The day started rather nice even though it was -6C (21,2F) but there was no wind so it didn’t feel that bad when I let the dogs out after we’d woken up. The sun rose and it felt even better until the wind started to blow. A bitter cold wind that made its way in to the bones in my body.
Today the wind blew from north-east and it’s the only time it actually reach my cottage and garden (well it reaches from east as well). We were mostly in the forest while having our walks so in there it was quite a lot better. Still not an animal moved and not birds made any sound, not even the Jays.
So we’ve done very little today just because of the wind. The most exiting thing I did was to make pancakes 🙂 🙂 Also I ate the last of the christmas food and that’s always a relief to be honest. Holiday food is always great the first two days but after that it’s just annoying to have to continue eating it 🙂
No mice in the box trap today so perhaps I’ve now thinned most of them out 🙂 I will not shout hi before I crossed the creek though (old Swedish saying). It might just be that they now learned that no matter how tasty coconut flakes are it still isn’t worth trying to reach them 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I think I’ll read a book or perhaps surf the net. To be honest, how often do You get out on the internet without having something already planned? I rarely do because no matter how much info there is about frogs in Africa or monkeys in Asia or what ever I rarely just go out and search for anything unless I really need to know about something special. I could do like that back in the days we had dictionaries, just open a book and read the first subject on a random page and then just keep on following references in that text 🙂 🙂 It was actually quite fun and I did learn a lot by doing so 🙂
Sunny and cold weather is back again. I do like the sunshine of course but the cold temperatures could stay away. Well at least we can see all the stars at night when the sky is clear and we do see a lot of stars here. I would be able to see even more if I went out to the bog where there’s very little light pollution but being lost when walking at a huge bog when it is cold isn’t that funny 🙂 🙂 🙂 plus the risk of walking in to wild hogs or moose is a bit too big I think 🙂
The wind blew like crazy yesterday but like so often it didn’t reach the garden and we were quite protected in the forest when being out walking. They weren’t that lucky in the northern parts of this country where , from what they say on the news, three people died, lots of trees fell and even some roofs blew away. Norway was hit even worse but I don’t know how much damage happened there. Our storms are usually much more worse when our winters are warm so I guess we should be happy about it getting a bit colder again 🙂
Nothing much has happened here but I’ve had my old Peugeot standing outside my neighbours garage, it was supposed to be a spare part car for the Peugeot they already have. Well he didn’t take much but instead started to wonder about fixing it instead because the huge Volvo they have drinks petrol like an alcoholic on a bad day so today we wrote the papers so that he now is the owner of it 🙂 One less thing costing money that I don’t have to think about 🙂
Lately some scientists have warned about the Gulf Stream will get weaker and that it would mean the climate up here in Scandinavia would change towards the extreme during winters. Well it turns out that it isn’t happening. They’ve studied the force of it for thirty years now and if anything is happening it’s the opposite. The melting ice from the northern parts of Greenland seems to drop earlier and therefore instead strengthening it. Reporters from Swedish Television made a visit to those studying the Gulf Stream and they said that they haven’t noticed any weakness of the stream and since I do truly dislike winter I really enjoyed hearing that 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have the last cup of tea for the day right beside me. It would be nice to have a cookie or something with it so I might make myself a mug cake after this. I have lots of fresh ginger so I might have some in it. I was quite old when I first tried fresh ginger and was really surprised over how different it tastes. I don’t have any citrus fruit otherwise I would have put some of that in it.
We woke up to a foggy world and the weather reports said fog all day long. I knew the hunters wanted to hunt for hare today but guessed since it was so foggy that they wouldn’t. It is really difficult to cook hare so it actually is edible so to sit in fog not being able to see what they hunt would be a waste of time and also if they would shoot anything it could just as well be their hunting dog. It happens way too often and beside traffic it is actually hunters that are responsible for killing more dogs than any wildlife would do.
