The village Tråvad, where I had my gardencenter is placed just beside the river Lidan. Some years ago one of the mothers in the village cleaned this place up and made a bathing place by the river. Since all kids bathed there anyway she thought it would be nice if they came home not only wet, but clean too. The place were really muddy then. Nowdays the visitors can buy candy and coffee/tea/soda with cakes , icecream, bunns and sandwiches there. They have also made two beachvolleyball corts there too and a soccer field. So most of the villagers are there when the weather is nice. (the water from the creek that I usually show pictures from here near my village finally comes in to this river)

They had a railway here too. The bridge is still there, but the trains are long gone. When the railway dissapered the village sort of got in to a long, long sleep that still goes on.

It´s a really nice summerday today. Not much sun, a bit of drizzle but no wind and rather warm. It was a pleasure to take the walk with my dogs after work today. The birds sang and all flowers smelled nice after the big rains.

People that went with the train threw out half eaten aplles through the windows when closing in to the station at Tråvad. Nowdays there are growing a lot of apple trees along the now gone railway. All are edible and some are really good, but one sort is delicious! It´s the best aplle I´ve ever eaten. I have been thinking about grafting some branches on my apple trees but I have no idea what sort pollinates this apple so I might just get flowers and no apples.

It´s such a beautiful place. The bath bridges hasn´t been put out yet though. The vegetation on the right is on a small island in the river. Mean geese usually nest there :-)

We´ve had some troubles with things dissapering at work for a while now. Doors has been unlocked when we´re comming in the mornings, but the alarm has not started. It´s just small things, yet. This morning I and my dogs went in to my boss office to prepare for working (I did that, my dogs just looked at me :-) ), when suddenly a large metallic bang sounded. It sounded like a pipe had fallen to the floor. I´m not stupid and has no urge to play heroe, so I stayed for a minute or two in the office and then got out to see what had fallen to the floor.





Now the island is on the left beside the picture.

Sword lilies are flowering on the island now. The sword lily is the only Iris that grows wild in Sweden. We had one more before but that is gone now. I think I´m going to have swordlilies in my pond.

I didn´t find anything that could explain the sound anywhere so it must have been the thief that dropped something on the floor while getting out of the factory. I called the owner of course and it seemes someone has copied two keys nearby because there was a bill sent to the factory a couple of weeks ago, but no one has autherised any copying what so ever. There were of course no signature on the bill. After talking to the owner I went to work as usual, but didn´t go inside without my dogs all day :-)

The other side of the bridge. This river is full with crayfish, something we love in Sweden.


Just beside the bridge is a great place to fish. I used to sit there warm evenings by my self if possible. But usually all kids in Tråvad found me :-) :-)

We´re actully getting some sun these comming days :-) But when midsummer comes the rain comes too. Midsummer is a very big thing here in Sweden and I´ll explain all about it later comming week. I myself doesn´t celebrate it, I think it´s sad when we´re slowly turning towards autumn and winter again. Why celebrate thet?
Have a great day now!

It´s raining outside. A calm gentle kind of rain that it would have been nice to take a walk in if it had been a bit warmer outside. But I can´t find an umbrella anywhere and my green rain jacket was chewed on by mice this winter, so I had to throw it away. The strong winds that the weather man talked about yesterday hasn´t come to us anyway, but it´s early morning yeat so who knows.

The White rose of Finland.

The "Dog crackers" grows en masse beside all roads. Strange name we have on them, I´ve never seen a dog eating them.

When the common Lilac stops blooming the Hungarian takes over. This one doesn´t spread as much as the common one.

Days like these are perfect to just take it easy and ready books I think and I would probably done so today, but my friends son graduated from High school yesterday and I promised to come today to celebrate him. They had many enough guests yesterday as it was so I told them I rather come today instead. It´s tough times to graduate now. There are no jobs to get and if there were any the demands they have to employ anyone is impossible to reach. For some reason You have to be young, but still have really many years of experiense in the area for the job. Those two demands are impossible to combien to be honest.

It was another thing when I graduated. They needed people everywhere. If one didn´t have all the scills they wanted to get the job, they simply told us that we could learn during working there. I was only going to work a year or two and then continue the studying. I wanted to be a vetrinarian and didn´t have the grades I needed to get in to that education directly. But after being at Volvo a couple of years I got used to the money and stayed there instead. So I never became a vet but I sure have payed so much by going to the vets with my animals I probably paid all their education instead :-) :-)

Iris setosa, Beachhead iris.

I think it´s thunder I hear from a far distance now, so I better stop writing.
Have a great day now!

We have a couple of different species of Butter cups here in Sweden and this one is one of the nicer that doesn´t spread that much, Ranunculus acris. It grows just beside the door to my wood shed/dog yard/garage. All pictures can be enlargend by clicking on them.

I was sitting and thinking about my comming pond projekt last evening and wondered about how much rubber carpet (or should I say rubber cloth?) I had to buy. I know there´s a mathematic formula that goes something like the length x width x depth times two and then some extra to the pond edges. So I went online and found an internet store (they have a regular store too) that already had that formula in the webbsite. So I wrote down the measurements I wanted and the site told me I needed 16 square meters of the carpet. But it sounds rather much to me. When I count it my self I would only need half that size. But I ordered from them anyway. If there´s to much of it I can simply dig another small pond somewhere else in the garden.

