Today it´s Walpurgis and that is a big day over here (It is especially celebrated here in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech republic and Germany) . It´s not a national holiday but most people doesn´t work more than half day at the most. This is the day we welcome spring (and it is our kings birthday too). We have hughe bonfires all over the country and they are lit on Walpurgis night. When doing so choirs starts to sing old songs welcomming spring. But there won´t be any bonfire here in Falköping since someone lit it last night. Half of it burned down and whats left is so wet that they don´t think it´s possible to start a fire in it for many weeks. The fire departement didn´t save water when putting it out :-) :-)

Three different species of spring flowers beside my favourite road in the forest.

Lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria. It is said to be a terrible weed if taking it in to gardens. But not in my garden though. But it doesn´t suffocate any other flowers and after flowering it slowly dissaperes again.

Yellow Star Of Bethlehem, Gagea lutea.

Wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa. This can vary quite a lot in color. It isn´t unusual to find blue or pink ones. They can also be red or totally green but that is not so common.

Usually those holidays nowdays has a christian meaning, but I´ve been looking around after more to why we celebrate this holiday. It seemes we used to celebrate on this day on the Vernal Equinox andd it was to honor the dead. They belived that the border between life and death to be as thin as it could be on that day. But the Christians came and changed it to something that fitted the church better (a bit of a shame really, we could have had our own “los dias de muertos” over here :-) :-) ). This day we celebrate (most people doesn´t know it though :-) ) the holy Valborg (Walpurgis night is called Valborgsmässoafton in swedish).

They are a bit behind in my garden and the yeloow wood anemone has only small flower buds yet.

This is how it looks in my neighbours hedge. This is the reason some thinks Scilla sibirica is a weed :-) I love it and it´s allowed to spread like crazy in my garden :-)

Red trillium, Trillium erectum. This started out as one lonly flower, this year I´ll get seven :-) It´s the only species of trillium I have the others are hybrides.

According to legend She was an abbes and an english princess. She was called to germany to bring christianity to the pagans. I can´t find anything that tells why she afterwards is celebrated and used against wichcraft and evil spirits though.

It will be a rainy Walpurgis night and that is a good thing. Rainy holidays usually keeps the violence down and especially that violence towards women and children.

The Himalayan primula, Primula denticulata.

Wild primerose, Primula vulgaris.

Some liverworts just have a much deeper color than others.

Well now it´s time for a cup of tea, the weather doesn´t invite to outdoor activities even if the rain hasn´t started yet. Perhaps I´ll join my dogs and take a small nap to :-)

Have a great day now!

 
 

 

They had changed how it looks when downloding photo´s here on blogger yesterday and I couldn´t for my life understand how I would do to download photo´s from my own computor. Going to Blogger helpcentre is as usefull as standing in front of a runaway truck asking for directions :-) :-) But there are groups where You can mail questions and hopefully there will be someone reading the question and answers too. I was lucky and got an answer real fast. The funny thing is that today it´s back to normal again???!!! I wonder what happened yesterday , why did it change like it did???

It rained almost all afternoon and night yesterday and it was a nice spring rain. We really didn´t need it but I like how it smells after a rain like that. The vegetation almost explodes afterwards too. Buds are growing and opening up now and more spring flowers has opened up.

The sky is mostly grey now, but every now and again the sun shines through smaller gaps in the clouds. The cranes I call “The teenagers” because they stay during summer and hang out in smaller or bigger groups, are now walking around in the fields close to the village. I walked the wrong way to be able to see them this morning, but we could hear them clearly, they shout really loud.

You can see the stone age toomb in the background.

But we could see the fox from a distance. My camera isn´t that good that I could take a photo of him unfortunally. His scent flew to us with the wind and even if my dogs didn´t care Bertil did. He wasn´t happy and continously told us so all the time until we came in to the village again :-) :-) Normally he quiet when walking with us nowdays.

Money wort or Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia). This sort gets yellow leavs later on.

Corydalis solida, couldn´t fins any english name for it. This spreads like crazy :-) and nowdays my neighbour has it too. It didn´t take three years until it had spread outside my garden :-) But it dissaperes soon after the seeds are ready to be spread. If I understand things correct it´s ants spreading them.

American Silverberry or Wolf-willow (we call it silver bush).

