Tuesday, April 27, 2010



I was at the hospital today for my hip check up. To my big surprise they let me in almost fifteen minutes earlier than the appointment time and I was out of the hospital before I was supposed to be there! My doctor was very pleased with how I healed after the surgery, in fact he was so pleased that I´m going to start work on Monday full time. But I´m not going to have my ordinary job just yet, the paint sacks are a bit to heavy for that.



They have this little Art/antique and crafts shop in Varnhem. Naturally it was closed.

I think this is an old school building. It´s something else nowdays though.

I wanted to visit my favourite gardencentre on my way home and at the same time visit Varnhems monestary church that is built just nearby the gardencentre.


This is a café right beside the church. It smelled wonderful of new baked bunns :-)

I think this is a really beautiful church.

 

There were lots of nice things to buy at the gardencentre and I almost came home with a magnolia (even if I´m terrified that I´m going to get slugs from almost anything I buy nowdays). But I looked at the roots and they were cut to get the tree up from the ground and placed in a sack. Never by a magnolia with cut roots, they usually have a bleak future ahead. So I only bought two plants for my pond, one of them is a red water lily. After sinking down the pot with the water lily my pond now is anything but clear :-) :-)





The first church built here was a tree church around 1040 but was later replaced with a stone church. But they nowdays has proof that christians has lived here since the ninth century. They started to build the monastery around 1150 but it was totally destroyed in a fire 1234. This is the berrial place for many of Swedens first kings and other very important people. 1527 the state took the monastery and church since we then had left catholisism. In those days we were konstant in war with the danes and they burned down the monastery buildings 1566. Unfortunally it was closed and wouldn´t open for an hour when I was there and I wanted to go home :-)






I´m getting a new computor soon too :-) I really wanted to have a Mac, but those costs a lot of money and I do need a new refidgerator and a washing mashine too and it would be nice to buy a more advanced camera. My brother knows this and always looks out for different specials on things I need so I can get them cheaper, I love my oldest brother :-) Today he sent me a mail that showed that my phone company has a special on a lap top. I don´t know what things like this can cost in Your countries, but this is cheap over here. I´ll have to pay 100 swedish kronor / month (around 13,8 US dollars) for the computor for the comming 36 months and for the mobile broadband 249 swedish kronor/ month (around 34,6 US dollars). I´ve checked again and the price on the broadband is actually 179 Swedish kronor ( 24,9 US dollars).




The surroundings by the church is rather nice don´t You think?




Well now I have a couple of more days of free time at home, I must win a couple of millions at the lottery :-) :-) :-) I´ve gotten used to being home now :-) :-) But for now I´making a pot of tea.

Have a great day now!

17 comments:

Princess Grace || Photography By Princess said...

Hi, You don't know me, but I browsed through your blog and love your photos and style... i'm following it now :)
I hope you follow mine too ;-)
http://ColorMePrincess.blogspot.com

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Princess and welcome to my blog!

I´m glad that You like it all :-)

I´ll chek in to Your blog later today!
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Kat said...

Thank you for the wonderful tour, Christer. I'm sorry you had to mention the aroma of the buns. Now you have me wanting to go to the bakery. That church is magnificent, as are the grounds and stone walls.

I know it is cold, and it looks damp too.

I am so glad your hip has healed but sorry you have to go back to work.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Kat!
Thought You might like the photo´s today :-) There will be more houses tomorrow if I remember to put them in :-) :-)

It would have been nice to stay home a couple of weeks more since it´s now spring really starts, but it´s ghreat that the hip mends so great too :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Valerie said...

Hello Christer!

Glad to hear that the hip has healed well! And, even though it's a bummer to return to work sooner rather than later, it's such a good sign of the progress you've made!!!

The old stone church is beautiful. Thank you also for the history. Now are/were the Danes typcially Catholics? I only ask b/c my children are half Danish :) any my mother-in-law's parents REFUSED to attend her wedding to my father-in-law b/c he was a Catholic. She grew up in Danish Lutheran farming community in Iowa. I really need to learn the history of the Scandinavian countries so that I can better educate my kiddos...otherwise they'll think they are 100% Polish-American like their mother! Ha!

BTW...I have been trying to find baby boy names and came across CHRISTER under the Sweden/Denmark section of my baby name book! I immediately thought of you!

Take care,
Val

jaz@octoberfarm said...

khi christer..thans for the idea about the maple! though i am sad it broke, the piece that came off had been blocking my path so now it is easier to walk by. i like your idea and might plant something small in front of it so it won't grow out over the path. it is such a jungle down there! i started clearing out my gazebo area and realize that i need to almost rebuild my gazebo so that is what i will be doing for the rest of the week. i saved the trunks from my christmas trees and have been sawing them into pieces to use all day. that church is gorgeous as are the grounds around it. you will love having a laptop. i was reluctant to get mine and now i never even look at my old computer! good to hear about your hip! joyce

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Valerie!
I can´t be other than pleased to have healed so well, but it would have been nice to stay home now when spring arrives :-)

It is a very beautiful church, perhaps one of the most beautiful in the region. Well until the 16:th century all europeans were catholics, but then Martin Luther came and we had war for a long time between the two different christian faiths. One could say that northern Europe became protestants and southern stayed catholic. I imagine that Denmark treated catholics in the way Sweden did, not to well. They weren´t accepted at all to be honest.

