Uvularia grandiflora ( Large-flowered bellwort) , we call it "Sorrow clock" in Sweden. This one lives in the forests of Missouri and is the favourite of all flowers for me.

I heard that we got our first case of swine flu, but it was a false alarm. But it´s just a matter of time before it comes they say. If You are older You probably woun´t be hit that hard from it, if You get it. There has been something similar before and if You got it then You´ll have a better defence towards this infuenza. If it mutates again it can be really bad for us. During the WW1 there was a influenza that we call “The Spanish disease” that killed millions over the world. But thankfully we have a much better healthcare nowdays, at least in the richer countries. What can happen in the poorer countries I don´t even want to think about.

The water is rapidly sinking in the creeks now. This April is tha dryest in years here in Sweden. Today I have to water my flowerbeds or else everything will dry out.

Now the news that Chrysler probably will go bankrupt spreads all over the world. That´s not good news but I understand that they didn´t reach the goals they had to, to get more financial aid. I´m so sorry for all workers that will be out of jobs now. But this will not only affect them, but all other buisnesses that depend on Chrysler. But perhaps they can rebuild the company later?

Today it´s Walpurgis night. This is a big day here in Sweden and many people works only half the day today. Here in Sweden it has its origin from the Vikings celebrating spring, but it was later made a christian holiday. This day we have hughe bonfires, but not this year because it´s to dry outside and in most places these bonfires are forbidden, and in some places they have fireworks too. When the bonfire is started choirs (often student choirs) are singing songs about how wonderful spring is. It´s real fun and I´ve been singing in a lot of Walpurgis choirs. It´s lucky they have this day every April 30 because many people need the holiday (May first) to recover from the night before :-) :-) May first I think is celebraited all over the world and I´ll tell You a bit more about how things have changed here tha last few years. But I can tell You that I yesterday became an alternate member of the union board in the factory where I work.

Just a couple of days ago there were no leafs on these trees. It goes to fast now!

The cottage to the right is my home. Belive it or not, but it is actully slightly bigger then the one to the left, but lower.

The Portal is slowly getting green now.

I´m happy to say, in a priggish way, that Sweden beat the U.S. in hockey last night :-) :-) :-) The U.S. was leading with 5-3 when it was only ten minutes left, so I had stopped looking at the match. But now they showed that we won at the news today :-)
Now I can hear the coffee machine from my kitchen so it´s time to stop writing.
It´s going to be a bit chilly today, only 20C (68F) and an arctic strong wind is blowing. But I can assure You that I will enjoy this weather no matter what. The heat in the factory almost made me wich for winter again :-)
Have a great day now!

The wild cherrys has started to bloom now :-)

This is a really old fence post they used to fence out cattle with. It´s been lying here for years and now it´s slowly decomposing.

Finally! My nectarine is in bloom! Let us now hope the frost will stay away in the future!

It has been cloudy almost all day today, but still it has been really warm. Inside in the factory it felt like I worked in hell :-) There was some wrong with the ventilation system in my departement so all the heat from the owen and washing mashine stayed in the big room. We really suffered in there, but the rest of the factory were cool and nice but who had the time to go in there :-)

I have an old plum tree in my garden. It´s dying slowly and I think it would be better if I took it down. Just beside it grows what I think is a shoot, but it might be a seed plant too. Now that one has started to bloom. A sign that it´s time for the old one to be taken away? But it does give delicious plums :-)

We never got any thunderstorm yesterday. Suddenly the sun came back and the evening became really nice. But soon cooler weather will come and then the thunder probably will come like a lettre in the mail. So now I´m going to unplug everything when I drive to work in the morning.

This is a Blackthorn, a plum relative. It gives small blue berries in autumn and they taste utterly bitter. But if one pick them after two nights of frost one can make the most delicious lemonade or liqueur. This is thought to be one of the parents to european plums. The american plums has other parents though.

This is the flower of the Blackthorn.

For a couple of years now people have looked on birds as the ones that will give us a deadly influenza. But then suddenly it´s the pigs that gives us that instead. Wonder why scientist never thought of that? Pigs are actully so close to us that we might use their inner organs when our own fails. So now when this influenza comes it shouldn´t be a surprise really, we can get other diseases from them. But that is ofcourse very easy to say now when this is happening.

