly later in the morning 🙂 Anyway, I looked at the thermometer and it showed -2,6C (27,3F) but the sun was rising so we went out for a walk. It was enough with a fleece jacket as long as we walked in the sunshine, it was far from enough when we walked in the shadows 🙂 Still I didn’t mind, no flies were out flying in those temperatures and it looks like my tomatoes survived yet another frosty morning!
We’ll be at the edge of a low pressure tomorrow and all weather sites predict lots of rain during the night and the Norwegian even predicts thunder. It will be a bit too cool tomorrow but it all depends on which side of the low pressure we’ll be on. I really don’t want any rain but I guess that since the ground is as dry as it is most will just be sucked up by all the trees and the grass but I fear it will wake up all those blood sucking biting flies. We already have some of them, the biggest ones that can be heard from a great distance but those are easy to keep on a distance (which means easy to hit in the air 🙂 ).
It is time to get something to eat and I think I’ll grill some grill sausages, our hotdogs are anything but nice so I do anything to avoid them 🙂 not even the dogs eat those 🙂
Have a great day!
I just can’t win :-)
Nova woke me up at 4am today se we went out for a walk. The morning was so beautiful that I forgot to take especially many photos, I took three to be correct 🙂
I’m sort of lazy when it comes to shaving so long periods I have the right style with a hipster beard 🙂 Yesterday I thought it was time to get rid of it and brought out my trimmer. I stood in the bathroom and trimmed away when the machine, wich has a cord, started to hack. I didn’t think much of it but tried to keep the cord in a way that it at least would work until I was finished.
I never remember what this flower is called. I have it in my garden and it is a native plant.
Suddenly big flames came out of the machine! I shouted something like AAAAAH in a high-pitched voice and was about to toss it in the sink but realised that would be a rather stupid idea since I had a newspaper there to collect all the hair, that would have been a smelly start of a nice fire 🙂 So I dropped it on the floor, still burning and tore out the cord from the jacket but the bl…. thing kept on burning 🙂 So I ran out to the kitchen and tossed it in that sink instead. I tossed it in a clay pot and placed it in the garden during the night 🙂 I looked slightly derange in my face, some places had still lots of beard left and it was a bit tricky to shave it all off 🙂
The white Jacob’s ladder.
The blue one. It is so dry here now that the flowers give up fast.
My printer hate me too! We’re going to have our annual road association meeting so I was going to print out the calling to the meeting and also last years protocol. I had bought black ink this year since it refused to print out anything no matter what color I chose as long as there was no black print. So I was printing out the calling when I noticed that the text was clear blue! I know I had adjusted the printer for black text but still there it was in clear blue 🙂 As soon as all calling notes had been printed the printer told me I had no blue ink left. No problems I thought, I’ll get the protocol in black so I don’t need blue.
The Beauty bush is in bloom.
A day lily without name.
Geranium pyrenaicum. I also have it in white.
Of course I needed blue, it refused to print anything in black as long as I didn’t have blue print! So away to Falköping I went and bought blue print and when I came back it didn’t fit! I had of course tossed away the old cassette, which by the way had just enough blue ink in it to color my both hand very blue. So back to the store minutes before they closed and I just bought a cassette which I thought looked the same and to my big surprise it was the right kind. So finally I could print the protocol. Guess if I got surprised that every letter it printed just had the edges in black, inside it was totally white?!
I allow lots of wildflowers in my garden, like Buttercups.
Laburnum.
It didn’t matter what I did it continued in the same way. So then I thought, I have a lot of blue ink now so if I adjust the printer to make the letters very dark blue instead, that should make the text look almost black. I now have the protocol and the text is purple and I have given up 🙂 I truly hate printers but I need one and every year it is the same battle and the printer always win 🙂
The weed flower bed. It doesn’t look especially nice now but earlier it was totally yeallow and soon it will be mostly blue from a geranium. There’s also a Sorbus domestica and a Rosa glauca.
This one too which I at the moment can’t remember what it is called.
The rest of the photos comes from the Ambi Silette.
It is time for something to eat and after that I’ll see if there’s anything interesting on tv. I now have a channel for free again (I don’t know for how long though, it can be gone tomorrow or in two weeks), it shows all my favorite comedies but there’s one problem, there’s no sound 🙂 I can however say that since we always have subtitles in shows made in another language it is just as fun anyway 🙂
Have a great day!
Back to cool mornings again :-)
We’re back at more normal summer temperatures here now, around 22C (71,6F) during the day and around 10C (50F) during the night but this night was a bit more chilly. I looked at the thermometer just before we went out for our morning walk and it told me it was 3,5C (38,3F) outside in the sunshine 🙂
It was actually really, really nice but I did wear a fleece jacket. The sun warms us up but the shadows are a tad cold for quite some time. We still have very low humidity so no morning dew today either. That however means the ticks won’t be around either so even if I miss the dew I really like the tick situation 🙂 Not many other animals around either to be honest but the ravens had a huge fight with something, they were so noisy that they could be heard all over the village.
