New cloud types has been found. I read this in National Geografics newslettres I get every week in the e-mail (Thanks GeeGee!). The ones they showed were a bit more spectacular but reminds of this cloud a lot. It looks as if someone has whipped the cloud with a whisk. New clouds doesn´t just appere without reason, I wonder what this means.

I´ve heard thunder nerby when I was mowing the lawn a moment ago. After the first sound of it I could hear my neighbour running down his stairs to his livingroom, to pull out the computor and telephone cables. He has already lost two computors to the lightning.

It´s been a lovely day comapred to those before. A lot of small clouds but a lot of sunshine in between. It came some drops of rain too now and again, but I don´t think it was much enough to even be called a drizzle.

Denmark won yesterday and it was screw ups from our players that gave them permission to win. But it was a great match and Denmark is now almost sure to go to the world cup in South Africa. We still have a chanse but it´s really slim. But as I told You yesterday, we can always cheer for the danes instead :-)

One of Teodors favourite places.

I´m going down to Gothenburg on Sunday two weeks and I thought I should drive to where I grew up and take some pictures if I get a chanse. Then You´ll get to see how it looked in old Gothenburg but with better kept houses. When I grew up there many of those living there didn´t have a toilette in the appartement, it stood outside and had no water.
Have a great day now!

I´ve shown You the ditch before, the one they have dug to deep so the water stays there. I´m wondering about making a pond here in my garden, not a big one but something like this ditch in size and perhaps with similar background. But with grass that doesn´t spread as much as our wild ones and with a little bush and perhaps some irises in it. What do You think about that?

This is a Saxifraga of some kind. I love these small flowers.




June the sixth, Swedens national day. I think it was 1983 they decided that this date should be Our national day, but it didn´t become a holidat until recently. Most sweeds have no idea why they choosed this day. There are two reason for that. The first reason is that Gustav Vasa was crowned king this day 1523. The other is that we got a new Instrument of Governement that gave the political power to our parlament. Perhaps two very important things in history, but nothing we say Horay to today :-) Besides, Gustav Vasa was a cruel ruler that never hesitated to slaughter those who didn´t agree with him. Before Vasa we also elected kings here, but he stopped that and made it possible for his sons to become king after him.

Today I thought I would show You some of the wild flowers in my neighbourhood. I´ve never been to any place that has so few different wild flowers as it is here. But nowdays some of my garden flowers are slowly spreading here :-) I don´t always know the names of the flowers.

Not even half of our population will celebrate today. We really don´t know how to do it I think, perhaps because we don´t think that Gustav Vasa is worth celebrating? There´s also another problem. After WW2 there were no place to be a nationalist. We´had seen what could happen if nationalism got to strong and maniacs took power. So I think (don´t know though) that the political leaders at that time did everything to surpress anything that might be likened to nationalism. We started to celebrate the Unatid nations day in schools forinstance.


This one is for a reason I have no idea about called Dog krackers.

The only ones that celebrated history and used our swedish flag were the nazis. So after a while they sort of made our flag theirs and that has given us some problems in a way. Anyone waving the swedish flag could be seen as a nazi, so we never waved our flag exept on big sportevents or national flaging days. But thankfully our immigrants are helping us nowdays, because they usually celebrate our national day and they do wave our flag :-) I thank them for helping us getting our flag back!

Buttercup.

We call this "Old womans tooth". Klick on all the pictures to make them bigger.

Today is an important day in other ways too. We are going to meet Denmark in football (or soccer as You americans call it) in a qualification match to the World Cup. There are few things that is as important to us sweeds than to beat the danish in football :-) :-) We may not beat any other country, but the danes is a must :-) :-) Even people not very interested in football are interested in this match. The funny thing is that if Denmark makes it to the World Cup, but not we, we all get danish as long as Denmark still is in the World Cup. To be honest, we are danish as long as we don´t have to meet each other. As I can remember we were very danish when they won the European Cup and we got third too. First we celebrated us and then them :-) Despite being enemies for almost all times we sweeds have a special place in our hearts for Denmark.

A Potentilla of some kind. Relatives to it is very popular in gardens all over the world.

