The flower of the Canada thistle (Cirisum arvense) is really beautiful. It´s a shame the rest of the plant is so hostile :-)

(Click on the pictures to make them bigger!)

It´s like walking in a steam bath outside today. It´s not the cool nice day I was hoping for at all. The rain added to that made it a bit awful to be honest. The flies has started to be a bit aggressive too so thunder might be closing in as they promised in the weather forcast.

The Meadow sweet (Filipendula ulmaria) grows everywhere here near to the bog. Smells delicious and can be used as a head ace remedy. Put some flowers in hot water or tea and keep it there for some minutes. Belive me it helps!

Yesterday I saw the movie "A prairie home companion" and it was a nice movie, Perhaps not the best I´ve ever seen, but nice. It made me remember when we had radio shows like that over here. The one I remember was called "The breakfast club" and an over exited show host had a very similar show as the one in the movie, but without the commersials. We didn´t have commersial radio until twenty years ago here in Sweden.

These comming three pictures shows species of different verbascums (Mulleins) The last one can be over 2,5 meters high (6,6 feet). They like it here and behave some what like weeds :-)

As I remember it was a very popular radio show. They had everything from our most popular stars to newcommers. The show host was also one of our most popular filmstars. But in Sweden if a program is popular for a longer time, they stop sending it. It´s like they think as if it´s popular there must be something wrong with it :-) It´s the same with tv-programs.

A species of what we call Wolf spider. The don´t have webbs, but runs to catch their food. It sits on a leaf from a Geranium zonale (one of the parents to our common geraniums. I´ll show You pictures of the flowers in early autumn I think).

Chinese globeflower.

Chinese globeflower.

But if the program is boring and no one listenes to it, it can continue for years after years :-) I´ve always wondered about that way of thinking. I only know one radio program that they actully saved after protest from listeners here in Sweden. But I don´t think we ever will get back the programs with live audience like the one in the mivie or our breakfast club. They were proably too popular :-) Well, the clouds looks like they will start arguing with each other, so I better stop for today.

Have a great day now, for me it´s only two more workingdays to vacation :-)

The cold front has arrived and I like it :-) But I don´t want it to last too long, my vacation starts in four days :-)

It feels like something has been lifted from my head now when the cold front has arrived. It will still be rather warm today, but the winds are strong and cools our heads making life feel so much easier. Perhaps I might be able to move up to my bedroom again already this night :-)

I finaly got my early mornings back. I have troubles every time we change from common time to summer time. My brain and body tells me that I´m up an hour early every day and the same going to bed. That makes me tired all the time. But now I´m back :-) It was a joy taking our walk already at six am. The cool air and strong winds made air light and flies hidding in the bushes.

This clematis flower just hangs there in the air. It took a long time until I could see the stem that held it there :-)

I think this is a Centaurea scabiosa, Greater knapweed. We can find it everywhere arund my village.

I have an extra free day today. The firm that sends us the ventilation pipes I paint at weekends have troubles sending them in time, so I finished painting everything yesterday. But I´m not complaining :-) I had hours to use so why stay at work if not nessesary :-)

This I know what it is though, it´s an Achillea millefolium or Yarrow. It loves my garden and I have it everywhere. The flowers are usually pure white, but can also be light purple. If You have stomac troubles it can help putting some of this plant in a cup of tea.

It´ll probably be a lot of rain these comming days, but who cares. It´ll be nice to sleep well again and we really need the falling water from the sky. Lets just hope that no more roofs falls down because of to much rain :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

Primula vialii, Chinese pagoda primrose . We call this one for Hyacinth primula. Must grow in wet peat in a shadowy spot.

Lemon thyme.

I wasn´t surprised when I saw the thunderclouds, but it took long time for them to move at all. It just stood there and thundered all the time.

It´s a bit cooler today, but not much. Wouldn´t be surprised if we got thunder today too. There were some spectacular flashes og lightning yesterday. The clouds didn´t move much so I had a clear vieuw of all flashes hitting Mount Mösseberg. I´m glad I wasn´t anywhere near them :-)

Suddenly they started to move west and some other thunderclouds from the east came closer instead.

Magnificent don´t You think?

My dogs and cats don´t seeme to be bothered by thunder at all. I had a neighbour here once that had a hunting dog that was so afraid of thunder that he shouted the whole time. Unfortunally the owner thought he would get used to thunder if he forced him to stay out in the dogyard during thunderstorms. He stopped when we realised that he actully was at home but never let the dog in. Doing so is cruel to the poor dog. When he understood that we wouldn´t exept that behaviour from him he stopped.

The thunder kept on all night and we did get some long wanted rain.

This flower is called Student carnation or Burning love in swedish. With that red color I think the last name is best :-)

I feel a bit lucky today. I came to work as usual and painted everything I could find and when my workingday was over there were nothing left to paint. So I took the day of tomorrow :-) :-) So now I only have three more workingdays and then four weeks of vacation :-)

Trollius chinensis, Globeflower, about to open up.

