Crayfish party – Swedish traditions part 2

Do you remember I told you about the Midsummer festivities? Well the crayfish party is basically yet another opportunity for the Swedes to drink aquavit and sing obscure songs. The difference is that this time we don`t do it around the maypole but decorate our houses with paper lanterns and wear silly hats. As you can see I am especially fond of the silly hats part…..

In Sweden we drink aquavit in small shot glasses and at the crayfish parties in my younger days you had to take a “shot” for every crayfish pincer you ate! That usually left you in a blurred state very fast or had you sliding under the table. Now when I am old and very mature ( ha, ha you wish) I do a lot less sliding under tables which also means that I feel a lot better the day after. My oh my you could have the hangovers from hell in those days. Not to mention waking up with strange bumps on your forehead from hitting the floor. LOL!

Yesterday’s crayfish party was of a much calmer variety and a family affair with my parents, uncle, my sister and my brother in law. We had a great time shooting air gun at balloons (before the aquavit mind you), eating an enormous amount of crayfish, singing and drinking the occasional aquavit.

I am quite sure that there was no sliding under tables but as you can see I have passed on the silly hat thing to the younger generation .....


Take care
Jeanette

Flying lesson

One of the great things with living part-time on the country side is that you get to live close to nature. Very close in fact…. The bad thing is wild hogs and rats. Mutant rats with beaver size teeth. Oh well, I was to tell you about the good part. A swallow and a wagtail both decided to use our stable as a kinder garden. The wagtails nest was directly on the floor under some old branches and I could literally follow the development from egg, to hatching, to tiny little birds. The swallows where up under the roof. I didn’t see much of them only heard them constantly cry out for food. The kids ordering in every day! Not a bad life.

Although I kept a close look on the wagtails I missed when they left the nest. But the other day when I stood in the stable painting some chairs the swallows flying lesson started. The mother sat up under the roof far away from the nest making encouraging tweet tweet sounds and the tiny little swallows sat on the edge of the nest looking scared. Then the mother (how come I think it’s the mother?) flew to a beam closer to the nest and called out again. Soon one of the babies made a wobbly flight to her beam and soon the others followed. Except one. He stayed in the nest holding on for dear life! The mother tweet tweeted, the brothers and sisters tweet tweeted but nothing happened. I could almost see him fiercely shaking his head and saying “no way! “.

His brothers and sisters soon grew tired of him and started to fly about in the stable more and more confident and crying out to each other “look at me, hey look what I can do”. But the mother didn’t give up ( can you see now why I think it’s the mother?). She kept on tweet tweeting from different directions moving closer and closer to the nest. And finally when she was almost next to the nest he flew! A very wobbly flight – mayday, mayday request permission to do an emergency landing – I rushed forward – crash - down on the ground he went. And there he sat. The entire afternoon! No tweeting what so ever made him move. He just turned his back on them all looking like he was saying “ Been there, done that, didn’t like it”. When I went in for dinner he was still sitting there.

- come on! It`s fun!

- No way!

Mayday! Mayday!

The next morning when I looked out of my bedroom window I started to laugh. On the lawn a tiny little swallow came walking very erect and looking very proud. I have never seen anything like it before. And do you know what? I am sure it was my swallow turning his back on the whole flying thing altogether!

>Don`t forget to fasten your seatbelts for take off and landing folks!

>Take care

Jeanette

Tales from the countryside

Kite + rape field = trouble ?
Emma, my youngest had bought a kite and wanted to try it out. Five minutes later she came running back in saying she had dropped the handle and now the kite in it’s string was caught way off in the rape field. Bob the Builder (aka husband) ran to the rescue and I went on with the dishes. With the dishes all finished and no husband or daughter back I went out too. Emma stood beside the rape field and I could see the kite flying in the distance but no Bob!
- Where is dad? I asked sounding confused
- In the field Emma promptly answered.
- Where are you? I shouted
- Here said a muffled voice deep within the rape and I could barely see the fingertips of his up stretched hand.
- And by the way, I give up! It’s hell in here!

What a wimp I thought. No way are we going to let that kite go to waste. How bad can it be anyway? It’s just rape for crying out loud! So off I went into the rape field. And boy was it huge! The rape was about a half meter higher than me and I measure 177 cm in my socks. (not that I was wearing just my socks mind you). I could use a machete right now I thought to my self feeling adventures as I was forcing my way through the field. After 100 meters the whole adventure in the rape field thing got pretty lame and after a 100 meters more it became down right scary. It felt like the rape was trying to strangle me. What if I fall? I thought building up an anxiety attack. I could be lying here until harvest time and no one will find me. My poor daughters I sniffled motherless at such a young age! Get a grip I said to myself and looked up to the sky and there it was – the kite! I got hold of the string and started my long struggle back towards the road following the happy sounds of my cheering daughter!

