It was actully sunny when I woke up rather late this morning. The garbage truck woke me up around seven am. I usually gets a head ace when I sleep so long in the morning, but the cup of tea I have beside me usually helps getting rid of it.
But when we started our morning walk the clouds came rapidly and with them the winds and rain. The wind is already at gale strength outside and it will get even harder they think.

I´ve become a rather good farmer latly. I have two cows, one chicken and lots of different fruit trees and grows anything from wheat to pumkins. As You surly understand this doesn´t happen in real life :-) No I have a little farm on Facebook :-) It´s rather fun but the crops grows a bit too fast I feel :-) So now it hurts a bit when I read that we are going to have to pay if we wants to keep on facebooking. Not especially much, only a couple of US dollars a month. This will happen already now in August, so I´ll say good bye to my farm and all my friends at facebook then. I think it´s fun with facebook, but not that fun.

In the old days they used what they had when they made fences. On this tree they didn´t even bother to remove all tree bark before attaching the barbed wire. Nowdays they don´t use barbed wire at all, only electric fences.

Bertil takes a nap on the entance stairs.

Clematis 'The President', my absolute favourite amongst clematises.

Well theré are a lot of other places we can meet our friends on the net and someone will surly start a new place much like facebook, it´s just a matter of time I think. Now I´ll have to leave You. I have some orange trees that I have to harvest oranges from and perhaps one of my cows is ready to be milked :-)

Have a great day now!

I´ve always thought that this is some kind of Aeonium, but I´m not sure any more. Since it´s hairy it probably grows on high hights to protect it from frost at night and hot sun during days. It´s a long lived plant that can be rather miss treated without complaining. But I noticed a rather cold winter (over freezing point though) is what it likes. Easy to take cuttings from too. I´ll take pictures when the flowers open up.

The first Holy hocks to flower. It´s an Alcea rugosa.

!

I woke up real early this morning and since I wasn´t especially tired I might as well get up. After a while I and my dogs took our morning walk and I made a little video for You. Unfortunally the cranes were silent when I made it, otherwise they have started to shout here again. Autumn is slowly comming and so is the cranes.

I´ve started to try to fit the peat blocks around the pond edge. But there is still a lot to do. I have to get rid of a lot more of the lawn, fill up with more soil and put the pump and dig down the filter beside. But I´m on my way anyway.

It was rather cool yesterday morning, only 9,5c (48F) and the morning dew soaked tha whole area. We always has a lot of dew in the mornings when summer slowly comes to an end. It drips from roofs and tree branches everywhere. I hoped that it would dry up later that day, so I could finish the lawn mowing. It didn´t but I finished the mowing anyway. It´s not fun when one has a lawnmower without engine, It sort of slides over the wet grass just folding it nicly. So now when the engine lawn mowers comes on sale I´ll probably buy one. Just to have summers like this one when we set new records in rain.

This is a less thorny relative to the thorny one I showed a couple of days ago. The name on this one is Eleutherococcus sessiflorus. The thorny one is called Eleutherococcus setchuenensis (the swedish name for that is Sichuan thorn aralia). These names is nothing one says fast :-) :-) :-)


Lathyrus latifolius, Perennial pea. Once You´ve got this one to thrive You never have to be afraid it will dissapere. It doesn´t spread much but it survives most everything, even cows eating it :-)

Todays morning walk was rather nice. Even if it was much warmer outside the flies didn´t bother me at all. Every now and again I could hear cranes shouting to each other or small birds making a last singing session for this summer. In the distanse a car passed on the big road to Skara, many of us still have vacation but not all. Otherwise it was totally quiet. One or two drops of rain fell, but that was all the motion I could notice in the air.

Iberis umbellata, an annual that self sows nicly. I sowed this almost nine years ago and still I have some each year. Can come in many colors.

I think I´ve sown this :-) I´ve never seen anything like it here in Sweden. I think it might be something called Leather wood.

The poppys are still flowering.

And they are still rather beautiful after when the seed pods comes.

But all is soon to change. A lowpressure is comming in with all the rain it can carry. The winds are going to be strong and becuse of that there will be more motion in the air than most of us wants :-) I was thinking of going to an auktion this afternoon, but the wether isn´t inviting to that. Through my window I can see that the wind is stiring in the trees, so I better put the cettle on and make some tea.

