The cottage by the Cranelake

So this is it.

2010-10-05T18:45:00.000+02:00

It looks like someone has cut through the stem of the sunflower, but since everyone has been so careful not to break it before I think that it´s just the winds that has been to strong lately.

So this is it, my last post on Blogspot. At least for this time. I have had a couple of blogs here on Blogspot, the first one when I started my gardencentre/nursery five years ago and I have always had smaller problems here, but no problems like I´ve had these last weeks. So Now I will be moving to a new blog with almost the same name (instead of writing Cranelake I by accident wrote Crane lake :-) :-) ). I´ll put in a link in the end of this post to my new blog home.

It´s been a rather nice, cool sunny day here but the winds have been strong all the time. Our walk before the sun went down was both warm and cold. When we walked in the shadows I wished I was closer to home and when we walked in the sun I wished the day would never end :-)

I´m having a fire in the stove and a pot of tea by my side. The wind is howling outside and I feel that it will be nice sitting inside close to the stove listening to the wind and reading blogs on the computer. I feel a bit sad leaving this place but glad that I did find a new place with hopefully less problems loading my photographs. To be honest, my blog wouldn´t be much without them :-)

So now I say adieu from The cottage by the Cranelake and I wish You all welcome to The cottage by the Crane Lake instead :-)
I´ll start posting there on Thursday
Have a great day now!

2010-10-04T19:28:00.002+02:00

I COULDN´T DOWNLOAD A SINGLE PHOTO HERE TODAY!!!! BUT I HAVE POSTED THEM IN MY OTHER BLOG ON WORD PRESS INSTEAD AND i THINK I´LL MOVE THERE ON THURSDAY!

By the way, I was wrong about how much I can download in that blog! It´s 3 GB, nothing else :-)
Just follow this adress and You´ll see my photos :-) :

The cottage by the Crane lake.

It is time to start thinking about Christmas now. Well not really Christmas but what photo I´m going to have on my Christmascards this year. Back in the days when i started doing my own cards, well i didn´t make them myself but I did choose the photo that they then put on the cards, I always choose the worst or most peculiar card I had taken during the year.

My first card had a photo of my green Citroen covered in snow on my parking space. Another showed our very, very green outhouse at our summerhouse, naturally covered in snow :-) I have had a blurry photo of my hotel room when I was in Paris and I have also had a photo of the inside of a street car :-) :-) These Christmas cards were so popular that when I stopped making them people got angry with me :-) :-)

But last year I had a rather good photo with mushrooms in it. I have had some bad photos taken this year, but not bad enough I´m afraid and I haven´t seen anything peculiar to photograph either. Well I still have time for that but it looks as if I have to use a good photo this year too. But as I said, there´s still time :-) :-)
Some of You that follow my blog and I have the addresses to will get one in the ordinary mail, but I will take a photo and show here for all you others out there.

I have also felt the urge to do any kind of crafts, like building a cupboard or a ship or something :-) :-) :-) Nothing of that will happen because I´m not especially handy to be honest :-) :-) :-) But there´s nothing much to don here in the winter when it gets dark already at 4:20pm. I am writing a little story for my nieces children though, but in the speed I´m writing it they will be grown ups before I´m finished with it :-) :-) :-) So I´ll better visit the closest crafts shop to see if they have something easy, yet funny to do during the dark winter nights.

But for now I´m happy with the fire that is burning in the stove and for the cup with hot tea I have here by the computer. Only Bertil is active, the rest of the animals is sound asleep somewhere in my little cottage.
Have a great day now!

2010-10-03T10:33:00.000+02:00

I think we had storm strength on the winds last night. I could hear the roaring sound from the wind in the trees but since my cottage was sheltered by the forest the wind never reached my home. I love that sound especially when I´m falling asleep late at night. But I guess it´s a totally different thing if You live in tornado areas. Then I can imagine that the sound of storms are quite worrying.

They are cleaning out the ditches in the area.

The entrance to the Forbidden Forest. I call this place so because this is the only place out here where I can feel that I´m not welcome. I did walk in there once and something made me feel really unpleasant. I tried to go in there one more time but I got the same feeling, so now I avoid to come even close to it.

This is one of the most delicious mushrooms You can find here! It´s the Hedgehog mushroom (in swedish it´s called Thorny mushroom). It has gotten its name because of the "thorns" You can see in this photo. They aren´t thorns really and falls of as soon as You touch them. It´s sooo delicious!

It´s still blowing quite hard outside so we went down to the creek as the road there also is sheltered by the forest. It was a cool morning and the sun was fighting its way through the clouds when we started our walk. Bertil didn´t follow us this morning, he had been out all night so he was sound asleep when I shut the door behind us.

The sun broke through the clouds just before we were leaving the forest :-) I was hoping for that when we started our walk, because it´s a magical feeling down there when that happens in the morning.

We had almost reached the end of the creek in the forest when the sun finally broke through the clouds for real and after that it got quite pleasant when we walked out to the open fields. Just before we´re leaving the creek there´s a spot where the ground almost always is a bit muddy and lots of tracks from the wild life can be found. It has been rather dry here lately so I could only see one track from what I think came from a Red deer. It was slightly smaller than a track from a moose and a bit more slim, moose often spread their toes when walking so it can be rather wide.

This and the following photos were taken yesterday afternoon on our walk towards the bog.

I have made a new blog at Word Press now, but that doesn´t mean that I´ll start using it now though. I like how it works there but there´s one rather big problem for me since I show a lot of photos. I´m only allowed to use 1 megabyte for other things than text. That means that I barley can put in four photos every time I post something there. I could of course make several postings in a row to get around that problem. But as it is now I do hope the problems here at Blogspot gets solved soon!

I had not a single problem when downloading my photos today! It was done quickly too?! I do hope the downloading problem is gone now!

I have a fire in the stove, a pot of hot tea by my side, one cat (Teodor) sleeping on the kitchen sofa on the other side of the kitchen table and Orvar sleeping just behind the chair I´m sitting in. Hector sleeps upstairs in my bed and Bertil in the sofa in the living room. It´s a pleasant morning.
Have a great day now!

2010-10-02T11:14:00.000+02:00

I have downloaded Live writer in to my computer and have spent the last two hours to try to figure out how to use it! They show how to add the blog but the picture they show doesn´t look like it does on my computer at all!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don´t have that kind of toolbar anywhere!!!!So how on earth do they mean I´m going to use this writer?????? I click on every guide line there is to ge started but nothing happens and there is absolutely no help to get. I hate when this happens! So later today I´ll start a blog on WordPress just in case this place drives me even more nuts than it has already :-) :-)
I woke up in the best of moods today, but Windows Live writer really changed that to quite the opposite!

Migrating geese.

It was quite cloudy and dark here this morning. But that has changed to windy, sunny and clear blue sky now.

I found a rather fun article in the newspaper this morning. I think You all know that it is in Sweden the Nobel prizes are given, but did You know that the Harvard University gives away the IgNobel prize every year? It gives no money nor honor and when You first read about this it´s rather fun, but when comming to think of it this can actually be worth knowing in the long run.

This year the prize in mathematic is given to Italian scientists that by a mathematical model found out that organisations actually works best if promotion is given randomly :-) That does show that all those expensive recruitment practices is totally unnessecary :-)

The Peace prize is given to English scientists that has found out that swear words actually can give pain relief and the Medicine prize were given to those that showed that a ride in a roller coaster reduced the sensaion of breathlessness when You have asthma. Well the last one could perhaps be useful if one is near a roller coaster. But come to think of it, if You have a small child suffering from asthma it could help to play roller coaster by lifting and sinking the child rapidly in th air.

Two seconds after I took this photo a big red fox walked out on the road n front of us. It saw us and ran away before I even go a chance to lift up my camera. So You´ll have to believe me when I say that it was very beautiful.

Earlier prizes has gone to a swedish scientist for his studies of the farts of herrings :-) It was the army that heard a strange sound when they were listening for foreign submarines in swedish waters :-) So they hired a scientist to find out what it was they heard :-) :-) One won the prize since he showed the beat way to make a comb over :-) :-) Someone has also won it for showing how we can make frogs float in the air by using magnets and one because he or she showed how to make a mouth protection from a bra :-) :-)

There is probably lots more to know if You search on IgNobel on the internet :-) The prize award is held every year in an auditorium at Harvard and hosted by the humoristic magazine "Annals of Improbable Research". I think this prize beats the Nobel prize in every way :-)

It´s a cold morning over here so I have a fire in the stove and I´m already on my third cup of tea this morning :-)

Have a grea day now!

2010-10-01T19:17:00.000+02:00

I sort of has difficulties deciding on what to write about today. There are thousand of things I can write about but I just can´t make up my mind :-) I could write about the weather, but You all already knows that it´s getting cooler and that we´ve had rather many mornings with frost here already. One good thing with the frost is that almost all mosquitos and moose flies now are gone :-)

But why not start with something that really annoys me :-) I ordered some lily bulbs some time ago even if I know the lily bugs most certainly will destroy them sooner or later, but they did look good on the photos I saw :-) Now they have arrived but not to the closest post office!! No they have sent them to a place on the other side of the county??!! Now I´ll have to drive several miles extra to get them home so I can plant them in my garden. How on earth do they think??

You know the huge problem we had at work? I wasn´t supposed to have anything to do with it since the big boys in the union took over. Naturally I have been involved rather much since then :-) I had hoped that we would come to a result today, but now it seems it will go all the way to the courts instead. I´m not looking forward to that at all. I´ve met and like all persons involved in this but I really only knows very little about this but both sides has told me more than I really wants to know, if You understand what i mean. Well I know this can happen so I´ll better see this as good experience for the future.

Since I really can´t do anything more I´ve decided to forget the whole story until that day I might be called to court. So now there´s a fire in the stove and soon I´ll make a cup of tea and some evening food. I´m thinking of making hot sandwiches with lots of cheese :-) I bought a new kind of cheese yesterday and I can´t decide wether I like it or not :-) It has a strong taste but sort of odd :-) perhaps it´ll work better as warm than cold? Some cheeses are like that, meaningless and sort of anonymous as cold but with a strong character when mixed in food.

We haven´t see Bertil for almost tw days now, but he met us on our way home today. As You can see Hector got happy to see his little friend again :-) I really had problems getting any photo in here today at all! I´m getting tired of Blogspot now I´m afraid!

It´s SciFi night at channel six today, my favorite TV day :-) I´ve always wondered if there is life on other planets and I have always wanted to be able to travel there. To go where no man gone before :-) I love that they now have started to find planets orbiting around other stars, but unfortunately they all have seemed to big or/ and to far from their suns to have a chance to have any life. That is until now actually. Astronomers now says that they finally have found a planet much like our Earth. Just the right size at just the right distance from its sun. I want to go there :-)

Have a great day now!

I´m prepared!

2010-09-30T19:42:00.002+02:00

It still stands even after they collected most of the timber yesterday.

I drove to Falköping on my way home yesterday to order a pallet with fire-logs for the coming winter, wether it will be cold or not. For some reason it´s so much easier to pay a store lots of money so I can have my cottage warm during winter than it is to pay a lot of money to the electrical company I buy my electricity from :-) :-) :-)

I don´t know exactly when it will arrive but we hope they can deliver my pallet with fire-logs at the same time they will deliver wood pellets to my neighbor (I´m not sure that wood pellets is the right name for that, but it´s more or less the same thing I buy but in much smaller pieces for their stove). The pallet will weigh around 1,2 tons in kilo, that is around 2645,5 pound so I´ll have some work to do when I´ll move all that in to my wood shed :-) :-) :-)

We have had frost a couple of more days now, this time the temperature dropped to -3,4C (26,1F) and since I still have my car outside the garage I had to scrape ice that stuck so hard to the car windows that I barley got anything of the windows at all :-) :-) :-) But since I have my electric engine heater on it takes only minutes until the ice melts anyway. But I really don´t like that we have so many nights with frost already.

So now there´s a fire in the stove and soon I´ll make a pot of tea and some sandwiches too. This is an evening made for reading.
Have a great day now!

The coldest winter in over a thousand years!

2010-09-28T19:12:00.000+02:00

They managed to save the sunflower even if they have put timber everywhere after the cutting. There is a flower lover in all humans it seems :-)

That is what Polish weather men has predicted for us here in Europe this coming winter. They mean that the Gulf stream is so weakened by all cold water melting on Greenland and that the oil spill in the gulf has made the stream sort of slower by the thickness of all the oil in the ocean.