I’ve done something with my right thumb, I don’t know what but it hurts like h… every time I move it 🙂 I haven’t hit it in anything and I have no smaller or bigger wounds in it either. I noticed the pain yesterday evening and thought that it would be gone this morning but it got worse instead. I can move it and it gets a bit better if I continue to move it every now and again but as soon as I keep it still for a few minutes it’s the same again. This is not a week to not being able to work because I’m the only painter who will be there all week. Lots of school graduations next week too. Thankfully I’m ambidexter so as long as nothing happens to my left hand things would work 🙂
I must go to the super market today. I really need mosquito nets and I’ll see if I can find a small fan too, just in case the heat returns. We all fear that this was the summer we’ll get this year. Last year started out much the same (less hot though) and as soon as our vacations started the cold and rainy weather came to stay. Looking at it statistically if May is hot June will be cool and July hot. Almost always a lot of rain though because the summer months here are also the ones with most water falling from the sky. Climate change however has changed things so now the weather turns anywhere all the time 🙂
It is time to get some breakfast and as soon as I hear that my neighbors are awake I’ll drive to the super market. I don’t want to goo to early just in case the dogs would start to bark in the dog yard when I drive away. They say they rarely do but if they do it will of course be on a Sunday morning 🙂 Normally I would be really annoyed if I had to go to a supermarket on a Sunday but we’re having a holiday tomorrow, our national day, so it doesn’t feel like I’m destroying the last day of the weekend.
My plastic garbage bins shines in the sun.
Have a great day!
Four photos from the Ambi Silette.
I could feel the difference when I opened the door.
I really hate to complain when we actually get warm summer weather as we have so far but it was just too warm yesterday, we Swedes aren’t used to have temperatures up to 31C (87,8F). Normally our summers are cool and rainy, so the weather we just had was a dream come true for us 🙂 I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t been working beside a huge oven and a huge washing machine that pours out steam that fills the entire place where I work 🙂
I could feel the difference in the air as soon as I opened the kitchen door (it will cool down to only 21C (69,8F) today, normal summer temperatures 🙂 ), the air was cool, almost chilly and even felt a bit humid, it is around 50% so it is actually a bit low and will drop even more later during the day. One weather site says we might get a few drops of rain another says we won’t. I don’t long for rain because it is now so dry in the ground that the lawn doesn’t grow and that I like 🙂 Also, all puddles and most small creeks are now bone dry so that means fewer mosquitos and hopefully fewer biting flies too 🙂 I’m not sure farmers like it this dry though but at the moment I really don’t care 🙂
I think this is a Kestrel and it hovered nicely so I could get some photos.
I have four long strips of sticky fly paper hanging from the ceiling and two of them are full of flies and has to be changed today, they were filled during four days. The first biting ones have arrived too, oh the joy. They are all very early this year so I hope their season ends early too. It would be nice if they actually were gone by the time my vacation starts but I guess that would be to hope for too much 🙂
A lone Greylag was grazing the field close to my cottage.
Yellow Goat’s Beard (Tragopogon pratensis) grows everywhere here and its root is edible and seen as a delicacy.
Cranes grazing another field.
It is time to make a pot of tea and something to eat as well. We were up already at 4:20 this morning and went out not long after that. The sky was and still is a bit cloudy but we could see the sun rise since the clouds were rather thin, so after the tea I think I’ll take a short nap 🙂
The Guelder rose is now in bloom.
Have a great day!
I had totally forgotten that I had planted hardy pelargoniums in my garden, so guess if I was surprised to see these two growing up 🙂
Bertil is being chased away from the apple tree by two angry magpies 🙂
It’ll be a lazy day.
According to the weather sites it is raining here right now but as far as I can see through the windows it doesn’t. Showers are of course always hard to predict, it might in fact rain on the other side of my cottage without me knowing it. It is a fairly warm morning with a brisk breeze and high humidity and it could have been rather nice if the humidity had been lower. The more the day passes by the better the weather will be and the lower humidity will be as well.
My neighbors calves all look the same but the ones the castle has look al very different.
I wonder if this is a Red Kite. It does look like it.
We walked down to the creek this morning and there was this rather big raptor up in the sky, normally they never come especially close but I was lucky today. I now know it is a Kite and I think it is a Red Kite which is rather rare here in Sweden. I did see a deer too and some Greylag geese but that was it when it comes to wildlife this morning. Of course I saw lots of small birds but they didn’t come close enough so I at least could try to identify them. I did however find lots of wildlife in Sune’s fur when we came home, I had to pick several ticks and I got all of them before they had bitten. They are now all dead 🙂
I’m now taking the chance or risk that we won’t get any more frosty nights here so I am placing all the remaining potted plants I have in the cottage in the patio instead. The roof seems to make the place rather frost safe, unless it drops down to -7C (19,4F) or lower which isn’t unusual the last frost night here. It is like nature wants to show that we never can relax totally and just shows of that last frosty night 🙂 So today I’ll take out the three passionfruit vines, the Lime tree and the last pelargonium. It is amazing how much more light I have in my home now 🙂
A little of what flowers in my garden right now, This is Spanish bluebell, a pink one.
Prunus pumila.
Japanese quince.
The Aronia has beautiful little flowers.
I still have the last laundry to do but besides from that I’ll most likely have a lazy day today. I might start sowing some vegetables but then I need to weed the last part of my vegetable patch and the weather isn’t that nice yet. I’ll see if I do it later when the humidity is much lower. It will be a warm week ahead of us so I’m thinking of mostly making salads to bring to work. Like chicken salad one day, pork the other (much the same as the chicken one, I just put pork in it instead 🙂 ) and so on.
The Columbines popped up so fast that I barely noticed that they had started to grow.
Bleeding Heart.
Paeonia vetchii.
My Haberlea rhodopensis is now so big that it almost suffocated my Ramonda myconi (Pyrenean violet) but I think and hope I saved it just in time.
It is time to start with the laundry though and after that a pot of tea 🙂
Have a great day!
I haven’t seen the very pregnant cow this morning, I do hope that calf is out by now.
I liked the start of the day anyway.
