Just a tiny bit lost.
Yes the flies are here but so far they “only” annoy the horses.
Sunny and even warmer today and I love it 🙂 The night was warmer than earlier too and I guess that’s what made it easier for the sun to warm up the air this morning. Yesterday we reached at least 20C (68F), I say at least because when the sun hits the thermometer in the afternoon it shows almost tropical temperatures 🙂 Today will be slightly warmer they say. I know this won’t last for long, after al it is just early in May yet but I will enjoy it for as long as it lasts.
We started walking towards the small lake like always on Saturday mornings. Soon that road will be cut of because it is a part of a big pasture. I could walk there alone since the cows only would be curious on me but they would most likely try to kill us all if I brought the dogs. I had just walked up the ridge when I thought Hell No! So we walked back rather quickly, jumped in to the car and off I drove.
We had almost reached my old home when I saw something by the side of the road.
- I stopped the car, thankfully this happened on a place where I could be seen from a far distance, and started to photograph him.
He was so busy looking for voles and mice that he really didn’t care about me opening the car door.
He was in no hurry when he walked away.
I really had no idea where I wanted to go, at first I was thinking of going to our biggest lake Vänern but it is rather far so instead I drove to the place where I lived before moving to this cottage. You’ve seen photos from there before but mostly in autumn and winter I think. The forest is kept like it is a nature reserve even though it isn’t. That means that no trees are cut down and when a tree falls it stays where it has landed. If one is lucky they have at least cut it where the nature trail goes 🙂 Or it can be like this morning, one is forced to walk in the more swampy areas and hope not to sink 🙂
The old tomb.
The forest is very different from here because it is mostly deciduous trees but mixed with some spruces and pines. An even bigger difference is the bird song, it is so strong there that no other sounds can be heard, heavy spruce forests don’t invite that many birds to be honest. Not far from this little forest it’s possible to hear the Nightingale. I’m not sure I would call the song beautiful but it sure is very exotic in this part of the world.Â
White Wood Anemones everywhere here.
The old fire pond isn’t used any longer, now it is filled with frogs and small fish instead 🙂
After the walk we jumped in to the car again and I thought I should drive the smaller roads back home again. When we came to the village where I work I hoped that the grocery store would be open but I had forgotten how early we were out walking 🙂 So we continued and passed my work place. There is this small road I can drive home on, at least during summer because it is a horror to meat anyone o that road during winter, there’s just no place for two cars to meet, especially if the road is slippery 🙂
I must have missed the road where I was supposed to drive on because suddenly I was totally lost 🙂 Well, that is a bit of a lie since I knew that I sooner or later would find a road I would know where it led. The only places I would end up at was the big highway, the road to work or the bog on the opposite side from where I live 🙂 The roads are very narrow and winding so even though I saw places that I wanted to photograph I just couldn’t stop.
The cherry trees are in bloom there.
Bjertorp castle.
I decided to stop at the super market if I could find any parking lot in the shadows, after all I don’t want my dogs to die og heat stroke. So I ended up parking on the lots reserved for families with children. I was thinking that not many families would be out grocery shopping that early in the morning anyway 🙂 I rushed in to the supermarket bought what I needed, except for bread which I really need 🙂 and I also bought one soft ice cream for me and two sausages for the dogs 🙂 They always look surprised when one asks for not fried or boiled sausages 🙂 some places always believes one wants them cheaper 🙂 The dogs enjoyed them and I enjoyed the ice cream 🙂
Tråvad church.
These beehives have been standing there since I lived there, eighteen years ago. I doubt there are any bees in there though.
I think I’ll have a small nap and after that we’ll take another walk and I do need to start thinking of mowing the lawn too, before it gets too warm.
I wonder if any bird is using it now? It still works to be honest and predators would have problems getting in.
On the way homewards again.
Have a great day!
It won’t take long till he’s used to us.
The morning is a bit chilly, we had below 0C (32F) this morning but since the sun shone and the wind was absent it felt rather nice anyway. According to the weather predictions we’ll have a cloud free sky so is anyone surprised if I say we do have clouds in the sky 🙂 🙂 They are thin though so the sun will be able to shine through.
We were out walking for over two hours and ended up by the bog where we so often go. Sune and Nova found sticks to chew and I sat on a tree stump listening to the birds singing. There were especially two birds from the same species I listened to, my guess is that one was a bit older than the other because his song was much more graceful, the other ne had on the other hand more power to his song. I wonder who would sound more attractive to the female birds?
The forest floor is now filled with Oxalis acetosella (Common wood sorrel). We call it Hare acid and the leafs are delicious.
The fox is getting used to us now. Today we stood and watched each other for quite some time until he went away. Nova and Sune didn’t care about him at all, they were more interested in eating deer and hare poop 🙂 I guess that, if we meet him again this weekend, he won’t walk away at all. He is really far too busy to find food for the cubs so if he feels we’re no threat he will just ignore us instead.
It really is too chilly right now but I still have the kitchen door open. The dogs love it and the sun is heating up the wall so it won’t take long until it will start to feel warm in the kitchen too. The first dandelions have opened up in my lawn but the ones that will get pink flowers still have no buds. I had plenty of those plants last year but then both Orvar and Hector found most of them 🙂 🙂 Only a few that I had put in pots survived 🙂
It is time for a pot of tea and perhaps something to eat as well.
Have a great day!
Four photographs from the Balda Jubilette.
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!
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.
And so it falls again.