Still they came for some reason and stayed for much longer than normal so I was quite annoyed the whole time 🙂 🙂 They sort of destroyed our morning just by coming here and make us have to stay at home. Yes I could go out but why risk ones life for not being able to take a walk in the early morning 🙂 🙂 🙂 They did however leave before the sun set so we did manage to have a walk anyway. For a couple of times it even looked like the sun would make an appearance anyway, it was close but never happened.
I sat  in front of the tv watching Tangled and suddenly remembered that when I was a child we had all those storied the Grim brothers had written down (and H.C. Andersens stories as well) I read them so often that they in the end fell apart. So I went online and now a book with all stories written down by the Grim brothers is on its way home to me 🙂 Those stories usually don’t have the happy endings Disney show us and it’s the same with H.C. Andersens books, the little mermaid has a horrible ending but I guess it wouldn’t be a great thing to show in a children’s story now days 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really need to find Andersens stories too 🙂
I’ve had lots of christmas leftovers today and still managed to squeeze down lots of rice porridge 🙂 I’ll have the rest of the porridge as breakfast tomorrow. Now however I’ll have that last cup of tea for the day and later on watch On the Tracks on tv. They say we’ll have fog in the morning tomorrow but most of the day will be sunny and warmish 🙂 By the way! Do You remember that I told You about finding two kernels/ seeds in the Kaki fruits (the Asian relative to the Persimmon fruit)? I put them in plastic bags in damp paper and then in to the fridge. Both have managed to germinate! So now I’ve planted them in pots and placed them by the kitchen windows 🙂
It was still rather cold when I went out with the nights catch and also a bit foggy but the fog was gone by the time we went on our morning walk. The cold weather was still on though but that is changing now. The snow has already started to melt and my guess is that it will be gone in a few days. After that however it’ll be pretty cold again so in a way it had been better if the snow had stayed for a while. Then again we might get more since winter isn’t especially old yet.
Alma behaves very different each time we’re out on a walk, yesterday she was a pain for a while but today she behaved so good that it surprised me. Almost no whining or pulling the leash!! I always wonder in what way she’ll punish me the next time we’ll be out for a walk 🙂 🙂 Since that walk was so amazing I’m almost afraid to go out with her tomorrow morning 🙂 🙂 🙂
If yesterday was the big day at christmas here today is the day people to other relatives meeting the same people they met the day before and tomorrow (boxing day is a holiday here) will be much the same but in a different place 🙂 🙂 Also the food will also be the same, Ham, pickled herring, beetroot salad, herring salad (truly one of the most horrible things we can eat, I’d rather eat pigs feet again than having herring salad 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) and if there is any rice porridge left we’ll make risalamand as dessert, lots of whipped cream is mixed with the porridge plus in my family also lots of berries mixed in to it, some prefer tangerine wedges.
I didn’t make any porridge plus I’m not a fan of too much whipped cream so I just had leftovers from yesterday and since I bought so much of the christmas food it feel like I’ll have leftovers for at least a week 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will however make rice porridge tomorrow 🙂 After all it is often called yule porridge over here. I had planned to make an oven omelette and cover it with a mushroom stew but I can do that for new years eve instead, I like that because I don’t feel full for several days after eating that 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I actually have the cup beside me 🙂 No more food today though. I’ll actually watch tv tonight, the Swedish version of Task Master, the Christmas edition 🙂
So the important parts of Christmas, or Jul as we call it, is over. I’ve baked gingerbread and failed something spectacular 🙂 🙂 🙂  It’s like eating hard bread and at first they don’t taste much but after a while the mouth is burning, I think there’s just to much ginger in them 🙂 🙂 Still they go down with lots of cold milk 🙂 After that I grilled the ham and had the first slices on a couple of vörtbröd sandwiches 🙂
After that I went out with the catch of the night and guess who had returned for a fourth time? Yes the mouse with the short tail. This time however it was in a bad shape and it didn’t make the trip to where I now let them out again. I guess it takes just too much energy for a small yellow-necked mouse to do those long trips, especially in snow and cold weather. I went back for the dogs so we could have our morning walk.