Have a great day now, I will!

My first toamtoe! It´s a cheryy tomatoe and it should be striped when ripe. The seeds comes from some tomatoes I bought last winter and the tomatoes had a great taste.

I think this one is a Fuchsia microphylla (there are several similar and I got this as a cutting without name this winter). The flowers are so small that it´s hard to see them if one doesn´t come close. This one is only three millimeter long (I have no idea what that can be in places without the metric system).

It has to be a short blogg today. Minutes ago the sun shined and birds sang, now I hear thunder closing in and the clouds suddenly covers the sky. It has rained here all night and they have promised that the sun is going to shine today. I would need that because the grass grows in faster speed than I can cut it.

Bertil followed us as usual on the morning walk. Not to happy about the wet grass and grovel roads :-)

It was rather cold this morning and a rain, the kind that sort of gets in everywhere even if it´s just a sort of drizzle, was falling. I can´t say I enjoyed it especially much, but my dogs didn´t seeme to be bothered at all. I had to choose between going in to the forest and we all would get really soaked in rainwater or taking the grovel raods and my dogs getting all full of sand. My little cottage is now covered with a thin layer of sand and I have to vacume it once again.

I once looked at pictures taken high over the biggest rivers in the world and the delta areas where they go out into the ocean. Funny how similar it can look on places small streams have been after a rain.

Summer is suposed to be the time of year when one doesn´t have to vacume the house each and every day, but it´s not only sand now. My dogs have started to shed their fur again! It´s the second time this summer! I´ve spoken to several other dog owners (their dogs are doing it too)and they are as puzzled as I over this. Why does our dogs shed fur twice in one summer? No meaning to complain about it though, just vacuming :-)

Well, I think it´s time for a cup of tea or perhaps a pot of it. I´ve just got a book (or several to be honest) from my brother that I really like. Its title is 'A short history of nearly everything'. It starts with the big bang and continues to cover mostly everything even if that´s impossible :-) It´s written by Bill Bryson and if You have some hors left, why not read it. If You like me is curious about most thing I think You´ll like it.

Have a great day now!

The sun did at least try to shine through the clouds this morning.

The morning started out as rather cold and nice. No sun but one can´t get it all as they say :-) But it was so cold that the flies had decided to sleep for some hours more, I had no need for my mosquitoe hat at all :-) It´s berry season and the forest is filled with black currant, gooseberries (I found a bush with really big berries, they tasted magnificent), strawberries and raspberries. Who needs breakfast then :-)

We walked through the forest on our morning walk. I really must buy new rubber boots, it had rained all night and I was soaking wet after going through all that high grass.

The forest is filled with raspberry bushes and all of them is filled with raspberries. Since we have the law 'All mans right' we can pick them where ever we want to, as long it isn´t a garden of course (doesn´t matter who owns it, no one is allowed to stop us.

This whole area is filled with raspberry bushes.

The mushrooms has started to grow now too.

I got a note last friday that the pond pump and pond filter had arrived, but not to where. So I assumed it was at the busstation like it was the last time I ordered from that firm. But no, they had used another company this time. Every one looked at the paper I´ve gotten, no one understood anything :-) Finally we found out that our post service had something to do with it.

Cows are curious :-) As soon as we came close they ran towards us to see who we were. My dogs aren´t to happy to meet cows :-) :-)

This is one of the blood sucking flies we have here. This one I found dead in my bathroom. The thing that shows under the head is what it uses to do a hole in our flesh to get the blood. It is as painful as one can imagine!

So I drove to the postoffice in Skara and they were as puzzled as every one else :-) I phoned to the person that was signed as contact person for this. He had no idea where the package was. I had a shipping number on this paper, but it was written wrong so that was no help either. So I drove home again to phone the firm that I bought the things from.

Behind the delphiniums there is a plant I think that You from northern america knows. It´s an aralia of some kind, A cordata perhaps. It isn´t what it said on the seed pakage anyway.

Guess if he was surprised too :-) He couldn´t understand why the swedish post should have the packages at all. So now I had several people looking for these packages :-) and no one understood anything :-)

This is a relative to the aralia. The small thorns You can see wount stay that small :-) The name is so complicated that I have to look at the note to write it here and the note is still outside.