Our swedish weather men hasn´t really answered on this yet, but I sure hope that they will reach another result when they calculate on the same facts. I think last winter was cold enough to be honest so I´m not looking forward to a winter colder than that one :-) :-) I wonder if we in Europe can force BP to pay most of our heating costs then? I doubt that very much!

I don´t think that we up here in the north would be the ones suffering most if this shows to be the truth. Our houses are well insulated for cold weather, but that is not the fact in southern Europe. Every winter we hear in the news how people freezes to death in southern Europe when the cold weather hits hard. I´ve never heard anything like that in happen my own country.

But I´ll prepare my home for a cold winter just in case. I´ll have to get something to cover the windows, thick blankets or perhaps styrofoam? Tomorrow I´ll also drive to Falköping to order fire logs, a whole pallet of them actually :-) But I´ll continue to buy smaller packages of it until the real cold hits us. I have electric radiators too, but I really don´t like to pay more money to those electric companies. They get enough as it is anyway :-) :-) :-)

But even if we don´t get it that cold it might be a good idea to buy a pallet of them anyway. I can always use them next year if I have some left then. It´s never wrong to be prepared for the worst even if we get the warmest winter in thousand years instead :-) :-) :-)

It has been a rather cold day today even if the sun has shined all the time. Northern winds has cooled down the area and it will be a clear night once again. I didn´t get frost last night as I thought I would, but my neighbors did :-) So now there´s a fire in the stove and soon I´ll have a cup of hot tea by my side :-)
Have a great day now!

2010-09-27T19:32:00.000+02:00

I do hope I´ll be able to post this now! I tried to answer Beatrice comment in yesterdays blog and had to try four times before it got through!!!! Error 505 is the message I get every time. Is blogger getting so big now that it´s hard to keep the servers from failing? Well I have an account on Word Press just in case :-)

Mosses doesn´t always have to be only green.

It´s been a sunny and rather cold day here. It´s not dark yet and it´s only 8,2C (46,4F) outside. The sky is clear so there´s a risk for frost tomorrow morning I´m afraid. So I plugged in the electrical engine heater in my car just in case. It´s nice when the car fast gets warm even if it isn´t really cold outside :-)

My dogs didn´t seem to care about all trees being cut down on my favorite place, but Bertil didn´t like it at all! He shouted loudly the whole time we were there.

This is my favorite moss in the forest. It looks like miniature fern leafs.

I´ll better make this short today since I have no idea if it will be posted :-) But I can tell You that I have a fire in the stove, a cup of hot tea by my side and two new comic magazines waiting for me upstairs :-)
Have a great day now!

These two mushrooms are so tiny that I think one of them could be placed on a pinhead!

I´ll end this today by showing the two perennial sunflowers I have in my garden. This is Maximilians sunflower and the one below is an artichoke called Bianca. Most people over here doesn´t know that the artichoke is a sunflower because only one or two varieties flowers here.

2010-09-26T09:58:00.000+02:00

It is still there and as You can see there´s another flower on it that soon will open up. I can have a sunflower photo in the top of my blog for many days to come :-)

Most of the fog has disappeared today, but the clouds are still here and a strong wind has come instead. The automatic lights with light sensors are still shining in the village and it´s almost nine am. That is the only thing I really don´t like when autumn comes, it gets dark early and a cloudy day like this it never gets really light at all. Today the sun went up at 6:07am and will go down at 6:02pm.

It´s a mix of photos from yesterday and today and they don´t come in any special order to be honest.

This isn´t showing the truth to be honest. It was so dark this morning that I had to adjust my camera for extra light sensibility.

Soon "the Portal" will open up again.

I have just finished paying my bills this morning. It seems I got all the bills I actually can get at the same time this month :-) :-) Even though I always set aside money for my bills every month, it feels kind of sad to see all that money disappear within minutes :-) :-) I use the internet to pay my bills so I always check my computer for viruses before I get in to that site.

When I entered the my banks site I got a message that they really didn´t like my choice of browser (as You might remember I changed from explorer to Safari some time ago), so I said to the bank (in my head then, I really can´t talk to the bank via my computer :-) ) that I used whatever browser that I like and I can always change bank :-) :-)

There are lots of browser that we can use now days. I like Safari because of its design and because I think it is less vulnerable against internet viruses since it really is a Mac program. Almost all viruses are made to get in via explorer since it is the biggest in the market. But there´s also Linux (I have only heard good things about that one), Firefox (well Firefox and I never agreed on anything but I know many that thinks it is perfect), Opera (have no info on that one) Google chrome (but I think Google is becoming to big and powerful now days. With power comes corruption and I don´t care if they want to do good, sooner or later that will change I´m afraid) and many more.

I have started a fire in the stove because it will be a cold day today. I have a pot of tea by my side and after that I´ll vacuum my home. It´s amazing how much sand and gravel my dogs can carry in their fur :-) :-) :-)
Have a great day now!

2010-09-25T09:28:00.000+02:00

Some or maybe all of my photos may be to dark to see for those of You that can´t tilt Your screen towards or away from You. I´m sorry about that but the morning was rather dark because of the fog.

It´s one of these mornings when it´s impossible to decide wether it´s cold or warm and how the day may progress. The night has been warmer than most summer nights, but now has the temperature dropped some and does that mean that it´s going to be a cold day?

The fog is laying thick around us and the humidity is so high that I can hear a constant dripping from the vegetation and our homes. But since there´s no wind it feels kind of pleasant to be out there walking. The only thing that can be heard is some cranes in a field nearby and some of the smaller birds waiting for me to fill the feeder.

My dogs are soaking wet after our walk and Teodor is quite dirty since he laid down and rolled on the gravel road when he saw us come back from the walk. Bertil however would never do such a thing, he knows he´s the king of the cottage.

I can feel the smell of smoke in my kitchen. I started a fire in the stove, not because it´s cold but to keep the high humidity outside the cottage. I have a cup of tea by the computer and when looking out the windows nothing moves out there. It feels like I might be the last person still on this planet.
Have a great day now!

By the way, do You know that the english word Window actually comes from the swedish language? Long ago we called windows for Vindöga (wind eye) here in Sweden. The english language borrowed that word and changed it to window. We swedes however stopped using that word and borrowed the word Fenster from the german language. We now days call windows for fönster :-)

2010-09-24T19:46:00.000+02:00

I have to take back all evil thoughts I had about the landowner when the trees were cut down these last days. He was actually forced to do so by the Environmental protection agency because they are going to enlarge the natural reserve and has gotten the idea that only "natural" trees is going to be allowed to grow there. Sounds a bit crazy to be honest, but I think I know what they mean.

It´s always the same branch that gets autumn colors on this tree :-)

If we´re going back in time, 300-400 years, pines and spruces were very rare in southern Sweden. Mostly it was deciduous trees like oaks, beeches, birches, apples,cherries and rowans that grew here. But they needed mostly the oaks for ships and the others were cut down when they realized the use we could have of spruces and pines.

So they won´t do any replanting there now so that these "natural" trees gets the chance to come back. The rest of the natural reserve is filled with spruces and pines and I wonder if they´ll start to cut down them too? But I think that they will be allowed to stay since they already grows in a protected area and some rare birds needs them if they are going to stay here, like the grouse. So if You keep on reading my blog for at least thirty more years You might get the chance to see how it looked here many, many years ago :-) :-) :-)

This island is around 200 x 100 meters big (almost the same in yards). All spruces and pines are gone and only a few birches were allowed to stay.

This ant-stack is severely damaged now. We can only see a small part of the stack to be honest, most of it is placed below the ground. The whole society of ants might die after this, forest machines weigh a lot.

I love when they make natural reserves bigger, but it is usually a big loss for the land owner. Like all parts of the State they don´t like ton spend money and we have been able to read horrifying stories how they can act towards land owners. Normally they don´t even offer to pay close to what the land is worth and if the land owner dares to complain they start to threat that they´ll just take over the specific part they want and pay even less. Sometimes they can offer to swap a pice of land that they already own, but normally it´s a pice of land less worth that what they want from the land owner.

It can however help the land owner if they can get a newspaper interested in the story :-) Those times they claim that it´s only a big misunderstanding and gives the land owner what they would get if they had sold the land themselves :-) :-) How it is in this case though I have no idea. I guess this is the case in most countries, democratic or not.

This and the coming photos are taken in my neighbors part of the forest.

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and later it´s SciFi night on channel six :-)

Have a great day now!

Zoey & Me! It was different to put photos in the blog today! But I have had it like this before. Just click on add photos like normal. The square You´ll get has some text on the upper left side like
Add photos
Transfer
From this blog
From Picasa
from webb site.

Click on transfer and then You can add photos from Your own computer! If You want to change the size on the photo just right click on the mouse!

2010-09-23T17:31:00.000+02:00

We had frost once again when I woke up yesterday morning. I didn´t need to look at the thermometer to know that, I heard it when my dogs ran across my garden. The car was covered in thick ice, so I started the engine and the back window heater at the same time. Normally I don´t start that one until I drive away, because I only have two cars that might drive behind me. After that I only have forest and bogs.

The night was almost free from clouds yesterday night. This time of year that means frost here.

The fog laid as a thick layer over the ground.

Suddenly I saw that there came out smoke from the door mirrors and thought that they were on fire! But my brain slowly started to work and I realized that there was no possible way for them to start burning at all. After owning the car for two years I now know that I have electric heated door mirrors :-) :-) :-) Normally it´s the first thing I scrape the ice from on my car in the morning, but yesterday I forgot that and since I didn´t know I had that I also didn´t know that they started to become warm when I started the back window heater either :-) :-) :-)

Now it looks like this on my favorite place.

Here´s the place where all the big, old tree stumps stood. Those that had mosses, lichens, mushrooms, lingonberry plants and new small spruces on them. No more of those photos will be taken here.

We went out to my favorite place in the forest when I had come home and as I had suspected they had cut down most of the trees there. They had saved some trees in the end of the peninsula, just beside the bog and I guess they are supposed to spread the pine and spruce seeds that will become the new trees there. They can do like that instead of planting new trees by hand if they want to.

Most of the thick green moss was placed on this side. They might survive that the trees has fallen on them, but the sun will burn them down next summer because they love to live in the shade. No more shade here for a long time I´m afraid.

The way home. I wonder it they will cut down these trees next year or if they are allowed to stay for a longer time.

They have cut down trees to make a kind of road to the next place.

The island that most probably got "harvested" today. You can see some logs on the ground and they are placed in a small creek so that the forest machine can drive over without to much problems.

I could also see where the next place were, because they had cut down trees so the machine could drive there without problems. It´s another island in the bog, close to the "mainland" so to speak. I didn´t care to go there today. I´ll save that disappointment for another day.

But we still have places that looks like in these photos.

But we still have some old forest where the mushrooms, moss, lichens and animals still can live undisturbed. It´s one of my neighbors that owns that part of the forest and he has says he won´t cut that down because he also wants some old trees left. It´s in that part I take most of my mushroom photos. I haven´t photographed half of the mushroom varieties that grows there :-) It´s also a part that the wild hogs likes now days, so I usually makes some noise before we take our walks there, especially in the early mornings.

And I still have my neighbors part of the forest to walk in :-)

I think this is an old stone age tomb. We have loads of them in this county.

I got a package yesterday from Mona that writes the blog Wsprsweetly Of Cottages. It was a book with one of my absolute favorite stories, "The wind in the willows". It´s a story about The Mole, the Rat and their adventures. If You haven´t read it, try to find it! Even if it is a children's story I think most adults would love it :-) We have very few flee markets over here and I haven´t seen it in any book shop either. But Mona promised to keep an eye open and get it to me if she found it. I love it! The book is filled with really good pictures on almost every side! Thanks Mona!

The wind in the willows by Kenneth Graham. Published 1908.

It´s filled with pictures like this.

I feel that it´s time for a cup of tea and then I´ll continue to reed my wonderful little book :-)
Have a great day now!

We all have our favorite places to sleep and this is one of Teodors. On the soil in a big flower pot :-) :-)

2010-09-21T18:51:00.000+02:00

I told You yesterday that we now have a government that that doesn´t have a majority of its own in our parliament, but that is perhaps not entirely true yet. I´m not sure how elections works in other countries, but here we can pre vote. We can vote a couple of weeks before the election day in special places. All swedish citizens are allowed to vote so some weeks before the election we all get our registration card in the mail. If we pre vote they´ll put that registration card and puts it together with our different votes (that are placed in envelopes so no one can see how we voted). By doing like this we then actually can change our minds and then go to the same place again, tell them that we have changed our mind and wants to vote again.