I knew the snow was on its way but according to yesterdays predictions it wouldn’t show up until late afternoon, so is anyone surprised it snowed like crazy here already when I got up at 6:20 am 🙂 The flakes are the semi big ones that keeps on falling forever and really builds up to highs heights. Now the predictions says we’ll have snow falling until tomorrow evening and this time I’m afraid they might be right 🙂
I’ve sen a lonely Raven fly around a few days now and that’s unusual here. Normally they are at least three or four and sometimes as many as twenty at the same time.
There’s a wind too that makes it rather nasty out there unless one can find wind free places. The bog close to the trees are such a place so that’s where we walked this morning. I must admit that I was rather surprised that the ice carried me since it has been rather warm during the days. I might go there next walk too just because it is so quiet there and it feels like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. On our way to the bog we saw a fox, a bit too far away but still near enough to be seen clearly. It knew very well that we looked at it but it just didn’t care. I understood that we never would be able to catch it even if we tried 🙂
I’ve cropped these photos of the fox a lot so You would be able to see it properly.
The worlds biggest cross-country ski race (Vasaloppet) is on tv at the moment. If one isn’t interested in cross-country skiing it’s the most boring tv program there is, even more than those very quiet documentaries we Swedes seems to lave to make. You know the ones where almost nothing is said and the person they are filming eat breakfast or drink coffee while the radio is turned on in the background sending a local radio station with music no one really listens to any more 🙂 The radio and the slurping of coffee or porridge are the only sounds in the entire documentary, usually they film something outside the windows, like birds eating in the snow os a car passing by on the snowy road. Those programs are not fun and Vasaloppet is even more boring.
The joy of having a stick with a plastic ribbon attached to it 🙂
He has a ribbon on his stick!
Give me a ribbon stick too!
Well, who wants a ribbon anyway 🙂
They started this race in memory of how the noble man Gustaf Vasa escaped the Danish soldiers, using skis and on the way towards Norway asked the people to help him fight the danes. Well, the have the race in the opposite direction so the finish line is where he was supposed to have started from and it turns out that he actually had now idea what skis are 🙂 They found a letter written by him where he asked what those wooden things were 🙂 He was a despot as king and gladly killed the men who finally helped him to the power. His sons were all more or less insane and did their best to kill each other too, Eric the 14th was poisoned with arsenic put in his pea soup when he was arrested while one of his brothers took the power.
It is time to get out on a walk again I think and perhaps I must shovel away some snow from the entrance stairs when we come back home again. I’ve filled the bird feeders but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to do it again, lots of birds out there and very little else to eat since the snow covers everything.
Have a great day!
Suddenly I saw my own foot prints.
It has been cold when one walks out in the morning thinking that it’s really warm when it still is -3,5C (25,7F) 🙂 The weak wind we had yesterday was gone but lots of the rime and snow that had been on the trees were gone, at least close to the village. It was a very different thing out on the bog. We went out here because no hunters showed up this morning and tomorrow will be too late since it will start to warm up rather much.
Today of all days I decide not to have the tele-photo lens. Can You see the little dark spot way back in the photo? That’s a fox and it didn’t run away for as long as we watched it even if it knew we were there. I guess it was really hungry.
This photo is cropped a lot. It is a big fox, almost as high as Nova. I’m pretty sure it must be a grandson of the big one we had here when I just had moved here, it became a buddy to Hector 🙂
Today I wanted to walk where we usually walk on the bog but had to take a small detour because of the deep snow that had accumulated amongst the smaller bushes. Someone with small feet had walked there recently but as I followed those tracks towards the island we always follow they suddenly stopped, they sort of started in the middle of nowhere 🙂 It was a very pleasant morning and the dogs ran around everywhere but still close to me so I didn’t have to shout to get them to come back.
We found this place where several deer had been both sleeping and eating.
We had been walking for around 45 minutes when we came to the point where we usually turn back again but something told me to continue for a while and suddenly I started to recognise some fallen trees. I think I walked perhaps ten meters (much the same in yards) away from where I usually stop and suddenly I found my foot prints from last Sunday 🙂 Instead of turning right I had continued towards north for around 45 minutes last week 🙂 I realised that I had a very clear picture in my mind of how it looked ahead of me but not about how it actually looks from where I came 🙂
In my mind I had open space on both directions but the truth is that the area where I came from is filled with lots of thin birches 🙂 Now I know where to turn if I get the chance to walk there again this winter. So instead of walking back the same way we came we just walked back to the other side where we walked the last week. We could hear one or two dogs bark in the distance but I don’t think it was hunting dogs, these didn’t sound as if they were on a mission, more like they had loads of fun 🙂 I also heard the same chainsaw we heard last Sunday.
Sometimes friends on Facebook show where they have been running with the help of gps I think. I wonder if I could do something like that with my new phone? It would actually be nice to be able to see exactly where I walked and if I get that deep into the bog as I believe I do. Perhaps one need one of those exercising  jigamathings  they all now days where, I think it takes the time and pulse and all those sort of things. I need to check that, I know I have gps in both this old phone and the new one so perhaps there’s a chance?
This kind of lichen grow really slow and only where the air is clean. All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
It is time to make a pot of tea or perhaps coffee, watch some ski biathlon on tv and then out for another walk again. I’ll send six more rolls of film to the developer on Monday so hopefully we’ll have lots to see some time next week or the week after that.
Suddenly I realised that I had taken a photo of this tree last week 🙂
And there they were, my old foot prints in the snow 🙂
This tree is hard to not remember so I was sure we were on the right track home again.
I’ve taken several photos of this tree too but then it was covered in rime instead.
Have a great day!
On our way home again.
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.
The cottage by the Crane Lake, life goes on. 
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