It was already less thick when we got out, I couldn’t see this road at all when I woke up 🙂
Yesterday was a horrible day at work, I don’t know how it was outside though. It might have been rather wonderful since the day was so warm but it was also mostly cloudy they said. I had the big luck to hand paint all day so the already hot factory was even for me since the air from the oven hit me all day. I don’t know how much water I drank but it was too little. The big problem is that what goes in must go out too 🙂
I woke up to a very foggy morning today, it was so thick that I couldn’t see my neighbors cottage and it is just 20 meters (much the same in yards) away 🙂 I hurried out with the dogs because as soon as the sun started to warm up the already warm air the fog thinned. We were able to enjoy it all through our walk though. It doesn’t happen often but today even the forest were full of fog.
I went home a bit early today because thunder arrived and the lights were blinking at work. It hit somewhere in the village where I work and was moving eastwards so I figured it would arrive here at home before me if I stayed until my working day ended. It hasn’t arrived yet because it moved very slowly. I have heard it in the distance and the site Real Time Lightning Map (click on the red text and a new window showing the site will pop up, it works all over the world) shows that the thunder is just north of where I live.
I better stop here just in case it turns south, I can feel how it is getting colder by the minute now so I guess it is 🙂
All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
Have a great day!
This little one was born just outside my kitchen yesterday morning.
It was a bit awkward to walk the first time 🙂
It is finally over for this year :-)
We’re having much the same weather here today as we had yesterday, no wind and perhaps a tiny bit warmer though. I have to admit that it’s quite nice even if I would prefer sunshine and warm weather. We haven’t gotten that much rain as they predicted though so we might still get a reasonable fly free summer 🙂 I’ll get tired of it soon enough though.
I stood still for a moment to take a photo and the dogs were just beside me when I suddenly heard a loud crack in the forest beside me. None of us was even looking at that direction but still the Roe deer goat (as we caklle the females) desided she had to get away. It isn’t easy when one is heavily pregnant but she was quite calm when she saw neither I nor the dogs were especiallly intere4sted in her. She stood at the same spot when we walked away.
I watched The Eurovision Song Contest yesterday night and it was quite ok. They had changed how they presented the votes this year. There are jut´ry groups in every country, people mostly working in the music business and then there’s the televoting. Both parts give the exacts same amount of votes but since they add together all televotes to one vote per song it looks much more when they present the televoting.
Australia won the jury group votes and it looked like nothing would be able to stop them from winning. The Russians won the televoting hugely but since they didn’t get that many votes from the Jury groups they “only” came third. The one winning it all when both groups were added were Ukraine! I just can’t understand how they could win, I’m sorry Ukraine but I just can’t 🙂 Australia came second and we Swedes ended up as fifth. Now it’s finally over for this time but it’ll start all over again as soon as we pass in to 2017 🙂 I’ll post the top three songs at the bottom of this post.
I think it is time for a short nap and after that we’ll take another walk.
Have a great day!
One might not like the Russian song but he sure had the best show of them all.
Another fantastic day :-)
‘It is warm today, it went above 21C (69,8F) already at 10 am and it looks like it will continue to rise for yet some time, yesterday we reached 24C (75,2F) and that was a few degrees higher than predicted. There’s no wind at the moment either so it feels warmer than it is. I’m enjoying it to the fullest, this might be the summer we’ll get this year. Last summer started much the same and after that it was mostly cool and rainy.
Nova saw these hares but listened to me and stayed where she was 🙂
I wore a fleece jacket when we went out this morning and it turned out to be too much. I didn’t regret it though because we walked through lots of bushes and god knows how many ticks that might have been in them 🙂 I have to say though that I haven’t picked that many ticks from either dog, Nova prefers to walk in open spaces where there are no bushes and the grass is low. Sune he takes his baths and I think that rinse away some of the ticks that are in his fur.
The ground is still too wet and soft but they keep on trying 🙂
Finally the ferns by the creek shows.
I’ve done almost all the laundry already, I still have the working t-shirt left to do though. I really can’t wash it with any other clothes, the powder paint that still is in the t-shirt has a habit to stuck on the rest of the clothes instead. It is very easy to brush off but still annoys me. The rest of the laundry is now hanging on the patio to dry.
One problem when summer start this early is to keep calm in placing more sensitive plants outside too early. We can and often do get frost here the first week in June but already now nights are warm (Scandinavian warm that is). I would like to have my tomato plants, the two I have, outside already now. I can of course bring them indoors if they threaten us with frosty nights but the pots will be rather heavy to carry and I’m not sure covering them will be enough.
I also have several Tamarillos which need both bigger pots and more light. I know that when the are acclimated to an outside life they will manage to survive down to at least 0C (32F). I once had one growing in a south heading window when I lived in Gothenburg. It grew really large and even gave me fruit but I tossed it away since it really smalls rather nasty if touched and for some reason one does that every time no matter how careful one is 🙂
From here on it is flowers in my garden.
The plants that I really! want to get outside though are the Naranjilla (Solanum quitoense). It too can take low temperatures since it likes to grow on heights above 1500 meter ( 4921 feet) above the ocean. The problem with them are the thorns. Nasty sharp that goes straight through the skin and are impossible to get out again 🙂 It has those thorns both on the stems and the leafs 🙂 I’ve heard the fruit is delicious so I just had to try and grow it, no matter how thorny it is 🙂
Tulipa tarda.
It is time for a pot of tea and then a walk again. We better enjoy this weather as long as it lasts because already next Saturday they all predict much cooler and rainier weather again.
Three more anemones.
Lonicera caerulea . We call it Blåbärstry (Blueberry honeysuckle).
Have a great day!
There were two too my big surprise.
It didn’t look especially nice outside when I looked through the windows, a bit dark and dreary to be honest. I have to say it was actually quite nice when we were out walking even if it was around 0C (32F) but since there is no wind at all it is quite pleasant outside. Ok the humidity is sky-high but I can take that when it is a bit chilly.
