Shopping and Flowers

Or shopping for flowers?

I took a trip to town yesterday.
I needed to return my library books.
And I came back with these.
We needed a bit of colour.

It was a dull day,
and even a bit rainy,

This is a display outside one of the florists shops.
The florists are always worth a look inside.



We find the shops tend open later here.


In the UK they are often open at 8.a.m. or 9.a.m.


That is if they're not open 24 hours!

It is possible to go into town and do a circular route round the lake.

Very pretty.

I'll try and capture this view on a sunny day!

Well I've found a sunny place for these two.

Is this one okay here?

Buds and Spring Flowers

This is what I was up to on Monday.
The sun was shining,
it was glorious,
sunny,
warm,
bright.

So,after reading up on the manual,
I took the new camera outside,
for a walk.

We didn't go far.
In the garden to begin with,
to take another look at the crocus I showed you on Sunday.
There they are,
still sitting in the brown grass.
But this time I used the macro facility.
Much better,
as I'm sure you'll agree.

A bit further afield,

towards the forest,

in the long grass,

and there are the wild flowers

(Wood Anemones I think).

Each morning when I go out

there are a few more.

Not so many of these yellow flowers,

no doubt from the Dandelion family.

Then there are the buds.
I don't recognise what it is though.

Couldn't resist taking a photo of the Little Yellow House.
Can you see a bird peeking out from the far side?
A Green Finch I think.

In the afternoon

I took a walk up the hill

with Mike.

Where there are always lovely views

no matter what the weather.

It had dulled over a little.

Then I noticed

how the Birch trees are coming into leaf more here.

So I took a photo,

just for that fact alone.

Then we took a walk back home.

And in the rough grass

I saw some of the first Daffodils,

Daffodils!

It's nearly May!
I wonder if there are any more,

hiding.

We'll have to wait and see.

Call back tomorrow

and see where we've got to,

the camera

and me.

Fun, Fun, Fun.

Whoops,
oh dear!
Full of good intentions.
I had fully intended
to post the winner of my giveaway
yesterday.

But you know how it is
when you have a new camera.
You just have to
get friendly with it.
Find out what makes it tick.
More importantly
find out how it works.
So that's what I was doing yesterday.
The sun was shining,
the flowers were blooming,
the buds were budding.
So I got clicking.
But I'll keep those for another day,
maybe tomorrow.

This is what was on offer.
See,
I've been using the new camera
for important things too.
A little felt picture.
Embroidered flowers and trees
on handmade felt.
I made the felt on a workshop in Cumbria last year.
I had in mind when I embroidered the felt
that it resembled
an English garden in a Swedish forest!



I've been busy making hexagons too.
And turned some of them into a pincushion.
The front.

The back.
As it is it's a pincushion,
or add a ribbon,
and it's an ornament.


It was lovely reading all your comments,
much appreciated.
Thank you.

All the names went into a hat.

I mean a basket!

Mike was honoured to do the honours.

And Sandi's name was pulled out of the basket!

Sandi over at: http://embroideroo.blogspot.com/

Sorry to be long winded about that but the link button doesn't work!

So this little group of goodies

will be travelling

half way across the world to Australia.

Just as soon

as I pop them in the post tomorrow!

So congratulations Sandi,

I hope you enjoy them.

And thank you to everyone else for joining in.

I've enjoyed it so much

I will have to think of another one!
Sometime

Soon.

Of course I should have said

that I really wanted to send you all a little something.

But apart from it taking me ages to make the 'little somethings,'

I think the cost of sending all the 'little somethings' would have been a bit too much for my little purse!

Reasons to be Cheerful

What could be making me so cheerful?


Could it be because there are spring flowers growing in the garden,
even though they look a little lost amongst the brown lawn?


Or because there are more wild flowers peeking through the long grass each morning that we step outside?



Perhaps because at long last we can take our daily walks with the hounds through the forest
now that the snow has gone.





Or maybe it's because the garden is demanding attention.


Or the birds are singing,



and our summer visitors have arrived.

Or maybe it's because I get to play with our new camera!

100th post and Giveaway!

It's my 100th post

so in great blog tradition

I will have a giveaway.

My first post was in January 2007.
It's taken a while to get here!
Initially I had set up the blog to keep in touch with family and friends.

I thought it was a good way of showing them our new life here in Sweden.

Except I didn't tell anyone about it!

People asked us

'Why Sweden?'

This blog I suppose

aims to answer that question.

It's really a photo journal

of our day to day living.

I often wonder whether to publish a post

because each day is much like the one that went before.

We live in a forest,

Our nearest neighbour is 200 hundred yards up the track.

