This wasn´t the sight I wanted when I sat down in my car to get the cake we had ordered :-)

We had ordered a Schwarzwald cake to eat at work today, just because we thought we were wearth it :-) I was the one to drive to the café to get it. Moments before I was going away the snow started to fall. Quite a lot too. I thought that it was best to take the small rodas to avoid the worst traffic, that was a pretty dumb idea :-)

But it had already started to melt down on my way home an hour later. The rain helped a lot :-)

It rained at the same time so it was a mess on the roads. Several times I thought I was going out in the terrain and when I thought it couldn´t get any worse freezing rain started to fall too :-) :-) It was mostly pure luck that made me reaching the highway to Vara, the town the café is placed in. The highway was free from snow and they had already put out salt on the road. What a difference to the small rodas I´ve been driving on :-) :-)

No more baths in the pond for the magpies :-)

Rain had taken away most of the snow on my way home thankfully, so it was like vacation driving in comparence :-) When comming home I was greeted by three soaking wet dogs. They love snow and had ofcourse been out all the time snow fell from the sky :-) It´ll take many hours until they are dry again :-)

Most plants and funguses has been destroyed by the frost and snow now, but these have managed to survive somehow.

We went in to the forest to keep away from the cold nortern winds we´re having now. The only problem with that is that even if it didn´t rain especially much drops fell from the rocking tress. So it was like there were heavy showers of rain :-)

At the moment nothing will happen at work that will make any affekt on how many people will have a work there. They will separate the buissness in two parts, if anything goes wrong they will be sure that some part still will exist. We will learn more in a couple of weeks they say.

As You probably have guessed there´s a fire in the stove and a pot of tea being ready to make me warm inside. Perhaps I´ll take a small nap too, that cake was so rich so it made me a bit tired :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

Yesterday morning we had -8,4C (18F) and today we had -7,0C (19F) and I don´t like it, not at all actully :-) But I´ve started to put my car in the garage, so at least I don´t have to scrape the windowa on my car. Now I only hope I catch some mice in my mouse traps :-)

Orvar got a stick and he loves chewing at sticks :-)

Old Erna looks a bit grumpy, but she´s anything but :-)

Hector took Orvars stick and now he´s happy :-)

We had nothing to paint today so I left early. It´s a wonderful day today. Almost no wind and the sun has been shining from early morning. Since the moose hunting season is over for this year in my neighbourhood, I and my dogs could take our walk in the forest again. After these cold nights the leafs on the trees now starts to fall down in bundles, so the sun reaches down to the ground again for the first time since last winter. Small birds were singing and deers could be heard jumping away on the bog.

The frost has stayed all day despite the sun shining all the time.

I woke up last night because it was a bit cold in my home (that´s why I have dogs, I just force them to sleep beside me then :-) :-) ), so now I´ve had a fire in the stove since I came home. Hopfully it wount be that cold comming night. I´m pretty sure it wount because they say that there will be rain and snow tomorrow. There will be up to 3-4 cm (around one inch) of snow, so I hope it´ll come after I finished work for the day because I haven´t changed to winter tires yet :-)

Have a great day now, I will!

In the puddles the water is frozen. Winter is on its way I feel.

My Cattleya hybrid has started to bloom now. It´s a shame it smells so bad :-)

It´s even colder outside today and this night it´ll be even worse. As long as I can stay out of the winds it´s bareble though. My dogs however loves the cold winds. Hector loves them most of all. He has the same warm fur as his grandmothers father that was a NewFoundland. He thinks all temperatures over freezing point is to warm :-)

Since the hunt still is going on today I had to walk by the fields. There is an old well not far from my cottage and I like to see if there ever is some water in it nowdays. But the walls in it has fallen down long ago. Sonowdays a birch grows up from it. Further down grows a fern too. I wonder hopw long ago they used it daily.

They were going to have negotiations at work today, but some information were not there? so they will start on thursday again. People are getting more and more nervous now and all they seeme to talk about is what they think is going to happen. I try to tell them that there is no use to speculate over things we don´t know anything about or can in any way affect until we get some answers. But even if they agree they start to speculate seconds after. I feel so sorry for them, some people have troubles sleeping now.

But here in my little cottage all is calm and nice. There´s a fire in the stove, my dogs sleep in my bed together with Bertil the cat. Teodor is sleeping on the couch in my livingroom. I think I´ll make some sandwiches with cheese, meatballs and perhaps liver pate. Perhaps those sandwiches will take a tour into the oven too? Warm sanwiches, a cup of tea and a good book is a great end of the evening I think!

Have a great day now, I will :-)

The northern winds from the arctic are still here and makes even a sunny day like today nasty. Well it was sunny until I came home, then the drizzle came and made it even worse to be outside. That sort of makes me smile inside thinking of all huntesr being outside today. The yearly moose hunt has now started. The hunters here only have a B-license to hunt moose and that means that they only have two days to shoot what they are allowed to shoot. Tomorrow will be even colder :-)

Tomorrow is an important day for the factory I´m working at. It has gone downhill fast after the vacations so now troubles are big. They woun´t shut it down, at least that is what they hope for. But they will probably shut down parts of what we are doing now and many of us will most probably loose our jobs. Negotiations with the union will start tomorrow and we will probably have an answer to what´s going to happen within this week. I´m not especially worried at the moment. Even if I´ll loose my job I have unemployment pay and since I never got around to buy that refridgerator and that washing mashine I need I do have some extra money if times will get tough. But as I told many of those at work, no idea to worry now since we actully doesn´t know what is happening.