But it will be a cold day for national day celebraters and for those going to the football match. There will be some rain, some sun, some wind and rather low temperatures. No problems for me though, I´ll be watching the match on tv indoors :-)
Have a great day now!

Paeonia veitchii. I can´t find any english name for it. Comes from China and Sibiria. We call it The rose paeony.

It´s cold outside today. It´s almost nine am and it´s not even five degrees C (41F ) outside. On top of this it rains too. So I´ve told my dogs that there will be no walk until it gets a bit warmer and the rain slowed down some. They can be in the garden if they want to, but they too are reluctant to go out in rain. But this is the kind of weather that my fuchsias likes so perhaps they can start growing now, until now they sort of are standing totally still. Here inside, my Red Mullberry trees finally has started to grow. I don´t know especially much about that tree but I´ve heard that the berries can taste anything from delicious to plain watery. Does anyone of You know anything about it?

Chenomeles japonica, a relative to the Quince. One get delicious jam of it, but unkooked its like eating a bit of wood.

I´ve had some problems with a computor program that will detect Trojan horses and stuff like that for a while now. I tried to undo some of the last changes it has made and then all hell broke loose. My computor started to shout with an alarmasound that there were a big virus attached to the program. So I had to uninstall it and take care of all viruses the antivirus program found. I had to restart the computor and then it started again! But now everything has been taken care of and a new anti trojanhorseprogram has been installed. Annoying though when that happens. A good thing is that I don´t have my mails in my computor, I use a webb mail service at my internet companie, so I can´t spread the viruses to any one else.

A Polemonium, called Jacobs ladder in swedish.


Rh. Catawbiense blue. It origines from the US and is one of the hardiest one can find. It´s so common over here now that people think it´s boring. I don´t. It can take our climate and always flowers with many many flowers. It´s one of the best we can find over here.

Well it seemes that it´s going to be a day spent indoors today. Yesterday I looked att “Back to the future 2” so I´ll probably look att number three today. I´ve also start looking back in family history a bit. I´ve come rather far back for only have done this for some hours. Our church records are rather exellent to be honest. I´ve heard that they are so good that the Mormones in Utah have copied all there is to copy here. So if You are from the American continent and Your family comes from Sweden You can ask them for help to find out more about Your history.

This Azalea is double and has a weak, but wonderful scent.

Hippeastrum striatum. This one is almost impossible to find out in the stores. It sort of passes from friend to friend instead. It always comes with two flowers at the same time, but I sort of broke one on this bulb.

I started this to see if I could find out from where my, on my mothers side, grandmothers grandmother comes from. I´ve heard everything from that she was Gypsie, from India and Hungarian but it seemes as if she possibly was from Italy. Or if it´s her mother that came from abroad. The handwriting in these old church records isn´t the best. Her last name is typically swedish, but there is a marking in the area for how many marriages she have had. I can´t for my life figure out if it´s a one or a two written down there. But there are many different church records I haven´t checked yet.

This stack of branches becomes

this instead. They make fire logs of it and I´ll probably buy some of this next autumn :-)

The sky is getting lighter so perhaps it will get a bit warmer too? Anyway, it´s time for a cup of tea I feel and then a film.
Have a great day now!

Lupines can be found all over the country even if it hasn´t grown in this country for especially long time. About two hundred years ago it was brought here from the American continent and then it spread :-)

They come in all colours, but blue is the most common.

You´ve seen my sunrises before, but I couldn´t resist taking a picture of this one yesterday.

I woke up quite early today, at five am. The weather is fantastic, yet I would write, because rain and strong winds are comming closer by the minute. There were no cloud at all in the sky when I got up and now two hours later theres lots of them. We have had some thunder close by these two late days but almost no rain. The grass on the lawn is starting to become yellow and that´s okey with me, the less it grows the more seldom I have to mowe it :-) I can always water the flowerbeds if there´s a need :-)

My favourite walk here, by the creek.