The Japanese primula has a lot of seeds and I´m thinking of letting it self sow where it stands instead of collecting the seeds. But if anyone is interested of seeds from it, just let me know and I´ll collect (this is the one I´ve shown You here before with a red center and apricot petals).

This little weed is adorable, a Veronica of some kind.

Another weed. Oxalis of some kind and it spreads like crazy :-) But I allow it to stay since it doesn´t push away anything else. And to be honest, I love the red leafs :-)

The buisness that had taken my pakages had done everything wrong :-) For some reason they had delivered my pakages to the swedish post service and then forgotten to give them the right papers. Since I had gotten the wrong shipping numbers the postoffice couldn´t track my pakages down and the firm I bought everything from had forgotten to send me the right numbers as they usually does.

Balkanmalva, Kitaibelia vitifolia. A mallow relative and has amongst other english names the names Cedar Cup/ Chalice Flower.

But I have a great mail man! He found some packages with my name on and since he knows where I live he took the pakages in his car. So he phoned me and delivered my pakages with the ordinary mail :-) Thank god for our mailmen :-)

A lilly I once got from someone and I have no idae what it´s called.

Delphinium grandiflorum, Blue Butterfly Larkspur. In swedish the name is Chinese larkspur. A short lived perennial.

Lavandula angustifolia, the only species of lavandula that is hardy in Sweden.

So now I have everything but the hoses to the pump and filter. That I have to buy separate. But it´s no hurry, I have the rest of my life to fix that. Now it rains outside, a gentle kind rain that sort of makes one feel good. Well now I think I´m going to make a pot of tea or perhaps coffee, look at the world cup in swimming and just enjoy life.

Have a great day now!

A wild geranium that also is a weed :-) If one breaks the stems it smells awful :-)

Potentilla nepalensis if I´m not totally wrong.

We walked out on my favourite peninsula by the bog yesterday. I´m not stupid enough to go out on the bog during summer. One must know the safe roads to do that and I know only a few of them.

We took our walk in to the forest and out to the bog yesterday. The grass is so high there now that I don´t want to walk there after a rain. I and my dogs would be soaked going there then. I was surprised by how little flies there were by the bog, they are after all comming from it. But they way through the forest was filled with them. But with my mosquitoe hat on the walk was quite nice :-)

Odon (or Bog billberry) can be found everywhere around the bog. I´ve read that Bog billberry is common on the american continent too. I love the sort of greygreen leafs that it has.

But the berries are far from ripe yet. Strange they usually are when the blueberry is otherwise.

I love walking on the bog, wintertime. When I know that it´s deep frozen. Going there otherwise is dangerous, one really must know where one can walk safly. There are places where one can sink down where there´s deep water benieth the grass and bushes. One looses the sence of diredtion out there too. Bogs are mysterios places, in this bog they sacrificed slaves and enemies a long time ago, to their gods.

One can´t but love walking in places like this :-)

The first night I lived here I took a walk in the evening with my dogs. My neighbours saw that I went away towards the bog and hoped that I wouldn´t go out there especially since it would be dark in just a couple of hours. The problem was that they didn´t see me comming back.

I had been sleeping a couple of hours when I suddenly heard the door bell and loud knockings on my door. My neighbours had started to worry and couldn´t go to sleep, beliving that they had to start a search party to find me out on the bog :-) :-) Can one be more than happy that people care that much? So I promised there and then, they didn´t ask for it though, that I wouldn´t go out on the bog until I knew the area much, much better :-)

Now it has rained that much that there finally is water in the small creeks too.

On the old road the grass is so high that my dogs dissapere in it :-) I call this road 'the clean road'. All the grass makes sure that my dogs doesn´t have any sand in their fur when walking here.

After the heat and drought the butterflies returned with the rain again. This little orange one is quite common here, but only in the forest. I´ve never seen it on the open fields.

I would like to go down to the biggger creek to now, but that´s a place filled with ticks during rainy summers. Since it has been so dry all animals has gone down there to drink water and with them the ticks has come too. We still haven´t gotten the virus that gives meningitis but we can still get borellia from them so why test our luck. We now gotten an even worse variety of the meningitis in the far north of our country. Getting that and one doesn´t survive. So perhaps it´s time to vaccinate against it. The common sort is bad enough I think :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

I just have to have some firns by my pond.