Garden joy
Spring sprang, and even though it was SNOWING most of May, I have felt the tingle of expectation that always build up before summer arrives. I spent the cold days well, collecting various plants from neighbours, and also raided my mother’s garden for perennials and shrubs. I dug some nice flowerbeds in my neglected garden, where nothing had grown for a decade, and have filled them up as pretty and creative as I can. As usual after sowing and planting, I lurk around, as if expecting to see flowers pop up and bloom all of a sudden, even when the weather is cold and sad.
Not much happening in the flowerbed this early in summer, so I have started to prepare a little vegetable-patch on the other side of the house. Carrots, sweet-peas, broccoli, ruccola, salad, radishes, and a few potatoes went down there. One of my neighbours, the one with the cows, came over yesterday morning with good chunk of cow manure that he piled up beside the patch. After I discovered that the soil contained mostly shellsand, I called him and asked if he had anything to improve it with. IF he had, -it didn’t take him long to arrive with a huge, reeking, dripping pile of cowshit. So now I’m about to dig into it and spread it around the garden. That should speed things up a little…
Just can’t wait for some warm days to arrive. A cold month of May usually means a warm and nice summer up here, or so the saying goes. I keep my hopes up. June so far has been so-so, only a couple warm days. That should call for a real kick-ass summer in july and august!
For the absent minded
Making lists is always useful, and a good way to organize how you spend your time. Here’s a really cute catalog card-generator from blyberg that I just had to try. I found the link at Hanna’s creative space. Just write your list and download the image it generates. Have fun with it!
My friend Merete at rebirthmedia introduced me to gubb. It’s a place to create all sorts of lists, -to do-lists, favorites-lists, shopping-lists etc. It’s up to your own imagination what kind of lists to make. Of course they give you a few hints on the way to get you started. So if you are like me, a complete scatterbrain with too many halfdone projects, it’s a great comfort to know you can store, and print, your important lists there.
With these two lovely tools, there should be no need to worry about forgetting important stuff any more.
If I remember to use them. Or look them up. Hm.
Midnight visitor
As I walked by the kitchen window a couple of nights ago, I discovered I had a very large visitor in the field outside my house. I grabbed my camera and tiptoed outside to get a snapshot.
I walked up to him as close as I dared, and he watched me closely, but didn’t run when I talked to him. Just knelt down and continued grazing, but I could tell that he followed my moves in the corner of his eye.
I encounter moose quite often, but mostly they stand by the road when I drive home from work at night. Or they scare the hell out of me as they come bursting out of the bushes and run across the road in front of my car, leaving only a trail of dust and an anxiety-attack. Either way, they vanish before I’m able to stop the car, pull out my camera, -if I have brought it along, and get out of the car to take a picture.
So was it too much to ask of my camera to work properly when I for once had a huge moose only a few meters away, standing perfectly still, practically doing photogenic poses for me?
Maybe it was the night, dusk-like, and not quite light, or maybe it was the photographer, too excited to think about technical details. Whatever it was, most of the pics came out a blur, and I had to go out and talk to the moose twice to get these (miserable) shots.
His calmness surprised me. He just wiggled his ears and continued his business. Like he was thinking: Finally, a patch of green grass after gnawing on shrubs and bark off trees all winter. Do what you have to do and leave me alone.
My business is to get a better camera soon. I’ve had too many irritating episodes with my old camera, so now I’m aiming for a Canon 450D, which is probably the best I can do within my budget. With the wildlife just outside my door I want to be better prepared. Does anyone have any experience with this type of camera they would like to share?
Passing time
I often complain that I work too much, and have too little leisure time to do the thing I want to do, REALLY want to do. I mean time and space to create, and doing something worthwhile for myself. But I need the money so I work as much as I can, which means taking on whatever job available, and spending a lot of time driving my car. Long distances, and time to think. Well, sometimes I just sing…
The field I work in is, vocationally speaking, of very little interest to me, I never wanted to be a doctor or nurse, and now I KNOW I was right in not choosing that way. I’m not made for it, my mind is of another kind. My problem at work is that I really sympathize on a person to person level, and often get too engaged in their life stories and suffering. Maybe I’m too sensitive, maybe I feel with them too much, because often when I return home, I feel drained to the bone, with no energy left, and just collapse in front of the tv, wanting my mind to go blank for a while. I dread being old and sick, when I see what it does to people at the end of the road, and the experience have altered my perspective on how to live. Life is too short, well I already knew that, but after working with the very old and sick, I fully realize how important it is to really LIVE the life we are given. It passes in a flash, they say, even the 97 year olds. Where did it go? How did I get here, with a body that’s too worn out and fragile to do even the most basic things, and the mind faltering too?
Before I get too depressing, I’d like to point out that often my days at work run smoothly with many heartwarming and happy moments, with those that have learned the art of joy and gratitude in their everyday life, no matter how difficult it is. What a wonderful difference that makes in an otherwise ordinary day.
So how would my days be ideally? I’ll give it some thought on my way to work this evening;)
Time to spring clean my ideas and wake the inspiration from it’s slumber.
Busy spring
I’m aware that this blog is a very neglected place. All two of you readers out there are probably worried sick about me, but never fear! I am still here! During the past two weeks I have been extremely busy as a milkmaid, a very unusual job for me, and one that urged me to bed early every night. Tired and with aching limbs, I might add. Six hours of leisure time during midday was not enough this easter holiday, as I had my teenagers at home, sometimes also their friends, and all rather reluctant to be shooshed away from the computer. Not to mention that these precious hours also had to be spent cleaning and cooking. So there I was, no blogging, no uploading of pictures, only a quick internet surf at 6:30 in the morning before I headed off to the barn and the cows.
Fia, 2 months old, wishes everyone a lovely spring. One of several little calves, all waiting to get out of the barn and into the green fields later. They have to wait a while tho, as the fields are still covered with snow.
I started to paint some easter eggs, like I do every easter, but didn’t have time to finish them. I wanted to write and show some pictures but easter is over now, so I guess that post will be put on hold until next year. Sneakpeak of some easter activity pictures here and here, exclusive for my readers only.
I upgraded to wordpress 2.5 a couple of days ago. The upgrade went just fine, but one of my plugins screwed up my text editor, so I had no tools anymore, for some reason. I had to reinstall part of wordpress again, and removed the plugin, of course, so I’m back on track again.
Nextgen gallery also needed an upgrade to be compatible with the latest version of wordpress, and it works just fine. I do miss some features here and there, tho. In both. They have rearranged the menues somewhat, and I keep looking for things that I used before without finding them. I just hope those features will be back in a later upgrade.
I’m doing some work on my theme as well, as I’m tired of the way this blog looks. I keep switching themes all the time, never satisfied, so you’re probably as confused as I am. I found a wonderful theme over at scribblescratch.com but sure enough I can’t get it to work for me. Being no css or html-expert, it may take a while to figure out what the problem is:)
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