Keep the Coffee Comming!

I normally don´t post anything on wednesday here, but for You that follows the blog "Keep the Coffee Comming" i post just this.

That blog has a new adress. Just click on the name here "Keep the Coffee Comming" and You´ll end up at her new adress.

Have a great day now!
Christer.

Since they for almost a week had predicted that it would be cold and rainy today, I wasn´t the least surprised that it became one of the most pleasant spring days so far :-) :-) It started out with a light frost, but the sun shined and the wind was abscent. Bertil followed us like always on our walk and today he cought a meadow vole. It´s what he is supposed to do around the house, so it was nothing special really. But he had no intention of killing this little creature, he just played with it.

The little vole just sat there but there were no blood. So if the chock wasn´t to strong it would most probably run away after some minutes.

Well I couldn´t have that could I. If I see it I can also prevent it. So i just told him to leave the little animal alone and to my surprise he did :-) The little vole didn´t seeme to be especially wounded, but he was clearly in chock. So I picked lots of grass and sheltered him (or her, who knows :-) ) with it. I know voles are real pests and they can spread diseases to us humans, but I just can´t see a small animal slowly get tortured to death. We´ll walk that way later on today so I can check if it´s gone.

The water is a bit to close to the small café now.

The old railway is gone, but the bridge is still here.

Before I went away to my accountant, wich showed to be something I could have skipped (but it felt good to know that I didn´t do anything wrong anyway), I planted my tomatoe seedlings in bigger pots. I now have 24 tomatoe plants! What on earth shall I do with that many :-) :-) I still have at least eight tomatillo sedlings to put in bigger pots too :-) :-) Well there´s always someone that wants a plant or two i think :-)

People tends to through out half eaten apples when going by train. Just down this path there grows eleven apple trees that gives good apples and one of them is the tastiest I´ve ever eaten. The problem is that I don´t know what other tree pollinates it so It´s no use to take grafts. It might not even be one of these trees that does it.

 

On my way home from my accountant I stopped by the little village Tråvad (the village I had my gardencenter/nurcery in). Or I stopped by the river and the place where one can take a bath during summer. I hope we´ve reached the peak in snowmelting now, otherwise the little café there will get big troubles. Now it´s time for a walk and then I think it´ll be a pot of tea and some bisquits with blue cheese mmmmmmm

Have a great day now!

I wonder what the poor Ladybug eats now? I think it should have continued to sleep for yet another month.

This weekend someone won the big lottery over here. 215 million sweish kronor, that would be around 29 million US dollars. Well it wasn´t me.that I can tell You. The fun thing is that even if the lottery buissness knows who the person is and the phone number and the adress thay can´t find him :-) My guess is that he has gone abroad on vacaton before the lottery this Saturday, so it´ll be a nice surprise when comming home again :-) :-)

This birch will never have any problems with drought I think since it´s growing up from an old well :-) :-)

It´s raining again today and will continue like this for a while more. It´s not really cold outside but the damp weather sort of eats its way inside our homes so most of us has a fire in our stoves now. My cats like that but my dogs prefere it a bit cooler (I´m with the cats on this one :-) :-) ).

I love these different fungi.

Tomorrow I´ll have to go to my former accountant, no problems with that really. She´s nice and is gold worth! But we thought last year was the last one I needed her help since I still had my buissness. But the Revenue ( or is it Treasury) had different ideas it seemes. Well it´s nothing complicated, it´s just a paper that has to be completed, but I really thought I had put my old gardencenter behind me now. I loved that place, but it wasn´t a pleasant gost to get a visit from if You know what I mean :-) :-) It almost destroyed my whole economy and now when the economy is really good again the memories gave me cold chills down my spine :-)

This is my red berried Elderberry tree. It´s a species from Ussuria in eastern Russia. It´s said not to have poisouness berries, but I´m not going to test that :-) :-) It´s not as hardy as the ones we have in the wild here and I love it for the twisted branches it has.

The Pulmonaria has already small flower buds. I guess that it´ll flower within a week. The flowers starts out pink and turnes blue after a while.