Almost totally open now.

Buddleia alternifolia a less known realtive to B. davidii, the Butterfly bush. This is hardier than the Butterfly bush so even I can have it. Butterflies love this one too even if it smells like hay :-)

My bush is rather young yet, so it´s not especially impressive. It flowers on the stems that growed last year. So if winter is hard there might not be any flowers the year after.

I´m mostly staing at home during my vacation, but I´ll take a trip way up north to friends that live half way up the country. I promise to take pictures on my little road trip so You get a chans to see how it looks over here. Well I´m a Harry Potter fan too, so I´ll probably go to see the new film , I´ll tell You what I think about it here too :-)

Have a great day now and to all my American friends I wish a happy 4th of July!

For a moment the sky cleared last night and the moon showed itself for a while.

I´ve always wondered what program I needed to put my name in the bottom of my pictures so I looked through the computor and found Microsoft Picture It. After a while i understood that it would take to long to keep doing that, but I did it on allpictures taken this morning anyway. When I was finished it refused to save my changes. The computor said no all the time. It was also impossible to leave the program if I didn´t delete all changes I´ve done. Sothat´s something I woun´t do again :-)

We met Teodor on our morning walk. He was thinking that a hare bigger than himself would be a great breakfast :-) when we disturbed him and the hare ran away :-)

The heat is on as Agneta Fältskog from Abba sang on one of her soloalbums. But it´s not as killing as it was yesterday. It´ll probably be even hotter today, but I can feel the cool front comming clooser now. There will surly be a lot of thunder when it comes because the temperature will drop from over 30C (86F) to around 16C (61F) in just a couple of days. We had a small thundercloud passing just over my cottage. It mumbled for a while but no rain and no cooler air so it was a bit of a dissapointing I have to say :-)

It was hot already at 6:30 this morning.



Why not roll around in the dirt when wet :-) He´s not the cleanest of cats :-)

I made an update on explorer yesterday and I regret that now. It´s impossible to write my text on a word dokument and then paste it here into my blog. That´s something I don´t like. It does happen that something one posts never reaches the blog and if it´s written down on a word dokument it´s only to past the whole thing one more time. Well done is done so I just have to get used to it.

Tomorrow my last working week before vacation starts. This will probably be one of the longest weeks in my life :-) Well it´s like that every year to be honest. I never do especially much during my summer vacation because we don´t have a single holiday until Christmas and that can feel tough sometimes. Well that´s not totally true, we have two in November I think but they are placed on Saturdays so most of us don´t get any free time because of them. I don´t think I´ll continue very much longer with the way I work now (Saturday until Wednesday) outherwise I´ll get to use those holidays :-)

Now the light blue delphiniums has started to bloom.

Now I´m going to make a pot of tea and after that go out into the garden to see if I can find something to photograf and show You tomrrow here.

Have a great day now!

This poppy came as a weed with one of my plants and now it self sows and spreads slowly in the garden.

Yesterday morning. There were a thin layer of fog just before the sun started to shine.

It´s still really hot over here and it´ll continue for a couple of days more. But after this heat wawe rather cold weather will come. That´s whats happens when living so far north on this little plante of ours.

Suddenly the whole sky turned orange. The picture lies a bit, it wasn´t that orange but close and it lasted for a couple of minutes.

This bug is called "Bumble bee bug". Birds avoid to eat it just because of the likeness and it´s one of my favourites.

They say that we woun´t have any thunderstorm here today, but I can´t remember that they said anything about the one we had yesterday either. It hit the little town Skara and created caos. The power went out, the highway had to be closed and over 20 000 flashes of lightning was recorded during the thunderstorm. During the storm costumers in the most popular store we have there noticed that water was dripping down from the roof. Thanks to that no one got injured when 1089 square feet of roof fell down in a second.

This is what we call 'Day lilie'. The flowers only opens for one day but there are many buds just waiting to open afterwards.



The sun´s just about to go down for the day.

This morning started out just the same as yesterday, but without the orange sky.

I can´t understand why they insists on making the roof totally flat on big buildings like that. They only create problems and has done so since they started to make them like that. Especially in winter if there´s a lot of snow. They just have to lift the roof a little bit in the middle and most of those problems would be gone.

Teodor enjoys the cooler soil on the pondspot.

It´s already to hot to do anything outside today, so my pond has to wait a bit more to be finished. Even if they say that we woun´t have any thunderstorm here today I doubt that. We can notice that on the flies outside. Normally they are just irritating and annoying, but when thunder is near they become agressive. There´s no chance to get rid of them then. They crawl over us then. They were agressive alredy six o klock this morning. So If You bloggers doesn´t get a comment from me today You´ll know why :-)

Have a great day now!

P.S. To cope with the heat at work I shaved of all my hair on my head this morning. If hot I just put my head under cold water and life is great again :-) D.S.

Despite the fact that Bertil is much smaller, he shased away his brother so he could be alone on the same place :-)