If the grass dries up I will probably have to mowe the lawn today. But first I´ll have to change oil in the mower. I bought it last autumn and I was told that I had to change the first oil after ten hours on lawn mowing. So perhaps I´ll start with that today and wait with the rest :-) But first I´ll take a cup of tea.

Have a great day now!

Helleboruses.

Last night the moon went in and out of the clouds. I was just waiting for the werewolfs to howl :-) 

It´s not warm outside but not especially cold either. It´s a grey and damp day with haze and drizzle and it feels a bit chilly inside even if it really is quite warm. But I´ve started a fire in the stove to push all that dampness out of my home.

Bjurums castle.

There lived people in this house just a couple of years ago, now it´s empty and now it´s falling appart just some yards from the castle.

I´ve already done what I planned to do today, drive to the grocery store in Gudhem, so now I´m not sure of what to do the rest of the day :-) :-) I think I´ll watch the DVD I bought the other week , Liar Liar. I´ve heard it´s funny and even if I´m not the biggest fan of Jim Carrey I´ll give it a try.

This is a  typical kind of house they make nowdays.

The video further down isn´t anything to watch really, but I wanted to record how it sounds when going in the forest an early morning here near my village. So turn up the volyme so You can hear the birds as good as possible.

 Houses seen from the grocery store in Broddetorp, a small town beside the lake.

Hector sleeps in my bed, Orvar down the stairs in the kitchen and old Erna sleeps in the living room. Teodore sleeps outside just beside the pond. He´s been looking at the insects that floats around on the pond with big interest. I´m a bit dissapointed since no frogs seemes to like my pond. I´ve seen frogs eggs in ditches all around and had hoped to get it in the pond too. Perhaps I´ll go out tonight and steel some from the ditches :-) :-) But I´m still hoping for dragon flies this summer :-)

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and I think I´ll make a couple of sandwiches too. I´ve bought the most tasteful cheese the other day. It´s so strong that I´ll get blisters on my tongue if eating to much of it :-) :-)

Have a great day now!

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!

One of my absolute favourites in spring. The name I found in English is so much more beautiful than ours, it´s called "Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem". If I translate our name it is "Spring onion" :-) :-) 

It´s already warmer today (11:27 am) than it has been so far this year. It´s 16C (61F) but it still doesn´t feel as nice as I wish it would. Perhaps it´s because the sun doesn´t manage to shine through the clouds. But I´ll stay outdoors as much as possible for this is for one day and one day only that it´ll be this warm. Already tomorrow the temperatures will drop again.

I´ve gone through Gardens Norths seedlists so now I know what seeds I ordered from them, but I still doesn´t know what is what :-) :-) But I did only sow two perennials that germinated last year, so those I can tell what they are. So today I planted a yellow larkspur ( Sulphur delphinium, Delphinium semibarbatum ) . It grows down in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as wild and it is not the hardiest of them all to be honest. But as long as it stands fairly dry during winter ( well most of the year to be honest, exept for spring) it will survive here too. After I´m finished with writing here I´ll go out and plant a couple of Monkshoods to. Monkshoods are very poisouness so if You handle the roots You should wash Your hands before doing anything else.

Now tick season starts here. I´ve already picked three from my dogs and one walking on my arm. Nasty little creatures those things. They have done a study on what use they are in nature and couldn´t really find any. Not even birds likes to eat them unless they are starving. I´ve tried them as food to my aquarium fishes and no one wanted it, they just sunk to the bottom! It seemes that the only thing they do is to spread diseases, perhaps that is a way for nature to keep down the animal population on this planet? So now it´s time to look throgh all dogs, cats and me before going to sleep every evening. I really don´t like those nasty little creatures!

Tomorrow it´s time to go to my doctor for a check up on my hip. I´m glad to tell You that almost all pain in my thigh after the sneezes is gone :-) But I will continue to use the crutch for some time more. Better to be safe than sorry. But now it´s time for a cup of tea and the to plant those monkshoods somewhere.

Have a great day now!

This is something You should avoid in Your gardens if You don´t like one plant to take over the whole garden. It is a "False spirea", Sorbaria sorbifolia. Beautiful in many ways, butterflies, bees and other insects loves it but it psreads fast and takes over everything if You don´t keep after it all the time. I managed to get rid of my plants, but still has it since my neighbour has it :-) Well, I can´t get a better neighbour so I´d rather fight with the spirea then forsing my neighbour to remove it :-)