This tulip, Tulipa tarda, is a tulip You should have if You want a tulip that spreads by it self. It´s rather low, under twenty centimeters, and gives several flowers on every bulb.

And now for something really surprising news! There is actully a bank in Sweden that made a profit this first quarter of the year!! It´s not surprising that it´s that bank, it has always had a good reputation. It´s about time I change to that bank now I think. Why stay at a bank that is lead by nutt heads? Next time I get into town I´ll talk with them.

This is how it looks fully open.

Well, now it´s time for a cup of tea I think and then prepare mentally to work in hell tomorrow too. I don´t think that they´ll have fixed the ventilation problems by then. As usual there wount be a blog from me tomorrow, so see You Thursday!
take care!

Gökärten (If You translate the name from swedish it is The Cuckoo pea :-) ), The Bitter Vetch, a perennial close relative to the common Sweat pea and grows wild here.

I´m seen as a very calm person that can take most setbacks with a shrugging of shoulders, but there´s two times every year that I get anxiety and lots of it. In autumn it´s when I have to take my car to the yearly inspection. I sit there and sees how they hammer hard at my car with a sledge hammer trying to find broken or rusty places. Well it´s not relly a sledge hammer but it feels like that. It doesn´t matter if I have a car that´s relativly young, I just hate it. Lucky enough they have a tv that we car owners can look at during the inspection and the coffee is free :-)

The other time is now in spring when I have to do my tax return papers. The stupid thing is that I don´t even do the papers myself. I just put them in order and drives to my accountant so she can do it for me. I can´t for my life understand why this gives me anxiety but it does. I know that I will get money back late this year, but still it´s really difficult to take those five minutes it takes to get the papers in order. I´m usually too late with my papers to my accountant too, so I always have to pay fines to the tax departement. But this year I´m actully early!! Does this mean the world comes to an end? I don´t think that has happened in many years :-)

The sun shined and the wind was calm when I came home.

It got up to 24C (75F) today and when working beside a hughe owen and a hughe washing machine ( we wash everything that we paint You see) it was like working in a steam bath and this is just the beginning of the warm season. The ventilation in the paint box is so strong that it sucks in all the heat from the owen and the steam from the washing machine, so when I have to clean the paint box I get dehydrated fast. When it´s summer I drink up to eight litres ( 2 US gallons) of water every day. I have to eat some salt too outherwise I tink I´ll die. But today I went home earlier so I could get my papers to my accountant and get rid of my anxiety :-)

But suddenly the clouds came and the wind started blowing hard. I do hope we don´t get a thunder storm, it´s too early in the year for that.

Now the sky looks like a thunderstorm is on its way. The wind have started to blow really hard too. If the thunder comes I then has to unplug all telephones and my computor, because the flash has a tendensy to fly out of my telephone cables. One time I got the lightning through my computor and in to my arm. I couldn´t feel anything for houers after that :-)
Have a great day now, I will!

I got this award from Wsprsweetly of Cottages today! Thanks Mona!

Despite the fact that it has been cloudy all day we reached a tempearture of 22,5C (72F) today. Can´t say that it felt like that but my thermometer says it was so. My dogs spent the day at home because I had to use the big diesel forklift today. Hector, the intelligent one, doesn´t like that one because It sounds to much. He accepts it when he sees me driving it, but I can see how he wants to walk away and here it because he “talks” all the time when I drive it.

Yet another wonderful sunrise this morning.

The pheasant family (three hens and one rooster plus a lot of chickens) spent the day just beside the factory in an old orchard we have there. Every time I tried to get a picture of it with my mobile phone camera the rooster ran away sounding much like a horn on a very old car :-), next weekend I´ll bring the real camera. I stood slightly hidden when I tried to take the picture when I realised that a big hare sat just next to me!! I had my protective overall on and smelled mostly paint, so I don´t think it understood that I was a human. When it did it was gone in a second :-)

The Clematis tangutica has already flower buds, that is early even for that one.