Well it´s time to make another cup of tea, put another log in the fire and perhaps once again try to make the digital box work so I can see tv again. I don´t know how it is out there in the world, but Sweden and Brittain were the two first countries that changed to digital broadcasting. Now we can´t see tv if we don´t have that little box that makes those digital signals understandible for the tv. I guess I have to buy a new one, this box gave up the day after the warranty period ended :-) :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

I just have to show You this tent! Normally those who follows the cranes has caravanes or something likeweiss. But here they have a tent. As You can see it has a small chimney, so I don´t think they´ll freeze in there during nights :-)

 
 
 
 
 

It´s grey and rainy outside today. You know that kind of drizzle that sort of eats its way through the clothes and one doesn´t notice it until it´s to late and one is far away from home :-) :-) Not even the dogs like to be outside in that, not to mention my cats. They stay inddors close to the stove today :-)

Yesterday It was the annual shaving of all hair on the hed day here. I do that once (sometimes twice, depends on how hot the summer is) a year. I´m a powder painter nowdays and that paint has a gift of getting stuck on my scalp and if the hair is long it´s hard to get rid of. Especially warm summers when I clean the paint box and sweats a lot. But I feel it might have been a bit early, so now I use a cap when going outside :-)

Now it´s so warm outside that I barly use the electric radiators to keep the cottage warm. I and three big dogs sort of keeps the temperature up any way. Well I use the fire heated stove in my kitchen too, but now is a time when it´s getting a bit difficult to use it. Have a fire in it too long and the heat in the house will be awful, to short and it will get cold in the middle of the night. But after ten years with this stove I´m kind of used to use it by now :-)

I feel a bit late today, we changed to summer time last night. I really don´t like it and way up here in the north it really doesn´t do any good. Soon we´ll have at least 18 hours of daylight here and even further north the sun won´t go down at all. Studies has shown that the heart attack rate goues up dramatically on this day and when we turn back the clock again. I usually have troubles for a long time to get used to the change, but this year I hope it´ll be easier since I´m home after surgery. I don´t have to care about the time at all :-) :-)

There are still some small rose hips left on the branch on this Rosa multiflora, or as we call it "Japanese climbing rose". They are so small and contains only one or two seeds each.

I think it´s time for yet another fire log in the stove and I think I´ll make myself a cup of tea with the new sort I bought today. After that I think I´ll force the dogs to follow me out into the garden for a while :-)

Have a great day now!

Now finally my snowdrops opens up their flowers. They are the only thing flowering here yet, so it´s good we have all the migrating birds to look at so we can feel that spring is on its way :-)

Today the weather forcast is quite accurate. Somewhat cold and rainy. It´s strange really because they usually gets it right when it comes to bad weather :-) But the rain eats the snow and ice rather fast so I think it´s ok even if I prefere sun and warm winds :-)

I never got around to walk to my mailbox yesterday, so I went there on our morning walk instead. I had gotten todays local morning paper to my surprise. We usually gets it when something big happens in Falköping, but I read it through thoroughly without finding that anything actully were happening in that town :-) Perhaps the paper was put in the wrong mailbox? Well I´ll probably never know, but it was a nice surprise to have the morning paper to read while eating breakfast :-)

There´s to much water in the creeks right now. Yesterday morning there were water where old Erna stands in this photo.

But the ice that stopped the water from flowing its natural way under the gravel road melted.

This rather cool and damp weather has made both me and my animals rather lazy. Hector is sleeping in my bed, Orvar just benieth the stairs in the kitchen, old Erna in the livingroom and my cats close to the stove where there´s a fire burning. I should really plants all ,y small tomatoe and tomatillo plants in seperate pots now, but I don´t have the energy for it. Come to think of it, I don´t think I have soil for it either :-) I think I´ll drive to the supermarket in Skara tomorrow and buy some.

All ditches were almost filled with more water than they could take.

I tried to go to the creek but as You can see the way was blocked with water. If I try to reach the creek from the other direction the roads are so muddy that I´ll have three brown dog when I come home :-)

But for now my only concern is to keep the fire burning in the stove. Perhaps make a pot of tea and to take a little nap too :-)

Have a great day now!

Not much sun as You can see :-) But almost all snow is gone so now I can walk over the fields again. That is my little cottage You can see here.

For a week now they have predicted that we would have sun all day and up to 15C (59F) degrees warms. So I wasn´t the least surprised this morning when we had frost on the ground. I didn´t get surprised later on either, when I was in Falköping and the rain poured down. It rained that much that it was impossible to take any photo´s :-) For tomorrow they have predicted rain and cold weather. With my luck that is a correct prediction :-) :-)

The cranes are flying in towards the lake.

I went to Falköping today to buy some fire wood for my kitchen stove. I normally buys Fire logs, but last week they told me that it most probably would be impossible to get any more of those before autumn. So I was happily surprised when that just had resived some this morning. They are a bit cheaper than fire wood when buying so little of it. Otherwise fire wood is the best and cheapest, but since my hip is like it is, it´s a bit too much work with loads of fire wood.