My neighbor has this thing for tractors, he has just bought a new green one (too new to look interesting enough to photograph) so now I think he has twelve or is it thirteen 🙂 I can’t say much though, I think I now have twenty cameras 🙂 My hobby is a bit cheaper though 🙂
Beside the bird song not a sound could be heard. I had hoped to see a badger today but they always seem to have gone back to bed when we’re out walking. I can’t complain though since we saw lots of other animals instead today. First I saw a cat hiding in a ditch and managed to distract Sune so he would try to say hi to it, not all cats like that 🙂
After that we walked in to a deer, she didn’t care much about us. She just stood there watching us pass by and then she continued to grace as if nothing had happened. Canadian geese came flying from all directions out to the fields to graze as well, we have many more here now than what we had when I moved here. We also saw a couple of Greylag geese flying above us and those were rare here back in those days.
She wasn’t especially bothered by us, as soon as we had passed she just kept on grazing 🙂 She is most likely one of the old ones who ate in my garden those nasty cold winters we had a few years back.
This Greylag couple are nesting on the bog.
We didn’t go far until I saw a fox. I tried to get as close as possible and at the same time tried to tell a more or less deaf dog to come closer to me without alerting it 🙂 🙂 Nova just kept on walking like always so we didn’t get as close as I had hoped but I did get a few photographs of it anyway. To my big surprise another fox turned up when the first one ran away, so both mother and father fox were out hunting, that must mean the pups are big enough to be left alone now.
The creek was between us so at first it couldn’t hear us getting closer.
Then we passed the creek at the same time I tried to tell Nova to stop and that it did hear 🙂 By the way! A hare passed straight in front of Nova yesterday and she didn’t even look as if she wanted to follow it 🙂 Just a year ago she was determined to kill them all 🙂
Playing fox cubs are the cutest thing there is and I once hired a summer cottage a bit north. There was a small village with two grocery stores! nearby (today it is surprising if a village has anything at all to be honest) and I had decided to walk to one of the grocery stores to get a few things I needed. On my way back to the cottage I suddenly saw five small fox cubs playing on the gravel road. I stood there for almost half an hour just watching them and I’m pretty sure mother fox was watching me 🙂
Here is when I saw the other fox, it too started to run when it saw us. Nova and Sune couldn’t care less, they didn’t even watch those foxes run away. After all it smelled like beavers and water voles along the creek 🙂
The clouds are getting thinner and my aunt in Gothenburg just texted me that they have sunshine and 20C (68F) in the sun at 8:30 in the morning. So that’s what I am waiting for right now. I don’t trust our weather predictions but they sound pretty nice at the moment, sunshine the entire next week and they think we might reach 20C (68F) in the shadows by the end of next weekend, that would be nice especially since I have a long weekend then. Ascension day is on Thursday and it is a holiday here and I’ve taken Friday off 🙂
Here are four photographs taken with the Ambi Silette at Forentorp Ängar (Forentorp meadows).
It is time to get something to eat and then just wait for the even nicer weather to arrive 🙂
Have a great day!
So far it has been rather nice.
It is supposed to be raining here right now, it doesn’t. I’m not complaining, just saying that they haven’t been quite accurate in their predictions 🙂 They also predicted, when I checked this morning, that we wouldn’t get any sunshine today, we did 🙂 It is a low pressure that gives them problems with their predictions, they just can’t figure out how fast it will move eastwards.
I thought this was what we would see from the sun today but it broke through quite a lot.
The church in Vilske Kleva.
If You look almost in the middle of this photo You can see another church, the one in Östra Tunhem.
The day has so far been rather nice with slightly higher temperatures than predicted too. A strong wind does its best to destroy the feeling of spring but it has failed miserable, the wind is nicely warm but so strong that my cottage is trembling and squeaking when the gusts hit. That doesn’t happen often, normally the wind can’t reach my home. Still, it is rather nice outside and we’ve been on walks two times already and after this we’ll go out again, if the rain actually doesn’t come.
We walked up the “new” road this morning.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which way to go to see how much they had cut down. The timber lorries have been driving here a lot.
I stood outside when I repotted my pelargoniums (some of You english speaking call them geraniums), it turned out to be rather practical since all the dry and loose soil flew away with the wind 🙂 I also repotted an old Flowering Maple (Abutilon and we actually have the same name on it in Swedish). It didn’t look too happy and I hope it survives. I have taken cuttings from it before and took a few today as well. Still it would be nice if the old one survived because they can actually become rather big after a few years.
I stopped before we reached the place. It is a big area.
Only because they cut down the forest it doesn’t mean these guys are heartless, Look how they have saved the ant stack from being destroyed.
I have a few more plants to repot, like my passionfruit vines but I’ll wait with those until the wind doesn’t blow that hard. No big plans for the rest of the weekend though, I rarely have any big plans at all to be honest 🙂 If the rain starts to fall I will watch one of the movies I bought yesterday, if it doesn’t I think we’ll be outside for most of the day, well I will take a short nap though after the walk we’ll take after writing this.
Tonight is Walpurgis night and it is celebrated in big parts of this country with huge bonfires and choirs will sing songs about spring too. I doubt that anyone can have a bonfire today because of the wind and any choir being outside in the wind will blow away 🙂 It is a rather big day here even though no one actually knows why we celebrate it 🙂
The rest of the photos comes from the Minolta 7000.
Walpurgis was if I remember right an English princess who became a nun in Germany and fought against witches which all were evil of course with great success. To be honest, the witches I know wouldn’t hurt a fly but lots of christians who I know would gladly kill anyone in the name of the religion. That was unfortunately the way christianity was spread not by free choise but by violence and death.