There was a gentle drizzle when we took our walk this afternoon. In spring I don´t mind when it rains while walking with my dogs. The rain cleans out all durt and afterwards its smell so fresh. In autumn or winter, when it rains, I don´t take walks if possible, then I do mind the bloody rain :-)

A piece of mywoodland. As You can see there´s a lot of old leafs left on the ground. I never take away them, thats the best nutition the plants can get. What grows here is easy plants. The only thing I do is to get rid of grass and weeds now and again.

I got a pleasant surprise when I looked into the blog “Wsprsweetly of Cottages”, Mona has given me an award!
Now I´m supposed to give it to fifteen other blogs, preferably some new ones and link to them here. I´m a bit lazy and don´t think I know any new blogs so I´ll make it easy for me. I´m giving it to everybody on my bloglistlinks on the right top of my blog :-) Then I don´t have to link an extra time :-) Thank You Mona!

This is a plant You from eastern USA may knoe. Trillium erectum. This is what every one interested in gardening wants in their garden over here. Mine thrives and self sows gently all over the woodland.

Now it´s time for a cup of tea and to read all my favourite blogs!
Have a great day now!

A close relative (Anemone ranunculoides) to the Wood anemone. Does not relly live wild where I live, but these seemes to enjoy life. Sometimes they cross breeds (is it right to say so?) with the Wood anenome and then sulphur yellow flowers will appere.

This is how it looked on the sky when I got up this morning, but the sun was dark red. The camera wasn´t successful in capturing that unfortunally. Today the sun got up at 5:28am and goes down 8:41 pm.

I did get a lot to do at work today. The owner came by with a piece of his birthday cake, because all the others got yesterday when he had his birthday. But it has been a wonderful day. The sun shines and we got up to 21c (70F) degrees :-) I could take a lot of small breaks when the paint dried, so I and my dogs walked around the area by the factory. There is a lot of grass and trees there that they could sniff around at :-)

It was frost and a mist laid over the fields.

The buds on my nectarine is slowly opening. Can You see the light pink? That´s the petals. Now I have to protect them from the frost we have here every night. I really want a nectarine or two this year :-)

Yesterday when I was out walking, a little aeroplane flew over me. Nothing strange about that, we have a little airfield in the town. But suddenly it sounded a bit strange, like it speeded up very much. I turned around because I thought it was going to crash, But no, it started to do loops and other fun things :-) Sometimes it just flew straight up in the air until it didn´t make it any more and then it fell. It was really fun to watch and the pilot kept on for almost half an hour. I´ve heard that sound before but never been able to see the plane, but now I´m going to look after it every time I hears it again :-)

The leafs on the birches has started to come now.

But down by the creek it´s a bit colder I think, so not a leaf were in sight.




When I mowed here I stayed up late one night and then heard the most peculiar sound. It sounded like a goat making its sound, but in a tin can and even more strange, up in the air? I asked friends that knows more about nature than I do, but no one had ever heard a goat in a tin can up in the air. I knew that there were no goats in the village and if there been one I doubt that it could fly. But I could hear this goat every night for a whole week, then it dissapered. Next spring it happened again. I could clerly here a goat in the air. I stayed up late every night looking at the sky for that goat. Why did it sound like it stood in a tin can? and why on earth did it sound as it was flying? The third year I started to ask people on the internet and then someone answered, It´s a “Heavens goat” or more commonly called a “Common snipe” (Enkelbeckasin in swedish). This bird makes this noice when it is flying and then falls rather fast downwards in the air. The feathers then starts to vibrate and the sound is made :-) :-) :-)
Have a great day now, I´m going to!

I haven´t heard a frog this year, but this is proof that they still are here :-)

The maples are in bloom. This is as colourful a wild swedish tree gets, exept for the appleblossoms, cherry blossoms and the white flowers on the sorbuses. We really don´t have any flashy flowers on our wild trees.

Three years ago there weren´t any Wood anemones here at all, now they have started to fill the area like a white carpet.

It was a bit of a haze outside this morning, but the sun shines and it already quite warm ouside. It almost feels like early summer now.