You could as a swedish citizen not be a catholic before 1860, but if You were a foreigner You could keep Your fath if You practiced it so no one could notice it (that came true for catholics 1781).

So I´m not so surprised that Your mother in laws parents behaved like they did I´m sorry to say.

Christer was, in the beginning, a name for the nobility but in the sixties whe I was born it became a rather popular name for the rest of us :-) Nowdays it´s quite unkommon as a first name (but to be honest it´s not my first name but I´ve always been called that anyway).
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
Ithink it might be a good idea to do like that. I´ve never heard that japanese maples breaks new branches on old stems. I wish I could have such a jungle here. It will be one day but it will take lots of time I´m afraid.

What a great idea to use the old christmas trees!

I think I will like a lap top rather much. Then I can sit oin a more comfortable place to write my blogs :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Sharlene T. said...

I'm so happy that you're healed but not so happy that you must return to work 8-( It's because I selfishly love your photos and don't want things like work interfering with my source of pleasure! The church and grounds are lovely and thank you for the history. Enjoy your cup of tea.

Caryn said...

Hi Christer
Glad to hear that your hip is healing much faster than expected even though it does mean that you have to go back to work sooner as well.
The photos today were great. I love how many of the buildings look grander than what they contain.
The rose window in the church looks very interesting. I'd like to see it with the light behind it.

I have a Mac laptop and I would not have anything other than a Mac now. Of course, you understand that Mac owners are a cult. :-)

Anonymous said...

Gosh, these images today are magnificent. I would love to have a house with this type of architecture. You must have gone wild in your thoughts as you took these photos. I'm putting Sweden on my list to visit in retirement. IT has to be a place of historical fantasy. Enjoy your tea!

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Sharlene!
Well there will be no bigger difference in my blog after I´m back to work. The only thing is that I won´t write here on wednesdays, otherwise it´ll be just the same :-)

Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Caryn!
But to be honest, I am glad that I have a job to go back to. So many have lost their jobs these last two years. So I feel a bit spoiled by wanting to stay home another couple of weeks :-) :-)

I´m going back to the gardencentre later so I hope the church will be open so I can go in and take some photo´s there too! They actually take an entrence fee nowdays, the church has become famous in a couple of books about early Sweden.

Yes Mac fans are a bit special :-) :-) and I wanted to become a part of Your world :-) But I have to much to buy for a while now so I´ll have to wait. My current computor is slowly breaking down and works a bit strange nowdays. I´m not sure it´ll make it more than a month or two more so this special came just in time. It gives me more time to save enough for a Mac :-) :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Z&M!
No, I´m sorry but I felt no wildness inside while taking these photo´s :-) :-) These houses looks much like lots ofother houses in the country to be honest, so no wildness at all :-) :-) :-)

But the church is something else, but I´ve seen it so many times nowdays that I usually don´t think about how beautiful it is.

Have a great day now!
Christer.

Wsprsweetly Of Cottages said...

I enjoy the tour! It's ...so different than here. More open, I think, space maybe? I'm not sure.

I loved that first picture of one of the dogs! I always look forward to the animal photo's. None of Bertil this time??? Hmmmm? :)
The building are just lovely...
I know that smell as our bakery is the same way. Makes you hungry just to walk by!

I awoke to lots of fog this morning..which now that I think about it is usual for this time of year. I was surprised though.

I still have not gotten my new annuals yet..tomorrow for sure. Spent a couple of hours in the Verizon phone store trying to get the new phones set up! NOT easy!

A laptop?? Wow! How nice! Mine is nice and not very old so no lap top for me. However my new phone has a computer on it so I can see my email when I travel. SO nice!
Take care, Christer.
Glad you liked that BIG WHITE BIRD on top of my cabinet! :) I needed a change anyway!
Mona

Wsprsweetly Of Cottages said...

p.s. I was so happy to hear that your hip is doing well and that you will even be able to go back to work. However...glad it's not me that has to go back to work! Retirement is sooo nice.
Mona

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Mona!
It´s funny how different it can look even on places not to far away. Southern and northern Sweden looks very different i mnay ways. Going to Norway or Denmark makes it even more different even if we live so close to each other and has been in unions some times. But we are only nine millon people in a country that is a bit bigger than California so we don´t have to live especially close on the countryside :-) :-)

It´s way to early for annuals here yet, but give us a couple of warm weeks and they´ll be every where. I´m just waiting to be able to sow Nasturtium :-)

I wasn´t really looking for a lap top, but this will only cost me 4 US dollars more a month and I´ll get a much faster broadband connection too :-)Now I´ll just have to wait for it to come home :-)

It is amazing how fast my hip healed this time, only two months and one week and I´m back to work again!

Roosters are so beautiful! I only wish I hade the time having a real one here in my garden :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.