Vår trädgård (Our Garden)

Last year, December, we moved into our new house. This is our first proper house (our other homes being apartments). With the house came our first garden. We had very little experience with gardening (except from the odd weeding job in our parents' gardens when we were kids). 

During Swedish winter, everything is covered in snow and there is not much to do in the form of gardening. Thus for the first few months after moving in, we did not do much outside. With the start of spring, however, our garden exploded with a vigor that caught us off guard. Most plant life here have to finish their life cycle in a couple of months, thus when spring starts, everything grows like crazy (weeds included). Most of our spring and summer weekends and some of the evenings after work (in midsummer the sun sets around 11 in the evening), were spent in trying to tame our garden. 

We had some success, see photos below, but we also gave up on some unruly parts, to be attempted again next year. Something we noticed that is very different between Sweden and SA gardening is; in SA the gardens are meticulously maintained all through the year, while in Sweden it is much of a one season attempt. Since everything dies during the winter, each spring is a completely new start. So for things that didn't work out well this year, you have a new chance with next year. Below are some of our successes and projects that we will re-try next year.

We altered our porch a bit, taking down some of the railing, oiling it and building steps (see below). The yellow flowers in the back are blooming now and looks very nice. I don't know what they are called but they are extremely hardy, they die during the winter and these grew from under a pile of dead plant material. There was another bush of these in front of the porch that we had to clear to make place for the stairs - we are still fighting to get rid of some of them though.

Some flowers and a hollyhock we got from our neighbor, Inga-Lil, that we planted in pots on the porch

In the window inside is a small tangerine tree, one of the few plants left from our apartment days. On the lawn, in the distance, a mouse murder is taking place -- the culprit, a serial mouse murderer called Donkie

Three tomato plants I planted on the porch after a batch of spring flowers finished

Dahlias I got from Inga-Lil

The porch steps that Ronnie built and scars where we fought the yellow flower plants and are now trying to regrow grass. There is still some of the yellow plant left but we decided to continue the battle next year. In the back are two vinbär (currant) shrubs. 

A röda vinbär (red currant) and small vita vinbär (white current - a variant of the red current that is a bit sweeter). Interestingly, vinbär translates directly to "wine berry". These berries tastes a bit like I'd imagine undomesticated grapes would taste like and the leaves also looks like grape leaves. I assume they are related in some way.

The vegetable garden from the kitchen door on the porch

A small greenhouse Ronnie and his sister, Cindy, built for me (see details of their visit here)

Some tomato and pepper plants and a bush of herbs (resulting from "seed bombs" that Cindy gave to us)

Lettuce and broccoli in seed boxes - this is working quite well

Cauliflower and nasturtiums - the cauliflower is struggling a bit (something is eating the leaves)

The rest of the garden: Strawberries, carrots, corn, tomatoes, peas, pumpkins and more seed bombs!

Rhubarb, this is the third crop for this season. I already harvested two crops resulting in many rhubarb pies, jams, compotes, smoothies and a whole freezer rack full of frozen rhubarb. 

Rhubarb pie

The herb garden that got a bit out of hand. Will start a better organised one from scratch next year....

Our garden shed - an old smithy dating from the 1700's. Next to the smithy is a flower bed with some nice flowers but, invaded by weeds. Another project for next year...

The inside of the smithy/garden shed

One of our two young prune trees. We tried our hand at pruning four young fruit trees (two prune and two apple trees) and one mature apple tree. Overall it seems to have worked nicely with the mature apple tree and 3 out of the 4 young trees blooming and bearing fruit. This small prune tree suffered a heavy aphid infestation - we will fight harder against these pests next year 

A few apples

Different variety of apple

The mature apple tree in front of the house

Some more nasturtiums and a pattypan in pots at the entrance

Ronnie cut open a path in the bushes with our new trimmer to access the raspberry patch (this was necessary since most of the bushes consists of nettles...)

The raspberry patch

Raspberries in incubation :)

This year was a crash course in gardening for us. Next year we will be ready when spring arrives, to apply the acquired knowledge of one season of Swedish gardening :)

C&R

Our first house

At some stage during the last few months we decided to move to the country side. We cannot recall the exact time we decided or even all the reasons for making this decision but we had the idea of buying a house in Sweden for a long time. Finally this has happened and we will soon be responsible to maintain a whole house. Below are some pictures of the house. 

View of house from across the river Tämnarån.

Main entrance to house

Smithy build in the 1700's

Inside of Smithy with some origanal tools

Young apple and plum trees in garden

A taste of the inside - Kitchen

A jordkällare - used to keep food and at constant low temperature throughout the year (quite old) 

Jordkällare inside -huge and high enough to stand upright

The house has a ground based heat exchange system which I think is quite nice. I think we will appreciate this since we will be moving in December which is not the warmest time in Sweden.

The street name is Fors - which means "rapids". These you can find 50m upstream on the river Tämnarån where the bridge from the main road connects to our access road. 

