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!
I am so happy about my bubble wrap green house! It is a small greenhouse made of bubble wrap on an aluminum frame. You are supposed to place it inside your ordinary greenhouse, and keep sensitive plants there to protect them from the cold at winter. I bought mine a year ago, but it is this year that I really appreciate it fully.
The thing is, I don´t have a greenhouse. So what I did was to put the bubble wrap house inside our little unused and unheated cottage in the back of our garden. This cottage was the original house on the property, that the first owners built 75 years ago. It has one room only, but exactly the right size to fit my bubble wrap.
A while ago I cleaned it fully, put in carpets on the insulated floor (I bought styrofoam blocks and placed on the floor to keep the cold out) and put up a rectangular light armature with two fluorescent lamps in it.
And today it was time to move all the plants into the bubbel area. Well, isn´t it sweet! I am thinking of bringing in a chair to be able to sit there now and then, just enjoying the still green plants with their last autumn flowers. And perhaps BREATHE a little inside the bubble house so the plants get some carbon dioxide nutrition… 🙂 When the cold sets in, I close the bubble door, as well as the cottage door, put in a small electric heater to set the heat some degrees above feezing point. Of course I will go there and see to them now and then – it is sheer pleasure!
It is quite unbelievable to be able to pick edible mushrooms in the middle of our garden. But since we started cultivating a meadow on our traditional lawn (!!) so many different kinds of flowers and plants have occurred. Which attract bees, insects and bumble bees. Which attract a lot of small birds. Which eat of the harmful creatures that inhabite the garden …
Anyway, the other morning I discovered “grågul stensopp” (in latin: Bouletus reticulatus), a mushroom with a four star mark in the books. It growed in an area near the oaks in our garden, under the 70 year old apple tree (a very old famous Swedish apple called “Åkerö”).
I was stunned with the gift. This was enough for the dinner´s appetizer, carefully fried in olive oil with a tiny bit of fresh garlic and salt, served on a piece of roasted white bread. Mmm!
When in town lately, I couldn’t resist the flower market and ended up buying a bunch of corn flowers. For my inner eye I could see them together with the different kinds of grass growing in our lawn.
So the next morning I went out with a scissors and picked long stems of different grass 
and arranged them with the corn flowers in two decorated glass bowls. 
Always nice to make two, there is often an opportunity to give away one as a gift to someone dear.
Simple but delicate ingredients make a romantic presentation.
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 …
Crazy Swedish Gardener 