My salary had not come into my account this morning as it should have, it´s pay day today. I know the company I work for has a tough time like so many others, but I didn´t belive they wouldn´t tell us if they didn´t have money enough to pay us. So I phoned my boss and wondered if he got his pay but he hadn´t checked that this morning. Then I phoned the owner and he just got the news that something had gone wrong at the bank. The company still had all our money on it´s account so now the bank employees had to manually transfere our salarys and that could take some time. As long as I know they are comming I´m calm :-)

The Wood anemone has started to flower in the forest now, but those I have here at home still needs a day or two I think. This is a flower everyone wants in their garden, until they have it :-) Spreads like the plaig :-) It can cover big areas in just a couple of years and is like white carpets on the ground.

It looks as the bank I use is going to make a historicly bad result this year. I´m not surprised at all. It´s a bunch of nut heads leading that bank. And it goes all the way down to the leaders in every single bank office. Still it´s only losses from the Baltic countries that makes the bad result, but soon the companies here in Sweden, that has problems already now, will start to fall and then my bank will follow like a well trained dog follows his master. The governement woun´t let it go into bakruptcy but in one way or the other it´s we costumers and tax payers that is going to pay for the incompetens of the leadreship of this bank. I think they should pay every nickel them selves at first, they get payed well inough for it. But they will probably get sacked even more rich afterwards.

I went to the store this morning actully remembering why I went there :-) I order four big sacks ( ten kilos each, 22 pounds)of dogfood there every month. It´s better to do so than that I come there and take all the dog food they have or that they might not have the kind I want for my dogs. They had gotten three bags of cat littre that were slightly broken, so they wondered if I wanted them for third of the price :-) Of course I bought them and that was really lucky cause I realised back home that I had no cat littre at all :-) But then something out of the ordinary happened. They packed what I bought in bags and then carried it to my car! That my friends doesn´t happen in Sweden ever. I remember when I got my right hip fixed and were using crutches and tried to get some things home from another store. No help, bu they were kind enough to let me take one bag at a time to my car while the rest was placed by the cashiers:-) :-) So now I´m in a good mood :-)

I tried to get a good picture of this fly some days now. The back of it looks like the back of a bumble bee, but the head is very different. Have no idea what it can be. It´s probably protected from predators just because of the likeness with th bumble bee.

Well it´s time to enjoy the warm and sunny day. Tomorrow I´ll be working again but I still don´t know with what. It should be big ventilation pipes to Volvo in Skovde, but those hasn´t arrived yet they say. They better leave a not telling me what to paint otherwise, because I´ve told them that I woun´t do anything if there isn´t a note there. This isn´t my ordinary job, so I have no idea what sorts of paint and colour it should be on the things. I can´t just guess and hope for the best :-) there´s no one else than me in the factory weekends You see. But the weather is going to be great all weekend so what does it do if I don´t have anything to paint? I can enjoy the weather instead :-) :-)
Have a great day now!

But I finally got at least one good picture of a bumble bee.

Some early flowering plants has started to give up for the year. Later in spring there will be big leafs here instead to gather strength to next years flowering.

A Brittish studie now blaims fat people to contribute more to the global warming than thin people, because their cars use more gasoline to transport them than if they had been thin. I wonder if I should get offended by that statement? I drive an old Vovlo 850 but it uses very little gasoline compared to other cars because I drive calm and careful. Is that something they have thought about at all? Or do they assume that we fat people drive cars that drink a lot of fuel and also always drives fast and recklessly? Well, studies like that only makes me laughe :-)

Another thing that made me wonder is what a swedish civil servant thought of one day. He thought farmers should pay extra taxes because the cows farted a lot. When they do the let go of big amounts of greenhouse gases and there fore destroys our climat (he thought). What he didn´t think of was that those gases was a part of the natural cirkulations in our atmosphere and therefore didn´t contribute to the changing climat. Usually when someone comes with a suggestion like that they turn out to be vegans that hate any use of animals for our consumption. How it was in this case I don´t know, but I do know that there are much worse things than cows that farts :-)

This morning it was Teodor that followed us on our walk. He has the idea to run ahead ten meters and then lie down on the ground wanting to be pat on the tummy. It doesn´t matter if it´s mud on the ground :-)