There are several islands out in the bog. This was once a big lake and even if most of the water is gone the islands still stands there above the rest of the surroundings. If one doesn´t know the way out to these islands one can fall down in to deep holes filled with water. But forest machines can build their own ways and easily reach them if they are close to the "shore". Here You can see the timber on one of these islands. Not a single tree stands there now.

I´ve never seen this kind of mushroom before in my life! It´s dark green! It will most likely disappear when they cut down the trees on my favorite part of the forest where it now lives. I think that it is quite beautiful!

This will all be replaced by grass and raspberry bushes in the beginning. The moss will most likely die in the sun.

The envelopes will then be destroyed without anyone being able to see how we voted and new votes can be done instead. Did that make any senesce at all :-) :-) But when we vote on the election day we´ll get that registration card back again directly. These pre votes isn´t counted until yesterday, so the result can still be a bit different. Since 2,2 million people has pre voted (out of 7 million, I think) things still can change. Even if it isn´t my side that will be able to win this it would be better with a stabile parliament and that the racist party then would have no influence at all :-)

Most of the bog is nature reserve and this is close to the border of that area. These trees are probably over 70 years old.

They will pull up all roots too after cutting down the trees, so this will be a rare sight on this place in the future.

What is even worse now is that Nazis has got one place in the County council in a nearby county!!!! Have people learned nothing??? Did the world fight these pigs for nothing? This is something that really scares me. Compared to this our racists in the parliament are nice and cuddly people. The whole county is still in chock after that result.

I heard the forest machines work when I drove away this morning. It´s always sad to know that most of the trees I like out there will be gone when I come home. Sometimes it feels like I really know them :-) But who am I to complain! I have a cottage made from wood, I love wood furniture and I keep my home warm in winter by having fires in my stove. Fires that needs wood to burn. I really can´t complain about the owner cutting down his trees then, can I? It isn´t better if they cut down trees where I can´t see them to be honest. I also know that new trees will be planted there, but it will take around 70 years until they are as big as those they cut down now. I´ll never see that again in those places because I really hope that I don´t become 136 years old :-) :-) :-)

Hector have found an old stick stuck in the ground.

He realised that he wouldn´t get it out from the ground, so he just laid down and chewed on it at the place.

Some cranes passed over us on their way south. One of them had a high pitched sound and it sounded so fun when it shouted like the others that have low voices :-) :-)

He hasn´t reached my favorite place in the forest yet, so I walked there and took the last photos of how it looks now. The trees might be gone already tomorrow. So now I´ll make a toast in tea to all trees that I love and put some more logs in my stove.

Have a great day now!

A sad day for Sweden!

2010-09-20T18:27:00.000+02:00

The election didn´t go my way at all yesterday. I can take that the government won once again, we just have to work harder showing how hard they treat sick people so we can win next time- But what I do have big troubles with is that we now have a racist party in the parliament. I´m ashamed being swedish today!

They got the votes from people that is dissatisfied with our politicians. Surveys has shown that immigration issues wasn´t especially important this election and other surveys shows that most Swedes actually looks upon immigration as a positive thing. So they voted on this party because they wanted to stir in the pot so to speak. Idiots! There are other smaller parties they could have voted on then! But now things are like they are. The government didn´t get a majority of its own, neither did the opposition. Neither of them will collaborate with this party so there´s a big risk we´ll have a new election soon.

You´ll have to click on this photo to make it bigger! I´ve made it a bit bigger than normal here because I want You to see the raindrops too. All photos gets bigger if You click on them!

Now to something completely else. I´m going a course in negotiations technique this week and today we´ve tried to learn all difficult words they use in all deals made during negotiations. I have to say that I most likely will have to have a dictionary with me when I´ll start with this :-) :-) :-) Only because a word might have a special meaning in the "real" world doesn´t mean it has the same meaning in different deals :-) :-) :-)

I told the factory owner that if I now have been chosen to be the head of union at work I´ll do everything I can to become a real good one too. I´m not sure he liked that at all :-) :-) :-) Another good thing with this is that a get to know other in my situation from other factories. The more people I know the better help I can get when I need it and can help back if someone needs it too.

This one is also a must click on photo for the same reason.

Now its here, the forest machine that will cut down the trees. Much earlier than I thought it would.

The sun shined almost all day today, well at least until I drove home. The clouds got thicker and the wind started to blow. The rain started when my dogs and I were out in the forest. It was much the same yesterday too when we were out walking, except for that the sun shined some of the time then. This weather is perfect for the Moose fly. I hate Moose flies and tried to take some photos of them when they landed on me. But the panic got to me and I just couldn´t stand still long enough to take a photo.

Moose flies can´t drink human blood, but that doesn´t mean that they don´t bite and that hurts a lot! They fly to a moose or deer and digs down like a tick and then they drop their wings too. Their legs are made like hooks so it´s very difficult to brush them of from clothes or hair. Hit them hard and they´ll just laugh You in the face! Sometimes they get down into the hair and stays calm, until it gets dark. I have woken up many times when I´ve felt one or two of them crawling around in my hair at night! So every time I come home I use a comb and combs my hair. A brush isn´t good enough to get them out of the hair You see. Just thinking about them makes the hair on my arms to stand right up. But they aren´t especially common thankfully and their season is short, but I still really hate them!

I wonder if the barn owner knows he has a pot of gold in there :-) :-)

It´s rather cold outside now and the rain is falling. I´ve started a fire in the stove and soon I´ll have something to eat and a cup of tea by my side.

Have a great day now!

Election day.

2010-09-19T15:12:00.000+02:00

It has been a busy morning today. I got up quite early and my dogs and I took our morning walk. The weather showed signs that it could be rather nice today. not to many dark and big clouds could be seen in the sky.

After that I jumped in to my car and drove to a place called Kinnekulle, just beside the lake Vänern our biggest lake (and Europes third biggest lake). I have friends there that recently sold their house there and will be moving out within weeks. If You like me loves to plant new and perhaps not so hardy plants in Your garden, this is a paradise. They have plants there that shouldn´t survive in this country at all.

The reason they can have these plants (and trees and bushes) is that they live on the mountainside towards the big lake. They are going to move in to the city nearby, but have bought the property just beside their old home and will now build a small cottage there to use as a summer cottage. Well they are retired so they´ll use it all year long to be honest :-) :-)

After the visit I jumped in to my car again and drove homewards. But I continued to drive when I reached the place where I have to turn to come home. It was time to do my duty today. We are having elections to the parliament, the County and Municipal government (I don´t like the word government here but cant really find a better word, but I hope You´ll get what I mean).

In Sweden, like in most parts of Europe, we have rather many parties to choose from. But they have now started to collaborate even before the elections, so it would be more fare to say that we have two blocks to vote on. The middle-conservative block that is the ones that has the power at the moment and the middle-left block that is the opposition at the moment.

We have a tradition here in Sweden to always help those in need so we´ve had a very generous social security net here. This has been miss used quite some time and the government had to make the rules a bit tougher. Unfortunately they made it so tough that dying persons had to start searching for jobs the week before they died!!! They created new laws bur´t didn´t give any guidelines how to interpret them. Time after time they have had to adjust the system to make it less heart less. But I think that would have been done long before the law came to practice! This is what might bring down this government. We don´t like people that kicks people that already is lying down.

The opposition on the other hand has been way after in the polls, until just a couple of days ago when yet another case of kicking people that is lying down reached the news. They want to raise the taxes rather much (the government wants the opposite), especially on gasoline and on people that earns very much. They also wants to restore the social network again. This politics will hit us here on the country side very hard. Politicians seems to have problems with understanding that we must use our cars, because we have no busses going to where we need to go and never on times when we need them :-) :-) Despite the negative effects for us here in the countryside I have just voted for the opposition today.

This is a Gunnera manicata. It might not look impressive but it is actually 2,5 meters high (around 6,6 feet)! It´s a bit smaller this year than usual because it has gotten no fertilizers and very little water during the drought we had here a couple of weeks.

This leaf is 1,5 meter (3,3 feet) wide and it wasn´t the biggest leaf :-) This perennial lives in Brazil as wild and it needs a lot of work to keep it alive during winter here in Sweden. I have tried a hardier, but slightly smaller relative to this one and it did survive one winter. But I killed it during the spring because I removed the protection a bit to early. I live in a much worse zone than this garden is placed in.

There´s also a big risk that we for the first time will have a racist party in our parliament! I would be ashamed to call myself Swedish if that happened. But just a couple of days ago some of our most popular athletes from all kinds of sports begged people not to vote for them. I do hope people will listen to them!

A tiny piece of lake Vänern. If it hadn´t been for those birches we would have seen Läckö castle.

Crocosmia 'Lucifer'. If I should have it I would have to bring it in to my cold cellar during winter.

So now it´s just a long days wait to see the result tonight. They think we all will know around 10:15 tonight if it´s a tight result. Otherwise we´ll know it much earlier.

Have a great day now!

2010-09-18T11:02:00.000+02:00

I love sunflowers so this one might start my blog many times for as long as it flowers :-)

I woke up with the worst head ache I´ve had in a year I think and my body screamed when I moved. No I don´t think that I having yet another cold, but I do think I had a fire in the stove for to long yesterday evening :-) :-) I felt like I was waking up in an oven to be honest :-) :-)

It´s always a problem with how long I can have a fire in the stove the first times every autumn. To little time and the cottage still feels cold and damp when we have the kind of weather we have now (rainy and cool). To long and it always feels like I sleep in an oven and wakes up with a head ache. But after two huge teacups with strong coffee and a walk in the forest and I feel great again :-) :-)

I think I´ll change my browser from Explorer to Safari today. Lately Explorer has been kind of slow and seems to have problems reaching different sites, so why not try another browser. I tried Safari when I just got my new computer but got big problems when I tried to type the sign "@". Safari then jumped back to the home page again, every time I tried it :-) :-) But now I know how to get around that problem. When I type @ I have to press the keys "ctrl", "alt" and the number 2 key. But now I learned that it´s enough to press the "alt gr" key to print @. That should solve the problem if I understand things right.

Tomorrow it´s the election day to our parliament here in Sweden. The government leads in all polls, but lately the opposition has come closer, so it will be a very exciting evening tomorrow! I will of course go and vote but before that I´ll visit friends that has sold their house before they move. They have a fantastic garden and I want to take some photos before it is to late. I guess that there´s nothing much flowering there now, but I´ll show You a fantastic plant that probably is one of the biggest here in Sweden but originally comes from Brazil. It takes a lot of work to make it survive at all here in Sweden and it´s totally impossible to have it here where I live. Believe me I´ve tried :-) :-)

So tomorrows blog might come a bit later than usual on a Sunday, but I think You might like to see that plant :-) Now it´s time for yet another huge cup of coffee, because I have no tea at home :-)
Have a great day now!

Apples.

2010-09-17T19:21:00.000+02:00

My late apples are soon ripe enough to eat and make pie from now. I love that first bite of an apple just picked from the tree. I love apples and I think most other people does too. One that loved apples was a man called Johnny Applessed. I know most americans knows about him, but I´m not sure many outside america does. There are lots of stories about Johnny and most of them seems untrue. He did not have pots on his head and torn rags for clothes. But the clothes he did wear was of low quality, the clothes he had of better quality he always gave away to those whom he felt needed them better than he did. Neither did he randomly spread apple seeds on the roads he walked, but more about that later. He was however a missionary for "The church of new Jerusalem" or as we call it over here the Swedenborgian church. They followed the teaching of the Swedish scientist,Christian mystic, theologican and philosofer Emanuel Swedenborg.

Did You know that the apple originates from an area nowdays called Kazakhstan? Not long ago they had big apple forests but they have started to cut them down. This is a problem because we might need that genetic material for our modern apples. We had very many different kinds of apples grown and for sale not long ago, but nowdays they grow just a few varieties that they know we will buy. This is a big problem because then different pest attacks the apples and the farmers then uses loads of chemicals to kill them off.

So when a bunch of scientist in the US heard that these forests in Kazakhstan was cut down they travelled there and collected as many different seeds they could. Not once but twice. The result of these trips now grows in Geneva, New York. With this genetic material they now tries to find out a way to keep away these pests. But personally I think it would have been better to have a bigger variety of apples growing beside each other. But I am really happy that they went over there to collect those seeds!

