The dandylions are all over the country now. It´s actully over 50 species of them here, but they look so similar that one has to be an expert to separate them. In Italy they have a special sort used as lettuce and another to make oil of. Young leafs are actully quite tasty.

One of my absolute favourite stories is “The wind in the willows”, but there is one more I like almost as much and yesterday they showed a movie on tv based on that book. I´m talking about “Charlottes web”. First time I came in contact with that story was 1974 I think. It was the animated movie that came the year before. I love that story but I can never again see it to the end. I just can´t stand Charlotte dying, just thinking of it makes me sad :-) :-) Strange how a story can get such a grip on me. I was ten years old when I saw that movie and I cried so much when Charlotte was gone that we almost had to leave the movie theatre and I´m just the same today :-) :-)

The seeds spread everywhere as soon as the lightest wind catches them. Sometimes it looks like it´s snowing in strong daylight :-)

I went to the doctor today to do my right hip check and to talk about my left hip that rather rapidly is going down the drains. I got a new doctor this time, my old one is slowly going in to retirement. So he tested my leg and knee (that gets damage since I´m walking in the wrong way) looked at the x-ray they had on the hip and they thought it looked really bad. Then he and my old doctor decided that we are going to take some extra x-rays on my left hip and on my knee. When that is done we will start talking about operating my hip. With a bit of luck it will happen this autumn :-) :-)

Claytonia sibirica, a nice little plant that is said to be a weed. But here it´s fighting to stay alive.

Strange weather here today. Some minutes sun, some just clody or rain and hail. But at least the wind is rather nice :-) It´s a bit troublesome to take walks with my dogs then. If the sun shines it´s to hot to have a rain jacket on and it´s kind of boring to carry it around if the rain doesn´t come. If it hails I must have a sweater, but it´s to hot to have that if it´s just raining or is sunny. Oh these problems life can give us :-) :-) Well it´s time for a cup of tea and then look at wat can be on tv tonight.
Have a great day now!

Nine or ten years agoo I found two seeds in a Granny Smith apple that already had started to germinate. I planted them and now I have two little trees in my garden and one just got its first flowers. Granny Smith isn´t hardy in Sweden so I wonder why these are in the cold climate we have here. I don´t think that there will be any fruit on it, because I don´t know what sort pollinates it and our crabapple tree doesn´t flower this year.

I woke up rather early and got to see this sunrise.

It´s quite nice outside even though the clouds hang low and the temperature could be higher. But the ever lasting wind is at least fairly warm. They had promised thunderstorms all night and all day yesterday, but we didn´t get it until late aftersnoon. It wasn´t much of a thunderstoorm to be honest, but I didn´t dare go out on the internet until rather late last night.

The light becomes rather strange when there is fog in the morning. But it is very beautiful I think.

I have had problems keeping up with everything this last week. I´ve been late posting my blog, late reading others, so I only managed to read a few before I had to go to bed. It has been one of those weeks when it had been better sleeping it through :-) But it´s not only I that has been like that, every one at work has been just like me. No one can say that he has been sick in any way, but every one has been tired and has had trouble getting things done. Perhaps it´s the weather change? We had summer temperatures all April and that is unusual in it self and now it has been rather cold and cloudy. That can make any one tired I think.

The 'Portal' is almost closed in the top now.

The lily of the valley has started too bloom now.

My car problems might have gotten a solution. I have a friend that is going to sell his little Mazda 323. It´s very well kept and looks newer than it probably is. He wants a bit more that I wanted to spend on a car. But on the other hand I´m getting a lot more payed now when I´m working on Saturdays and Sundays, so I think that evens it out rather well. It doesn´t use a lot of petrol either and now since the price went up to over six US dollars/US gallons that is a very good thing :-)

At least one of my Bleeding hearts survived the two hard frostnights we had a week ago.

It looks like the sun is shining through the clouds, so I think I´ll get a cup of tea and go out to the kitchen stairs for a while.
Have a great day now!

The Lilac tree has also started to bloom now. Last year i cut down my 45 meters (148 feet) long lilac hedge so it wount bloom this year. But there is still so much lilacs here that the smell will fill my garden and home. It´s beautiful, but personally I think it´s a terrible weed and I wouldn´t be sorry if they all just died.

Normally butterflies is more beautiful on the other side of the wings. But this one is it on the outside.

They have just showed a series of programs that is called ”Who do You think You are?”. It´s all about genealogy. Famous people gets a chanse to know where their familys comes from. Now they are showing the Brittish original. Today it´s the famous writer/ aktor Stephen Fry.










Both me and my oldest brother have been wondering if we should do the same with our family. It´s quite easy to go far back in history here in Sweden. The churches has hold records of us since they came to this country. But it will take a lot of time and we are both rather lazy. Some I already know. I don´t know who my fathers father was, no one does. My fathers mother refused to say who he was. But all my grandparents came from the county Blekinge in sothern Sweden. A part of our country that once belonged to Denmark.

