On the spring theme; a matchbox label from Japan with cherry blossoms! LS have found her stamps, I have my matchbox labels in my storage. What were you collecting as a kid? Or now? I still have all my grandma´s buttons too. It´s a bit like a candybox to me! Or all the embroidery threads....mmm.
Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. If there is some good flammable stuff, it will catch fire.
- Anatole France
'Veboa' = wood shed (really, it is vedbod, OK is just a bit accented).
Photo by OK, posted by Lena.
During our mountain trip to the Swedish 'fjällen" the name for the alpine mountains in Sweden, we visited Fulufjället National Park (English link1, link2). I hadn't been there since fourth grade I think, and it is a lovely place. The mountain is large and flat, and in the northwestern part of Dalarna province. We stayed in the hostel in the village of Mörkret (=Darkness!), which is next to a large enclosed area with wild moose (Moose Adventures). One of the moose had had twins earlier that year, and we saw them through the tall electric fence (it was late, dusk and rainy, so the photo is not good). If you buy a ticket you can go inside the fence and see all the moose better, including the giant bull, The King of the Forest ('Skogens Konung').
It had rained for days, so everything was wet, including the gorgeous lupine flowers that actually come from North America and have spread like a pink-lilac-purple wildfire over Sweden.
The next morning we drove a couple of miles up to the entrance to the National Park, at Njupeskär, the tallest waterfall in Sweden. It is about a mile's hike up to the waterfall, first through boardwalks and trails on bogs, and then through an old virgin spruce forest filled with ferns, blueberries, lichens, mosses, and some mosquitoes. The lichens are amazing, from the 'map lichen' (kartlav), which grows extremely slowly on rocks and makes topographic maps in its patterns, to the lobaria (lunglav) that we saw on a few birch stems. The lobaria looks like lung lobes, and was therefore used as lung medicine in the old days. The soldier lichen is cool with its red spore-bearing parts on top of small trumpet-shaped structures.
It was still raining but not so hard, so my photos are not the best. On one spruce tree we saw the markings of the three-toed woodpecker (tretåig hackspett) that had looked for food, probably bark beetle larvae or other insects. The fireweed (mjölkört) was flowering, and flies took refuge in the flowers that provided shelter from the rain. On the bogs where some cloudberries (hjortron), but not too many. To find lots of them you have to go away from the trails. Old log cabins, without Falu redpaint here in the north!, provided shelter to hikers.
Near the parking lot is a small interactive science center, a Naturum (nature room), which is one of the best I have seen anywhere. The design is astonishing - one wall is all glass an out towards the bog, with not one human-made thing in sight. Kids (and adults) can sit and watch the birds with provided spotting scopes. There is information about the forest, forest fires, mammals (including wolves and bears), birds, lichens, weather (which is extreme here by Swedish standards), and history.
Things are arranged so that toddlers also have things to look at, it is at all levels, which I really like. You can touch and hear different animal's fur and sounds, look at videos of forest fires, and find out what you saw during your walk. Nothing is plastic, or at least you don't get that impression, everything seems to be sustainable and from natural origin (wood, rock), except for some metals.
One cross-section through an old pine tree showed healed fire damage nine times since 1497 - so this tree is older than Colombus' discovery of America. And it was just a tree like any around here. Well, a lot of Dalarna was clearcut for the mining industry, but the logging didn't reach all the way up here, thankfully. Another tree was standing at a road crossing and people carved their initials or signatures (bomärken) and year into it for the last 200 years at least. That tree fell down and the trunk was preserved here as part of the local history.
One of the typical rocks in the area is porphyry (porfyr), a kind of rock that locks like colored clay with little tiny dots in it. The basic color can be many, here is Blybergsporfyr which is dark with light dots. Many more photos from Fulufjället kan be seen here.
Report from Sweden:
Today LA and I spent the day with my Dad IS, out at a little lake called Trehörningen (=Three Corner Lake), south of my home town on of Eskilstuna in Sweden. Near the lake is a giant forest area that was burnt down accidentally last summer to the fishermen's despair. The fishing organization Å! Fiske had stocked the beautiful lake with catchable and edible rainbow and steelhead trout, but the forest fire released so much nutrients into the lake that it killed a lot of algae and all fish due to lack of oxygen. They had released 800 lbs of fish, and 600 lbs of it was pulled up as floating dead fishes. They left it on the shore for the white-tailed eagles, who had a party. This year it looks better, and the water has been restocked and the water chemistry seems to have stabilized. You can fish if you get a permit, and you get to keep your catch. The trouts are up to 7 lbs!
We spent the day there with my Dad the entomologist doing a scientific experiment. We lit a fire (in the grilling area near the lake), to see if any fire-specialized insects showed up. Many unusual and rare species have been seen in the forest fire area, insects that are specialized to live on burnt wood. The three-toed woodpeckers have had a blast eating insect larvae under the peeling barks from the dead and dying trees. We set up white sheets for the insects to land on (and for us to see them better on) around the fire. The more smoke the better, so we put on green pine needles and wet wood after the fire got going. There was lots of interesting species that are adapted to forest fires there (fire weed, different mushrooms, very rare fly species, etc), but the special flies with infrared sensors on their bellies didn't show up.
South of the lake is the original unburned forest full of lichens, blueberries and wet moss. The lake has gorgeous waterlilies, swimming water snakes, a million tiny frogs that just hatched, and sundews (catching the fire-adapted flies, maybe?). You can fish but it is also just a gorgeous place to have a picnic, regardless of if you are interested in 'attractant fires', charred forests or not. Here are some photos, and more is here.
bubbly lichens... [fönsterlav]
Swimming water snake [simmande snok]
Bear moss [björnmossa]
waterlilies in lake [vit näckros]
the lake [sjön]
Attractant fire and sheets for catching insects on.
Swedish blueberries [blåbär]
A kind of beetle that uses it jaws as defense (it is biting my Dad). [bitbock]
Waterlily [vit näckros]
Dinner! One of the fisherman gave me this fish and it tasted great! It is a steel head trout. [middag!]A carbon monoxide alarm!
We had a scare at the house tonight. With only the kids at home and me and PP on the way from our work places, the furnace choked and spewed out rotten egg sulfur infested gases in the house with some carbon monoxide, which caused the alarm to go off. The kids called 911 (thanks!) and got out of the house, so when PP and I got home there were firetrucks, ambulance, and police here. Kids were safe, just some oxygen for one of them, and the house had to be aired out. No fire, thank god! The firemen were very confused by our dual wood/oil burner and also by the heat tank of course. After 40 min or so we could go back inside and then the kids and I went off to get Chinese take out for dinner. Nobody was in the mood to cook. Our oil company service guy showed up after 30 min, I guess when you mention fire trucks that they decide they need to be here. The whole oil burning part of the furnace was all full of soot, and it had clogged the exhaust pipe, but it is all cleaned out now. We are not sure why it happened, why the oil burner burned so bad and clogged it up. But thank god that 1) it didn't happen at night, 2) that someone called 911, and 3) that nothing caught on fire. And mainly - I am so happy we have carbon monoxide detectors. If not, the kids could have stayed in the house and get poisoned. So all of you, get carbon monoxide detectors now! Many thanks to our kids AREA and LA, and to the neighbors and local volunteer firemen and EMS too! Thank you, thank you.
