Sun shining, temperature a little above freezing point, red ribbons and Christmas decorations inside and outside – there is an atmosphere of what is soon to become Christmas Eve, the great celebration day here in Sweden.
I hope you will all have a Christmas holiday with lots of peace, stillness, mindfulness and joyful meetings with nature in this freezing season. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
When I was a small kid, I lived in the north of Sweden. Wintertime we kids used to compete between families on how to make the most beautiful snow lantern. Today I had a day off work, and the snow held just the right quality to make snowballs – so I decided to make a snow lantern, grown-up version.
I used the summer bird bath that I had long ago stored away for the winter. This little round and shallow bath on a rack, will make the lantern come out of the snow, and sort of float in the air when darkness fall and the candle light inside is glowing…
So I started building a circle of tightly packed snowballs. The weather was gloomy, grey, so some of these photos nearly look like black-and-white ones.
I started on the second row, on top of the first. To help them get “glued” on to the first row, I dipped the bottom of every snowball real quick in some water – that made them freeze to the snowballs beneath and beside.
The most beautiful structure is if you can build the second row a little to the left or right of the first snowball, it makes like a zig zag pattern from the outside when the lantern is lit.
When you continue building, see to that there is a slight tilt inwards, like an eskimo hut.
Finally, after a long time of building, the lantern is ready. By the time I had come this far, the dusk had closed in, which made it a perfect timing to light the lantern.
I used one of those memorial candles, because they are contructed to burn for 50 hours, and are not affected by wind and damp weather.
A rather shaky photo (below), my camera is not a good one in complete darkness. But i think you can imagine the feeling. In the middle of the darkness, something is floating out, glimmering, glittering.
The last of the summer and autumn season, I shot some photos in the morning light. The weather report promised snow storm and 20 degrees Fahrenheit (- 6 degrees Celsius). So I really believe this is the last of the growing season. Enjoy!
Autumn is here. In fact this photo is from a week ago. Today winter is approaching fast, and I went out into the rain and storm to see to things in my garden. On the soil of one of the planting boxes outside, I had placed the pot with the sweet potato plant. I started to take care of the withered plant, cut it by the soil and sorted it into the compost.
Then I wanted to dig out the soil from the pot – and stopped dead! My God, there was something in the pot, something big!
The impossible had happened! I had in fact grown sweet potatoes, in an ordinary pot that had been standing on a bench in the sun all summer. All books, instructions, articles say you can grow the plant and get a nice flowering plant, but to harvest sweet potato like this is impossible. The season in Sweden is too short and too cold.
And look at them, they are big – HUGE in fact. The sweet potatoes I buy at the grocery store are not this big. I could hardly hold them in one hand. Two of the three potatoes measure nearly four inches (10 cm).
This will be a nice dinner for two. I will clean them, peel them, cut them into cloves, put on a baking tray with some olive oil and salt and cook for about 15 minutes in 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius). I will serve them with som feta cheese and sprinkle persil from the garden on top. Mm, looking forward to that!
Some wonders of life are visible only if you are present in the “now” of life.
This morning I was up with the sun and started the sprinkler in the lower part of the garden. I stood there watching the water spraying over the high grass with the sun beams 
coming in from the side. When the water hits the grass I see a miraculous sight. It is like a little cloud of dust letting go from the top of the grass, flying through the air, landing on the ground.
What on earth is this? Then I understood. The grass was ripe, ready to let go of its pollen. It just needed a little “push” from water or wind – and I happened to be there right at that moment. It was so so beautiful. I tried to catch it with my camera.
The “clonk” revealed it.
Some weeks ago I bought a squirrel food feeder (www.vivara.se). The construction is a little box with a windowlike front and a roof or lid that the animal can push up with its’ head to fetch food. I put it up in a birch tree, positioned so I will be able to see the feeder from my window.
Well, the weeks passed and nothing happened. But a friend told me it could take some time before a new feeder is found and accepted by the animal. So I waited. And one day when in the garden I heard the “clonk” sound – wood smashing against wood, the sound the feeder makes when the squirrel drops the lid of the feeder back in place. This was so exciting, finally a squirrel!
I shot a video and extracted some photos from it. Sorry about the quality, but it was shot through the window, so as not to disturb the squirrel.
This morning, after having watered the flowerbed below the veranda, I noticed this acrobatic snail. Perhaps he escaped the water sprinkler by climbing up the name tag stick in the flower bed. And right on this photo he is trying to climb down again …
The Grand Finale has come at last, to the Heart for the World. Tulips in different forms and colors are overflowing the heart bed. I managed to prolong the poles that hold the chicken net, to give the flowers more room to grow. But now, in full bloom, the tulips struggle to get through the net. And I struggle to decide whether to “let them free” and be afraid every morning to see the tulips all eaten up by the deer. But perhaps I do anyway. People say the deer are more interested in buds, not the full blooming flowers. A heartful greeting from me and my garden 🙂
Last Christmas my grocery store sold stone pine cones as a decorative odd thing to have on your table. Put it in a warm place, they said, and the cone will open up and there you will be able to harvest the pine kernels. Well, the cone was beautiful as it was, about 9
centimeters big (3.5 inches). We tried to “warm it up”, but nothing worked. So I decided to keep it in the southern window of our house. And yesterday I discovered it had ope
ned up, the spring sun basking down on it. So beautiful, so magic. With the black pine kernels tucked inside each “leaf”. I cracked one open and tasted it – absolutely wonderful!
Some of you have been wondering what the Heart for the World looks like today, in the beginning of spring. For you who have not read about it, go back and read about the construction of this special heart, a flower bed filled with tulip bulbs. The post is called A Heart for the World. As a reminder, here is a photo of how it looked at the end of the autumn 2015.
Today, april 2016, the heart looks like this. I have protected the tulips against deers with a chicken net across the bed, placed on poles to hold the net up in the air so the tulips have room to grow. Really, I have no idea what to do when these 30 centimeters (12 inches) of room for growing is used up and the tulips need more space.
For extra protection I put wads of unwashed sheepwool here and there, and soaked it with the badsmelling liquid I get as a side effect from my Bokashi compost. I dilute it a bit and spray on the wool. I have noticed the deers avoid places where I have sprayed this stuff.
I will keep you posted on what happens with the Heart for the World. I can tell you all the neighbours are as excited as I am about it.
To be continued…
Crazy Swedish Gardener 