We are located 4km south from the center of the town called Tierp. Tierp is 60km North of Uppsala and we can commute in under 40 minutes with the train (Tierp advert here). 

We will post more on our adventure at Fors and living in the countryside.

R&C

p.s. I passed the requirements to be allowed to drive in Sweden and at least we will now be able to get to our house - as soon as we obtain some vehicle. 

Glassblowing

Recently, Carina took me to Ulven, where we could try our hand at glass blowing. During the process, we were guided by Stefan Erlandsson, who provided us with a lot of interesting information about the art of making glass and the processes of shaping this amazing material.

Each of us made three items. 1. A paperweight where we used metal shears to cut the glass. 2 A drinking glass and 3. a decorative bowl. The last two items was shaped with a variety of tools as well as blowing the glass into a metal mold. More shaping is performed after the shaping in the mold.

Shaping the drinking glass

Shaping the drinking glass after mold-blowing

Mold-blowing

Shaping a bowl

After the items are shaped it is slowly cooled down to room temperature. We thus returned the next day and was extremely pleased with the end products.

Self made glass products

The glassblowing workshop is located at Ulva Kvarn in an old watermill approximately 7km from the city centre. There are a number of hand craft shops, galleries and resturants at Ulva Kvarn and spending a bit of time just outside the city is very refreshing.

Old mill-house

This was an excellent experience and I highly recommend it.

 R&C

Life after a long long winter

Yes ... we're still here. Still alive after a very long winter -we have just been lazy to write a blog. However, this winter was quite serious, in fact it still snowed yesterday! Things are looking up however, the daily temperatures are climbing as the sun is fighting the cold back into the arctic. I never actually realized how big an influence the latitudinal position of the sun has. I mean I knew it from reading it in books etc. But here you can actually FEEL it. In the winter it feels as if the sun makes no difference at all in the temperature, night and day -- very cold -- doesn't matter. In terms of lighting up winter days -- well it does a little bit better than temperature-- but also a very half-baked performance :)  But come spring, you really start to see how the sun fights back the cold. The night temperatures still drop, the snow still try to pour down, the daily shade temperatures are still in the minus but where the sun shines - things heat up and melt. So slowly the ice on the roads and bike-paths disappear, the snow and ice on the lawns and fields stay a bit longer and is still visible now in the shade patches. The gravel and ice mounds next to the roads stay the longest. (Gravel are strewn on the roads and bike-paths in the winter to make them less slippery). This winter was quite long and icy so quite a lot of gravel accumulated on the roads and next to the roads as ice/gravel mounds (because the gravel get scraped off with the snow when the snow plows clear the paths from snow). Come spring - big sweeper trucks sweep the gravel up to use again next year. Luckily, these sweeps began last week since it got quite difficult to cycle through the gravel. This is a sure sign of spring coming, also the first flowers started to break through and nearly all the ice on the river is melted now. Another sure sign - it's getting harder and harder to find an open spot in the bicycle stand. But we are happy things are heating up and look forward to the coming spring (I don't think we can really say it started here yet).

Next blog - hopefully this week - will be about our recent trip to Estonia, and our visit to the wonderful medieval town at the other side of the Baltic.

C&R

Winter is here!

Yay! The snow began on Wednesday and continued on-off until today (Saturday). While the magnificent white stuff were accumulating, the temperatures dropped lower and lower. At the moment we are at -8 and it is predicted to go down as low as -22 by Tuesday. I had a nice jog outside today at noon, with the temperature at -5 and fine snow drifting down. The sun was out, the landscape was brilliantly white and the air crisp and dense - it was very refreshing. I would have never believed such a thing is even remotely possible while living in SA - jogging in sub-zero temperatures, on the snow. Obviously, you do not where your T-shirt and shorts... gloves, woolen hat, thermal underwear and a top layer of clothes is good for -5. Last winter I jogged in -10 , then you need a thicker outer layer, like a thick woolen track-suit. It is really nice and invigorating and not at all difficult to run on the snow - the compacted snow on the footpaths actually provides a very nice run surface.

Below are some photo's of the past week's snow,

Wednesday night when the snow started

My bike Thursday morning - yes, I'm still biking to work

On the way to work in the park on Thursday

Trees have snow only on one side because of the way the wind was blowing

The road to work

The road to work

The road to work

Thursday evening - unused bikes have accumulated quite a layer of snow

Thursday evening - unused bikes have accumulated quite a layer of snow

Thursday evening - unused bikes have accumulated quite a layer of snow

Looks as if a marshmallow man exploded

A bright Saturday morning with the sun out

A bright Saturday morning from our balcony

Even our balcony had a thick layer

Out jogging - My running path

Out jogging -The landscape outside town

Out jogging - Looking at Uppsala from afar. The cathedral and castle is visible on the horizon

Out jogging - Ice beginning to form on the Fyris river

Out jogging - Snow and ice

Thanks Sweden - this is the type of winter we love

C&R