Cropping film photos doesn’t work as good as if they had been digital.
It is time to take that walk just in case rain actually would start falling.
Have a great day!
A three and a half hour walk.
A nice start to the morning.
So up we went almost as early as usual even if we were going to the garage to get new brake pads on my car, they have the same working hours as I do and I wanted to get there as early as possible even if it could take some time before they would get to my car (which it actually didn’t, they fixed my car right away). I looked out the windows and saw to my extremely big surprise that the weather predictions actually were right!!!
I have no idea what this is and there were no signs to tell me either. I’ll see if I can find anything on the net about it.
This however is an old tomb. My guess, from the stone age.
Kinnekulle. This mountain is well known for it unusual flora. Even Carl von Linne thought it wonderful. Behind that mountain is our biggest lake (the third biggest in Europe) Vänern.
The sun was shining and there were only a few thin clouds up in the sky. I have to admit that it was a bit chilly when we went away but since I was planning on walking for several hours I really didn’t mind that much. The garage opened just as we arrived so I just gave the owner my keys and went away. I had decided to follow the old pilgrimage road eastwards. I have no idea why they made this a pilgrimage road back in the days but it seems to have important churches and monasteries as some kind of connection points.
The village Gudhem. Mostly small houses but there are a few apartments too.
This farm was like something from a fairytale. The pilgrimage goes straight through it so more photos below. It was hard to get any photos though, I had my telephoto lens on, a bad choise if wanting to get photos close-up.
I love how the moss sort of glows in the early morning light and when being photographed towards the light. Photographed with the light from behind it just looks anemic 🙂
I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach the church (Kungslena church) which the pilgrimage lead to, it is 22 km (13,7 mile) away and even if it will go fast getting there it will not be the same back since it is all uphill back to Gudhem again 🙂 and the dogs must be able to stop every now and again to sniff on all the messages other animals have left. It would have been interesting to get to the church though. The church standing there now was built some time in the 13th century but they are pretty sure there was a church made of wood standing there long ago. The odd thing with this church is that it has three steeples and it is very beautiful.
I’m not sure if it was three houses belonging to the same farm or three different homes really close to each other. That was usually the case back in the days. The homes were close to each other in the middle of the fields. This one had hen, ducks, sheep and goats and I saw a horse too.
I later heard from a neighbor that this is a self-sufficient farm and they also sell what’s left when they have taken what they need. I wish I could have gotten a good photo of the pond with a tiny bridge too but my telephoto lens didn’t allow that.
I think we had walked half way there when we turned back again. To be honest I thought it would take twice the time to get back since it was all uphill but it didn’t, so we passed the garage and went the other direction too. My first thought had been to walk that way instead but there are signs at Forentorp ängar (I’ve shown You photos from there before, the old mill to the monastery stands there) that they have cows and calves on the fields where the pilgrimage goes through so no dogs allowed. Cows with calves have a tendency to want to kill dogs and their owners and since I was getting new brake pads I thought dying would just be a waste of money 🙂
This is the odd part of that farm, the badly colored slightly Austrian inspired house You can see here 🙂 It didn’t fit in at all but I guess it is a practical thing to have 🙂 and yes, there’s a horse.
I think I found it, the mythical place where old tree stumps goes to die 🙂 🙂 It looked so odd, it is actually a huge field filled with old tree stumps.
We came back to the garage after being out for around 3,5 hours and the sun had shone all the time. The wind was rather cold so when that hit us it got nasty cold but when we were out if its reach it got a bit too warm 🙂 especially with all that uphill walking 🙂 I decided to take a short nap when we came home, I set the alarm and woke up when it started. I turned it of and slept for two more hours 🙂 The dogs didn’t seem to mind at all 🙂
All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
White Wood anemones are popping up everywhere now. The anemones in my garden is slightly behind but I’ll show You them as soon as they open up.
This would make a nice bowl. I think it is the biggest burl I’ve ever seen!
My neighbor told me that it had snowed while I was sleeping! Guess if I was happy not having to see that 🙂 but it is so warm that it melted straight away. The clouds arrived just as predicted too and now they are leaving us again, just as predicted???!!! Is this a sign of the end of the world??? I can’t remember the last time they were exactly right before 🙂 🙂 It is time for a pot of tea and then I’ll see if there’s anything interesting on tv, I doubt that though 🙂
It was impossible not to take a photo or two of this foul. It had such long legs and jumped around having fun.
I have plenty more photos to show but they’ll come in tomorrow’s post.
Have a great day!
This is the time of year when weather can change in a minute.
The bog ladies had had a chilly and wet night so I can understand that they had had many fires burning during the night 🙂
It is actually quite nice outside even if the sun isn’t shining and the occasional rain drop falls down. It is slightly above 10C (50F) at the moment and the little wind that’s there is just nice. I wouldn’t mind if the cracks in the clouds were a bit bigger but we can’t get it all, can we 🙂
I had hoped that I would be able to mow the lawn today, not because I like it but it is soon a bit too long but it is still so wet that my mower just would clog up totally. Most of the Wood anemones have buds now, I have a few different ones like the Yellow one but also a few different of the white one. Soon I’ll see white, blue, green and white with a blue eye flowering in my woodland.
All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
I have a few plants in my cool cellar and I’m thinking of bringing them up so I can turn off the greenhouse lamp down there, it eats energy but is great for the plants. The problem is that if we get a setback how well can I cover them, they already have leafs. I’ll place them on the patio close to the cottage wall and that usually keep the frost away. The sunshine however, if we get some that is, is the biggest problem. Just like us plants need to adjust to it so they don’t get burned.
Lots of geese were fighting in the tiny lake when we arrived and only one couple stayed so I guess this is their lake now.