But back to Johnny Appleseed. He didn´t randomly spread apple seeds on the roads he walked, but he started nurceries. He sowed the seeds he got for free from Cider producers. He walked to areas where he knew or thought settlers soon would come and bought some land. He fenced the land so cattle couldn´t get in there, sowed the seeds and hired someone to care for the little plants that had started to grow. When the trees was big enough to sell the care taker sold them and Johnny would then get his share. He normally wanted money, but was happy if he got cornmeal or used clothes. Sometimes he didn´t get anything but never argued about it.

These apple trees usually gave sour and bitter apples, not good for eating. But they were great for cider, hard cider that is with lots of alcohol. Back then the settlers knew that water could spread diseases so they never drank water, but they drank cider, hard cider instead even for breakfast. Because every one knows alcohol kills bacteria. This became a big problem until the temperance movement started and with that most of these sour, bitter apples dissapered. Johnny Appleseed never got rich on this business but he could have bought much better clothes than those he preferd to use.

I´m not sure You can see them, but there are two plastic red and yellow ribbons in the trees. I think it´s easiest to just follow the spruce from the bottom and up until You can see them. I think they mean that my favourite part of the forest will be cut down this winter.

This is a bit funny, but I have no photo of apples in my blog today :-) But I do have a bottle of sweet cider by my side, non alcoholic :-) There´s a fire in the stove and all the animals are sleeping upstairs.

Have a great day now!

2010-09-16T19:20:00.000+02:00

We were supposed to have strong winds here today, at least gale perhaps worse. But it must have missed us totally. We have had almost no wind at all, but it would be a lie to say that it has been a great weather even if the sun showed it self when I came home from work.

Can You see the young doe? She didn´t think that my dogs or I could see her so she stood absolutly still all the time. Her mother stood some yards away but didn´t care about us, she knows us well since long ago.

The hughe and awful problem a work has now been lifted from my shoulders. I haven´t the competense needed so the Union is taking over. We are many people that have had problems sleeping these last days and when I understood I didn´t have to deal with it any longer I slept like a log. But I had the strangest dreams last night :-)

I dreamt that one could see if an explosion was real or a fake if one looked at a photography. They never explained to me how an explosion that blew away anything near it could be fake though :-) :-) So they made real explosions and fake ones and I took a lot of photos :-) :-) :-) The result was the same which ever it was, but I could clearly see a big difference in the photo :-) :-) :-) Sometimes I wonder how the brain works :-) :-) :-)

The evening is cold here so now there´s a fire in the stove and I have a cup with hot tea by my side. They say that we still have summer as long as the medium temperature don´t fall under 10C (50F) for one week and we are still above that here, so I bid You all farewell from a cold summers day here in Sweden.
Take care now!

2010-09-14T19:11:00.000+02:00

I woke up this morning with a stuffed nose and a sour throat. Not a good start of a day that would become worse :-) The morning walk with my dogs were quite nasty with cold winds and drizzle that chilled my bones. Indoors I could feel the cold humid air get through the walls, but there was no use in starting a fire in the stove since I was on my way to the hospital.

I had planned on waiting quite some time before I could be x-rayed, because I had a drop in appointment. That means that they will x-ray me when the have a couple of minutes over during the day. So I had a book with me (Harry Potter, The goblet of fire) and hadn´t even opened it before they called my name :-) So I went home again within 25 minutes :-) and ate some breakfast because I realized I had forgotten to do that this morning :-) :-)

I could have stayed at home for the rest of the day, but since we have problems at work I thought it best to go there anyway. I´m the head of the union and gets involved in all problems we might get at work. I can´t tell You anything about the problems we have right now, but I can tell You about problems in general.

If an accusation is made either to me or the owner we meet and start discussing the problem. If the accusation is serious we might ask our different organizations for help and I did this this time since I´m fairly new as the head of the union. They explain how the law should be interpreted and what actions might be taken. One problem is that we all might hear what these persons say, but interpret it in different ways.

Another problem is when the accused accuses the accuser (did that make sense :-) :-) ). Then we have to figure out if one of them is lying or both or do they actually believe they tell the truth both of them?! Are there any witnesses that can support any of the stories? Perhaps both sides can be supported by other peoples observations?

We are at the moment in the situation that we can´t figure out anything of these questions above. I and the "vice head" :-) of the union has to do our normal work a the same time as we tries to figure out what really has happened and spend much of our evenings talking by the phone trying to figure out what to do and wha to believe.

But the big guys in the union will come tomorrow thank good! I want us all to gather in a neutral place so we can talk to all concerned in this and I hope I can get the others to agree to that too. This is a nasty buisness and it will most probably be much, much worse before it´s over.

But the evening is nice. The sun is shining and the cold wet air has dried up some. I have a fire in the stove and a cup of tea by my side. I better enjoy this evening because tomorrow comes a new day with new problems :-)

Have a great day now!

A man died here a couple of days ago because he had been eating one White Toadstool. They are easily confused with this musroom, the Champignon.

But they are actually quite easy to separate from each other. A White Toadstool is ALWAYS white undernieth and the Champignon is NEVER white undernieth. There are other ways to separate them too but this is the easiest.

2010-09-13T19:46:00.000+02:00

It has been an awful day at work today, things I´m not allowed to tell You about. So I´m a bit to tired to write any blog today. Tomorrow I can sleep a bit longer because I´m going to the hospital to x-ray my spine.

I hope Your day will be great!

How to make a wreath.

2010-09-12T10:59:00.000+02:00

I never got around to start a fire in my stove yesterday. The cooler rainy weather never reached us and the night was actually warmer than most summer nights. But it´s much the same today as yesterday morning. Cloudy and foggy but rather warm.

We all know that there´s lots of viruses going around here in the Internet and most of us have one, hopefully good anti virusprogram in our computers. But I would like to say that You should never trust only one anti virus program. You should have At least two! I have one of the best anti virus programs there is out there through my internet company, but I also have a program called "Spy bot". It´s a free ware and can be downloaded from several places out on the net.

The first time i downloaded this program it found over 35 Trojan horses and several other viruses too (and I had one of the most used programs back then). Trojan horses can be used to reach Your bank accounts if You use an Internet bank like I do. This morning however I realized that I had forgotten to download this program in my new computer so that´s what I've been doing just now and then it searched through my computer. I´m happy to say that it didn´t find anything this time.

Now You might think that "I never visit places where there´s a risk of getting any viruses" and neither am I. But now days it´s enough to look at photos in our blogs or perhaps looking at photos of our favorite celebrities. Those photos can be infected with viruses too, but since You now know that I check my computer with two different anti virus programs and only show photos that I´ve taken myself my photos are safe to look at. But never take anything for granted, so get a second anti virus program now!

Prairie coneflower, Ratibida pinnata.

This is the biggest pumpkin I got and I don´t think it will have a chance to become any bigger. The frost has taken all leafs and even if the frost stays away this will ever become a big pumpkin.

I made a new wreath yesterday and took photos to show how I do it. If something is unclear with how I explain things just ask me so I can try to explain again :-) Now it´s time for a cup of tea and some breakfast I think.

Have a great day now!

This is the material I use to make a wreath. A frame of straw with plastic around, otherwise it would son start to mold in our climate), wire reels and straight pieces of wire of different thickness (You can use string too but it´s way much harder). But You can make Your on frame by twining branches together. Make it in the shape You like, why not like a horse shoe?

I went out and cut fern leafs to have on the wreath. But anything goes to be honest. If You want the wreath to stay green, choose something ever green. This one will soon trun brown. Oakleafs is another great thing to have on wreaths. I especially like the oak leafs that comes from the Northern read oak (quercus rubra). Unfortunaly for me they don´t grow here.

Cut what ever You have in the same size pieces. The longer the pieces are, the "fluffier" the wreath gets. These parts doesn´t look like good pieces to make a wreath, but You cover these with the top part of the fern leafs.

Start by pushing in the end of the wire on the side You will have the leafs. Spinn the wire one or two turns around the frame so it locks it self to the frame.

As You can see here the top of the fern leaf covers the parts I showed You earlier. I hold them towards the frame and spins the wire around the leafs and the frame one time. Pull hard so the wire keeps the leafs in place. The leafs are much tougher than You might think and won´t break. Now You´ll just do the same thing again with a new bunch of leafs. The next layer must cover the others so You don´t see the end bits. It´s a good thing if You cut all leafs before You start and You will need a lot more leafs than You might imagine. It´s also much easier doing this standing up, to sit and do this has never worked especially good for me.

Half way through now. Every now and agan I spin the wire two times around the frame to lock the leafs so they sit there even if You should dropp the wreath on the floor.

Now it´s time to end the binding. Just lift the top of the first bunch that You put there and place the last bunch of leafs benieth that. Spin the wire twice and push it benieth itself like You can see in the photo. Pull really hard so it locks itself and cut the wire.

I didn´t do it properly this time since I want to show You how to fill an empty spot. You can still see the plastic in this photo.

Now it´s time to use the straight pieces of wire. Just take some leafs and spin the wire hard around them. They can take it without problems.

I missed to take a photo of the next step. Anyway, Push the vire through the frame, this can be really hard when You are not used to do it. The thicker the wire is the easier it is to push through the frame. But the thicker the wire is the harder it is to spin around the leafs. To fill the empty spot You will have to stat benieth the leafs already there so they will cover the place the new leafs are cut. When the wire is through the frame pull real hard and lock the wire in the frame by pushing the end of the wire in to the frame.

No one will ever know that You´ve missed a spot or two :-)

Finished. A wreath is always a bit uneven so try to find a top and a bottom of it. The thinnest place should be placed as a top when it hangs on a door.

You really don´t need any decorations on the wreath, but I choosed rose hips this time too. Here You can see how I pushed the straight wire throuh them. I lock the end of the wire at itself so the rose hips are pulled together. When that is done You just do as when You would fill an empty spot.

You´ll need a hook in the wreath so You can haf it where ever You want to hang it. Use a thicker piece of wire and bend it like I show here.

Push it in to the wreath at the place You want as the top of it. This might have to be adjusted several times until You feel that it is in the right place :-) :-)

If You think this is to "fluffy" ferns are the easist leafs to cut with scissors. I tried to have some acorns in it too, but they sort of dissapered besides the rose hips :-)

2010-09-11T10:12:00.001+02:00

We have the kind of weather here today that doesn´t look especially inviting, but that is rather nice when You are out walking in it. It´s rather cool and cloudy with some fog visible in the distance. The wind is weak so the few mosquitoes that sill hangs around follows like devoted pets.

By the way, did You know that mosquitoes that carries the awful malaria bacteria also gets infected by it? I read about that in this mornings paper. But the mosquito has a different kind of immune system than we humans have. When it gets infected the immune system creates a special kind of bloodcells that kills the bacteria. It doesn´t kill the bacteria that it transfers to us unfortunately.

I´ll pick some leafs and other things later today so I can show You how to make a wreath. This is the old time way to do it, now days lots of people uses glue guns and perhaps no leafs at all. I´ve seen a really cool one made of only chestnuts.

It will stay cool all day today so I better go out to the wood shed to bring in some more firelogs to the stove. It´s no use starting a fire now, but it will be nice to have one when the night comes.
Have a great day now!

2010-09-10T19:06:00.000+02:00

The dark grey clouds in the sky makes it look like late evening outside. A cold and nasty drizzle is falling and that together with a semi strong wind makes the village empty of people. I have a fire in the stove and a hot cup of tea by my side. It´s a good weather to stay indoors looking at SciFi night on channel six :-)

It was a bit to dark to take any good photos in the forest today, so all these photos I show is a couple of days old. You can click on all of them to make them bigger and hopefully better too.

I love the looks on these mushrooms. I have no idea what they are called or if they are poisounes.

I´m going to change to winter tires on my car on Monday. I know that it is a bit early but my summer tires are worn out and the old winter tires I have are worn out too. For those of You that don´t know we have to have special tires in winter that can work good in our climate. Those tires we have during summers doesn´t work good at all here during winter. They become to hard in the cold weather and it takes forever to stop when breaking. Winter tires in summer on the other hand doesn´t work good either. They become to soft and it takes forever to stop when breaking.