I can´t remember when waterlevel was so low last time and this is just the beginning of summer. But if summer becomes normal rains will fill it up in notime :-)

The things we painted that should have the same coating as a car came back to us yesterday. They sort of forgot that the surface still was very soft. That paint has no hardener in it, it has to dry for several days until it can take any pressure at all. So when they shipped it away the packed it really hard so it shouldn´t be able to move during transport. The problem was that the paint still was so soft that it moved instead :-) :-) Sometimes I wonder why they never ask me what to do since this is what I once learned at Volvo and they know I know this. There´s a lot of things I know nothing about what so ever, but this I know. So now they have to wait for the paint to dry and get hard so they can grind it down. After that I can paint it again. This can take weeks if unlucky, it all depends on the paint they used.

The Aquilegias has started too bloom.

I have a long weekend now, three days of free time :-) because on Saturday it´s the swedish national day. I think this is the first time, or is it the second? that it´s a holiday in Sweden. We haven´t had a national day for very long either. I think it was 1983 or so that they decided that we should have a national day at June sixth. Before that this day was the day of the swedish flag. When they made this day a holiday, they made us loose another holiday because they thought we had many eough as it was. We really don´t have many holidays over here, but we all have five weeks payed vacation every year instead. Most of us sweeds don´t know why we have the national day on June sixth and we really have no idea how to celebrate it. But I´ll tell You more about this on Saturday.

The Honeysuckle too. Now it´s time to start looking at it in the evenings. We don´t have hummingbirds here but we do have rather large night butterflies that people often misstakes for hummingbirds.

Oh, I almost forgot! The blood stains in my livingroom :-) It´s my and my animals blood, but not really any more. The season for mosquitos and ticks has come and they do drink a lot of our blood. I really don´t want them to drink more of us and I really, really don´t want them to get outside to lay eggs so there will be even more of them. So whenever I see a mosquito I´ll smack them with a newspaper and that makes all the bloodstains on the walls and the ceiling :-) Sometimes Imiss a tick or two on my pets and when they drop it seemes we all walk on them, so now there´s blood on the floor too :-) But how do one get rid of blood stains on a white surface? I have no good idea. I´ll probably have to repaint the room to get rid of it :-)
Have a great day now!

The first Larkspur for the summer.

Sorry no blog from me today and no answers on yesterdays blog. Bad weather including thunder is apoproaching. If lightning strikes down near a telefone cable it usually comes out in my house and then in to my computor. But I can tell You this much that there are blood stains all over my livingroom now :-) Tell You more on thursday :-)
have a great day now!

I wonder if this is an old pig stie? Nowdays it´s a good place for birds to nest in.

It was a bit over 32C (90F) warm in my bedroom last night even though the window had been open all day. So sleep wasn´t to think of for rather many hours. I wasn´t tired this morning strangly enough.




At work it was even warmer today. Outside it reached 27C (81F) but by my paintbox the temperature was much higher. The ventilation system in the box is really strong so it sort of sucked the heat from the owen on one side of the box and the heat and humidity from the big washer on the other side. It´s like working in a steam bath :-) I´m usually not in a good mood when I have cleaned the paintbox in hot weather so people use to avoid me then :-)

I´ve noticed that a lot of our wild flowers are yellow. At least now in spring.

Snails seemes to have all kinds of colour on their shells. This one is really beautiful. This kind of snail seldome does any damage on the plants, they rather eat leafs that starting to decay.

You know the equipment I broke this weekend? Well today I found out that we had similar equipment in the factory. I asked why we didn´t use that one, it´s all in metall so it´s difficult to break :-) It´s something wrong with it was all the answer I got. So I took a look at it and after cleaning and lubricated it ( took over 30 minutes) all problems were gone :-) I don´t think they have done that since they bought it over ten years ago :-) :-)

So despite me being clumsy and break things this weekend, I sort of saved the day by getting our own equipment in order. Now we can send the painted material in time for once and possibly get more things like this to paint in the future. That is if the ordinary painter takes this seriously and does his work right. He wasn´t to enthusiastic about having to care about the coating being like that on cars. Perhaps I have to put my foot down and paint it my self, even if it´s not my job to do?
Have a great day now!

A wild geranium. I don´t know it´s name because we have several of them that looks much the same.