Midsummer’s eve.
Troll butter.
Today we celebrate Midsummer’s eve here in Sweden, a holiday as big as Christmas over here. The traditions go way back and the christian church did of course do what it could to make it a truly christian holiday and one could say they failed miserably 🙂 They made tomorrow John the Baptist day since it is 6 months before Christmas day so that sort of fits rather well. If You ask anyone today when John the Baptist’s day is I’m pretty very few would be able to say the right day. For some reason we Swedes always celebrate the eve, never the actual day 🙂 Tomorrow will be a day to cure hangovers for many people and in nine months lots of kids will be born 🙂
It rained almost all day yesterday. The dogs loved to finally get out on a walk this morning, I was exhausted when we came back 🙂
The Midsummer pole, some also call it the may pole but in this case the swedish word for may doesn’t mean the month but to dress, is dressed with leafy twigs and flowers. Some say that tradition is very old others that it came from Germany in the early middle ages, what we do know however is that back in the days they had huge bonfires but to be honest, it is not so wise to have if the summer is dry, who knows how well that fire will spread with some help from the wind 🙂 Anyway, the midsummer pole is dressed and risen early in the day and later in the day people will start dancing around it. My favorite song is the little frogs and it is quite fun to see grown up jump like little frogs around the pole 🙂 Another favorite is of course the priest’s little crow who drove a car by himself and we all know that is a pretty difficult task for a crow so he slides here and there until he ends up in the ditch and of course that’s what all dancing will do too 🙂
Photo comes from: http://www.grottanfredriksdal.se/?page_id=332
- The bog ladies had had fires during the night.
It doesn’t take a lot of dirty imagination to see what the midsummer pole really is 🙂 and lots of magic is connected to it. The pole is usually made as a big cross and at the end of each side of the cross hang wreaths, those wreaths were important to save because when winter arrived it was important to put in the bath, that would keep You healthy for the rest of the winter and that was very important since they didn’t have any antibiotics. Even though the night is very short here at this time of year it still was important to keep ones eyes open just in case any of the beings we have here would come too close. They were especially active this coming night. A common troll was no big problem, it seems they usually were good friends with humans (and no our trolls don’t burst if the sun hits them or become stone. They also look very much like us with the exception of the long fury tail). A mountain troll however is a nasty piece of work and they would most likely kidnap any human getting to close. They are however easy to see because of their size and they are also rather ugly).
This is how normal trolls look like here. The painter was John Bauer and this painting comes from the boom series Amongst gnomes and trolls. This is about a changeling, the troll mother (to the left) wanted of course the best for her daughter so she swapped babies with a queen. Her daughter was anything but nice though 🙂
This however is a Mountain troll, shrewd but not too intelligent. This is also a John Bauer painting.
Young girls had their best chance of knowing who they would marry this night. They had to, totally quiet until they fell asleep, pass seven (or nine depending on where one lived) fences and pick seven (or nine) flowers to put under their pillow. If they managed to do that they would dream of their husband to be. One way to make sure one would be healthy all year long was to roll around in the midsummer’s morning dew, naked of course. The dew had lots of magical powers so people collected it too in empty jars just in case someone got seriously ill. This was of course the night it was important to collect as much healing herbs as possible, preferable with lots of dew on them. In some places they drank spring. They had beforehand cleaned out a spring in the forest or where ever it might be and during the night they went to the spring and drank the water, that would also secure good health they thought. Naturally that could be a problem because of the spring nymph. If they didn’t sacrifice to the nymph the effect would be quite the opposite.
I woke up at 2 am last night while almost successfully trying to cough up my lungs over the bed. My throat had been so swollen for a few das that if affected my ears but suddenly I could feel the swelling get smaller, I got my hearing back again 🙂 and my fever vanished and has stayed away all day! I still have that nasty coughing and I’m pretty sure it will stay for at least a few days more. I would feel alive again if it not had been for the rather high temperature outside together with over 95% humidity. It feels like I’m walking in a steam bath 🙂 🙂 An hour ago they predicted rain and thunderstorms but now they say mostly sunny and no thunder at all 🙂 I don’t care because I’ll most likely just sit on my sofa doing nothing. The beekeepers wanted me to come over but I don’t have any energy to do anything 🙂
The four last ones, for this time, taken with the Kiev4.