Normally I want studded tires because they work the best when the road is icy, but they aren´t allowed this time of year, so this winter I´ll have friction tires instead. Well the car gets more quiet anyway :-) The law says that we have to have winter tires when the weather so requires and it is the police that decides when the weather requires it so that ca vary a bit unfortunately. The fine for not having winter tires when the weather requires it is also rather high. But this year I´ll be the first one to have changed tires in time, normally it´s the other way around :-) :-) :-)

Have You noticed that we now can look on statistics here on Blogger? If You look on the page where we download our text and photos there´s a place You can click on for statistics. It shows an Overview, posts, readers and traffic sources. I ca for instance see that most of my readers lives in the USA. I have absolutely most readers there and Sweden comes far behind as number two. After that it´s Canada, Portugal and Argentina.

Most readers that comes from other blogs comes from Octoberfarm, Keep the Coffee Coming comes as second and as third comes Zoey and Me. I can also see what post have had most readers. This last week, month or from when the statistics started. Perhaps not so surprising my post of old Ernas end is my most read post. July is the month with most readers otherwise, but that isn´t so surprising since the statistics started in June :-)

Chantrelles, delicious!!!!!!!!

Well, it´s time to make some sandwiches and then to put some more firelogs in the stove.

Have a great day now!

Clematis "The President".

2010-09-09T19:30:00.000+02:00

This is one of the easiest and simplest wreaths You can do. I could have made it less "fluffy" around the edges but my mood wasn´t the best that Saturday. I had picked some acorns and maple seeds to have in it too, but the wreath will become brown after a while and then they would be hard to see. I felt that it had been some time since I last made one :-) Normally it would take ten minutes at the most making a wreath like this (but better), now it took half an hour :-) :-)

So I went to the hospital on tuesday to meet a rheumatic specialist and also a physiotherapists and an occupational therapists. I went there believing we would talk about one disease (psoriasis artheritis), but went home after talking about another disease (Bechterews disease) :-) The doctor examined me and asked me after al symptoms I could describe. After a while she asked if I ever had back pains and I told her that I had had that twice and that it was something of the worst pain I´ve ever had. So she asked me if I had any pain now and I said no. But if I put my fingers here she said and pressed them towards my lower spine.

I didn´t realise that one could have such back pains without knowing it :-) :-) :-) But I did know it after her pressing her fingers there :-) :-) So next week I´ll x-ray my spine. Well I can´t say that I´m happy to have this disease but it is much better than psoriasis artheritis. The best way to treat this illness is actually to have a job like I have and to have dogs that forces me to take walks every day :-) The more active I am, the better I will feel. I will also continue with the anti inflammatoric pills I already hav and I have also started taking pills against ulcer. Not that I have any ulcer, but the medicine will prevent me from getting one.

Otherwise it has been a normal week. Perhap not normal because we now have an Australian man working in our factory. He will stay with us for a couple of weeks and afte that he will travel to Canada competing in snowboard of some kind (most probably one of the more extreme kinds, austarlians usually does that :-) :-) ). He used to do that before but injured his back so he had to stop. But now he´ll try once again and I hope he will be successful. But there´s one problem, even though most sweeds speaks rather good english we are ashamed over our broken english. So it´s only I and the one he works with that speaks to him.

I never miss a chanse to speak english, it happens so seldome out here in the countryside. I really don´t want him to feel to isolated either. How fun is it standing there with nobody to talk too all day. I brought him on a little tour through tha factory today and it´s one thing talking english on a video showing it here and a totally different thing talking it "live" :-) :-) But it´s fun and if we would have any problems understanding each other we just try to say it again in a slightly different way :-) :-) :-)

It looks like I will have troubles getting the highest grade in the daily dozen in National Geographic. I have the fith highest grade at the moment but it is a bit to much behind I´m afraid. But I thank You all for voting on my photo. I´ll let Tou know if I get a new chanse with another photo :-)
Have a great day now!

2010-09-07T08:42:00.000+02:00

It has been a couple of sad days here but life goes on after all. I will most probably still look around after old Erna wondering why ahe doesn´t turn up when we´re in the forest walking :-) and I will most likly take a jump when walking over her favourit green blanket in the livingroom so I won´t stumble on her (which I have several times in the past) :-) :-)

I am home from work today becvause I´m going to The town Skövde later today to meet a specialist in rheumatic diseases. I thought it was best to do that already now while I still can move around without to big troubles. If there is effective help to get to keep the pain away I want it :-) To many wait to long to get to a specialist normally.

Bertil had been out all night so he was sleeping on the couch when we took our walk. So for once Teodor decided to follow us on our walk.

The morning has been rather cold and foggy but it was wonderful to take the morning walk. We´ve had frost most mornings since last I wrote here, but today was only cold. Not a single mosquitoe or fly annoyed me and I could heare some migrating geese high up in the air.

I went to National Geographics web page when we came home and realised that my photo was choses as one of the "Daly Dozen" today. Every month they publish the photo that gets most points in the magazine and that would be fun. Anyone can vote there and I would be happy if You would vote on my photo. It´s the seventh photo in todays choises and the higher vote You give me the bigger chance I have to become the one getting published. But there are many other great photos there so be fair. You must vote for those photos before mine before You can vote on my photo. Here´s the link: Daily Dozen.

Take care now!

And so comes the day.

2010-09-03T10:31:00.000+02:00

The day all pet owners fear. The day You have to say good bye to a dear friend that perhaps has been there for many, many years. Early this morning I had to say good bye to old Erna. I still vividly remember the night she was born on my kitchen floor and it feels like yesterday. Thirteen years, five months and two days goes much faster than one ever can believe.

Now I´ll stay away for a week or so, take care You all.

There´s no need for comments today.

Christer.

Morning fog.

2010-09-02T09:33:00.000+02:00

I´m home today. I have gotten a cold and have a slight fever. The only disadvantage with the experiment method my hip surgery has is that I´m not allowed to have high fever for more than two days. If I do have that I must have antibiotics. It has to do with germs loves to live underneath those metal parts I have now days. So if I have a slight fever I can´t take my pills against the inflammation in my joints making it hard for me to work or even get up some mornings. Because those pills also lowers fever, so by taking them I would never know if I had to have antibiotics :-) :-)

Don´t feel sorry for me for this, I know of people that have a much more aggressive form of what I have and they have it so much worse than I. As long as I can take my pills my life is quite normal.

The morning is cold and the sun is shining. I have seen migrating geese and cranes flying by my cottage all morning. Deer are upset by something because they have been "barking" for a long time now. Perhaps one of my neighbours are out walking their dogs.

It seems that we only have the staying birds left here now except for some geese and cranes that stays for yet a couple of weeks. Not a swallow can be seen and no bird sings in the trees. But the katydids still sits there in the evening playing their instruments. I have plenty of them in my lilacs, but since they are green and the lilacs still have their leafs they are almost impossible to see. None of my cats shows any interest for them, because katydids can bite and bite hard :-) :-)

The photos You can see today is a couple of days old. I wanted to pick out a couple and post them on both the Swedish Natural Geographic and my photo album on the American National Geographic. Once posted on those places I´m not allowed to post them anywhere else You see. But the morning is much the same so I think they are quite accurate anyway :-)

The older calves were quite curious :-) My dogs are a bit afraid of them so they kept to the other side of the gravel road :-)

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and then a nap I feel.

Have a great day now!

Frost!

2010-08-31T19:13:00.000+02:00

I looked at the thermoteter when I got up this morning and got a bit surprised. Only 2C (36F). But I have to say that it felt much colder when I opened the door so my dogs could walk out. Wha I forgot was that the heat censor hang towards the wall that still was a bit warm since yesterday. I realised that when I saw the windows on my car. They were covered with thick solid ice!

So I bade farewell to my tomato plants when I came home today after work and picked those tomatoes I think has a chance to becoe red and ripe. Then I looked at my potatoes and I think I´ll have to say farewell to them too. If they go under I´ll check if they had managed to make new potatoes, but I´ll give them some days more before i do that. It is at least one week to early for frost here. I do hop this isn´t a sign of a cold and awful winter!

I tasted that little apple I showed You yesterday and I have to say it tasted delicious!! But all of those apples are more or less destroyed by worms I´m afraid. To bad they are so small, not even an inch wide :-) :-) but if one has twenty or more of them they will be as much as a ordinary apple I think :-)

Tese three photos shows Toadstools.

No fire in the stove today, the sun has shined all day so it is actually a bit warm inside. But I will ofcourse make atleast one pot of tea and then I´ll wander out into cyberspace to visit You all!

Have a great day now!

I thought it was time for You all to learn some more swedish now. It´s very simple like these two videos sows :-) If I understand it correctly there are more episodes if You like to see them :-)
Christer.

Autumn.

2010-08-30T18:01:00.000+02:00

Perhaps I should make myself an autumn wreath this year. I have plenty of these big rosehips and I can pick some acorns in the forest. I haven´t done any since I closed my gardencentre/nursery so perhaps it´s about time now.

The sun is shining and it is 14C (57F) outside. Autumn is here for sure now. They say it will become warmer again and that the rain will keep away this week. I love cool mornings but I´m not that fond of cold mornings and that is waht we have now. It was 5C (41F) this morning and I guess that the first night with frost comes next week or so. If it doesn´t the autumn usually gets long and warm. I do hope for that!

I sowed a seed from a Paradise apple nine years ago and this year the first fruits showed. If I remember correctly the apple I took the seds from were bright red, this looks more like a normal apple, but very tiny. I think I´ll try to eat one of them :-)

When I go to the store I almost always pay with my bank card, if I have money on me I always spend them to fast :-) So naturally I didn´t have any money on me when I went to the grocery store in Gudhem when I went there yesterday. I´m really glad that they know me there because they card system didn´t work. The lightning had struck several times when we got that storms on Saturday and their internet connection had died totally. It didn´t work again until it was time to close for the day. We do live in a very wounerable world these days. If internet goes nothing works :-) :-)

One of the species of Katydids we have here. This one looks much like a gigant grasshopper, but we have those looking a bit like aliens too :-) :-)

The common red toadstool. We call them Fly musrooms, I think we do that because they made a fly poisson from it bac in the days. This i also the mushroom the vikings mixed in their mead. After that they wn berserk. Well they didn´t have tv so what should they do on a saturday evenig :-) :-) :-)

Bertil ha decided that he wanted to go out to an island in the bog on this little bridge that Yu hardly can see because of the high water level. I told him it was a bad idea for such a tiny cat.

He stood there for quite some time until he decided I probably was right. He weighs only four pounds after all :-)

For once I have lots of time today. I went from work two hours earlier than usual (so I could go to the store and pay my bill) and it feels like I have had the whole day off :-) :-) My dogs and I was trying a part of the forest we´ve never been in before, but all rain we´ve had lately made it feel like we were going in a swamp. So we went back to our usual areas but it wasn´t much better there to be honest. But who am I to complain really. Thousands of people are drowning all around the world just because thet have got so much more rain than we have.

Now there´s a fire in the stove and a pot of tea by my side. Well it´s to much to say that there´s a fire in the stove. For some reason the fire log won´t burn especially good. It sort of only glows. I think that the firelog is to dense so the fire just stays on the surface. The quality can vary quite much between different brands.
Have a great day now!

No I haven´t forgotten :-) You have to click on this photo to make it bigger to see her, our little doe tha always stands on the same place every morning when we take our walk. I´ve never seen her here before so perhaps that was why I didn´t see her until ater I took this photo.

2010-08-29T09:17:00.000+02:00

There´s a fire burning in my stove and I have a hot cup of tea by my side. It is really cold outside today (only 5c, 41F) and it started already yesterday afternoon. The day had been rather nice with some sunshine, little wind and some raindrops now and again. But then it started.

The thunderclouds are building up already now in the early morning.

I think that the property that this barn belongs to (this is the one I´ve shown You before) is sold now. I´ve seen cars there every morning when I drive to work and I saw a little boy, seven or eight years ol the other day whe I came home.

I was looking at TV when I heard a sound that I thought was my neighbors V8 engine. So I didn´t care much about it. Not until the sky became so dark that I had to turn on some lights and the first lightning went through my telephone :-) (it is a miracle that the telephone works as it is since so many lightning has gone through it. But it is an old time telephone and they can take almost anything).

It didn´t rain at first so I thought that we might be on the edge of the storm. Thinking that, the rain started. The rainfall was so strong that I thought the road might be damaged by it. After ten minutes of heavy showers the hail came. Within a minute the temperature dropped to 45F (7C).

It went on for at least half an hour and after I went out to see what had been damaged. I think my tomatoeplants are dead now, they look anything but healthy. So I brought some of the green tomatoes with me inside to let them ripe in my kitchen window.