More snow had fallen during the night and it continued to do so until at least noon. Small tiny flakes so it didn’t add that much to be honest, just enough to cover our tracks from yesterday. Snowy days makes the world very quiet, especially since no one was out driving tractors or cars. We did hear a few birds tweeting and a couple of ravens as well. So when one suddenly hear three big moose running in the forest it will be a bit stressing 🙂 🙂 🙂 The best thing is just to stop and hope they don’t run over you 🙂 🙂 We didn’t see them this time but running moose in a dense forest do make a lot of sound 🙂 🙂
I had a christmas lunch around 1 pm ad it feels like I won’t have to eat anything more this week 🙂 🙂 I didn’t think it was that much but christmas food is anything but light 🙂 I napped in my recliner for a while before Donald Duck and his friends celebrates Christmas (The Wonderful World of Disney). We’ve seen this hour long program at 3 pm every year since 1960 and we know most of it by heart now. It is actually one of the most popular reprograms we have here in Sweden and even though they sometimes makes changes in it we don’t care, not as long as they don’t touch Ferdinand the Bull. Last time they tried to do that and show the ugly duckling instead the complaints were so many that they showed him after the original program and is back again since then 🙂 We Swedes can tolerate a lot but not that 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve had a few of my gingerbreads with lots and lots of cold milk and now I’ll skip the tv and read some book instead and I doubt I’ll have anything more to eat. I will however have that last cup of tea but that’s it.
They said the chance/ risk, depending on how one look at it, that we in southern Sweden would get a white christmas was slim to none, so I wasn’t especially surprised when I let the dogs out this morning that we had snow on the ground  🙂 🙂 🙂 Also it continued to snow for quite some time and the temperature has dropped so we will have a white Christmas here this year.
I had a parcel waiting for me at the grocery store in Gudhem so I decided that it was best to pick it up before we went out on our morning walk. I had ordered an aquarium book from 1942 so that I would have something to read this christmas plus the fact it is so old that I would be able to read about cold water fish people since long has forgotten about 🙂 I had hoped to find shredded coconut as well because I had forgotten to buy some when I went to the store yesterday. There’s nothing mice seems to like more than shredded coconut. Unfortunately they didn’t have any but it did remind me of potatoes when I saw the last two bags they had 🙂
A sort of a second flowering 🙂It is actually quite hard to see these huge animals as long as they stand totally still.
This morning the box had trapped three mice! This time a definitely recognised one of them. Some time in its life it had lost a part of its tail so it was easily recognisable. I went out with them before I drove to the store. We went out on our morning walk as soon as I came home and walked much the same way as when I released the mice. We passed the last little field before entering the forest and something caught my attention. I didn’t see them at first but then I saw them, three moose! One big cow, one calf and the third too small to be an adult moose but still too big to be a calf. I’ve seen them before a couple of times and felt happy that they’ve survived the hunting season so far.
