Now when all snow has melted and some rain has fallen there´s water everywhere. What You can see is a pond that is about fourty meters long (131 feet) but on plces not a meter wide (not three feet wide) This is a paradise for mosquitolarvaes :-)

I wonder if this will survive after they have thinned the forest. The sun will probably dry out these plants and mosses and grass will probably grow here instead. I could find more than thirty species here.

One could say that Maundy Thursday is the starting of easter here in Sweden, because it´s today all the witches are flying to Blåkulla to have a party with the devil. Blåkulla is an island far out in the Baltic sea. Depending on where You live today is also the day children dress up to look like witches and wizards. It was unusual with wizards before, even boys dress up to look like witches, but Harry Potter have helped them to show how a wizard looks like :-) Here on the westcoast it´s more common that they dress up on easter eve instead. When they have done that they go from home to home and wish everybody a happy easter. In return they get a lot of candy :-) Perhaps this is the reson Halloween never sort of lifted to be a big thing here?

Good Friday is like any holliday now, so then people either is resting or cleaning in the garden or perhaps visisting relatives. Some starts to paint the eggs for easter eve breakfast too, but that´s more common to do on easter eve morning.

This is a newly hatched Tordyvel, a dungbeetle. Not to uncommon here in farmerland.

Then easter eve comes and here we (on the westcoast) does it a bit different from the rest of Sweden. All spring people have collected combustible debris, like Christmas trees and what they have gathered in their gardens. Unfortunally some people hides old tires in the middle of all debris. Well they burn all right but the fumes and smoke from them is anything but good to You. So normally there´s a hugh pile of things that can be burnt that day. But first we eat Easter eve dinner. Sweeds take any reason to eat pickled herring and easter is no exeption :-) I can´t stand that and is always amazed over how many variants there is :-) For us few that doesn´t eat pickled harring there is of cours eggs in million variants, chicken, swedish meatballs, small sausages, salmon and lots of more to eat.

My own easter egg :-) Nowdays we see more and more of the easterbunny, even if we don´t have him as a special eastersymbol. We don´t even call him easterbunny, we call him easterhare :-)

After dinner it´s time to start the fire in the hughe pile. Nowdays it can be a problem to get permission to have this easter fire because the risk of it spreading to houses and dry grass and there is always someone that don´t like it for some reason and then complains about it all year. In some places they sing while the fire is burning but the most important thing is to scare all the witches that is flying back from Blåkulla. So fireworks are used in big quantities :-) For us that has dogs that doesn´t care about fireworks it´s quite nice to watch, but for those who has dogs that´s afraid it´s a day of pain. Because to the contrary of new year fireworks it can continue all day long, everything to scare witches (and ofcourse wizards) that might come home earlier or later :-)

This we call "Videkissar", something like "Vide kittens". Vide is a Salix species and we use the branches of this or birch to our Påskris. We take the branches and decorate them with coloured feathers and small eastereggs and small flying witches and much more, do You have that too? Couldn´t find my eatser decorations and for a reson I can tell You about tomorrow, it´s a bit difficult to get feathers today.

I think easter is very much liked (for those that isn´t christian) because spring usually is here and we get a long holiday. From Good Friday to Easter Monday. My holiday will be a bit shorter though. I promised to go to work on Easter Monday to paint big tubes I think. There were a roumor that I was going to work at Good Friday, something I would never do. My boss wondered when I agreed to that because he knows I wouldn´t do that. So I told him that hell freezes over until I work on Good Friday :-) I think that spread to the owner of the factory (that probably already promised something like that to the customer) So when he came to talk to me he said it would be nice if I could work any of the easter days, of my chosing of course :-) Well the factory needs this job and I need a job so I said that easter Monday would be ok.

These two geese flew over my cottage this morning :-)

But today I´m free to do what I want. The sun shines and I think it would be nice to have a cup of coffee at my kitchen stairs :-)
Be good!