Boooooring !

Three days since my hand surgery and I am already bored stiff. In between taking painkillers and piling my hand up high on pillows I am slowly going crazy. I can’t concentrate on my books and all my glossy interior design and gardening magazines makes me want to redo my home and garden. Now! At once! (Yes, you were right Angela!) I can’t stay in front of the computer for very long either which gives me all the signs of abstinence syndrome. Not being able to surf around and read all the great blogs out there gives me the shakes and shivers. Booooring! Can you hear the sound of Homer Simpson? Believe me I have him shouting in my head all the time! Thank god it’s only 14 days left before the bandage comes off.


Here comes a few words of wisdom :

Five things you can’t do with only one hand
Short commands on your computer
Open a box of chocolate
Open a bottle of wine
Eat with knife and fork
Take a bubble bath

So there is NO way I can drown my sorrows in wine, food or chocolates!
Big sigh!

Five things you tell your family that your doctor said you couldn`t do
-for six months time at least
Cook
Make the beds
Empty the dishwasher
Go shopping for groceries
Vacuum the house

You have to make the most of it while you can eh?



As I am writing this I suddenly feel ashamed. Here I am full of self-pity when I should be grateful. My bandage is going to come off and I will be completely recovered. Just think about those who are injured or impaired permanently. So my thoughts go out to all of you less fortunate than me.

Lots of love to you all!

Jeanette

Stormy weather

I am scheduled for hand surgery on Monday so this weekend was the last opportunity to do some gardening. The garden damage control had done the trick and the spring flowers had been left alone since our last visit. The amount of flowers looks very promising and I can’t wait to see what the garden will really look like in a few weeks time.

We decided to trim the hedge down to a little less Sleeping Beauty height. The weather could have been better though. A storm passed over the south of Sweden Friday night and it was still very windy when we drove down to the house on Saturday.

My husband, better known as“Bob the builder” did the trimming and my daughters and I had a tough time raking the branches together. Have you tried raking in head wind? Not easy I can tell you. Our hysterical laughter echoed over the garden when the branches kept flying back at us.

We couldn’t use the wheel-barrow because of the wind so we had to rake all the branches on to a tarpaulin and drag it to the compost heap. My youngest daughter got the best job ever. To stop the tarpaulin from taking of with the wind she had to lie on it while my eldest and I did the raking. After a day’s hard work we had completed about ¼ of the hedge….. So next weekend I will be works manager sitting in a chair resting my hand while supervising the work. Ha, Ha !

I am a bit nervous about the surgery. Or not really the surgery but the frustration that goes with it. Not being able to do anything creative for a while. My left hand will probably be in a bandage for 2-4 weeks! I am not really sure how I will cope. Not easy to wet- or needle felt with just one hand! Not easy to do anything with just one hand in fact. But I have stocked up on gardening Magazines and books so hopefully I will be all right.

Happy Valentine

I’ve always been rather skeptical to Valentine’s Day. Just another smart commercial stunt pulled of by merchants and shop keepers to empty your wallet. Much like Mothers day and Fathers day. That’s still my opinion most of the time but what if you see it from another angle. If Valentines Day make people full of love and friendship towards their fellow man then it’s a good thing right?

So I compromise.

I wish you all a wonderful Valentines Day full of love, warmth and happiness……but no gifts. Because the greatest gift of all is love both to give and receive.

Damage control

Do you remember this guy?

And all his friends? And how I went on and on about how cute they were? And how glad I was to have wild animals so close to the house? Well now I’m leaning more towards roast venison accompanied with a good claret. The bastards have eaten all the bulbs on my rhododendrons! My garden is surrounded by a hedge of Sleeping Beauty proportions. Two small gates used to secure the garden but they had to come down because my husbands gigantic lawn mower (do you remember that one too?) couldn’t get through. So down came the gates and in came the four legged party crashers munching away like nothing could stop them. And in fact nothing could!
So this weekend we wanted to do some damage control! Being a pacifist at heart I didn’t bring my rifle, but I brought a lot of wire netting instead.

The sun was out for the first time in weeks so while my husband was building a fence I was doing some damage control of my own getting rid of all the weeds in the flower beds and doing some general tidying up in the garden.

I enjoyed all the bulbs struggling to get up. I am looking forward to our first spring in the house.


It’s exciting to see what flowers I really have since I’ve only seen the garden during the summer.


When the fence was done and the bleak winter sun was setting we headed back for the city wonderfully relaxed and ready for a new week at work.

Bye, bye house see you next week.

And bye, bye roe deer see you in the woods

……not in the garden!

But if the fence doesn’t do the trick I have another ace up my sleeve! Wool! If you hang wool on the bushes the roe deer stay out. Apparently this works with killer slugs too. Make a small groove around your flower beds and fill it with wool then the slugs don’t want go near it. It’s worth a try isn’t it ?

Playing with colors

It has been a rough couple of weeks. Both my parents got seriously ill a few days apart and had to be hospitalized. They are home now and on the mend but suddenly I had to face the fact that my parents actually are deadly and it took a while getting used to. In fact I don’t think I’m there yet. I was in desperate need of some cheering up and to divert my thoughts away from all panicy feelings and fear of loosing loved ones. The remedy? Explosions of heartwarming colors and loud music. So I filled my house with tulips in bright colors, lit tons of candles , loaded the cd-player with old harp blues records ( the older the better), poured myself a glass of wine - red of course and got started.

Sketching in my journal.....

A red wet felted piece but what will I use it for?

Aha, a devilish week must of course result in a red devil cat……

Can I play with colors too ?

Did I mention that I am just crazy about tulips?

Just look at the beauty and the mix of colors !

Finished the day playing scrabble with my youngest daughter while the eldest went of to a disco. My daughters- the best heart warmers there is!