So now there´s a fire in my stove, we have all eaten and I have a pot of tea just ready for me to drink. Even if there´s clouds all around, life sure is nice :-)

Have a great day now!

Outside it´s a cold and nasty day. We´ve gotten winds from the arctic and they are eating their way through the clothes chilling our bones. But inside it´s warm and nice. Infact it´s so warm that I´ve had five butterflies flying around on the upper floor. They´ve understood that my cottage isn´t such a good place to spend winter at. Fortunally they weren´t to difficult to catch, so now they are all outside to find something better to spend winter by.

The swedish IDOL has started and as usual the quality is not too good. Most of the competitors are quite young and a voice span less than a octave it seemes. Remembering seeing the American Idol this summer our just make me sad watching :-)

But to be honest, one of our winners is actully starting a carrier in the US right now. Her name is Agnes and the song just about to get popular is called "Release me". She is actully one of the few Swedish Idol winners I like. Down below is the video with that popsong. I don´t know if this is the one that will be showed in the US. When the american people saw the swedish one they laughed and said, lets do a new one :-) :-)

The video below is of her latest hit over here and what is hopfully a hit in the US too.

It´s getting a bit too warm inside now, so no more firelogs in the stove, but I think I+ll make a new pot of tea, that is something one can´t get to much of :-)

Have a great day now!

Pictures of two butterflies I´ve rescued from a certain death today. I wonder how many are in here.

I get the newslettre from History channel from my good friend AliceMary when ever a new one is send to her. I really like it and there are loads of things to learn from History.com. Now they have a Citizen quiz, based on the new Citizenship test for new hoping American citizens. I can now proudly say that if I took that test today I would become an US citizen :-) I had 77 rights out of 96 questions. Now I dare You all to take it too :-) :-)

As You can see in the pictures it was a wonderful, but cold, morning today. I was up and out before most people had woken up, so there were no streams of smoke comming up from the chimneys.

One of the great things in autumn is when I look towards the mountain sunny days and I can see all those streams of smoke comming out of chimneys and I can count how many places there are up there :-)

I found a butterfly on the ceiling in my bathroom just some minutes ago. It had found a perfect place to stay over winter it thought, but I had to disagree. It´s far to warm there over winter and it would with, certanty, die slowly. So I removed it, opened the door and set it free. The problem was that it had no intentions to be free at all :-) It didn´t matter how much I shaked my hand it stayed. So I threwed it up in the air and it immideatly landed on my foot. It took a lot of foot shaking until it flew away to the closest bush. It´s warm enough for it to find a better place to stay over winter, so I hope it find one soon, before a bird sees it as a nice meal :-)

Have a great day now!

When the weather got bad yesterday it got bad fast. Suddenly we had rain, lots of wind and thunder.

Even though the weather started out sunny and nice yesterday, it suddenly changed caracter in the afternoon. In minutes clouds came and covered the sky, the wind got really hard and thunder begun. Today started out much the same, without thunder though. But the rest of the day we´ve had sun and wonderful weather.





We went down to the creek today. The water level had rissen dramaticly compared to the last time we were down there. I didn´t want to follow the creek to long since the moose hunt will start on Monday. The hunters are a bit sencitive about that specific hunt and don´t want any unnessesery dog smell around the hunting places. Even if I don´t hunt myself I do understand them because they have only two days to get the chance to shoot their mooses.




So we turned around and started to walk back to the fields outside the forest. Unfortunally they had started to spread manure on the fields we had come from, so I decided to cross a little bridge. Well bridge is a too good name on it. It´s two logs with a plank between them.The plank has also started to root. I know that if I try to walk over first, Orvar and Hector will try to pass me on this thin bridge. So I told my dogs to pass first.

Hector had gone half way over when his brother decided he wanted to be first on the other side. Well You can guess the result. Since Orvar is much bigger and heavier than Hector, he simply pushed Hector over the edge :-) Erna follows just behind and when Hector crawls up on the other side from the now quite deep creek, I prepare to go over the bridge too. Unfortunally Orvar then thinks he should go back so before I even start he is already back behind me. When Hector sees him go back so does he. Erna sees that too and she decides to go back too. Since she´s almost death I have to scream to her to stop.

Naturally she can´t hear a thing and runs back over the bridge. I then tell all dogs to go back over the bridge again, but since I shouted rather high they think that the bridge probably is dangerous. The more I try, the further away from the little bridge they go :-) :-) So I decide to walk over first myself. Now the bridge is weat and very slippery from Hectors bath. When I have come half way over I hear that Orvar starts running towards me. He´s not the brightest star in the sky, but he does understand me when I say: Push me and I´ll kill You with my bare hands :-) :-)

My cattleya hybrid has started to show its flowerbuds. Unfortunally it smells like cat..... :-)

Today I want to congratulate all Americans! Since the American president Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prise! I think that man will do even greater things during his life!

Have a great day now!