Geranium pyrenaicum. If You have sandy soil like I does, never put this in Your garden! It spreads enormously. Nowdays my neighbours have it and it has started to spread in to the forest too. Beautiful but devilish.

I also know that, on my mothers side, that my grandmothers grandmother came from abroad. No one really wants to say anything about her. Some say that she was hungarian, some that she and her family came from India and that my grandmothers grandfather brought her and her family with him home when he was a sailor. My grandmother on the other hand said something completely different.

Common Solomon's seal just about to open its flowers.

I loved my grandmother more than anything and I never heard her tell a lie in all the time when I grew up. One day she told us that her grandmother indeed came from abroad, but she was neither hungarian or indian. She was in fact a gypsie (or Roma as we should say now). I can´t for my life belive that this was something my grandmother just said. Even today many people look down on gypsies and only twenty years ago it was even worse. I think that it´s great that I possibly is a sixteenth part gypsie :-) So I usually talks alot about it with relatives that wouldn´t be especially happy about it :-)

Stylophorum diphyllum (Celandine poppy). maybe You that live in north eastern US have this in Your neighbourhood? I have it in my garden :-)

Looking on old pictures of my grandmother and her siblings, as young, I would say that she was right. But still today we don´t even know my grandmothers grandmothers name. So I think that when summer and vacation comes I´ll have to start looking back in history. There are pages on the internet that helps a lot and one can ofcourse get help from an organization that does this. But until knowing for sure this partly danish/gypsie sweed says by and have a great day now!

Wild gooseberries out in the forest.

The first flowers on my Paradiuse apple tree has opened up now.

We are going to have the election to the European parlament june 7. Normally when we have our election to the swedish parlament somewhere around 90% of us votes. But to the EU-parlament 40% is a good result. We joined the EU after a referendum but we don´t like it. We take every chans we can to complain about it :-) The EU parlament has very little power and is placed in two cities, Brussels and Strassbourg. The move between the to cities cost enormus amounts of money, but France refuses to let Brussels be the only place to have the parlament.

They are a bit pink on the outside but pure white on the inside. I´ve waited nine years for this to happen.

I wount let You have to read me whine about the EU, but they have for instance decided that a strawberry has to have a minimum size to be allowed to be called strawberry and that a cucumber is less worth if it´s bent in the shape. For a while they also put extra taxes on the bananas we like in Sweden and Germany (big and not to sweet in taste), just to protect some of the countries old colonies that grow a rather small and sweet banana.

The buds on the Tree paeony is really big now. If we get some warm weather I think they´ll open up in a week or so.

It seemes I have to get another car soon. I like the one I have now, but there are some problems with it and it would cost as much to fix it as it costed to buy it. So now I have to start looking for a new one. This time I would like to have a smaller car, preferably a small stationvagon like a Volkswagon. Normally I always have a Volvo or a Citroen but they use to much petrol. The prize on petrol is now 5,9 US dollars/ US gallon and now summer comes and the prize will be even higher. Strange really that the prize always rises when summer comes, happens every year over here. But I can have this car all summer with a bit of luck, so I have lots of time to find another.

This flower is called Skelört in swedish. That would be something like "Lazy eye wort" in english

:-)

Well, it´s time for some tea and a couple of sandwiches I think.
Have a great day now!

The first buds on my roses. This rose is called "The white rose of Finland" and is a white filled rose that can stand drought very well. It can be up to 2 meters in hight (6,6 feet).

Huray for Norway and Azerbadjan!

Well, it didn´t go especially good for the swedish song Yesterday. 21 of 25 songs. Norway won and no country has ever gotten so many points before( It´s a great song written and performed by a very talented Young norwegian. After he won the norwegen final he was attacked by nazists screaming he was the worst thing that ever happened to the norwegian song contest. You see he is born in Belarus and fled from there when he was five years old. So I wonder what the nazis thinking now :-) :-) ) Iceland, that came second didn´t even get half the amount of points. But we are happy anyway, because we came third too. How You wonder? Well the song from Azerbadjan were written and performed by sweeds :-) Well we musn´t forget AySel that sang the song too, she´s from Azerbadjan and one of the most beautiful women I´ve ever seen!

The Swallows has finally arrived at work. They nest on the beam under the big roof we have outside the factory. Love them but they are messy birds. Their droppings falls on everything we have outside. But they are protected all over Europe so we can´t do anything about them. But to be honest, we would miss them if they weren´t there every year!

Today I was alone at work and when I stood there and painted I realised that we didn´t have enough paint. So I got a chance to phone the owner after all :-) Personally I think that someone should check these things before the weekend so they can get more paint before it´s to late.
The weather has been teriffic all day. Sunny and warm. The clouds came almost as soon I got home like it did yesterday, but it´s warm so I´m not complaining.

