Wednesday, July 8, 2009

A small thundercloud. The dark blue-grey over it is even bigger thunderclouds :-)


It´s thunder season, no doubt about that. I was just about to start writing on my blog yesterday when I heard thunder from a great distanse to the south, but thought I would have time to write something anyway. But then it struck out in the bog perhaps 100 yards from my cottage :-) Guess if I was in a hurry to unplug the computor :-)



Can anyone tell me what this is? I have no idea! Got it from a friend last year and kept it in my cold cellar during winter. I don´t think that it´s hardy in my garden though.


Vacation has just started and now I´ll relax for four weeks. Well that´s not entirely true. I´ll do two trips from home. One up nort and one down south. I have to paint my cottage too. I always has troubles starting, but after that I have rather fun to be honest. The cottage is small so it woun´t take many days to paint it. I also has to chnge some broken pieces of my windows by the entrance.

Now I can´t move pictures here either. Don´t like explorer at all any more. Well anyway, we now can get this little bowl and six or seven others if we buy two pakages of Cellogs different breakfast sereals. One can´t just buy the breakfast bowl. So this one costed me over 7,5 US dollars! I want the rest of them too, but that would be a bit expensive. I hope they start selling them without the cereals, I usually don´t eat thet to breakfast :-)



The common little blue bell.

This bluebell comes from the family Adenophora, but I´m not sure what kind it is.



But otherwise I woun´t do a thing I think. Well that´s not entirely true either. I must go down and give color to the things I made at pottery class too. I haven´t heard that anything got broken during the burning of the clay. As long as the cats head (was it mountin lion we agreed to that it was Mona?) and the bird bath is okey I´m happy. I´ll probably take another pottery class this autumn again. It was loads of fun :-)


Centaurea macrocephala, Globe centaurea. This is a favourite of mine (and loads of small bugs as You can see :-) ).

Ramonda myconi, Ramonda. A close relative to the African violette that can live in Sweden. This one was unfortunally hurt by drought.





I will go daown to Gothenburg again of course too, to visit my son and some friends. Perhaps again take some pictures of my old neighbourhood too. I was thinking of go to a Zoo too, but perhaps not. The one I´m interested in is called Noa´s Ark. That zoo is for breeding endangered animals and they have so many places to hide if they want to, so it´s not sure one can see any of them :-) I would like to see the European wild cat. Looks very much like an ordinary cat, like my Bertil. But they are so wild that they are impossible to tame. Even their kittens are so aggressive that one needs protective gloves :-) I love that about them :-)

Three different violettes growing as weeds in my garden, but who can dig away a beautiful little flower like this?




So if I would do everything I want too during this vacation I would probably need four more weeks :-) But the rest of this week is only for relaxing and perhaps finishing the pond. But otherwise I´ll just relax. Well there´s of course .........
Have a great day now!

This is a grape vine from the American continent, but I can´t remember its name. Can You americans recognise it by its leafs? It can take strong cold weather without problems. It´s to young to have grapes yet though.


Looks yummy doesn´t it? But it tastes nothing at all, it´s not a strawberry You see. Potentilla indica, Mock stawberry, is a relative to the real strawberries though.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't recognize it Christer. At first "climbing" something came to mind but I'm not sure. It's very leafy. The violets are gorgeous. I can feel their scent from here in Florida. Have a great vacation and take lots of pictures to share.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Z&M!
I hope the vine can give some grapes next year, so I can tell how they taste. I sowed it myself and I have a vage rememberence of the text. The grapes is very sweet if I remember correctly.
I´ll take loads of pictures, I promise :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

jaz@octoberfarm said...

hi christer....that looks like a concord grape vine. they come in green and purple. they are the ones with the thick skins. they make great jelly and are good for juice too. if that is what it is they will do good for you. here we have them in the coldest parts of the country. when i drive in upstate new york or towards toronto you can see fields of them stretching as far as you can see. welch's has their headquarters by lake erie and their factory too. i have those mock strawberries too. they look so good and they have no flavor at all. i hope your package arrives before you leave!