Tomorrow will be cold and rainy they say so perhaps I should wait with picking up those plants. This is the time of year when weather can change within minutes, one minute it’s sunny and warm and the next snow can fall.
The beavers are back in the creek 🙂
It is time to have a pot of tea and after that we’ll take another walk.
Have a great day!
Two Rolleicord photographs.
Two Hasselblad photographs.
This was taken at the nature reserve Forentorp Ängar just as the sun rose.
I could see their breaths.
It was a tad chilly here this morning, only 1,5C (34,7F) but the sunshine didn’t have many clouds to fight its way through so it did feel warmer than it actually was. On tv they said we might have a big chance to see the sun today, on the web however we didn’t have any chances to see the sun and it is the same forecast business saying both 🙂 I guess the chances of getting it right gets bigger if they have different forecasts in different places 🙂
We walked to the little lake and the birds were singing like crazy. There wasn’t a single crane by the lake but I could see some ducks and two Trumpet swans (or as we call them Song swans). Lots of ravens in the air too and I do wish they for once could sit down close so I could get a good photo of anyone of them. That only happens when I’m driving it seems and then it is impossible to stop. Just a week ago a big raven sat down on a high tree stump just beside the road and the sun was reflected in some of its otherwise pitch black feathers, it looked magnificent.
This is the second bike I’ve found here. Who in his/ her right mind bikes out here, toss away the bikes and then walk for at least an hour before they come close to a bust stop? If someone not known to the village had driven her and tossed old bikes the word would have run through the village in seconds 🙂
We also walked out to the bog but no sight of any moose this morning and it was so chilly that not even Sune wanted to take a bath in the creek 🙂 I could see the dogs breaths in the air and I wonder if it might have been colder out there than elsewhere, it sure feels like it many times but that could be the ever-present dampness which give that feeling.
Well, the ravens aren’t that beautiful right now, they seem to be moulting.
It’s so fun because I just checked the latest forecast on the Swedish website and now it suddenly shows that we’ll most likely see the sun the entire day, at least between the clouds that might pass 🙂 I feel that I have chosen the wrong career 🙂 I think I would get it right just as many times as they do just by using a deck of cards and giving the different cards different meaning 🙂
I feel that it is time to take another walk and after that a short nap would be great. I really need to replant some potted plants today and also start looking for places in my garden where I can plant some flowering quinces I once sowed. No rush with the latter though, spring is still young to be honest.
Have a great day!
The Hepatica self sows well in my garden, they do so much better if there are ants around. There’s a sweet thing on the seeds that ants love to eat so they carry away a seed, take the sweet part and drops the seed, preferable on the way down to their nest. I’ve read that the best place to sow a hepatica seeds (as fresh as possible) is to dig it down 7cm (almost 3 inches).
It was almost soundless.
The evening sky yesterday, that was when I heard the hogs so close.
We can actually see the sun today, it is a round shiny disk behind the clouds 🙂 but I must admit that it is quite nice outside. Almost no wind and reasonable warm as well. The starlings have arrived and I think they are one of my favorite birds just because their song is so full of all kinds of sounds. We had one coming here for several years and it sounded like a cuckoo clock 🙂 Today one sat in the top of a spruce and it had a really exotic sound to its song.
The morning sky this morning.
The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). They can empty a cherry tree in a few minutes and are therefore not popular amngst cherry tree owners 🙂
We walked to the little lake in the forest this morning, as we have done every Saturday morning for several weeks. It is so nice to walk in that somewhat old forest and who knows for how long it will stay, all trees here are more or less the same age so when they start cutting down the trees in one part of the forest the rest of the trees will follow pretty soon I’m afraid. Today I had no big hopes of seeing any cranes, I’ve realised we get there just too early, it seems all cranes first fly to the big lake to eat, they put out food there every day now and when they’ve done that they spread over the entire area.
There were a few duck in the lake but nothing more when we arrived. I stood there for a while just enjoying all the sounds and trying to see what ducks it was. The dogs got bored quite fast but since I could hear how some cranes were flying around I wanted to stay a few more minutes. Suddenly one arrived. It sailed down almost soundless. I thought it was going to land on the north-western bank but it turned in the air and followed the open water for a while until it landed in the reed. Now I understand why I couldn’t see the cranes last week, they totally disappear when they walk in to the reed.
All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
We have also walked to our part of the bog and today Bertil followed us out there. He wasn’t totally happy about us going out there and I think wild hogs were close, I could hear them yesterday evening very close to the beekeepers cottage. They are surprisingly noisy to be honest. I really wanted to take a photo of Bertil with one of my old cameras but he just refused to look towards me and I really didn’t want a photo of his behind only 🙂 So to get his attention I tossed away a twig, not big in any way. I’m quite useless when it comes to aiming but of all times today was the day I was good at it 🙂
It came gliding downwards just as I was going to walk away.
Isn’t it typical, for once he actually listened to me and turned around just as the twig fell down and hit him in the head. I’m pretty sure I won’t see him until tonight again, he was pretty angry and who can blame him 🙂 I took a tour in my garden when we came home and to my big surprise I saw that the garden was more alive than I could have thought. The crocus flowers and so does the lungwort, The deep blue Hepaticas are in bloom too and there are still a few snowdrops looking beautiful. I could even to my even bigger surprise see a few chionodoxa’s with big buds. I have a few in my garden but they really don’t like it there but today I found a few new ones where the water barrel stands 🙂
It is time to make a pot of tea and after that I think it is time to take a nap.
Have a great day!
A tad cold on my head.