A couple of days ago I bought a low.price brand toothpaste. I don´t know why really because I always by the same brand outherwise. But I was wondering around in the store trying to remember why I went there in the first place. I know I should have a note with me, but when I write one it´s always still on my zink when I come to the store. Like last time I was there. I wondered around not knowing what I was supposed to buy. The people that works there knows what I´m like so they came with a lot og suggestions to what it could be this time :-) So I bought some sausages if it was something dinner like I needed, some rice, bread, vegatbles, milk and sourmilk with raspberry taste, soap and this toothpaste. When I came home I realised that it was catfood and toilette paper I really needed :-)

But anyway, this toothpaste. It has the taste of old chewing gum, You know when You have chewed on it for a long time and there´s really no taste left. It also gives an urge to brush the teeth one more time just because of that taste :-) One doesn´t feel directly fresh in the mouth afterwords :-)

I heard something rather fun (for me) when I listened to the answering service on my mobile phone yesterday. There was this little girl that absolutely refused to go to bed and she had a hell of a tempar I can tell You :-) This little girl wouldn´t go to bed no matter what :-) I listened to it for over six minutes. I could hear that the phone must be in a pocket or something because the sound was a bit subdued. I couldn´t really hear the voices of her parents so I didn´t understand who they were. After a while I found the telephone number in my mobile phone ( unanswered phone calls) and then sent a sms to my boss asking if his doughter, four years old, might have had a bad temper the day before :-) For some reason my number had been dialed from his phone by accident and everything was recorded by the answering sevice :-) :-) :-)

The sun shines outside and it´s time for me to take a cup of coffee on the kitchen stairs. They say we are going to get summer temperatures for a couple of days now, warmest when I´m working this weekend of course, but that doesn´t matter as long as the sun shines :-)
Have a great day now!

More and more of the later spring bulbs are getting flower buds now. This is what we call "Kings field lilly" , one of the english names is "Checkered Daffodil". This one is going to get a white flower

and this one will be checkerd coloured.

A fire is burning in the stowe, my dogs are sleeping in my bed (making it full with doghair and sand :-) ) and my cats are out chasing mice and rats (at least I hope so, but with my luck the´ll be best friends with them instead :-) ). Outside the clouds are hanging low and it looks as if it could rain any minute now. But it has looked that way all day now, so I don´t think it´ll start raining at all.

One of my tree paeonys has five big buds now. Lets hope that neither me or my dogs will brake it this year :-)

They say that the waterlevel in the lake is very low, but that´s kind of strange, because if one goes on the fields here there is so much water in the ground that one starts to sink if one stays to long at one spot. The ditches isn´t espesially well kept here, so perhaps that´s why the water don´t reach the lake?



I got a plant via mail today, a Shortia uniflora. This one gets the most beautiful flowers. Garden nutts like me send flowers to each other all the time, if we can´t meet of course. We do sow a lot of seeds every year and finally we get to many plants so we have to det rid of them somehow. So we have "Plant exchange days" a couple of times every summer. Then we take what ever we have to much of or plants we for some reason doesn´t want to have any more. Plants as I see as weed, can be gold worth for someone else. Somehow we all comes home with more plants than we had with us :-)

Now it grows beside one of my rhododendrons.

There´s a fotball/soccer arena in Gothenburg (Nya Ullevi) that started to rock when Bruce Springsteen had a concert there many years ago (1985). Perhaps it liked the music :-) The problem was that the audience danced and Gothenburg is built on blue clay and the music and dancing made the whole arena to start to rock :-) People who saw it says it looked fantastic. It costed millions to repaire the arena after that :-) and to make sure it wouldn´t happen again.

This is a Corydalis solida (we call it Nunns wort in swedish). This spreads like crazy all over the garden and outside too :-) But it´s a gentle weed and lets other plants grow beside them. The colour can be everything from bright red to durty purple.

and sometimed half the flower can be white.

Now they have built a smaller soccer arena (called Gamla Ullevi (Old Ullevi) for some strange reason) just beside the other one, on the same blue clay of course. Now neighbours to the arena has started to complain, not about the loud noice the fans make, but their homes has started to rock when the home team makes a goal :-) The fans are jumping around when the goal comes and the vibrations from the arena makes peoples book cases move in the houses next door. Lamps are swinging around and some people thought it was a strong earthquake the first time it happened :-) So now they probably has to repair the new arena and stabilise the ground again :-) Wonder why they didn´t think of that in the beginning :-)
Have a great day now!