This is a Saxifraga of some kind. I love these small flowers.




June the sixth, Swedens national day. I think it was 1983 they decided that this date should be Our national day, but it didn´t become a holidat until recently. Most sweeds have no idea why they choosed this day. There are two reason for that. The first reason is that Gustav Vasa was crowned king this day 1523. The other is that we got a new Instrument of Governement that gave the political power to our parlament. Perhaps two very important things in history, but nothing we say Horay to today :-) Besides, Gustav Vasa was a cruel ruler that never hesitated to slaughter those who didn´t agree with him. Before Vasa we also elected kings here, but he stopped that and made it possible for his sons to become king after him.

Today I thought I would show You some of the wild flowers in my neighbourhood. I´ve never been to any place that has so few different wild flowers as it is here. But nowdays some of my garden flowers are slowly spreading here :-) I don´t always know the names of the flowers.

Not even half of our population will celebrate today. We really don´t know how to do it I think, perhaps because we don´t think that Gustav Vasa is worth celebrating? There´s also another problem. After WW2 there were no place to be a nationalist. We´had seen what could happen if nationalism got to strong and maniacs took power. So I think (don´t know though) that the political leaders at that time did everything to surpress anything that might be likened to nationalism. We started to celebrate the Unatid nations day in schools forinstance.


This one is for a reason I have no idea about called Dog krackers.

The only ones that celebrated history and used our swedish flag were the nazis. So after a while they sort of made our flag theirs and that has given us some problems in a way. Anyone waving the swedish flag could be seen as a nazi, so we never waved our flag exept on big sportevents or national flaging days. But thankfully our immigrants are helping us nowdays, because they usually celebrate our national day and they do wave our flag :-) I thank them for helping us getting our flag back!

Buttercup.

We call this "Old womans tooth". Klick on all the pictures to make them bigger.

Today is an important day in other ways too. We are going to meet Denmark in football (or soccer as You americans call it) in a qualification match to the World Cup. There are few things that is as important to us sweeds than to beat the danish in football :-) :-) We may not beat any other country, but the danes is a must :-) :-) Even people not very interested in football are interested in this match. The funny thing is that if Denmark makes it to the World Cup, but not we, we all get danish as long as Denmark still is in the World Cup. To be honest, we are danish as long as we don´t have to meet each other. As I can remember we were very danish when they won the European Cup and we got third too. First we celebrated us and then them :-) Despite being enemies for almost all times we sweeds have a special place in our hearts for Denmark.

A Potentilla of some kind. Relatives to it is very popular in gardens all over the world.

But it will be a cold day for national day celebraters and for those going to the football match. There will be some rain, some sun, some wind and rather low temperatures. No problems for me though, I´ll be watching the match on tv indoors :-)
Have a great day now!