The night was rather chilly so the world was covered in a thing white frost layer, quite beautiful ans since the sun is slightly blocked by thin clouds it stayed for quite some time. Even though we went out later than yesterday the cranes hadn’t arrived and when they finally did we already had passed that field and I really didn’t want to walk back. These cranes are the local ones so we’ll get plenty of chances to see them later anyway.
I can’t decide whether I want to take a nap or to go on another walk. I did nap too long yesterday so even if I was really tired yesterday evening I still had troubles falling asleep. The problem is that if even if one set the alarm it is too hard to get up if one still is very sleepy 🙂 I’ve heard that a nap shouldn’t be longer than maximum 30 minutes, I’m not sure I would have heard the alarm after only 30 minutes yesterday 🙂
I shaved off all my hair on my head yesterday and my skull had the colors I would think a zombie would have 🙂 Lots of pigments from the powder paint was still there despite me washing my hair every day 🙂 It was a bit chilly on the walk this morning, I didn’t wear anything on my head 🙂 but it is amazing how fast one gets used to it, it felt absolutely ok by the time we came home again.
I think we’ll take a walk again and then I’ll see if I need a nap when I come home again. Today I was looking forward to watch an episode of Grimm again, channel six never change what they show no matter what holiday it is. Well it turns out they did this Easter. Ok, they’ll show Tintin (very, very big here in Europe) and after that Ice Age 3 instead but I wanted to watch Grimm, this latest season is really good!
Have a great day!
He’s so fat now! He doesn’t get more food than his brother Bertil but still he just gets bigger and bigger! I think he might be eating food up at the farm because they feed any cat who comes. They are organic farmers and all cats are welcome since they eat mice, voles and rats.
It has been quite pleasant.
The day started out slightly foggy and drizzly, the fog gave up but the drizzle kept on until early afternoon. It has been warm though and the wind has been rather weak so it has been pleasant to take walks anyway. I had planned on doing some repotting of plants but instead a took a nap, an hour and a half long nap and the only reason I woke up was because of a telemarketer. I was actually quite happy she called so I finally woke up but not so happy that I bought anything from her 🙂
I have tried to find any folklore about the beings and their activities at Easter but have found almost nothing, only the witches seems to have been active this holiday. I guess however they are out and about like always though even if humans were more concentrated on scaring witches. I did however find a lot of sites about the old Norse believes and can dig in to that if You wish to know more. The Norse beliefs (or Asa tron as we call it) is a growing religion here though even if few say it out loud yet. Almost all swedish names for the days in the week comes from the Norse gods. Monday and Saturday sort of linked to it too since Monday is the Moon’s day (it was pulled across the sky by the horse Rimfaxe) and the sun was pulled across the sky by the horse Skinfaxe).
Tuesday (Tisdag in Swedish) is Tyr’s day, he was the son Of Oden. Wednesday (Onsdag in Swedish) is Oden’s day. Thursday (Torsdag in Swedish) is Thor’s day (His name in swedish is Tor) and Friday is Freya’s day (She’s called Freja in Swedish), Saturday however has nothing to do with any beliefs, it is the day for baths 🙂 Saturday is called Lördag in Swedish and to löga is to take a bath in old Swedish 🙂
I had high hopes of seeing cranes by the little lake today but there wasn’t a single bird of any kind there 🙂
It is time to shave off all the hair on my head again, it doesn’t matter how much I wash my hair, I can still find powder paint if I scratch on my skull 🙂
Instead I found the cranes just a few hundred meters (much the same in yards) away from my cottage. Unfortunately my camera prefered to focus on the trees 🙂
Have a great day!
I got one chanse and I took it :-)
We started early this morning and were out before 6:30. We didn’t have any fog as I had hoped but the sky was almost totally clear so we would get sunshine. A bit cold so I wore a sweater beneath the jacket, I thought it is better to be a bit warm than to freeze. How stupid I was, it is better to freeze a bit because one will get warm just by moving around and wearing an extra sweater and at the same time being fried by the sun is like walking in hell 🙂 and that does not help with the temper when two leashed dog do what they can to tangle us all in to a lot of small trees and bushes 🙂
They were of course only leashed in the nature reserve, none of them have much of hunting instinct but a nature reserve with almost no smell of humans but loads of smells from animals can start hidden talents and that is something I really don’t want 🙂 We reached bridge three without and just as I walked across if one of the boards broke, thankfully it was close to the bank so it never fell down into the creek. I walked slowly backwards to land again and was thinking of going back home but then I figured that since it held enough when I stood at the middle of it I really should be safe walking across it. The creek isn’t deep but it is muddy and the water is a bit too chilly for my taste 🙂
Already here we could hear the Black Grouse roosters trying to impress the hens. There are very many out there now, it isn’t that long ago they were almost extinct in this area.
The sun warmed up the ground a bit too fast so long parts were more or less swampy, even where the path led us right. It was even worse when we reached the lake. It was impossible to go where we had been last week and that was quite annoying since I could hear cranes just nearby. I looked between all the trees towards the lake and suddenly there one was, a crane. There were too many trees to use the autofocus and I knew I wouldn’t have especially much time to get a photo. I focus between the trees as good as I could and suddenly the crane showed again. As soon as I got the photo the crane was gone again. We did try to walk around the southern part of the lake because I could see a small boat on the other side.
This lake is known as what we call poor lake. It isn’t very nutritious so either all the fish in the lake is tiny (we call those fish for thousand brothers, there are loads of them but all are tiny) or there are a few but rather big fishes in the lake. I did however find some folklore about it. It is said to have a powerful being living in it, something we call Sjörå (a kind of lake nymph), she’s also called the Lake Lady. She is unlike many of our beings not one to kill humans just out of blood thirst, unless one make her angry of course by for instance we killing or destroying the animals and surroundings. You will understand that it is her You see because she usually sits on stone in the water, combing her beautiful but green hair.