There´s actually a deer in this photo. Can You find it :-) I almost didn´t and I knew it was there :-) :-)

Potatoes are stronger ( they can actually survive in the ground in mild winters) but they too looked really sad. But looking at them today now when the sun reaches them I think they might make it. It was when I was looking at the potatoes that I remembered that I had my Cattleya orchids on the entrance stairs. Yesterday I thought they would die for sure, but today it looks as if they are alive, but very damaged.

My dogs and I walked in to the forest and out towards the bog later that evening. The ice was melting slowly, making mist rise from the ground. Not a sound could be heard except for some migrating geese up in the air. The temperature had dropped some more and I realized that I had way to little clothes on me. But not a single mosquito or fly flew around anyone of us :-) Hector, that thinks everything above 10C (50F) is way to hot really enjoyed our walk.

Now the sun is shining but I have already seen more thunderclouds close to the village. I don´t mind the thunder but I would appreciate if the hail could fall somewhere else :-)

Have a great day now!

It came smoke from all chimneys in the village shortly after the temperature drop.

2010-08-28T10:05:00.000+02:00

Do You all know that we nowdays have a "Junk comment file" here om Blogger? I didn´t and now I realised that Beatrice had left a comment that got stuck there. I did wonder where that comment went, because I had read it in my mail :-) :-) So Beatrice! I just answered that comment You made on August 9 (You can find it under "It´s pitch black" on the sidebar). If You didn´t know that just look under the headline Comments on the place You write the blog.

I forgot to turn of my alarm clock yesterday evening so my dogs and I got up before 5am as usual. Since they were awake I thought it was best to let them out to do what they need to do and after that there was no use getting back to bed again. I normally wake up around that time anyway, but it´s always better to wake up without the help of an alarm clock.

My neighbours new garage for his two tractors. One of them stands in front of it here, do You think it will fit or does he has to make the garage a bit bigger :-) :-) :-)

It was a quiet morning, like it always is on a Saturday and I could hear a dog bark, probably from a farm on the mountain some miles away. Most of the fog had risen to the sky but some still lingered on the mountin sides. We have a doe that always is on the same place every morning when we take our morning walk. She´s rather young and the first times she saw us she jumped away in panik. Nowdays she barly strolls lazily away some yards and looks at us. Soon she won´t even do that :-) :-) I took a photo of her the other day, but I´m afraid I delelted it minutes ago.

If You click on this photo to make it bigger (something You can do on all photos) You´ll see the smoke comming out of my chimney.

Today will be a day dedicated to lazyness. I´ll replants some cuttings I have on my patio, open up some or all of those kernels I found in the Donut peaches/nectarines and sow them in moist paper towels and later put them in the fridge, read some and look at the Finn Struggle on tv. For those of You that don´t know what the Finn Struggle is I can tell you that it is the worlds oldest competition in Athletics between two countries. Sweden and Finlad meet every year since long ago in a battle where no one is above cheating to win :-) :-) It has happened that all competitors has been disqualified during a race :-) :-) I missed it yesterday because I sat here writing and reading blogs :-) But today I´ll make a pot of tea and watch it.

All the little black dots that You can see on the cable are swallows waiting for the insects to start flying around in the air.

I started a fire in the kitchen stove for the first time this season too this morning. It wasn´t especially cold inside to be honest, but all the rain that we´ve had has med the air a bit to humid even inside. So now my home is a bit to warm but it feels so much nicer when the air is dry. I think I´ll even open up my bedroom window again. It has been closed since the almost storm we had some days ago.

The weather forcast says that we will have some rain and some sunshine today, quite normal weather here for this season. But I wouldn´t mind if we got it a bit more dry here now. Just so that most of the deep holes and small ponds in the bog dries out for a while. That would most probably kill most of the fly and mosquitoe larvaes that needs water to survive and that would make next summer so much nicer :-)
Have a great day now!

Sulphur tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare. Beautiful but nothing You want to eat. People that has done that may die. It looks very much like an edible mushroom but is said to taste bitter.

2010-08-27T19:34:00.001+02:00

I have put a translation bar in top of my blog and it should work for all languages now for those of You that doesn´t read English, but we all know how Google translates :-) :-) But if it doesn´t work at all please tell me so I can try to do something about it. Now I see that I also have a translation bar on the top right side too :-) :-)

The Goldenrod is almost luminous before the sunrise.

It´s getting darker and darker here now when autumn is comming. Now it´s dark already at 10pm and it´s dark when I get up in the morning around 5am. Soon it will be dark when I leave home for work and when I get home after work. Well it´s not like that until November I think but I hate just knowing that it is comming. I´ll have to buy a new flashing collar for one of my dogs this winter, because someone of my dogs chewed on one of the collars :-) Thankfully he/she missed the batteries!

I went to the hospital to leave some blood before my visit to the rheumatic specialist I´m going to on September 7. While waiting for my turn I started to think about the comming head shave and realised that it perhaps would be better if I waited until after that visit :-) I really don´t want to scare any one with how I look then :-) :-) So You´ll have to wait another week until I can take photos of my shaved head :-)

When mushrooms grows like this, in a cirkle (well almost anyway), we call it a Witch ring. It gives bad luck if You pick the mushrooms from the centre and outwards instead for the opposite.

I have a vague memory of promising someone to do something tomorrow, but I have no idea to whom I gave this promise or what I promised to do :-) :-) It might have been something to do with a phone call, but that doesn´t help if I can´t remember anything more :-) I can also be that I remember that big branch that broke on our crab apple tree, because we removed that last Saturday :-) :-)

This is what we call a Corpse mushroom. Smells like rotten flesh and we have unfortunally lots of them. Flies loves it and the scientiffic name really tells what it looks like, Phallus impudícus :-) :-)

I have a fresh pot of tea beside me and perhaps that will help me to remember what it is I have forgotten, or not forgotten if it is that branch that still is stuck in my head :-) But now when I am thinking. It might be those clematis cuttings I promised to take to their new owners. I think I might have said I would bring them on Saturday if I forgot to do it during the week. I brought them with me today so it might be that I have done what I promised to do :-) I got two plants with me home too, two Perovskia or Russian sage. You never go empty handed if You visit a garden freak :-) :-)

Well it´s time to leave You all so I can drink my tea and have a sandwich or two.

Have a great day now!

2010-08-26T19:32:00.000+02:00

My dogs are happy! I have a work friend that also is a farmer and every now and again he asks me if I want some livers that he has in his freezer or if he just has slaughtered an animal fresh in his fridge. He doesn´t like liver that much so he never knows what to do with them. Sohe gives them to my dogs instead :-) So all yesterday evening I boiled and grinded three very big livers. My dogs gets crazy already when I bring out the bag from my car :-) :-) :-)

These keep their colors if dried. Many of us have one or two of these at home as decoration :-)

Sometimes I buy kidneys and does the same with them for my dogs (kidneys isn´t something that I´m to fond of and the livers that my dogs gets are usually from older animals so they can taste a bit sharp). But it smells awful when boiling kidneys. It smells like someone has peed all over my kitchen :-) But my dogs loves it so I buy some now and again.I then mix the grinded liver/kidney with the food and it doesn´t matter if one of my dosg would be sick, they will eat it anyway :-) :-)

I almost overslept this morning. We had had a power failure last night so my electric clock didnt work. But I had for some reason set my other clock to ring wich I usually never do otherwise. It would have been nice to sleep an hour or two more this morning :-) :-) But I will be able to sleep an hour or two more tomorrow morning. I have gotten an appointment with the specialist on rheumatic diseases on September 7. So tomorrow they will take a lot of my blood and make tests on it.

Do You remember when I accidently cut of a couple of vines of a clematis I have and took cuttings from it? Now they have roots. It took a while longer than I had thought but it worked anyway. I have also checked that the kernels from those Donut peaches have seeds in them, so soon I´ll sow them in moist paper towels, put it in a plastic bag and then in to the fridge. With a bit of luck will they germinate within a month or so.

Now I feel that it´s time for a cup of tea and then I´ll read some chapters in the first Harry potter book.
Have a great day now!

These are some of the cuttings I made from the clematis vine I accidentally cut of. I removed the plastic bag that I had around the pot to fast, so the new leafs dried. I didn´t think I needed that plastic any more since it´s been raining all the time here.

The new roots are doing great, so now I have planted the cuttings in separate pots.

2010-08-24T19:27:00.000+02:00

Autumn is here!

I feel it´s time for me to shave my head again. The powder paint is usually very easy to wash of after working but if it is hot and it usually is, the powder sorts of glues itself to my scalp when I´m sweating. I can wash my hair several times and still remove powder from my head on sundays :-) So once or twice I just shave my head and when I want to remove the powder I just put my head under a tap :-)

Every time I´ve shaved my head I drive to Tråvad, where I had my gardencentre/nurcery and walk around waving to the old folks. Most of them really could use new glasses, so they never recognises me from a distance. Naturally they think I´m a skinhead and sort of waves back just in case so the skinhead doesn´t get angry :-) :-) They always get angry with me when they realise who I am :-) :-) :-)

We have really strong winds here today, almost storm actually. The winds are so strong that I don´t dare having a window open now or this comming night. It has rained all day too, but now the sun and the rains sort of takes turns on comming. Well the mosquitoes are atlest having trouble getting close in these winds :-) Butr I´m afraid that the rest of the old crab apple tree will fall if this continues. With my luck it will fall on my dogyard :-) But my dogs will only go straight in to my garden instead. I forgot to lock the door one day and all they did was to try to get in to the garden.

My neighbours tried to make them walk in to the dogyard again but gave up and opened the gate to my garden instead. My dogs just went to my patio and stayed there for the rest of the day :-) My neighbours doughter and her friend once wanted to take my dogs for a walk and when they got into the forest they released them from the leashes. Ten minutes after they had gone they knocked on my door and wondered if my dogs perhaps had shown up :-) :-) Yes, they were sitting in my patio. I don´t think I ever have to worry about them running away to far :-) :-)

Now it´s time for some tea and then I´ll read the first Harry Potter book. I´ve decided to re-read them again because I think they are brilliant books. Any book that makes kids want to start reading is a great book!

Have a great day now!

2010-08-23T19:26:00.000+02:00

I have shown photos from the ruins of the convent in Gudhem before, but I do like that old ruin.

I´m late as usual on mondays :-) I don´t know why but I always am nowdays :-) I haven´t even eaten anything since I came home almost three hours ago so this will be a short blog today.

It has been one of those days when time has just flown away. It didn´t start to well since I had driven rather far on my way to work when I realised that my wallet still was at home and had to drive back again :-) But otherwise they day has been rather good. They say the sun shined most of the day too, but it was hidden by clouds when I finished work. Now they say heavy showers will dominate the comming day.

I went to the grocery store in Kvänum on my way home and they sold a new kind of peach and nectarine. They are almost flat and tastes delicious! There are kernels in them but they look very different, they are almost round and I have no idea if they´ll germinate but I just have to try it. If they do it´s not sure the fruit will look the same, but if they taste even close to these I don´t mind. I know that I´ve tried peaches and nectarines here before and that they sooner or later will freeze to death here. But this time I will have some in pots all year round, if they germinate that is :-)

The nunns had to have a guest house wether they liked it or not. At one time they had to many guests so they moved to a place far away :-) But they moved back ten years later. The cellar is still totally intact though but I never went down through the open door as You can see to the bottom right.

Have You ever seen peaches and nectarines looking like this before?

Well it´s time for some food and a pot of tea now.

Have a great day!

My tea pots. I wasn´t looking for any special kind of tea pot so the left one fits me perfect just because it´s so big. The right one I thought was so uggly that I just had to have it :-) :-)

But I do like this coffe pot! I saw it through the window the last week of my vacation and hoped it would still be there when I could get there again. It´s swedisg china and the maker is Rörstrand. If I turn the lid slightly to the right the lid stays when poring coffe.

2010-08-22T09:18:00.000+02:00

Last nights moon. If You click on the photo to make it bigger You can see the dark spot on the moon too. I´ve almost never been able to get a photo like that of the moon before I got my new camera.

I can´t remember when I was this tired as when i woke up this morning. I woke up at five am as usual and unfortunally my dogs noticed it. So I had to get up to let them out in to the garden. I went straight back to bed when they all had come in again and slept for an hour more. I was as tired as before but got up since I usually gets a terrible headache if I sleep to long in the morning.