The dogs didn’t see them but they understood they were somewhere near 🙂 I must say that Alma has come a long way, just a few months earlier and she would have gone berserk 🙂 🙂 For once she actually started to follow the scents on the ground instead of screaming like obsessed and whining like she has gone crazy 🙂 🙂 We didn’t see any more big animals but both Alma and Malkolm kept their noses to the ground for the entire walk 🙂
I have actually been rather active today because when we came home again the first thing I saw when I went down in the cool cellar was that the trap had another prisoner. Well if that mouse with the short tail come here again I just as well get a cage and have it as a pet 🙂 🙂 🙂 It wasn’t the least stressed to see me, rather the opposite to be honest 🙂 🙂 It had taken it slightly more than two hours to find its way home again 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I just took the trap and walked even further away before I released it again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was worried for a while that I for some reason had all forest mice and yellow necked mice in the entire area but I think I’ve just caught the same ones all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂
After that I made the gingerbread dough. The recipe said that I should have agave syrup and coconut fat but since I’m not a millionaire I used normal syrup and butter. The dough will rest until tomorrow morning before I make the cookies. I will however not be without anything nice to eat today because my neighbours daughters (six and three years old I think) wanted me to have something as a christmas gift, so they made me some fudge and butterscotch to have during christmas, well it won’t last that long because it was delicious 🙂
After that I baked two loafs of Vörtbröd, they came out rather nice, I and the dogs have already tried a couple of slices with a christmas cheese 🙂 So tomorrow I’ll bake the gingerbreads and also grill the christmas ham. I bought a small already cooked one because now days we really don’t use the water it was cooked in as they did back in the days when every calorie one could get was important. They used to heat it up and dip stale bread in it the get up all the fat still in the rather salty water. It has never been a favourite of mine so I buy ready cooked instead.
It is time to have that last cup of tea for the day and of course some of the christmas candy my neighbours gave me 🙂 Tomorrow is our big day of christmas and if I get some time over I’ll write something here 🙂
I knew it was going to get colder but I didn’t know it would be that cold. the temperature dropped down to -7C (19,4F) this morning. The fog was gone though and the sky clear so I forgave the cold weather since it would mean sunshine 🙂
One funny thing with fog and below freezing point temperatures is that the ice created on the windshields on the car is just as good protecting against bullets like kevlar is 🙂 🙂 🙂 I really don’t like the motor running so the heat will soften the ice in but even that heat had problems thawing that ice, so I removed as much as I could and drove to the edge of the village. There I stopped and removed most of what was left but it still wasn’t easy 🙂 🙂
So I guessed right, there was almost no traffic on the roads, the big ones were ice free but the smaller ones in the forest was anything but. I wasn’t in any hurry though so I just drove as fast as it was possible and still have a chance to stop if any animals would jump out on the road. Usually they stay calm when it is this cold though but one never knows. The only wildlife I did see today was the two tiny mice I caught in the box trap 🙂 🙂  I’ve decided to move the peanut bird feeder from the kitchen window because I know they will climb up to it and eat the peanuts and that’s ok as long as they don’t walk inside again like they just had bought some takeout 🙂 🙂 🙂
I had written down a list what to buy in the grocery store and even remembered touring it with me but I still wasn’t prepared for how much it was or the price to be honest 🙂 🙂 I bought big packets of most things because it will most likely cost even more in the long run if I buy the smaller packages. Plus I would have to drive many more times to get what I need so I’ll have to add the petrol price as well and even though the petrol price is really low here right now it still costs a lot to drive shorter distances since the car barely gets warm enough to work effective. I will at least not starve during christmas and new years eve 🙂 🙂 🙂
So I wished every one in the store a merry christmas (or as we say a good yule) and continued to my old working place and wished those who worked a merry christmas as well. There were more people working today than I thought it would be but I think everyone has taken tomorrow off and most likely till after new years eve. I don’t think I’ve ever worked during christmas time ever. Normally I have stopped working at December 22 and not come back to work until after the 6th of January. I always saved a week of vacation and the rest of the time I used the hours I’ve saved during the year.
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I had planned to bake a couple of loafs of bread today but it takes such a long time so I wouldn’t be in bed until midnight and that’s way too late for me so I’ll bake them tomorrow and I’ll make some rice porridge in the slow cooker at the same time, it is after all our christmas porridge (and also the porridge we give to the yule gnome at christmas 🙂
Yesterday they said on tv that we would have fog all day today and usually they’re wrong 🙂 Not today however, fog all day and some time the sun even managed to shine through. No hunters out either so we managed to have rather nice walks today.  It is supposed to stay well in to the afternoon tomorrow but the temperature will drop below 0C (32F) so the roads will be slippery.
