Saturday, July 18, 2009

I had the whole upper floor of my friends home, an old school, all to myself. This is some of what I could see from the balcony by my room.
Their "little" dogyard. Think it was as big as my garden :-)
Their "little" pond :-) Unfortynally the filter of the pond had malfinctioned while they were away for a couple of days, so the water was completely green of algia.


During my stay we took a trip to the closest town, Söderhamn. They have, unlike so many other towns in Sweden, kept most of their old tree and stone buildings. During the 60:s and 70:s they tore down all old buildings in Sweden, claiming the old houses were a health hazard and to expensive to repair. Replacing them with concrete buildings. Today we all think it would have been worth the money to save the old. Unfortunally I forgot to take any pictures of the town, but took at a couple of churches instead.




We took a trip to the closest town, Söderhamn. It was a hot and sunny day so we went in to a couple of old churches made of stone. It was so nice and cool! Unfortunally I forgot to take a picture of this church outside.

I´ve always wondered why they make Jesus look like he came from a skandinavian country. To be honest, he can´t have been rather short and looked much like the arabs do today.








There are graveyards around the churches and that is what You can see on the picture of Ulrika Eleonora. All the flowers in front of the church is graves. To get inside these old stone churches on a sunny and warm day is a relief. The air is cool and the stillness inside is soothing for ones soul.


This church is called 'Ulrika Eleonora. I´m not sure if this is a typical look for a church in northern Sweden, but I saw some with the same shape in the arcitecture.






I think that the windows looks quite modern in their looks. But I think they were pretty old too.




I´m not sure what tis is to be honest, but I think it´s some kind of nobility shields from powerful families that lived in the area. The churches was filled with them anyway.







After being to theese churches we went to two gardencenters. Normally I don´t buy plants in gardencenters nowdays because of the spanish wood snail, or should I write wood slug? They have no enemies in the swedish nature and eats everything they come close too. But they hadn´t gotten them up here yet so I felt secure buing plants there. I´ll show You pictures of what I bought in a later blog. I also got plants to have in my pond from the friends I visited.
Tomorrow I´ll show You pictures from our trip to the ocean. For those living there the water is really salt, but for me comming from the west coast it´s almost like freshwater :-) But more of that tomorrow. Now it´s starting to blow harder outside. We´re going to get a lot of rain, wind and thunder they say. So if I´m not writing in Your blogs or not answering in my own You know why.
Have a great day now!


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard Teddy got your pond finished by the time you got home. I bet that was a pleasant surprise. He's a hard worker. Those are nice photos of the churches. They do look old but have a charm to them. I wonder what religion prays there. Catholic per chance? Show us a map of where you were if you have access to one. I didn't know you were going to be close to the ocean. Have a good one Christer!

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Have to say that Teodor has been rather lazy unfortunally. I too had hoped he would have finished the pond by now :-) :-)

This is a protestant Lutheran church. It´s just recently that the catholic church have bocome rather large and so the muslim faith, even though we´ve had freedom of religion for a rather long time. Beside the lutheran church we´ve had a rather big group of jews too. Sweden were one of the very few countries that didn´t force them to live in ghettos.

I´ll try to find a map to show here.
Have a great day now!
Christer.

jaz@octoberfarm said...

hi christer....i love visiting old churches. i went to one just outside of prague in the czech republic and everything in it was made from bones from the graveyard. even the chandeliers were made of bones. we only got a little rain here but now it is much cooler. what a strange and wonderful summer so far. northern michigan had frost last night! frost in july!!!! my post will be a bit late today. i am cooking and am not quite finished yet. i thought i would be posting flea market finds because my son and i left at 5:00am this morning to drive to a flea market in ohio. we got there and there was no flea market!!! it was so early nothing else was open so we just drove home and i decided to cook. we had fun anyway! joyce

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
Yes it´s something special with old chuches. But everything made of bones is a bit bizzar even for me :-) :-)

Frost this early!! Don´t think we have had frost even in the most nortern parts of this country. But agree with You, it has been a strange and wonderful summer in every way :-) We have rain now and again here, but it will start with full power tonight they say.

A bit of an anti-climax that trip to the non existing flee market. But it isn´t bad to be home and cook either :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

jaz@octoberfarm said...

think of pepper jelly as being sort of like a thinner chutney. it is sweet and savory at the same time. we have this cold front that dropped down from canada which caused the frost. this has been the coolest summer i can remember and they are forcasting a very snowy cold winter. can you see me grinning from ear to ear??? my kind of weather!

NinaH said...

Anar vem du besökt!;-) Förstår du haft en underbar tur! Söderhamn är en liten trevlig stad- tror jag fortfarande att den är alltså... för det var länge sen jag var där!;-)
Hoppas också din hemma-växtlighet hämtat sig nu efter din bortvaro!;-)

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
I´m not to fond of chutney so I think I´ll skip the pepper jam then.

We had one of the warmest springs recorded and one of the coldest early summers. Then the heat came and now cold again :-) I don´t even dare thinking of the winter :-) But these last winters has been rather warm here.
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Tjänare Nina!
Javisst vet du vem jag besökte :-) Kommer att skriva om det i min svenska blogg när jag är färdig här med det. Det var härliga tre dagar kan jag säga :-)

Här ser ut som sju svåra år i trädgården. Nu skall jag bara göra färdigt dammen och sedan bygga upp en rabatt runt :-)
Ha det gott nu!
Christer.