It is time to make a pot of tea I think and perhaps I’ll repot some plants with too small pots but I doubt it 🙂
Have a nice midsummer’s eve!
I just wish this was over now!
I’m still not especially well to be honest, the coughing has kept me awake most parts of the night and I’ve now seen a lot of night-time tv and I won’t miss that when this finally is over 🙂 I now also have an aching right foot heel 🙂 I gave up after waking ap the zillionth time coughing my lungs out and walked downstairs. I’m not sure why but when I had three more steps to walk before I had come down to the bottom floor I just too one big leap out in the air 🙂
The garden does get a special shine on rainy mornings.
I’m not quite sure how I did it but I landed like a super hero always does in films, You know when they land in high speed and hard but in full control sort of half kneeling with one hand on the ground 🙂 🙂 🙂 I guess looking at all these super heroe movies finally paid off 🙂 Still I did land on something with my right heel and I can feel that very well right now 🙂 I think that the coughing at least has stopped when I’m awake though, it would have been better if I coughed while awake but not while I was sleeping though but at this stage I’ll take anything 🙂
Delphiniums have opened up. All standing photographs are more manageable if You click on them.
Soon the weed flower bed will look at its best. The bright yellow Greater celandine, the deep blue geraniums and usually quite a lot of white flowers too.
Perhaps I should plant some Betony in the weed flower bed too.
The first Foxgloves flowers too. Normally I have more white ones than the common pink.
The fever came back too but today it finally has lowered so much that I think it is over for this time. So it looks like I have been through the worst now but I won’t celebrate until it is over 🙂 I’ve had the kitchen door open as much as possible (we’ve had lots of rain so it has been open in between showers) so that the dogs have been able to go outside as they’ve pleased. Taking walks have not been an option, My energy has run out after just a few yards 🙂 Unfortunately that has meant lots of flies in my home and today I finally gave up and brought out the heavy weapon, fly poison spray! It is some kind of nerve toxin which is harmless for mammals and spiders for instance but very effective towards flies. Smells bad though so I forced the dogs outside while it was doing its job. There will soon be thousand more here but at the moment my home is nicely fly free 🙂
Butterflies just love chives.
The red leafed elderberry bush has pink flowers.
We’ll celebrate Midsummer’s eve here tomorrow, it is almost or perhaps just as big as Christmas here and even though the christian church tried to make it a christian holiday (John the Baptist’s birth day) they failed utterly and it is still a very pagan holiday here. This should of course have been celebrated on the solstice but politicians didn’t seem to like that we had another paid holiday so they moved Midsummer so that Midsummer’s day always came on a Saturday. How they failed, even employers want to have Midsummer’s eve off so together with the unions they decided we should have Midsummer’s eve off but with full pay 🙂 but more about our holiday tomorrow.
The rest of the photographs comes from the Kiev4.
It is time to try and fall asleep sitting in front of the tv again. It is sunny and rather warm with very low humidity outside today, would have been perfect to take walks in if I hadn’t had this cold. Tomorrow might get nasty warm with humidity around 97 % all day, so even if I’m much better by then I still won’t have any energy to do anything anyway 🙂
These photographs were taken where I lived before I moved to this cottage. I don’t think it is a nature reserve but the land owner keeps it like it was. A fallen tree stays where it is and the path that might be blocked takes another way around the tree after a while 🙂
Have a great day!
The hero however can be almost evil, we still accept it.
This and the coming four photographs comes from the Kiev4. No photos taken today.