- Well done my husband said when I finally reached the road. I thought it was a bit scary in there.
- Piece of cake I said. What could possibly happen in a rape field? Of course not mentioning that I for a second or two had been ready for the loony bin.

Yesterday the farmer harvested the rape field and guess what came running out?

A wild hog! The farmer told us that a whole family of wild hogs lived in the rape field and that we should be very careful around them since they could be quite dangerous when protecting their young. Jeez Louise! and I had been walking about in that field! Had I met the male I would have been cut to pieces by his sharp tusks. So lesson number one folks:

Kite + rape field= trouble

Kite + rape field + wild hog= DANGER !

Take care
Jeanette

1 year Anniversary

On the 16: th of July we celebrated the one year anniversary of buying our country house. Over a nice meal and a glass of bubbly ( Ok I confess I had four….) my husband and I summarized what we had accomplished this first year. Here goes:
Master bedroom made from scratch meaning isolation, flooring, painting the walls and an extra door put in.
New isolation and flooring in the hallway.
Two rooms made into one big living room meaning tear down a wall, close the old a doorway with new bricks, painting the walls and sanding the floor.
New roof in the living room.
Installing a fireplace.
Take two kitchen cabinets down and put new doors on the rest ( my husbands most complained about project since there was nothing wrong with them accept that they were ugly. The ugly part being my opinion not his….)
Put up a staircase to the attic.
Installing a water heater – that was done on the anniversary day! Hurrah hot water in the kitchen!
A lot of gardening (weeding) can also be added to the list.

We have pretty much filled the goals we had for the first year and the goals for the second year is installing new electricity ( the old wires being dangerous) and installing central heating. Both of the above is planned for this autumn. Start building ( and finish) one of the rooms on the attic and hopefully begin on one or two more. And enjoy a lot more of the garden and do a lot less weeding!

This first year has been hard work but I don’t regret buying the house for a second. My house and the countryside is my paradise on earth. And in my ten year plan is already to sell the town house and move here permanently. Not in my husbands plans yet though but you just wait….he will come round in the end!

So you want a guided tour do you? A befor- and after tour of the premises? I`ll see what I can do.

First you have drive down the long and winding road. Sorry about the wheel barrow but I am mending the driveway…..

Welcome to my house. Come inside at your own risk. Remember - Builders at work!
( aka Bob the Builder - my husband)

The master bedroom to be

The hallway

One of the smaller rooms soon to be part of the living rom and home of the fireplace.

The kitchen. Just look at the ugly yuppie 1990 cabinet doors. Yuck!

Tadah.....drumroll......One year later

The master bedroom

The hallway with the stairs to the attic

The now much bigger living room with it`s fireplace

The kitchen.

Not quite finished. I am going to paint the rest of the woodwork white and add some pots in copper and old ceramic mugs ..... I still hate the white tiles but my husband want hear of having them down as well. I might try painting a blue pattern on some of them.... to make them look a bit older.

This is the view from my living room window!

Now I think you understand why I want to move here permanently!

Thanks for your visit and welcome back!

Jeanette

PS Boy, was that the longest post ever! Sorry! But you did ask for a guided tour.....

Clematis

The good thing about having a gardening quarantine is that you get to spend time in your garden actually doing other things than weeding. For me that means wandering about with my camera, stop and smell the flowers and enjoying the moment. Today it was the spectacular colors of my Clematis that caught my attraction……

Don`t forget to stop now and then and smell the flowers!

Hope you all have a lovely day

Jeanette

Quarantine

My cottage garden is very old fashioned. The old lady that owned the house was very fond of her garden and had a lot of old plants. When she died the house stood empty for more than a year and the garden was unattended. The former owner lived there only for 8 months and wasn’t interested in gardening. He had enough work with trying to make the house livable. So much work I am sad to say that his marriage broke up and they had to sell it. We bought the house in the middle of last summer and didn’t have much time for the garden either carrying on where the last owner left off and trying hard not to let our marriage go the same way. So this spring the garden was all shambles and in great need of some tender love and care. I have been working hard with cutting down hedges of sleeping beauty proportions, digging up nettles and giving the weeds a hard time.