I was so tired that I fumbeled with my tooth brush and dropped it so it fell down in to the cat littre tray. So I grabbed my spare one and did the same thing once again :-) :-) You would think that I by then would have realised that it would have been better to get out of the bathroom, don´t You? But noo, naturally I fumbled once again and now there´s also a jar with hair gel in that littre tray. Well, it´s time to clean that littre tray anyway so it will all go to the dump. I simply refuses to move those things out of there now :-) :-) :-)

About that getting immune of the itching mosquitoe bites it´s said that back in the days the Swedish Sami indigenous population every summer went out and slept naked for one night so they really got bitten by mosquitoes and midges. After that they had no problems with itching bites (but I do wonder how they felt after that night with or without any itching :-) ). I´m not sure that´s such a good idea to test though. It happens that mooses and deers dies every summer just because they couldn´t flee from mosquitoes and midges. They more or less got poisoned to death by all the bites.

It´s a cool, cloudy morning without any wind at all. The swallows are flying around my cottage eating as many mosquitoes as they can before the long move south. I could see how at least hundred swallows attacked a magpie that sat on a barn roof when we took our morning walk. I´ve never seen this behaviour this late in the season before. They have no young ones in the nests and the magpie just sat there minding its own buissness. The poor magpie had to flee to a big tree on the farm next door.

Goldenrod. This is the European relative to the Canadian Goldenrod. It´s not as invasive and smaller too.

I´m just waiting for the grocery store in Gudhem to open up now. I do need atleast one new tooth brush, but I think it´s best to buy two just in case :-) I´ve already finished one pot of tea (and that makes me realise that I have forgotten to take any photos of my pots! I´ll get some for tomorrows blog instead). I´m still tired but I won´t be dangerous in the traffic anyway. It´ll probably only be me on the roads anyway :-)
Have a great day now!

2010-08-21T17:59:00.000+02:00

I feel a bit tired after working overtime today, but I didn´t miss much here at home since it has been raining heavily all day. Well it did rain, but stopped when I came home and now the sun is shining again. I now live in a mosquitoe paradise.

But I prefere mosquitoes in comparense with flies to be honest. They don´t come in hundreds or thousands like the flies did this summer and the itching stops after a while. Most of us gets immune towards the itching thing they put in us so the blood doesn´t clog while they are drinking. So in a couple of days I will start to ignore them again.

I went to the second hand shop in Kvänum last week and looked at the watch I told You about, but I didn´t buy it. Instead I bought two tea pots and one old coffe pot. One of the tea pots looks like most teapots does nowdays and the other one is really, really uggly :-) :-) It´s rather new and made in a japanese style that probably was intended to remind the owner of the old age. But the colors are to strong and the figures are drawn poorly but I just couldn´t resist it :-) :-) The coffee pot is however rather old and made here in Sweden by Rörstrand. Unfortunally there were no cups belonging to it.

They did have a set of tea table ware with lots of cups and different plates in a chinese style. The china is very thin and the colors a bit to strong for my taste though. It was a bit to expensive too to be honest. I can take photos of the pots I bought it You want to. I think I´ll go back and check for more things next week.

Now it´s time to make a new pot of tea. I just made one but it tastes strange. I think I put in to much tea leafs so it´s rather unpleasant to drink :-)

Have a great day now!

2010-08-20T18:50:00.000+02:00

I have bloodstains all over my kitchen today. I´ve tried to find and remove them all but as soon as I think I´m done I find more of them. No is not crushed flies or mosquitoes I´m talking about. The blood is mine and I dropped over my kitchen this morning.

Marshmallow, Althaea officinalis.

Not a single pumpkin on my pumkin plant, but it grows bigger and bigger every day :-)

It sounds very dramatic, but it wasn´t to be honest. I was a tiny bit late this morning and was going to make sandwiches for breakfast when Orvar started to look on the floor to see what I might have or would drop on the floor. I turned towards him and started to say that he was rather unpolite looking on the floor as if I always dropped something when making food :-)

Just when I was turning towards him I slipped with the cheese slicer and sliced a piece of my indexfinger on my left hand. It is amazing how much one can bleed from a finger :-) So I tried to stop the blood from falling all over the place at the same time I was looking for sticking plaster. Finally I found the box I bought just some weeks ago and realised that the plastic wrapping still was on the pakage. So I tried to rip it of with one hand and my teeth.

It is amazing how hard that plastic is wrapped around the pakage! So then I tried to cut it open with a knife only sliding and getting the knife towards my stomach. Well I didn´t cut myself that time anyway :-) The knife was to dull for that, so I found a sharper knife and finally I got the plasters out of the box just to realise they too were wrapped in some kind of paper/plastic. I only managed to rip of the edges of this wrapping in the beginning and got a bit tired of it and wondered if I shoul just wrap some paper around the wound.

More and more leafs turns yeallow now. Autumn is here.

I finally got out a couple of plasters and bled right through them in minutes :-) :-) I ate my breakfast as fast as I could and hurried away to work. Thne fun thing is that I just can´t the missing piece of me. I really hope it didn´t fall on the sandwiches. Would that make me a cannibal then? :-) :-) :-)

Now it´s time for some tea and then relaxing because I´ve promised to work overtime tomorrow. I regretted it as soon as I had said it :-) :-)

Have a great day now!

2010-08-19T19:20:00.000+02:00

It´s a rather nice evening. The sun is shining, the wind is weak and it´s warm. The grasshoppers and katydids hasn´t started their music yet and a few birds sing their winter songs. The magpies are sitting in the apple tree behind me waiting for their chance to fly in to my kitchen to grab some cat food from my kitchen table just beside the open kitchen door.

White toadstool, very deadly but beautiful.

This is some kind of fungus, but I have never seen it before in my life.

The old lady Erna can´t decide whether she wants to be outside or not, so as soon as I close the door she walks to it so she can get out again. She stays there for ten minutes and then comes in again. Just to come back when I have closed the door again. Today she´s worse than my cats usually are :-) :-) Hector is upstairs as usual sleeping on my bed and Orvar chews a bone in the living room. Both Bertil and Teodor have decided that outside is the best place to be.

This fungus gets brown after a while and then it looks like something my dogs could have left on a bad day :-)

I saw my first Golden eagle this morning on my way to work. It was a young one sitting by the road eating on a run over hare. It is a magnificent bird and I´m happy that it lifted before I came close. I had heard that we have rather many around here but never seen any. We also have Sea eagles here and they are even bigger. I hope I can see one of those too soon.

This is also some kind of fungus and it seems to become more common the more rain we get.

I want to apologise that I haven´t visit many of You these last days, but I have had troubles slowing down time :-) I don´t know how some people seems to be able to do all they want during the days to be honest. When do they sleep? But I do hope I will get better visiting You all when everything falls back in my daily routines again.

Orpine (Hylotelephium telephium). We call it "Love wort" over here. It´s more known as a red flower though.

One of my perennial sunflowers, Maximilians sunflower (Helianthus maximilliani).

Tigerlily, Lilium lancifolium.

I see that it´s time to refill my cup with more tea!

Have a great day now!

2010-08-17T20:04:00.000+02:00

It has been a cloudy but warm day today. The sky was dark grey when I drove home from work and the closer I got the darker the sky got. The first drops of rain started to fall when I drove in to the village. Now it´s pouring down outside.

Nothing ever works as it should at work when we come back after vacation. But this time most things broke down the week before when my boss was there to do some things. We´re only two persons at my departement nowdays so we had to borrow people from other places in the factory and that never is good since they don´t know how to work in the right way. But we also has a young man that has worked in the factory this summer and he is a life saver :-)

Rodnande fjällskivling or in english Shaggy parasoll. Some that eats this mushroom gets sick others don´t. I like it as a mushroom to mix with other mushrooms.

Even though he only will stay this week he is curious and willing to learn new things and he works really hard. He makes me look much lazier than I really am :-) :-) Since I usually am tied to my painting machine much of the time he could take much of the work my boss usually does (he is still on vacation You see). So if this young man hadn´t been here this week my job would have been much tougher.

Two kinds of Finger mushrooms. The yellow is unedible and the one below is edible (but it doesn´t taste that great to be honest.

There is an old crabapple tree groing just beside my dogyard and it must be over one hundred yars old. It´s so old that it doesn´t have the strength to flower every year but this year it did and very much too. So now every branch is full of small apples. So many that the weight of them got to much for the poor old tree. I did think one big branch were a bit to low yesterday morning when I went to work and I was right. It is as thick as my thigh and had broken and some of it had hit the fence to the dogyard.

So yesterday evening I brought an old saw and started cutting those parts from the fence. It´s not that big damage to the fence but it is no use fixing it until we´ve taken away all of it from the tree, because it´s still attached to the branch in question. So we´re planning on using a tractor, a saw (maybee my electric chainsaw) to get it down now on Saturday. My neighbors telephone lines is in the danger zone so we will all work together to bring down the branch as painless as possible :-) :-) I hope I can take some photos of us working (but I´m not sure the others will allow it though :-) :-) )

The old tree doesn´t have many more years I´m afraid. There are big cracks in all bigger branches and funguses has attacked it for years now.

The damages could have been much worse after all.

I feel that it´s time for a cup of tea now and then some blog reading.

Have a great day now!

2010-08-16T18:54:00.001+02:00

I don´t know what it is with Mondays but I never have enough time then. So today I just show some photos and then I´m off to do other things. I hope I´ll get time to visit at least some of You later. First day at work was like most first days after vacation is, filled with problems. I do hope it´ll be better tomorrow.

Now I must have something to eat and a cup of Russian Earl Grey tea :-)

Have a great day now!

2010-08-15T09:29:00.000+02:00

I´m a bit tired today because I didn´t get home until just before midninght yesterday. I was down in Gothenburg and so was the rest of the world it seems. "The Gotheburg Party" was this week. It´s a kind of festival where they serve food and lots and lots of beer a have different cultural events. Lots of music all over the city too.

It´s almost only photos of Bertil today.

I passed three South American Indian groups playing panpipes, guitars and tambourines and I immediately started to think of Simon and Garfunkle :-) :-) I also passed a group that played march music and a couple of rock bands. I could also se a hughe stage on the end of Gothenburgs main street, but no one entertained there when I passed. I didn´t bring my camera so You won´t see anything from it. Maybe next year.

The dinner was great and it was so fun to meet my cousines and naturally my aunt that invited me to her birthday party in this restaurant! Now it´s time for a cup of tea and then I´ll enjoy the beautiful weather we have today. Tomorrow I´ll start working again. Four weeks of vacation is really to little :-)
Have a great day now!

Tansy, Tanacetum vulgare. Has a smell that You either love or hate. I love it.

2010-08-14T09:21:00.000+02:00

You can make all photos bigger and better by clicking on them.

It´s a foggy, calm and damp morning. The only sound that can be heard is that from migrating cranes and geese. The swallows has just started to fly to catch some breakfast and they fly low today.

I have been watching the news much lately. One reason is because we´re going to have elections here soon and it will be an exciting election this year. We really have seven parties in our parliament, but they have now created two big alliances so now we are moving fast towards becoming a two party country. I really don´t like that! We also have a racist party lurking outside the parliament.

There´s a deer in the middle of this photo, just where the grass meets the trees. She has been standing on the same spot on the gravel road every morning now. When she sees us she slowly walks to this place before jumping in to the forest.

A party needs 4% of the votes to get in to the parliament and still this party hasn´t managed to get that many votes. But I´m afraid it might this year, much because we don´t trust our politicians especially much. But where do they trust politicians :-) :-) :-)

If You click on this photo You will see that there´s another deer jumping away from us. You can see it near the road on the left side just where the grass meets the bushes.

The other reason I´ve been watching the news is to see how the weather behaves all over the world. If it isn´t heat waves and droughts, it is rainfall, flooding and landslides. Much of the landslide and flooding problem could have been avoided if they hadn´t cut down all trees. Their root systems keep the soil together and the trees use a lot of water. But profits has always been the main thing, the problems that comes after is a minor problem (until something happens that is).

But I am lucky to live in a country where they replant cut down forest and where the weather stays relatively calm (still that is!). But these weather fenomenas will continue and get a lot worse I´m afraid. The climate on this little planet of ours is getting warmer and warmer and with a warmer climate the problems will get worse. The big question is, is it too late to do something about it?

Here You can see one of my neighbors new garage. It is HUGHE :-) :-) :-) It´s actually much bigger that the cottage You can see on the left side of the road :-) I like it though and I do hope he will paint it in some other color than the usual red.