I’m not sure which is worse, the fever with boiling/ freezing periods or the coughing with runny nose 🙂 I’ve started coughing so bad that every single muscle, even those tiny in the scalp aches after one of those cough attacks and the runny nose isn’t especially fun to have either 🙂
I didn’t get many hours of sleep last night and the few I got wasn’t any quality sleeping 🙂 The coughing makes the sore throat even more so so every tim I tried to swallow the pain hit the brain and woke me up. I’ve spent the morning watching the film Avengers Age Of Ultron. A perfect film to watch when the brain no longer works 🙂 The logical center in the brain doesn’t work anyway so nothing seems impossible to do 🙂 There isn’t even anything odd having a Norse god as one of the main characters 🙂
The last two taken with the Hasselblad and ISO 3200 film.
These two and the four after that comes from the Minolta 7000.
As I said yesterday, the evil guy in films like these must be truly evil, not a philosophical mumbo-jumbo character but heroes can be very different, they don’t even have to be good ones for us to accept them. In the Avengers films I don’t think there’s really a single good one, except for possibly Captain America, the rest of them are more or less unstable as best 🙂
It is time to open the kitchen door for a while, it has been raining all morning but it looks like it has stopped for a while now. I really don’t care because I really need to get new air into my cottage, the old one smells like sickness 🙂
The last four come from the Balda Jubilette.
Have a great day!
I can’t say I was impressed.
From the Gevabox.
I can’t even pretend I was impressed by the Swedish team yesterday but at least they didn’t lose. 1-1 and that’s only because the Irishmen nicked the ball in to their own goal 🙂 🙂 Mostly the Swedish players ran around like chickens with panick attacks 🙂 I doubt they have any bigger chance to go especially far this year.
Really nice weather today and the predicted rain for tomorrow is no longer predicted, not the rain that would come on Thursday or Friday either but instead they warn for loads of rain on Saturday. The one who lives will know as the old Swedish saying goes 🙂
Our leg less lizard. It is called Copper lizard or Copper snake.
Our wild strawberries are almost ripe now. So much tastier than the ones we grow. We call them smultron.
I’ve very little more to say today so I give up now and see You all on Thursday.
Four photos from the Minolta 7000.
Have a great day!
Four from the Kiev 4.
European football championship.
From the Gevabox.
Sweden is just now in a match against Ireland so no blog today.
From the Minolta 7000.
See You all tomorrow!
From the Kiev 4.
Have a great day!
From the Hasselblad.
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).
Tonight they fly to the big party.
Old photos again today. I have a few new ones in the camera but I just didn’t have the energy to get them in to my computer 🙂
Tonight is the night when the witches flies to Blåkulla to have a party with the devil, at least according to old folklore. We actually call them påskkärringar which directly translated is Easter hags but the word kärring actually means my loved one in Swedish so it is hard to translate it good 🙂 Anyhow, tonight is the night. Blåkulla is most likely an island by the east coast of Sweden and its real name is Blå Jungfrun (The Blue Maiden). Naturally most of You think that witches fly by broom but not all do, many actually fly on an upside-down cow 🙂 Rather practical if one gets thirsty on the way 🙂
Three from the Zeiss camera.
Anything could actually work to fly to Blåkulla so to make sure nothing one owned would be used by the nearest witch they put away anything they thought could be used in sheds or barns and then they painted white crosses on the doors. But it isn’t only women flying there to be honest, there are also men and quite a lot of children too. One way to at least make life difficult for the witches was to, on Easter eve when they were flying back home again, start huge bonfires and use fire works. Today most of us think of the animals and the environment since there usually are lots of bad thing in the fireworks like led so we don’t use that much of it, there’s even talk about forbidding it totally and I won’t mind if that happens even if I think it is beautiful.
Three from the Kiev.
One could say that this is the Swedish (and Finnish) Halloween because today in the eastern parts of Sweden kids dress up like witches or wizards and goes from house to house to get candy, we in the western parts do it on Easter eve instead. I doubt it will happen here though because the kids here are either too young or too shy 🙂 I don’t have any candy at home anyway so I do hope no one comes here 🙂 I will however look up in the sky to see if any witches fly over my cottage, I won’t start a bonfire or use fireworks but I will wave to them and wish them a happy easter 🙂
and three from the Retinette.