Some days we feel that we could be the last people on earth
because we haven't seen anyone for days,

literally.

When we sit outside on our terrace,

it is very quiet.

There is only the sound of the birds,

or sometimes the sound of the wind in the trees.

Hardly any aircraft travel overhead,

and traffic noise is only heard

occasionally.

Perhaps when the wind is blowing in the right, (wrong) direction.

Mike has told lots of our friends about my blog now.

And I know they call in to see what we're up to

or maybe it's just to see what the weather is up to in Sweden!

My daughter told me last week that she looks at my blog,

which I'm very pleased about.

I enjoy my trips into Blogworld.
I have made a lot of friends here.

Important when so far away from

family and friends at home.

So still without my camera

I will show what I have on offer for my giveaway.

I think I can manage with photos that I took before I dropped the camera.

I have been making some ATC's (artist trading cards),

from some felt I made last year,

which I embroidered.

I titled them

'English Garden in a Swedish Forest'.

I had some felt left so keeping the same size as an ATC

(two and a half inches by three and a half inches),

I have one to giveaway,

similiar to the ones shown here.

a heart,

you can just see one here

peeking out

but there's more in my side bar.

a hexagonal pincushion,

similiar to the one here, but smaller, and dottier.

some ribbons I bought-

one of a Dalarna horse,

and one blue and yellow (symbolising the Swedish flag).

All that that you need to do if you want to enter the giveaway
is to leave a comment here.
I will leave it open for a week,
until Monday 28th April 9am CET time

when I will pick one winner.

Please leave a link so I can contact you if I pick your name out of the hat.

Now I'll just go and find a hat!

Oh, and a Happy Birthday to my son.
Twenty three years old today!

Well that should be Sunday.

It has taken me that long to post this!

Best of luck!

Edited to add that the giveaway is international.

Wellie Weather

http://bunmountainblogspot.com/2008/05/procrastination-formally-over-html

Despite the weather being glorious these last few days,

it is still very wet underfoot.

So I have swopped my snowboots for my wellingtons!
Even the hounds seem to tiptoe over the soft squidgy parts of the garden which should be lawn. It looks horrible as well,

all brown and gloopy.

So even if the camera was working

I doubt whether I would take a photo of it.

Normally we would be celebrating Easter with an egg hunt for the children.

I love it when we can have the egg hunt outside.

The spring flowers make a good hiding place.
But this year it's just Mike and I, and the hounds of course.

But here are some photos from the two previous Easters spent with the family.

These photos were taken in 2007 when my sister and her family came for their first visit to Sweden. It was a memorable occasion but for the wrong reasons. (As the link does not work you would have to look back to May 2008.)

But we had an egg hunt with lots of small eggs to find.


It is a tradition in Sweden to decorate trees or bushes with brightly coloured feathers.

So I decorated some of our shrubs.

I also decorated some twigs with eggs and feathers and put them in a pot on the terrace.


This is a photo from Easter last year.

I took my daughter, grandson and his dad over to my sisters where we had an Easter egg hunt in her garden.
We collected the eggs in a Hallowean bucket!

A Happy Easter weekend to you.

What a Difference a Day Makes

Or a week,

or a month,

or a season.

Though I'm not sure that it is Spring here

in our part of Sweden yet.

Mike was reading that for it to be proclaimed to be Spring in Sweden

the temperatures have to be above freezing for 7 consecutive days and nights.

Half of our garden is still covered in snow

though we have had some lovely sunny, warm weather earlier this week.

Underneath the pine tree in the garden, where the snow receded first,

I saw the first spring flowers in bloom.

Some crocus.

Four little purple flowers, still in bud, unlike the ones you see here.

The camera is still broken.

So the photos I'm posting were taken in 2007.

We were here then.

There's still plenty of ice around making interesting patterns.

I wish the camera was working.

There's been some interesting snow sculptures that have been forming in the snow walls along the side of the small forest roads.

In some places where the snow is still lying on the forest floor,

pine needles have dropped in abundance.

The snow has melted away leaving patterns in the snow.

It looks as though someone has placed the pine needles to make the patterns.

They look very pretty and unexpected.

Earlier this week,

Mike went shopping

and he bought me a bowl of minature narcissus,

similiar to the ones below.

But the ones he bought me are a different variety,

they are taller and more slender.

Very elegant sitting on our coffee table.

I think he thought I needed cheering up.

Can you tell

I miss not having a working camera?

I don't post as often.

I will have to resort to using more of our archive photos

and hope that we have some for every eventuality.

It will be an interesting challenge.

The clouds cleared tonight as we walked the dogs allowing us a glimpse of the moon.

We missed seeing it last night when it was full because of the cloud.

The thermometer reads one degree.