Here You can see how one of the boards are much lower than the other. I have to admit I got really scared when I heard the cracking sound 🙂
The ground was pretty good until we came out to the more open spaces in the bog.
She has a somewhat strange herd of cattle, they are striped and the cattle usually grace around the lake. If one should come too close to them the cattle then will run straight into the lake and vanish. If one would fish in that lake and happens to catch a big pike it is best to put it out in the water again because it could actually be one of those striped cows. She will help anyone who will sacrifice anything to her, like a few coins or silver. She will then make sure one will get a good catch if fishing in the lake or warn if bad weather is approaching. Make her angry though and she will most likely drown the one doing that. She also dislikes the being living in rivers and creeks which we call Näcken (and also the Creek Horse which also lives close to rivers and creeks(Bäckahästen), so it can be a good idea to be a good friend to her. Näcken and Bäckahästen will kill You just for fun.
We never managed to get closer to the lake than this. There is one path leading to the lake from another direction and I think I’ll try that one later this year.
I got one chance to get a photo of a crane and I took it 🙂
I tried to reach the boat but the surroundings were just too swampy today.
I won’t go there tomorrow because it was just too wet now (unless the night gets seriously cold so the ground freeze again) so this was the last time this spring I could go there because from Monday until the early summer this will be a bird sanctuary and no one is allowed to be there. The bird sanctuary actually starts here in the village so unless one is going straight home to someone one knows here one can’t wander around as one wish. We who live here are of course allowed to walk around but not out on the bog. We were out for over three hours and as soon as I started to relax all my muscles got cramps 🙂 It didn’t matter what I did it just refused to let go for a very long time 🙂
It is time to take another cup of tea, then some laundry because I had no clean t-shirts left and after that a nap I think.
Have a great day!
One photo taken with the Retinette.
and there it was.
Thankfully the road was still frozen when we started walking, it wasn’t when we came home.
I do wonder why the ones working at the Swedish weather forecast service SMHI get paid at all 🙂 No sunshine, no warm weather and no fog what so ever. If the Norwegians can get it right why can’t the Swedes? All week they’ve promised sunny and spring temperatures and to be honest, we’re not close to that. It is however rather nice outside since there’s no wind at all and it is warm enough to make the roads muddy again after a reasonable cold night. It could be worse though, March can be a nasty cold month with lots of snow so I guess this is better after all 🙂
It sure isn’t beautiful down stream the creek any more but I hope it will be again.
Today I had decided that I would reach the lake in the bog and my biggest problem before we left was if I should bring the Hasselblad camera, loaded with B&W film. I decided I would left it at home because it does weigh almost 2 kg (over 4 pounds) and the bag has a tendency to squeek. At first it was like SQUEEEEEK, SQUEEEEEK, SQUEEEEEK all the time. I tried everything to stop it doing that and tape was the best thing I could find. Now the bag says sqrrek, sqrrek, sqrrek instead but at least more quiet but I can tell You that the sound does drive anyone insane after twenty minutes 🙂 🙂 >Naturally I should have brought it even if I would have gone mad long before we reached our goal.
So we walked down to the creek and the first thing I heard was a couple of cranes shouting in a field nearby, that is a wonderful sound at least as long they just are a few. When they reach over 20 000 it’s an awful sound 🙂 I saw a fox hunting out on a field and it too heard the cranes. It can of course not take a crane unless the bird is more or less dead but as the opportunist it is it started walking towards the sound. The snow and ice on the ground cracked with a sound of an explosion every time I took a step so I knew that the fox most likely would be the only animal we would see on our walk. We did however see a few cranes, trumpet swans and geese fly above us though.
I followed the beekeepers instructions on how to get to the lake and when the creek reached its end it split in two, one towards north and one towards south. We followed the one towards north and did after a while find something looking like a path, the snow-covered it pretty good but it was visible every now and again. It felt like we had been walking for hours (which in fact we actually had 🙂 ) and I was almost to the point of turning back since I thought I’d misunderstood the instructions when I finally saw it, the lake.
Here the creek splits in two, we followed the one towards north.
I think this might have been one of the places where one controlled how much water would leave the area.
The pines out here don’t look healthy 🙂 They are probably much older than I am.
The last few meters we mostly walked on ice I think. It is a swampy area where we finally reached the lake but thanks to the cold nights the ice still carried my weight. It is absolutely quiet out there, I think there is one property just beside the lake but that’s it and if I now the authorities right they have most likely forced the owners to sell because that is what they have done with all other landowners close or in the nature reserve. The authorities say they want to protect the area but since they now have forbidden any restoration of the ditches letting the water out of the area the water level will rise as soon as those ditches stop working. When that happens all the places they want to protect will drown so it is a somewhat strange way to protect anything 🙂 Well, in time I’ll get a lake property with zillions of biting flies all summer long, am I not a lucky guy 🙂
Finally! We’ve reached it!
The end of the creek. It felt like I had found the source of the Nile 🙂 All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
The last part was filled with grass and Bog myrtle.
I think we were out for almost 3,5 hours and we all took a nap when we came home. To be honest, I’m not sure anyone of us wants to go out again today but I’ll make a try later. It is time to make a pot of tea and then some more sleeping in front of the tv 🙂 So was it worth walking out to the lake? Yes it was 🙂
We can only see a small part of the lake and I’ve looked at maps but aren’t quite sure where this is, I really need to buy that map which shows even the tiniest of paths and creeks. I will come back here again. There is an easier way, I can drive much closer and get there by a walking on a bigger path the last hundred yards but that’s no sport 🙂
Have a great day!
Then we walked back home again.
The cottage by the Crane Lake, life goes on. 
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