It is time to make something to eat. I’m not sure if I’ll just make a few sandwiches or if I should have a piece of the Småländska cheesecake (slightly different from the American one) I bought yesterday 🙂
and three from the folder “For a rainy day”.
Have a great day!
Turns out it is an old April first joke :-)
This and the coming three are taken with the Kiev 4.
The thermometer says we’ve had 14,5C (58,1F) here today but it was quite cold when I drove to work this morning, I had to scrape ice from the car windows. We had the kind of fog that sort of looked like it was flowing like a river on the ground, unfortunately in places where I couldn’t stop to photograph it. It has been a slow day though, mostly because we didn’t change colors especially often. I think we painted black almost for 8 hours.
I really have very little to say today. An old April first joke from 2007 has started to go around on Facebook here in sweden, it says that a Great White Shark has been spotted in Swedish waters 🙂 Even though I think the great white is a fascinating fish I still am rather happy we don’t have it here 🙂 We do have sharks but they are all very small. Occasionally we get visits from Greenland shark and the Basking shark but those are, even if they are huge rather harmless.
These five are taken with the Retinette.
This and the two next was taken in Falköping when I was buying fire logs.
It is time to get something to eat I think. I’m so glad we’re having a short working week because I sat and wondered what day it was and thought it must be Tuesday since the day passed so slowly 🙂
and these four was photographed with my digital Nikon when we walked to the lake in the bog.
Have a great day!
For the first time this year.
From the Kiev 4. All standing photos are more manageable if You click on them.
We had thick fog again this morning but since I start working an hour earlier on Fridays it was just too dark to take any photos. Too bad because I was all alone on the big road and could have stopped slightly illegal on the wrong side of the road to get a foggy river photo 🙂 I don’t think I would have dared even if the light was right 🙂 but it sure was tempting 🙂
I think it was on Tuesday evening I took these four photos.
I was looking for the cranes that You can see fly away in this photo and really didn’t see the deer until I took the next photo 🙂
Time just flew away at work and so did the fog outside, so by the time I was driving away from work the sun shone and it still does. I stopped at the grocery store and just as I walked in so did around fifty school kids from the nearby school. I must say they behave much better than we did when I was that age but they do have a tendency to be everywhere at the same time 🙂
I did think that it would take forever to get out again but they all just wanted one or two things each and it seemed as if they had just the right amount to pay so it didn’t take any longer than it usually does. It was so warm in the car when I drove home that I had to let the climate control start to cool it down 🙂
We could to my big surprise walk out on the bog despite the warm and sunny weather.
A smell reached me when I came home and opened up the car door, I can’t say what it was but it smelled spring for the first time this year. As if there were lots of flowers in bloom. It can’t have been that though since only a few snowdrops still flower here. I did however buy a small pot with dwarf daffodils, or as we call them Easter lilies. I’m not sure if they smell at all because only one of the buds has opened up some but I’ll know as soon as they do.
I think this is Eriophorum brachyantherum. Called Close-sheathed cotton-grass. We call it Myrull (mire wool).
I think this is what we call window lichens. It was placed between the one glass windows and the extra winter windows during winter to suck up all the moistness between the windows.
It is time to give the animals their food and I’ll have something as well I think. I think I’ll have cocoa even if it is warm and nice today.
Four photos taken with the Kodak Retinette. This is at work early in the morning.
The old forge to the right.
Perhaps I should clean the lens more often 🙂 but I do like the rays from the car headlights.
Have a great day!
So much fog, so little time to use it.
Taken with the Kiev 4. The Bertil photo I showed on Monday was taken with a Minolta 7000 and not with the Kiev as I wrote.
Sorry about not posting anything on Tuesday, I suddenly had lots to do and it lasted til Wednesday too. Now things are back to normal again and I hope it stays that way, I really don’t like unexpected work, to be honest I don’t like expected work that much either 🙂
The coming eight photos are taken with the Kodak Retinette.