In the process I found rose bushes, peonies, monk’s hood, delphinium, foxglove, lupines, lilacs and an enormous amount of Lily of the valley. I have been working so hard in the garden that I got a sore hip tendon. I tried long and hard not to pay attention to it and by doing so pretending that the pain would just go away. But when I couldn’t walk properly any more due to the pain I had to stop pretending… So I put myself in quarantine. Gardening quarantine! Last weekend I didn’t even allow myself to visit the house because I new that being there I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from digging or mowing the lawn or planting flowers, or….It wasn’t easy I can tell you because now is the absolute most beautiful time of the year! My youngest daughter felt sorry for me and said we could spend some quality time together instead.

I am very proud over my two daughters. They are both talented girls and the eldest (16) is very much in to fashion, great at doing make up and has a lovely singing voice. She is a natural when it comes to horses and wants to study natural horsemanship for Monty Roberts in America. The youngest (13) is the creative one. She handles a sewing machine and a drilling machine with the same forte and wants to be an inventive genius when she grows up. She got her own sewing machine last Christmas and this Christmas her highest wish was a dress form. And she got one! Now when we had some time on our hands she wanted to sew a summer party dress. Said and done. We bought a beautiful fabric and a pattern that in fact was a ball dress with a long skirt but we decided we could always shorten it. I was a bit nervous because the pattern seemed rather difficult but we were determined to give it our best shot. I cut the fabric and my daughter did the sewing. Furter down you can see the result!

My poor garden.

So sadly neglected. Everything is buried in nettles and weeds.

After some TLC.
I still want it a bit rough and unattended looking but now the peonies, monk’s hood, foxglove, lupines, and Lily of the valley has a fair chance of growing and blossom.


My daughters dress.
Not bad for a 13 year old! The dress form was a great help!

And now my hip is so very much better and my walk only has a very small limp to it! I hope to be able to do some more gardening in a near future! Or at least be able to bend down and smell the flowers…..

Hope you all have a lovely week!

Jeanette

PS My dear blog friend Betty Jo has moved her blog. Please visit the new one and take a peak at an amazing verandah and a lavender colored house.

Alien nettles?

I wanted a small vegetable garden at the country house. Not much, just some rhubarb, salad, herbs, strawberries and one or two raspberry bushes. I had the perfect spot. The former owner had already planted rhubarb there so why not carry on where he had finished.


The place was absolutely covered in nettles but what the heck you just pull them up by the roots right? It took me 10 seconds to realize that pulling them up was out of the question. They had roots as big as my index finger and grew half way to China.


Armed with a spade I started digging. And digging and digging. Six hours later I had removed all the nettles from approximately 15 square meters and I was beyond tired. I had been going on autopilot the last hour or so and my husband had told me twice already to finish for the day. But if I stopped now all my hard work would be unnecessary because they would grow right back. So before I could call it a day I had to cover the ground with black garden matting in order to kill the survivors. And because it was a windy day I had to secure it with stones. A lot of stones! Thoughts of a long hot soak in the tub accompanied with a glass of wine or two were the only thing that kept me going!

Another hour and fifty stones later I was done! My entire body felt like I had been run over by a truck! I had muscles aching I didn’t even know existed. And I used to work as a physical therapist so I should know! But I was happy and very, very proud. My husband had already left for town and I just couldn’t wait to get into my car and drive home too for my long longed for hot bath! When I opened the trunk I found the five sacks of compost soil I had bought on the way down and forgotten to unload !!!! I wept. And as I dragged them out of the trunk one by one I could swear my foul language killed the nettles that were left…….

When I came back two days later I ran to look if my hard work had been in vain. Wow! It looked just perfect. No nettles! But wait a minute weren’t there nettles everywhere else instead? Oh yes! All my flowerbeds where full of the little bastards! So now I have a war going on in my garden. It’s between me and the nettles and right now it’s 5-0. To the nettles! When ever I turn my back on them they seem to grow up again. Poof and they’re back! Could they be aliens? Are they in fact planning on taking over not only my garden but my brain as well? I have been feeling rather odd a while now having a strange urge to just give up and let the nettles take over. Is that a first step towards being beamed up to the Mothership do you think?