Anonymous said...

The thundercloud photo is awesome. I love the violet photos, they are fantastic! I wish my "weeds" were as cute as your weeds. I hope you have a great vacation!

Abby

Kat said...

Christer,
Those violettes are about the most beautiful flower I've seen in a while, and on your blog I see all beautiful flowers.

Tara said...

All that about the flowers and thunder and I'm stuck on the bowls. I LOVE those!

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
When I read Your description of the concord grape I suddenly remembered the text i read about this grape and it´s the same one :-) Thanks! They were especially good to make jelly of it said. So let us hope that my two vines will give some grapes perhaps already next year!

Those mock strawberries even looks more delicious than ordinary strawberries :-)

My neighbours will take care of the packakge otherwise, they´ll take care of my mail those days I can´t my self. I´m so looking forward to it :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Abby!

I love all clouds and this one became so beautiful towards the hughe dark blue-grey around it.

Unfortunally not all weeds are as beautiful as the violettes, not even around my cottage :-) :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Kat!
Yes those little violettes are really cute. They grow every where and are mixes with the wild ones and with pansys, so they can come in all colours. For some years I had a white and yellow one with small blue spots on, but nothing like that this year. The funny thing with them is that one never knows in what color combination they come next year :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Tara!
I usually never react like this on china or anything, but I really wants these bowls :-) But is it worth paying over 52 US dollars for them and then have more cereals than I´ll ever eat :-) perjaps :-) :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Wsprsweetly Of Cottages said...

Christer...I do hate to admit it but I am a total coward when it comes to lightening and thunder. I think I told you this before..but...it bears telling again!
I love those little violets! I have NO idea what the long pink blooms are...none!
We have a family of ferrel (sp?) cats living in our back yard. The babies are born up high and live their lives from the beginning learned to walk the fence. There are two babies this time..black and white..and so adorable and very wild. One fell off the fence into our yard when the last litter was born and I had to get gloves to pick it up and put it back into it's bramble nest on top of the fence.
Thanks for your visit. I wish I could describe what I saw that day! My camera went crazy and would not focus...everything went strange. Who knows...:)
Mona

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Mona!
I have great respect for thunder nowdays. Out here where it´s all calm and quiet one really understand the power of it so much better. Nowdays I always stay indoors when I hear the roar from the clouds.

Yes even ferral kittens can be really wild, but can be tamed after a lot of work and wounds :-) Even after four generations of captive European wildcats they are still as hostile as ever :-) :-) But that´s what I like about them I think, they bend for no ones will but their own :-)

I´ve watched Your picture for many long times and I have no clue to what that can be. But I think You did the right thing by not getting closer. If something makes You feel uncomfortable or even afraid, just leave it. It´s like me and the part of the forest here where I feel clearly that I´m not welcome. I´ll never go in there again.
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Richard said...

Christer, those 'mystery flowers' look to be what we'd call 'honeysuckle' here ... of course, I could be totally wrong, but they're very similar to what was growing at a friend's house, and that's what they called 'em.

In another spot on your blog, you had pictures of wild strawberries ... we used to see those all the time when we were kids, but I haven't seen any in years now. I'm glad you still have 'em in Sweden. I never found 'em to have much taste, but we all fought to be the one who picked the most anyway ...

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Richard!
Lot´s of plants can be called Honeysuckle without beeing it unfortunally. I don´t think this one belongs to that family, Lornicea, that the real honeysuckle comes from. But I´ll search the net on that name and perhaps, perhaps.

Strawberries grows everywhere here and they are real tasty too, It´s because we have so much daylight here during summer that they bocome so sweet. The further north we get, tha sweeter and tastier the berries get! We have lots of them this year so I think I´ll make som jam from them :-) Nothing better to have to pancakes :-) :-)
Have a great week now!
Christer.