Tuesday, August 31, 2004

We are getting guests on thursday!
It is James' parents and his sister. It was supposed to be a surprise that his sister was coming too but we fumbled a bit in the start and James guessed it quite soon after he got to know that his mum wanted to talk to me alone one day. Its no good having a too clever husband! Makes it damn difficult to get surprises organized without him poking his nose in it!


Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Sweet but... Bizarre

We went to a viewing of the house I mentioned in my previous post. I'm disappointed. From the pictures it looks alright and actually very sweet, just our size and price range as well. Once you're in the house it feels a bit like a small dolls house with slanty roofs and floors, there wasn't a right angle anywhere to be seen and we discovered when we had a look outside that the whole house was sinking in one corner. I don't think I have a problem with that, you can always correct the foundation (expensive but manageable) but the main bedroom felt very.. off. Don't know why but I felt I would never be able to relax in that room. The kitchen was a big old style Swedish one, it felt like the heart of the house, which was good but the bathroom was dreadful and might hide some water damage since the wallpaper was ancient and peeling in the corners.

The guesthouse was really just a shell, you would have to redo it completely since it has been very neglected and the owner had used it as a workshop! My heart just cried when I saw this lovely old Swedish kitchen turned into a workbench and filled with oily and rusty junk! They still had the old wood fire oven even though it was old and tattered you would be able to save it. It would have made a lovely guesthouse all made up with a new sleeping loft and renovated kitchen.

I guess we just have to keep on looking. I think though we are pretty sure about what we want with a house and aren't afraid of doing stuff ourselves. But the house itself has to feel a bit more like 'home' then this one did. I don't mind tattered and neglected as long as the house isn't sinking and the roofs sagging inside like this one's was. Location was perfect, not overlooked at all and a pretty good sized yard out in the sticks. It was a 5 minute walk to the lake as well so we would have been able to have a boat.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Its gone from very very warm to ridiculous rain and thunder and wind, in a week the weathers been transformed totally. And the trees are turning yellow already! Yesterday we had the mother of all thunderstorms and I had to bike home in a quiet part of it, thankfully there was a quiet part, if not I would have had to stay and ask for a lift with someone else. I just got back home when it decided to start rumble again and huge flashes shot across the sky. I hid on the sofa with a newspaper to distract me from it all, its cool to watch a storm when you have somebody else there, not so cool when you are alone! At the end of the first batch the setting sun reflected on the misty clouds and it went all yellow outside, literally. Very spooky and a bit uneasy I watched the light turn from dusk to a brighter shade of yellow and it got lighter then it was at 6 o'clock! It was amazing though, against that big eerie yellow cloud these big fat thunderheads of dark blue grey clouds just stood out the more and you could really see the clouds tumble around from the winds in them. I should have taken pictures of them but never got around doing that, the flashes didn't make me any braver to go outside, I'll tell you!

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Wait a while, i have to fan myself with some paper.*swish swish swish*
I am down in gothenburg with my mum to visit my sister and it is almost 29 degrees and it is 8 in the evening!! And my sister dont have a ceiling fan like we do back in Falun. So major question is if i will sleep with the window wide open, inviting all the bees and wasps or if i sleep with a closed window but butt naked...

I do hope that James is behaving himself at home, but me thinks he is too busy with all the things on his To Do list to make any trouble. He opted to get home one our earlier today because he felt so overwhelmed by the To Do list, or so he said when i phoned to let him know we got here alright. Bet you he is sitting in front of the computer looking at this running sites and noticeboards and not at all doing the watering and what nots. I hope he remembers to cook some food for himself for tomorrow(no flaming hamburgers though i hope). But if not there is always the cantine at work.

Tomorrows plan is to go into gothenburg and do a bit of shopping. I have no idea if that is such a good idea in this heat but i rather do that then sit in here with not a slight breeze through all the windows that are wide open in hope of some relieve.

Friday, August 06, 2004

Shit shit shit!

I just worte a mega blog and i had an error msg when publishing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am NOT rewriting it!

*sob*
The allotment is yielding quite a lot right now that needs to be taken care of. Mum and me went up to pick some peas for the second time(got 2 pints after shelling them) and I picked all the parsley and gave some away since we had way to much for ourselves, mum took some of the beet roots that were getting too big and has now pickled them for us. They are sitting nicely in our coldroom storage ready to be used. I took most of the broccoli side shoots and I think that they are coming to an end now. The runnerbeans are really running away whit loads of flowers and beans coming along very nicely. They are next for the picking. Also the tomatoes are turning red now, faster then we can eat them, well I'm not surprised since the weather has turned very warm and humid, who needs a greenhouse!?

The sweet corn is coming into bloom and onions are getting to be huge. Only thing not growing so good is our rhubarb plant and the salads are pathetic this year even though we've been watering when its been dry. Oh well you cant have everything now can you, at least we seems to be having very little pests this year. I've been planning a bit on how to restructure the little plot of land we got. Right now the raspberries are falling into and over the little pebble path we've made and its not really very convenient to have it there. So, either I move the path or I take away the raspberries on the left hand side. I'm leaning to moving the raspberries and the black currant bush to the other side and have a long border with either only flowers or you put your salads and herbs there. Hmm, a herb border would be nice.. plus some marigolds and other flowers of course!

Lynn was talking about getting rid of old stuff and reaping the rewards of earlier projects. Well I'm reaping what I've sown earlier but I'm not so good at the getting rid of old stuff. Due to that we will be getting new windows installed in September I have to make sure they can get into the storage to change 2 small windows there. Talking about getting rid of old stuff, so far I think I've managed to chuck 2 small, pitiful looking boxes away to charity and one (!) little bag of garbage. I just cant do it, well not good at least. Ever since I was a kid I have been told by my mum that it could be useful later, that applied for anything at all, no matter how small or weird, you'd save it for later, put it in a box and voila when you needed it you didn't remember you had it anyway so you bought a new one that also went into a box and so on... Help me??