Today I´ll go to Gothenburg (by train) but I won´t bring my camera with me. But for now I´ll have a cup of tea and then I think I´ll take a nap before going away.

Have a great day now!

Even a withering lily is beautiful.

2010-08-13T14:55:00.000+02:00

I´ve been very busy this morning. I have bought new trousers, fire logs, found out the price on region tickets to go by train to Gothenburg and pulled out a tick out of my left buttock. Not a bad start of a day :-)

We have a small area where there grows lots of thistles, nettles and other plants we call weeds and this is a small paradise for butterflies. I went out there yesterday and some of the butterflies were kind enough to stay still while I photographed them :-) This is a Thistle butterfly.

I´m going to Gothenburg tomorrow to have dinner with one of my aunts and some other relatives. I realised that I didn´t have any decent trousers, so I drove to Skara to buy some. Since I was there I bought a couple of bags with different teas as well. I looked after a tea pot too since my old one is no longer. But they only had small ones for one cup and when I make tea I make a lot. I had the idea to go to Kvänum and the secondhand store today, but I was so early that they wouldn´t open for yet a couple of hours. I pass it every day when going home from work so I´ll go there next week instead.

I´ve never seen this one before, but I suspect it belongs amongst the Goldenwing butterflies.

The Thistle butterfly. It´s one of the migrating butterflires in the world and comes to us during early summer from the mediterranian. They lay eggs here on thistles and nettles and a new generation is born. Unfortunally they can´t survive through our winters.

So I drove to Falköping instead to find out how much a region card for traveling to Gothenburg would cost and if I could buy it today. It´s valid for 24 hours and then I can travel how much I want those 24 hours on almost any kind of public transportation. It shows I have to buy it the same day I´m going to travel so I´ll go there before leaving tomorrow.

A False Chanterelle. It looks very much as the delicious chenterelle but has almost no taste at all. Lovly color though.

The Puffball is quite delicious when it is as white as here. We have a lot of them around.

But since I was in Falköping I went to the store that sells fire logs during winter and asked if they might have any stored somewhere and they had. So now I have six pakages in my woodshed (in winter that would last five days since I only use them for support heat). If it wasn´t for the fact that it´s rather hot today I would start using them now, because the humidity outside is terrible and it sort of gets inside too.

This is another kind of Puffball that gets atleast twice as big as those above. All Puffballs in Sweden are edible and quite tasty as long as they are white.

This is one of my absolute favourites! In swedish it has the name "Lemon yellow slime mushroom" :-) It describes it rather well actually. It has a layer of slime but it´s easy to remove and if You cut the stem it´s actually lemon yellow inside. Fry it in butter and it´s soooo delicious!

I drove to the grocery store in Gudhem on my way home too. I always goes there every Friday to buy what I need for the comming week. I like the place and it´s not especially expensive either. That is the only place I know of that sells seeds for the birds all year long. Otherwise it´s almost impossible to find that over here.

It seems to be a good year for Toadstools. I think this is what we call "Blushing Toadstool" (Amanita rubescens). It´s quite delicious and edible, at least most times. It can also be mixed up with other very deadly relatives so I never pick it.

The spots that most toadstools has can fall of in heavy rains, even on the red one.

The tick You wonder? Well it felt like I had gotten a small pimple on my buttock and it was barly I could see it, but I have a special tool to remove them so now I´m free from it. It can only have been there for a couple of hours, but it still feels rather creepy to find something living on You like that!

We have only two toxic Boletales in Sweden and none grows here. We have however two that can destroy all other food if they by misstake gets in to a dinner. Their taste is so strong it´s impossible to eat it :-) :-) This one is quite tasty though.

Some boletales are used as fake truffles in for example liver pate.

It has beenraining all morning and will continue like this for several days they say. But on the other hand, they told us we shouldn´t have rain now just a couple of days ago so who knows what weather we´ll get :-) Now it´s time for a cup of tea here by the open kitchen door. It´s raining like mad but the wind turns the rain away from the door so I´ll sit here and enjoy the sound :-)

Have a great day now!

I had to lay down on the ground to take this photo, the mushroom is really small. Just seconds after I noticed that I had placed myself just on top of an ants nest :-) :-)

2010-08-12T09:22:00.000+02:00

It´s a calm morning and not much is moving around in the village. I heard a bird in my apple tree some minutes ago that sounded just like a parrot. I´m sure it wasn’t, it most likely was a starling. We had a starling here for many years that sounded just like a Cuckoo clock :-) It didn´t come this year but I guess ten years is rather a high age for a starling in the wild.

Kvänum is filled with small factories like this one. Kvänums Kök (Kvänums Kitchen I guess it´s called in english) makes rather expensive kitchens and is rathet known out in the world I´ve heard.

This was the home for another company known outside Sweden, Madame Chic. I think the main products are cosmetics. Nowdays they reside almost where I work in Kvänum.

Even though the village is rathjer small they do have a couple of parks there. This one with a statue that I have no idea what it is supposed to be. Appendicitis perhaps :-) :-)

Here´s another one and it has a small stage. I don´t know if it ever has been used though.

They say it won´t rain today, or tomorrow! I think that we’ve gotten quite enough as it is, especially yesterday. I had driven to friends for a cup of coffee when the light gray sky suddenly turned very dark grey, almost black. Then rain started pouring down and when we thought it couldn´t be worse it increased some more :-) :-)

Kvänums ån. If You remember we had a word for a stream that meant it wa bigger than a creek, but smaller than a river? Otherwise the best name for it would be Kvänums river.

I noticed that lots of dogs and their owners were walking on the road beside the å, I would too if I lived here.

Unfortunally this beautiful plant grows there, the Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) and lots of it too. Children loves to hide benieth the giant leafs and when they get out in to the sunshine they get third degree burns on their skin. The sap in the plant does that and those burns are really nasty! It´s now decided it must be eradicated here in Sweden. Well they will try anyway. I could see that they had cut them down earler this summer. But they grow back fast.

Another weed thrived there too, the Larger Bindweed (Calystegia sepium (Snårvinda)). I do like it and wouldn´t mind it in my garden. But it has a tendency to suffocate all other plants close to it, spread like crazy and its roots goes down as much as ten meters (about ten yards) down into the ground. Very har to get ri off if one wants to. Like the morningglory the flower is open just one day.

It had calmed down some when I drove home again, just to get worse the closer I came to my cottage. Lightning’s flew all around in the sky and for a minute or two the rain fall was so heavy that I couldn´t see the road at all. With me in the car I had a mobile phone that my friends didn´t want any more. Not all people in the world likes these new touch screens but I do. I also never really liked the mobile phone I´ve had for a year or so. The buttons are so small and so close together that I have troubles pushing down one without pushing down a couple others too :-) :-)

The silo can be seen all over the village. here You can see the grocerystore to the left too.

The farms is placed just beside the village limits, well the one with this little cottage is just on the inside of the village limits.

I think this was the forge where the blacksmith worked. The owner tries to keep it in shape but kids has an idea that it is fun to break all the windows on it.

The thunder went away as I came home but the rains stayed. It must have been raining all night, I never sleep so well as when I can hear the sound of rain all night.

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and then a nap I think.

Have a great day now!

The Boletales has started to grow, it is autumn. Did You know that funguses aren´t neither plants nor animals? They are a group of their own.

2010-08-10T15:14:00.000+02:00

The water is clearing up in my pond now. So I saw four fish in their this morning. Two of my fan tailed goldfish and two others.

I´ve been to the little village Kvänum today and got the breaks fixed on my car. Since I had to wait some time I walked around in the village and took some photos. During the time I did that I got the evil eye cast on me at least twice :-) The villagers didn´t seem to happy about me taking photos of the village. They have had probvlems with criminality and drugs there some time and most houses do have different alarm systems.
Kvänum is full of small industries and it actually comes more people in to the village every day than there are people living there. I took over 100 photos but I can´t show all of them here.

The new hotel in Kvänum. I think it is around five or six years old. Since there are a lot of industries here the hotel won´t be without guests. There was an old hotel here before. The owner had done hughe repaires on it and when it was about to re open it burned down by accident.This is a really nice hotel

The old village school. Nowdyas they have miniature golf there and a Boule course.

There are quite a lot of appartement buildings in Kvänum also. This one however looks deserted.

The main street in Kvänum. When I moved here this street was full of life. Small shops was placed along the street and there were always lots of people there, even during vacation time like now. Now there are three shops, one bank (the first house to the right, my bank) and one pizzeria.

They also have a secondhand shop. The closest in many, many, many miles. They only have open on wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Lots of what they have is more or less junk, but I saw through the windows some things I really would like to have. An old clock with its history written down for instance, it costs 500swedish kronor (around 68,50 in US dollars) therev were some other things too so I might go there tomorrow or on Friday.

It used to be a gift shop that I liked here. I could find anything in there :-)

There are some more photos I would like to show You, so I might continue this on Thursday. Now it´s time for a cup of tea and prhaps a sandwich or two :-)

Have a great day now!

The clouds flew low this morning :-)

2010-08-09T09:11:00.000+02:00

It is pitch black here already by 10pm now, so when I went to bed yesterday around that time I could see nothing when I had turned out the light. I always have an open window during summer (with a mosquito net :-) ) so I like to listen for all sounds out there for a while. The only thing I heard last night was the sound of grasshoppers and katydids. Sometimes I can hear an owl or two if I´m lucky.

I then realised that I have troubles hearing the sounds from the katydids with my right ear. I always use ear protection at work and have always done so, so this must be a normal aging thing. The sound is made in such a high frequency that when as one gets older it´s more and more difficult to hear them. I got a bit sad there for a second or two because I will miss it once it´s gone.

I don´t know if I only had dozed off or if I was sleeping, but suddenly I heard a loud screaming noise. Have You ever heard a hare scream when a fox gets it? It is creepy because it sounds much like a human scream and that was what I heard last night. It´s not a good thing to wake up to that sound I can tell You. It took a while until I realised what it was, but my heart kept beating hard for a long time afterwards :-)

If You click on this photo to make it bigger You can see a dark shadow in the and of this road, just over the gree string of grass. Since that place is close to where I heard that raccoon like sound yesterday I got a bit curious.

But it turned out to be this deer that You can see in the middle of this photo, just where the light green grass meets the darker green trees. You have to click on the photo so it gets bigger to be able to see it.

I woke up to a foggy, damp and quiet morning. Not a sound could be heard and only my closest neighbour was up since he has to go to work. I love walking around in fog even if I finally get so wet that it´s unpleasant :-) There are no sharp edges and the light is creepy in a way. I can see shadows moving around and it can be an animal but it can also just be the fog. Those times I feel like I´m the only one living.

It´s still rather silent outside. I can hear the warnings sounds from some birds in my garden. I guess it´s Teodor out hunting. They would never even have noticed Bertil, he´s a too good hunter for that. I can also hear a moped passing by my cottage. It´s a neighbour that is about to fetch his morning paper. He really could walk, the distance isn´t that far to be honest, but he just loves that moped of his :-)

I promised Didi I would show You some of my drawings I´ve made long ago. Well I promised to show her really but since You all can see my photos I´ll allow all of You to look at them :-) :-) :-) I usually throw away everything I´ve drawn because I always find something wrong with them. But for some reason I have saved these. I also draw a rose yesterday and I´m really not happy with it. It looked ok until I started the shading of it. Personally I think it looks like a piece of meat that someone has walked on. In my defence though, I haven´t been drawing for a long time.

Well, now it´s time for a cup of tea and some breakfast. Today I have to papers to read because they don´t deliver the Sunday paper here on Sunday mornings. I live to far away from Falköping for that.

Have a great day now!

This is the rose I tried to draw yesterday. I´m not happy with it at all. I did try to draw a rose perhaps a year ago, but that came out so bad no matter how I tried that I stopped to draw again. GThis one, however bad, does give some hope that I might be able to draw decent once again.

No, this is not Jesus :-) It´s actually from an old commercial for Ecco boots. I didn´t like the boots so I never drew them :-) I unfortunally failed with his face, but the rest is ok.

I think this was a one or two summers popstar. They come and go so fast that it´s impossible to remember them for any longer time :-) It´s decent as a drawing I think.

This might also be a one summer popstar but it might also be anyone I found a photo of :-) There´s much I like to change here. Even if the eyebrowses should be thin back then they would look much better as thick. The ears isn´t good nor are her lips. But for some reason I´ve saved this one too.