They´ll send my order already today, so with a bit of luck I´ll have the order here by Friday. The weather will not allow me to start digging until earliest next Monday and it´ll take some time to get it finished due to my bad hip and leg. But I´m in no hurry and have all summer to get it finished. Later I have to buy a waterpump with filter too, so the water stays clear all the time. Since I´m planning to have the pond in a rather shadowy place I´m not worried that it will be to much of algies in the pond. At least not as long as I don´t have fish or other animals (like frogs for instance) in it. I´ll show You pictures so You can se how things progress with it.

Some parts of my garden looks rather like somewhere out in the forest. I let the plants take care of them selves and they create the most beautiful combinations. Like here with yellow filled Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) and blue Forgetmenots.

This is a flowerbed I haven´t taken care of for years, so now there´s almost only weeds in it. But it´s sort of beautiful anyway. But I think I´ll take care of it this summer, nettles has started to grow there and they can be really difficult to get rid of.

A primula I got on a plants exchanging day last year. Rather beautiful don´t You think?

Aquilegias can look as they please, this one had a 'Nora Barlow' as one of its parents.

Oxeye daisy.

The single flower of the larkspur is really beautiful.

It was sunny when I woke up and we had some sun during our morning walk too. But now the clouds lay thick and one almost can feel how the rain just hangs in the air waiting to get permission to fall down. The heavy rains wount come until tomorrow but, the weather doesn´t invite to outdoor activities as it is right now either, even if it´s rather warm. It´ll be a day of lazyness and relaxing instead I think. It´s to early and warm to start a fire in the stove, but it´s never to early for a pot of tea.
Have a great day now!

The Welsh poppy, Mecenopsis cambrica, is said to be a weed but not here unfortunally.

The Oriental poppy, Papaver orientale is a weed however. I´ve tried for years to get rid of it and has now given up :-) It´s beautiful for a day or so and after that it´s just plain uggly. I know some people are jelaouse of me just because they want it but only dies for them :-)

Iris sibirica. Now some of my irises finally has started to bloom or have lots of buds.

Cold as usual this morning and the fog was thick on the ground.

When they cut down a lot of trees in the forest a year ago, they left all branches and smaller trees in big piles in the forest. Now a year later they have grinded it all down to chips and placed in containers. Much of it missed the containers and fell to the ground. So when I came home I met my neighbours shuffeling some of it up in to big sacks to use in their stove (it was their trees that were cut down last year) and when I passed they told me to grab some sacks in their stable and take as much as I wanted with me home.

Horse tail, but we call it Fox tail in sweden.

It´s going to be very cold, windy and rainy these comming days, so I got my car and filled four sacks that I brought home. Perfect, now I don´t have to buy fire logs when the weather gets bad tomorrow. Not that fire logs costs much, but if one can get it for free why not :-) and it can be difficult to find them now out of season. It´s going to rain a lot comming days, over 50mm ( two inches) and in some places the wind might even reach the force of storm. This is a typical swedish summer, but we usually have it a bit warmer than we have now. If we´re unlucky this weather will continue all summer.

Now I have enough to put in my stove when the bad weather comes. I have to be careful with it though, because it burns fast and gets really hot so if unlucky the stove can be damaged.

The magpies that nests in the crabapple tree by my dogyard has decided to raise their young ones in my garden. I can´t for my life understand why. They know I have two cats and three dogs here and it´s not the safest place for magpie younglings. The magpies let their young ones out from the nest quite early and they can´t fly that good so their easy pray for cats and dogs. So now there´s a lot of noice in my garden all day long :-) As soon a cat, a dog or I comes a bit to close they start to scream really loud. I hope they move soon, I don´t want to find a dead young one in my garden.
Have a great day now!

As usual Bertil followed us on the afternoon walk. He wasn´t to happy to walk around in this high grass. Fantastic what a small cat can miau loud :-)

Yesterday was a day well spent at work! Non not really, on the contrary acutully :-) They had as usual forgotten to leave a note telling me what to paint. So I painted the yhings I saw by the paint box. Shouldn´t have done that. I should have put on a different paint before the one I usually does :-) The things they wanted me to paint were in a different part of the factory, why they were there I have no idea. It would have been better to let me stay at home and still pay me :-)

To boldly go where no man gone before :-)

Well I have been here before but during summer I tend to avoid this high grass because of all tics there. But despite the last rains it has been so dry here that most tics are gone.

I had told them that we neded more air nozzels to the equipment that I can paint things with the same standard as car coating. It was supposed to be me that should buy these things, but instead they sent another man that didn´t know what I was talking about. Do I have to tell You that he bought everything that I didn´t want, but not the things we need :-) :-) :-)

Here comes some pictures that shows what´s going on in my garden right now!

The election to the EU parlament were yesterday over almost all Europe. Only about 43% of the population voted and in many countries the sitting governement were punished by the voters. Unfortunally a lot of rasist parties got a lot of votes and places in the parlament. We sweeds didn´t send rasists to the parlament, but instead we got a newly made party there instead. Pirat partiet or in english, The Pirate Party. They got loads of votes now when it became illegal to download music and mivies on the internet (for free, not those that we pay for). The party is also against a new law that will make it possible for the military to read all our mail and listen to all our mobile phone phonecalls. I´ll tell You about that disguisting law later. It´ll take some time for me to write that in english so You understand what I mean.

I´ve decided me for making a small pond. Now I only have to find a place nearby that sells the rubber carpet that will keep the water in the pond. Wouldn´t be a to big of a problem since it´s quite popular to make ponds over here.
Have a greate day now!