I’ll drive to my old workplace tomorrow to wish those few that will be working a merry christmas. Most people in the industry and offices will take a winter vacation now, most likely two whole weeks so even if I’m out on the roads before it gets bright and the roads most likely will be slippery I’ll probably drive on them alone 🙂 I guess the worst traffic before christmas is done by now so perhaps not so many people will kill themselves in the traffic due to stress.
So finally the tide has changed, days will finally start to be brighter, well at least longer because so far the winter has been long, grey, dark and murky. To be honest our winters usually are all those things and I can just say that I’m happy that we at least haven’t had any snow to speak of. It looks like our winter comes later and later every year, now it starts sometime in late February and usually ends around late March. I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t come at all 🙂 🙂
It took two days until another mouse was caught in the box trap. I released it early this morning, came home and set it up only to find a new one sitting in the trap after an hour 🙂 🙂 🙂 My neighbours kids think I’m so exciting because they are allowed to look at the mice in the travel box 🙂 Today their friends were over for a visit and those kids loved to see the little mouse too 🙂 🙂 🙂 The ones caught now are a different species though, the previous ones were the yellow necked mouse but the latest ones are a slightly smaller close relative the Wood mouse.
What I don’t want to catch in then trap is the Bank vole, perhaps even more cute than the mice but it can also carry a nasty disease called vole fever. It starts like a slight cold but if one is unlucky it can kill humans. This year there’s a warning for people living in the northern parts of this country that it might be vole fever they have instead of a cold because these last years have been good for bank voles (well every little rodent one can find actually) so the risk of getting vole fever is really high now. We do have them here as well but they are more common further north.
It is time for that last cup of tea and later on I’ll make some rose-hip soup as well. Nothing on tv to watch besides the news so I’ll probably read a book or surf the net for the rest of the day 🙂
I haven’t caught any mouse in over a day and a half now 🙂 I won’t say hooray yet because since I do have a sort of semi wild garden there’s most likely more just waiting to come in 🙂
I was lucky to get a photo of our smallest bird, the Goldcrest. It rarely sit still for more than a second 🙂
We couldn’t have our morning walk today because the hunters came, I doubt that they had any luck though. So I was even late with getting the sod far last mouse out of the cottage. It didn’t suffer because I put in plenty of food before it was caught 🙂 So cross Your fingers and hold Your thumbs for good luck so none of the rest out there decides to move in 🙂 I guess it’s useless to hope but anyway 🙂
Dark and murky all day long, ok the day isn’t that long anyway 🙂 Only less than 23 hours left before it oh so slowly turns towards longer days again. In the beginning the sun will rise slightly later though and at the same time set later as well but in a few days even the mornings will turn again. No one will notice much for quite some time though but just knowing make life better 🙂 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll have my vitamin D at the same time. I do still get a lot of vitamin D anyway since I can be outside in the daylight despite not having any sun but that’s not really enough anyway.
Dark and grey again even though we almost could see the sun for a few seconds in the afternoon 🙂 We were supposed to have rain but it missed us. Perhaps a good thing because there’s so much water in the creek now that if we would get lots more it would overflow.
I could see a few ravens in the sky but no other bigger animals, they tend to stay where it is calm and today was nothing but. We did however see a big forest machine in the distance and the sound from it stressed Alma so much, she really doesn’t like strange sounds or any change what so ever. We managed to have a walk without her freaking out too much anyway 🙂
I realised how old I am now when I was on Reddit and looked at their different forums about aquariums. Back in the days when I was a kid I learned one way to have and keep an aquarium healthy and have never really changed my ways as it has worked well. Today having an aquarium is high tech! They fertilise the plants, use CO2 as well and they even use soil  and having soil in aquariums was something they always said was a big no no.
