It was a slightly cold morning, but only a few thin clouds and no wind to talk about. Perfect for a long morning walk with my dogs.

We took our first long walk after Erna got snake bitten two weeks ago this morning. It was a rather cool morning and birds sang on our way to the creek. The boys ran around laike crazy sniffing on every spot where an animal had made a mark. Erna, old as she is took it a bit slower but still were way ahead of me. At the moment she doesn´t seeme to have any problems, but this is the time when things can start to happen.

The road to the creek and later "the forbidden forest". That´s the only part of the forest around here that I never enter because I can feel that I´m not welcome there.

To walk in high grass and in the forest in the mornings means that one is soaked when comming home. This time of year we have a lot of dew in the mornings, normally the sun dries it up during the day. But now when temperature slowly is dropping the suns heat isn´t enough. Like yesterday when I mowed my lawn. Even if the grass was rather short, it still was wet even in the afternoon. But that dew can normally help in periods when it doesn´t rain that much, the water slowly drops down the stems of the plants soaking the surface of the soil.

Euphrasia stricta ( I think, there are a couple similar species). We call it Eye comfort in swedish.

Lythrum salicaria, Purple-loosestrife.

There were water in the creek, but I don´t think I´ve ever seen it with so little water.

The magpies still gets into my kitchen steeling catfood :-) But now they are a bit more careful to watch after my cats before going in. Yesterday I heard them flying in to land on the table, but then suddenly start to scream loudly. Bertil had been hiding ouside behind the kitchen door and when a magpie flew in he took the chanse :-) Well he didn´t catch any magpie, but I think he at least scared them a bit. I never had magpies in my garden before because my old cat was a master catching them. So they felt it was easier to get their food elsewhere. Magpies are funny and intelligent birds, but they do make a mess when being in my kitchen and they take all food from smaller birds in winter, so I would prefere if they were elsewhere instead.

It was almost impossible to find the path in the beginning. They have left many smaller trees after the cutting of the forest so we had to go out from the path for quite a distance sometimes.

But a bit in to the path it was so much better and easier to walk. Next year I woun´t have any problems walking even on the beginning of the path because of my hip surgery :-)

The world cup in athletics has started in Berlin now. I don´t expect to much from our swedish athlets though. many have been injured for long times and others isn´t just up to it to be honest. But they are all better than I am anyway :-)

But I will expect a lot of them when the classical "Finn struggle" starts some weeks after the world cup. As I told You before that competition is something we do take very seriously :-) It doesn´t matter if the rest of the world is better in athletics than we are, as long as we beat our neighbours the Finns! :-) Cheating has been common from both our countries :-) There has also been disqualifications of all persons in one running race too :-) We truly love our neighbours, but during the Finn struggle we simply must win, the finns of course feels the same :-) :-) The competition between our two countries in athletics take place every second year in Sweden and every second year in Finland. This year the competition is held in Gothenburg. I must go and see it live before I die one day :-) I think You can read about this on Wikipedia too.

Lagurus ovatus, Hare´s tail grass or Bunny tail. Originally this grows in southern Europe but nowdays it can be found on lots of places. We have lots of it in my village. It´s an annuel and if You like decorating with dried flowers this one is perfect to use too.

Blue bells.

Calluna vulgaris, Heather. The grounds isn´t really good for heather around here, but we have a few of them anyway.

I started the pond pump and filter this morning too. There is just one more thing I have to buy though. I can´t find the english word for it though. But it works like this: If the cable gets broken somewhere on the way a kind of fuse makes sure that wet grass doesn´t get electric. That has happened and people has died because of that. So until I have such a thing I have to make sure no animal or I are walking around in the grass if it´s wet.

Now I only have to wait to see how long time it takes until the water gets clear. I think it´ll take some days before seeing any result though.

Clouds are now covering the sun and they have predicted rain this afternoon/evening. Well, I have a murder mystery book to read by Stephen Booth and Yesterday I bought a book by Stephen King, The Dark Tower4. I didn´t know about the three though. I hope it´s good reading anyway.

Have a great day now!

I´ve started the pond pump and filter now. As You can see the hoses are to long but since I can´t see where the pump is going to stand I have to adjust that later.