Breakfast table for a squirrel?
We’ve had foggy mornings here and yesterday when the fog finally lifted we reached a bit over 15,5C (59,9F). I did feel that it was much warmer at my work place and I drank loads of water but not enough anyway because the headache came like a letter in the mail. We should have gotten much the same weather today but even if the fog finally lifted it stayed as thick clouds in the sky. Still it did get reasonable warm anyway and since I had to work I really didn’t mind if the sun didn’t shine 🙂
Note to self! If using a view finder camera check where the lens is if one is going to take a photo through a fence. The dark shadow in this photos is the fence 🙂
I brought old-time cameras with me in the mornings so I hope I’ll get some nice fog photos to show when those films are developed. I could only stop for a few minutes in each place if I didn’t want to come too late to work. I have some film photos to show already today though and I think I saw some fog in a few of them 🙂 I do hope that we’ll get fog on Saturday morning too, the Norwegian site say we might because if we do I’ll try to get to the bog lake again to take more photos there. They say that there’s a path going around the lake and I’ll see if I can find it, after all the sun is up until well after 6pm now so I will have lots of time if I start early in the morning.
The coming eight photos are taken with the Minolta 7000.
The other painter at work works beside the line where I work with a separate smaller oven and he usually take all bigger things that are too big to put on the line. Normally It is I who help him to place the things right before he starts to paint them. Today he only had nasty heavy things and all were soo big that we couldn’t use the lift (a chain and hook hanging in the roof) so we had to do everything using only our muscles, we don’t have plenty of that I’m afraid 🙂 At one moment I had to have my hands lifted above my head for over five minutes, that’s not nice 🙂 When I was going home I wanted to pick up some garbage from the floor and I barely could do it, guess if my back was stiff after today 🙂 🙂 I guess that one shouldn’t go on like this if one has rheumatism in the spine 🙂 I’m soo looking forward to tomorrow morning when I’ll try to get out of bed 🙂 🙂
It is time to get something to eat, I’m thinking hard flatbread with cheese and I think liver pate and sausages of some kind 🙂
Have a great day!
Today the fog came!
The day has passed relatively fast even if we painted the things I really don’t like to paint. chemical cabinets. They look just like lockers but are white which makes them harder to paint because of course no metal is allowed to show and white paint is difficult that way. Another reason I don’t like them is that they are the reason my shoulder hurts. We had stopped painting them but the factory who made them had enough parts to make 50 more. I wasn’t happy when I heard that. Now however we’re supposed to never paint any again.
I’ve gotten more films developed. These four are from a camera called Kiev 4. Made in the Soviet Union back in the days and tough enough to kill a moose if one would hit the animal in the head with it 🙂 I also had a film from the Zeiss camera but it looks like I once again have a huge light leak in that camera.
We had thick fog here this morning so I brought a camera with me. I don’t know why but the places which would give the best photographs are never placed so that I can stop and take a few photos. It’s always on the highway where they have no resting spaces. There is however a small lake just beside one so I stopped there. The fog was so thick that it was impossible to see the lake but I hope the trees will help me getting a few good ones. On my way home I stopped on a tiny road and walked to where I could see the river when I drive by.
Four from the Kodak Retinette again and this time I’m more happy with the result.
I had two photos left to take so naturally I did a double exposure on one of them 🙂 I do hope the second one will be that good that it makes up for that mistake 🙂 Nova’s ear is still not good but better. She now behaves like crazy when I come home which she never does when her ears are bad. I’m glad the medicine took care of the pain before anything else can be noticed. If now only the pus stops flowing things would be rather good. Sune tales care of most of it though, I’m so glad I don’t like things dogs like 🙂 🙂
There will be more photos from the old cameras later on. I have just taken a short glance on them so far. The rest of the photos are from the weekend or earlier in winter.
The cottage by the Crane Lake, life goes on. 
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