They also test for the, for me, most odd things like ammonium. Can’t remember that I ever had a problem with that, must smell horribly if that happens 🙂 🙂 I don’t however think necessarily were better back then but it sure was less complicated and less expensive 🙂 🙂 Anyway when I looked at those forums I started to remember all the old books I read until they broke and realised I don’t have any left and started to look on the net. So now I have two of those books I read and a third is on its way. These are of course old school because I’ll never start with any of that they do now days 🙂 🙂 The book that’s on its way is printed in 1938 so it’ll be interesting to see how things have changed since then 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. There’s absolutely nothing I want to watch on tv so I guess I’ll be reading those two books all evening long 🙂
We’ve had two really grey and dark days but today the sun suddenly appeared again (of course not while we were out walking) and it felt really strange 🙂 It didn’t give any heat away though so I guess it appeared just for show 🙂 Still we were in the garden enjoying it as much as we could. It is and has been very windy as well but no wind could reach us here in the garden.
Well I guess it’s a bit wrong to call it logs, they’ll grind it down and make pellets of them. So this is the place I let the mice free.
It was so dark for a while yesterday so I switched to black and white for a short while.
I’ve sort of started a new routine. Wake up and let the dogs out to the garden and when they’ve come in I go down to the cool cellar and check what the box trap has caught during the night. When it gets brighter outside I take the mouse/mice out to the forest in the travel box and let them out just beside a big pile of logs they haven’t removed yet and walk hone.
The clouds thinned out so I turned back to cooler again 🙂
When I come home I leash the dogs and out we go on our morning walk. They are really interested in the smells at that pile of logs 🙂 Alma seems to have understood that if she is quiet we will see bigger animals and two days ago we saw a big moose. Unfortunately just as it vanished in to the forest so I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. Lately I’ve driven to the different places where I can pick up parcels so we might have our walk after that instead, it’s usually brighter outside if we do it that way.
Thankfully I don’t have any more parcels waiting to be picked up so I hope I don’t have to go anywhere until Monday when I’ll visit my old work friends again and also do that last christmas food shopping. I need a small ham and mustard and I’ll also check what I need for making gingerbreads. It’s always nice to have some gingerbreads at christmas but the gluten free we can but are an abomination to the world but I’ve made this kind before and they are delicious but perhaps a bit strong spice-wise 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea and most likely a slice or two of the just a few hours old Vörtbröd I baked today 🙂
Rain all day long, not even the monster likes to go outside. It is warmish outside though but that doesn’t help much since we really can’t be outside anyway.
The travel cage for hamsters that I bought arrived today so I went to the grocery store in Gudhem to pick it up. They have so many parcels there now that one really can’t wait a day or so to pick it up, sort of annoying since I’ll get another one tomorrow. I’ll most likely have to go to the supermarket in Skara to pick up another one and that’s a bit annoying since that means I’ll almost go all the way back home just to continue 20 km the other way 🙂 🙂
We went out to the bog this morning and we could hear lots of animals moving around. I must say that both Alma and Malcolm showed their best behaviour all the way, even when we met a young Fallow deer buck. There was some whining and some pulling the leash but I don’t think they ever have behaved better than today 🙂 Before our morning walk however I went out to the forest by myself with the box trap.
It had caught a small yellow necked mouse but it was still so dark that I had to wait a couple of hours before I could release it. When it was time to do it another one sat in the trap as well 🙂 Rather big so I guess the small one was a female and the big one a male. There was no coconut flakes left so I guess the big one wasn’t out to get fed 🙂 🙂 This time I went further away in to the forest just to make sure they can’t find their way back home again 🙂
The Fallow deer buck has two tiny antlers, hard to see though. Must be around two years old.Now I don’t have to walk out to the forest with two cowards following me to release the mice, They can stay in this cage until it is time. I’ve put some peanuts in it so they have something to eat while waiting 🙂
It is time for that last cup of tea and I’ll also have the last of the ice cream. I’ll buy more tomorrow since I most likely will have to get that parcel at the supermarket anyway 🙂
The Cottage by the crane lake. 