I stopped by the crane lake on my way home. There´s still just around 2600 cranes there, but more are comming by the hour. Last year we reached a record by having 18500 cranes by the lake at the same time. Now hunters are screaming for the chance to shoot some of them. There must be something wrong in the head of some people when the first thing they want is to kill some animals just because they are plentiful. I don´t think they´ll get that chance for a very long time. Every one loves cranes here :-)

And every year by this time there´s a café opening. The coffee is good and fairly cheap.

I was thinking of buying a pot of daffodils since the ones we have not even has started to show here. But they didn´t have any in my grocery store yet. Do You know that here in Sweden daffodils are called Easter Lilies? The close relative Poets daffodil is called Pentecost lilies. They tend to flower around those holidays. But they did however have some Easter cactuses (Rhipsalidopsis gaertneri). They are amongst my favourites so I bought one of those until the daffodils comes next week.

Since the weather prediction made this morning predicts cloudy weather and perhaps some rain, I´m not especially surprised that the sun is shining at the moment :-) I wonder, do they have drunk monkeys making these predictions? It would explaine a lot :-) :-)

Anyway, I might just take a cup of tea and place myself on my kitchen stairs and enjoy the day.

Have a great day now, I will!

 

I just wanted to show You a guest by my feeders yesterday. It´s the Hawfinch. Perhaps not so uncommon here, but this is the first time I´ve seen it by my feeder. The beak is so strong that it without problems cracks cherry seeds.

 
 

Not the best of quality in this photo, but You can see how it looks anyway.

According to the weather forcast on swedish televishions webb site we´re having sun right now. Since being out a fair bit of the morning and now looking through my window I can say that we´re not :-) :-) It´s been cloudy and foggy all morning and will probably continue to be like that all day. But the snow and ice is slowly melting away, so who am I to complain :-)

This week I don´t have to order my food like I have been these last weeks. I think it´s a fantastic service the grocery store in Gudhem has, to take the food to us when we can´t go there our selves. But it is nicer to be able to pick the things one selve even if there´s the big risk that so many more things comes home than what I really need. It´s so easy to tell one self that one needs things that really isn´t necessary :-) :-)

Bjurums old village school. Today there´s a photo exhibit and I think it was nature photo´s.

There are only two House care (as we call them over here) by the lake and that means few cranes :-)

I drove by the lake to see if there were any cranes yet and there were quite a few. But unfortunally they were a bit to far away so the photo´s didn´t come out especially well. But I did get a good photo of some geese instead :-)

This sign says "Bird protection area" and it´s placed by the road in to my village. Between those dates only those living in my village or guests (I think they count the mailman and milk trucks in to that :-)  ) are allowed in the village.

There were no falls on the morning walk today and I´m planning on not falling the rest of the day either :-) My wrist does hurt some but I don´t think anything is broken in it anyway.

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and perhaps a sandwich or two :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

We have lots of Red Elderberry in our forest. I love the shape of these bushes and they are amongst the first ones to get leafs too.

The weather isn´t especially inviting today. It´s raining some, it´s blowing some and it´s not that warm either. But combiened these things does that the rest of the snow is melting even faster. So I welcome it :-)

Red Elderberry leaf and flowerbud.

But I and my dogs were able to take most of our morning walk before the rain started. We went into the forest and out on to the peninsula that leads out to the bog. Most of the snow and ice are gone from the road, but there are still lots of twigs and branches lying after the thinning of the forest last winter.

I didn´t get that many photo´s when we were walking, so I thought I could show what to expect in my garden soon. I never saves any of my photo´s so this is a copy from a copy so the quality isn´t the best on these comming ones. This is a Hepatica nobilis.

A Trillium hybrid.

I walked as careful as I could with my crutch and came half way out to the big ditch without troubles. My dogs loves running around there and it´s perfect in the way that they do get wet, but not durty :-) It was a bit difficult to take photo´s though, because the sky is dark grey and the trees made it even darker.

Anemone ranunculoides, the Yellow wood anemone.

I had made it almost all of the way back to the road when it happened. My right foot got stuck under a couple of twigs and I fell like a tree in a storm :-) I got a bit worried that something had happened to my new hip implants, but it seemes that´s the only place it doesn´t hurt right now :-):-)

One of my Helleboruses, Christmas roses.

I twisted most of my back and my neck and I think I might have broken or twisted my right wrist. My back and neck are slowly getting better but my wrist still hurts a lot. If the pain doesn´t go away by tomorrow I´ll go to the emergency so thay can x-ray it. But I´m hoping for the best :-) I´m a bit tired of hospitals now :-) :-)

But now I´ll make a pot of tea, some sandwiches and put wood in the stove. I think I´ll stay indoors most of today :-)

Have a great day now!