The beams and the roof makes perfect nestingplaces for them. Now I´m only waiting for "my" couple that builds a nest just above my window on the upper floor.

The sock mystrie is solved! I have wondered whay all my books on the bottom shelf in my bookcase always is scattered on the floor. It seemes that someone (probably a ginger coloured cat in this hose) uses the place behind the books as a sort of treasure box :-) So now all my sock are back again :-)
Have a great day now!

Lotus corniculatus.

This geranium is new to me. It´s called 'Blekingetösen' ( that would be the girl from Blekinge, a county in Sweden). This is a Unique geranium.

I´m not in the mood today! One might ask me what I´m not in the mood for and I would answer I really don´t know :-) I´m just not in the mood! I should be in the mood for anything really, because everything went my way today.


Came to work and there was already a young man there that should help me all day moving heavy steel beams and some other things while waitng for me to paint them. For once there actully were a note waiting for me that told me what to paint during the day! It helps to be nasty towards the owner when he doesn´t do as I say he shall :-) Well they forgot to tell me what colour I should use to the different things, but one can´t get it all :-)

Vinca minor (Lesser Periwinkle). They are usually light blue or white and I got this purple on a plant swapping day.

So I had to phone the ordinary painter very early (woke him up actully), so he could tell me that we only had one colour because the rest had not come yet :-) Normally when some one new comes to help and we never met before, they can be quiet all the time. That isn´t especially fun. But this guy had no problems wit that what so ever, so it was really fun to work today.


The sun has shined all day and just until we were going home, there were no cloud on the sky. It was when I came home though. The wind started again too! I really think that we have more wind nowdays than we had before. It feels like it never stops any more. When it does it´s on hot sunny summer days and then all blood sucking insekts come. We have some really nasty flies here and when they bite it hurts really much. Wet summers there are so many that it´s impossible to walk close to the forest and the bog.

There woun´t be any apples on this branch anyway. It shouldn´t be brown in the middle but yellow. The frost was to tough last night.

When it is as its worst it doesn´t matter if it´s close to boiling outside. One has to have thick sweaters, jeans, preferably rubber boots and the socks over the jeans, gloves and a mosquito hat when walking there. But thankfully I can still walk on the fields and most summers aren´t that wet. If it´s not the flies it´s the ticks that drives one crazy :-)

Can You see the little lady bug on the second lowest leaf?

Well it´s time for another cup of tea, but I wount like it, I´m really not in the mood You see :-)
Have a day now! :-)

They said sun all day, so naturally the clouds came early this morning :-)

It was -5C (23F) outside this morning when I woke up. But on the other hand the sun shined so it was quite enjoyble to take the morning walk after all. The weather forcast said sunny all day, so I wasn´t surprised when the clouds came :-) It has still not reached 10C (50F) so now there´s a fire in the stove so it at least gets warm inside.

The Portal is slowly closing in the top now.

The second semi final in the Eurovision song contest were yesterday evening and now we have all nordic countries in the final on Saturday. When the eastern european countries joined the competition we in the west smiled kindly and thought that they wouldn´t stand a chance. We don´t smile kindly any more :-) They usually wipe the floor with us from the west :-) At first we blamed it on neighbour voting. They ofcourse votes for their neighbours, something we would never do :-) :-) To be honest, we vote more for our neighbours and has always done, than they do. The truth is that we also votes for these eastern european songs :-) :-) We love them :-)

Orvar and Bertil is never far away from each other.

But this year Norway is the big favourite, but it´s close with several other countries. Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbadjan, Turkey, Greece, Boznia-herzegovnia and Sweden is also belived to come high in the end results. We can´t vote for our own songs, but from the rest of them Norway, Ukrain, Azerbadjan and Armenia is my favourites. But I guess the top four will be Norway as number one, Ukraine as two, Armenia as the third and Azerbadjan will come as fourth. We´ll know on Sunday if I´m right. I´m not able to stay up during the voting because I´ll work on Sunday. But I´ll let You know the results in here in my blog.

It seemes like a lot of the migrating birds didn´t realise that we had summer here over one month early, so there are still new birds comming every day. This is usually the time of year most of them comes. Yesterday I saw at least twenty geese comming from the south and there were some this morning too. Most plants in our gardens have started to grow really fast now, so when it comes nights like this, with cold weather, they freeze severly. Even though we had enormously many cherry flowers I´m afraid that there wount be many cherries because of the frost we´ve had now. I´m afraid that my nectairine also wount get any fruits because of that. But now I at least knows that it flowers :-)

Three geese on their way north.

It´s time for yet another log on the fire and after that a little nap I think.
Have a great day now!