Paintjob and bird watching

This week has been hectic and the weekend became a busy one too. I had to work on Saturday and I don’t usually so I only had the one day for all the stuff I was planning on doing. The eldest daughter have been keen on a total makeover for her room for a long while now and by this weekend we had run out of excuses not to…. The walls and roof was to be painted white and she has a wooden loft bed and that was to be white too. I have told you before that paintjobs aren’t really my forte. My husband and me…well we have a very different view of how careful and methodical you go about things. I want a quick result and my husband wants durability. The first step towards divorce is when the room is to be covered in paper in order to protect it from paint stains. I mean he literally wants everything covered and if it was up to me to decide I would use a newspaper or two on the floor and just move them about! Okey, okey so I tend to slobber a lot and there is usually more paint on me than on the actual wall but hey I just want to get down to the painting and get it over with. The decorating part is much more fun. Luckily for me my husband and daughter had done most of the walls and roof by the time I got home from work so the bed was left for me to paint. My daughter wanted a shabby chick look and I am quite sure I managed the shabby part it’s the chick part I am not equally sure about. But she was happy and said it became just the way she wanted!

Sunday was a beautiful and sunny day so with the room finished we decided to drive down to the house and enjoy a bit of sun and a walk in the woods. I am born and raised in the city but spent a lot of my childhood exploring the countryside with my parents. They loved being outdoors and there was never any bad weather you just had to dress for the occasion. The joy of being outdoors has come back to me since we bought the house and I always try to get the opportunity to take long nature walks through the beautiful landscape that surrounds it.

All the woods are filled with wood anemones right now. My absolute favourite spring flower. So delicate and pretty. My eldest daughter was born in late april and when she was younger we always went picking wood anemones on her birthday.

The sun had warmed the wings of this butterfly and she was doing a wobbly first spring flight through my garden. Here she is resting on the lawn. Very soon my garden will be filled with them gracefully flying from flower to flower.


I am not very good at birds or animals but I am slowly learning. I always bring my camera and take photos of the birds I see. That way I can look them up when I get home.

Wagtail

Yellow sparrow

Blue Tit

Room with a view!

And what a view. "The windows" facing wood anemones on the slope down to the brook.

Nature is absolutely lovely this time of the year. In the wood the trees had tiny little bulbs and the early spring flowers covered every slope and meadow. The air was crisp and warm at the same time and the whole world smelled all fresh and new. The sky was a brilliant blue and the birds were singing. And when the sun was setting we went back to town – a happily married couple again! A spring walk in the woods can do a lot towards avoiding divorce due to a paintjob argument! Oh my, life is good!



PS I am SO enjoying all your comments. So much that I am doing a few consolation prizes in wirework…..so hang on until sunday

Happy Easter? No but a Merry Christmas!

In the south of Sweden (Skåne) were I live there is a big art exhibition every Easter. Local artists open up there homes and show their art and you can drive around for days and still find new and interesting artists to visit. We planned to spend Easter holiday at the cottage and to drive around and visit some of the artist that are close to our place. But Mother Nature wanted differently… We drove down on Friday. It was terribly cold but the sun was shining and my garden was full of spring flowers. The Easter holiday looked promising.

We have no central heating in the house yet but usually manage to get the temperature up to a bearable standard with portable radiators and the fire place. When we got there we had a depressing nine degrees Celsius in the kitchen and the bedroom was so cold just thinking about sleeping in there made me frostbitten. My Easter spirit was sinking fast….But what the heck…..if the Eskimos manage who am I to complain. So we ate in front of the fireplace and went to bed dressed in long johns, fleece sweaters and my eldest daughter even wore here wool hat and mittens. Tomorrow was bound to be much better right! You wish!

During the night a snowstorm blew up and we lay close together shivering and listening to the wind howling and the windowpanes rattling.

When we looked out of our bedroom window the whole world was white....

And we had four degrees in the kitchen so in the wee ours of the morning my husband and I got up and started packing and as soon as it was daylight we hit the road. We got out in the last minute. Half an hour later the roads were impassable. Luckily for us the newspaperman had just been around delivering the morning paper to our neighbors so we could follow in his tracks until we reached the main road back to Malmö. The closer to town we got the less snow we saw and when we reached Malmö there was no snow at all. We almost felt we had dreamed it all! It’s funny how it can be such a huge difference in the weather just 60 kilometers apart.

But I got to see some art anyway. Natures own art!

And I spent the rest of the Easter holiday in my nice and warm city home lying under a blanket reading and eating chocolate. Life could be worse I suppose……

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.

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 ?