Sweden is getting hotter

.....but not the weather. It's the food. My favorite mustard is made by Johnny's, and look what I found in the store!

Mustard with mango & habanero, mustard with chipotle & black pepper, ketchup with habanero and hamburger sauce with red onion & bacon. 

I will have to try them!

Skogspromenad - A walk in the Swedish fir and spruce woods.

Yesterday I took a walk in the forest, and I felt so relaxed. High and strong stood the fir trees and mosses and lingonberries were growing below. On the spruce forest floor the blueberry bushes were light green and the berries were on the way, almost ready to pick. I had a pre-taste, since I found a few blue ones among the green, not yet ripe, ones. I love the Swedish woods, despite the fact that it has pretty few species; I think fir and spruce stand for about 80 % of the trees growing in the Swedish woods.

Over it all were the white fluffy clouds and blue sky, and you could hear a raven call out.

A old saying comes to mind:

Lyss till den granens sus, vid vars fot ditt bo är fästat.

[translation:  Listen to that spruce's sound, by which feet your home is tied.]

Only two or three generations away, all Swedes were living close to the nature. Not so much today.

10 years!

Ten years ago on this date PP and I got married, right here in our garden.  During the wedding party in the evening some balloons came flying by, right over our party, and here is one of them.  Thanks PP for ten great years! 

Stamp of the Day: American Songbirds

I am back!  After a brutal spring when it comes to teaching loads, I am now back blogging.  There is lots to report; fun things I saw in Sweden in March, the species counting competition (our personal bioblitzing) and all the amazing things I saw as part of that, and a garden that right now is exploding with growing greens.  For now, here is a set of new US stamps with some of our great, beautiful birds.  Of these, I have already seen these year: scarlet tanager (unbelievable red), rose-breasted grosbeak, american goldfinch (they seem to be nesting on our property), white-throated sparrows (which now have left for more northern places I think), and of course the circus-like and flute-sounding Baltimore oriole.  Ah, birds are truly wonderful.  Having so colored birds around you makes you think you are in the tropics.