Showing posts with label Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nature. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Summer berries

JenniferTurns out that the woods right next to my apartment are filled to the brim with bilberries. Who knew?? Well, probably almost everyone except us. We had wondered about the odd unofficial looking paths leading through the woods... and now we know why they're there. They are so thick that on a warm day you can smell them.

(Bilberries, as you may recall from this earlier post, are pretty much the same as blueberries but not quite, and they grow on low bushes not high, so they're rather a pain to pick. But oh so tasty!)A few smultron (wild strawberries) are to be found also, not far from the bilberries.

 Meanwhile, our apartment complex maintains several currant bushes, both red and black. So the picture is is of my haul from a few day's ago, all of which was gathered within a 50meter walk from my front door. Life is good!

A funny little-kid-logic story about the red currants – the bushes are right next to a playground, and while I was sitting on the park bench picking a few, now and then tasting one, a grandmother-and-grandson and mother-and-son were in the playground. I heard the grandson ask his grandmother something about me, though I didn't catch it or her response. But I did clearly catch the next thing he said, which was "Perhaps they taste better when you're sitting down," which made both the grandma and mom laugh, and I had to laugh a little too. "He likes to pick them," his grandmother explained to the mom and me, "but he doesn't like to eat them."

Sunday, July 7, 2013

My birthday picnic outing

JenniferI took a long drive through the local nature reserve for myself to have a picnic on my birthday. Click on the photo gallery to see the pictures I took (too many), which are in order of the journey. I'd hoped to make a map of it but that function doesn't appear to be working at the moment... check back later, but I did want to get this up, before I forget. Most pictures are, sadly, unlabeled, but pretty. And I do at least list the picnic items on the picture shown to the here. Next up, a post about my birthday cake, which I had on the Fourth of July. It's a Whole Big Thing, as those of you who check Facebook may know...

Saturday, June 1, 2013

May flowers

It's been a really nice May – plenty of sun, but not too warm, often quite cool, which means the spring flowers have been hanging around longer than they otherwise might. Here's a few pictures. Why Google won't let me link to the whole album I don't understand, but I'll just put them up instead.
A wood anemone, eller vitsippor på svenska.

Two birch logs surrounded by vitsippor.

They also come in blue, more rarely, and are then
called blåsippor (and  I'll bet you can figure out why).

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Snow, Runes

JoeIt was a crisp, sunny day in the midst of a grim, muddy winter. We celebrated by tromping through a bit of horse pasture to see our pair of local runestones. It turned out to be a good time to see U 897 (pictured, on the right): the light dusting of snow was enough to bring out its rather faded lines but not enough to make the field impassable. In the summer, the stone is covered in dense vegetation; in the spring and autumn, the pasture is treacherously muddy.

Coincidentally, just yesterday morning I wrote up a bit on the other runestone in this same field.