A year at Fors

It has been a rough and tumble year - but we made it. A year ago we've moved into our new home (our first house), close to Tierp. It took a while to settle in and make the house our home, but it was fun to experience "house living" for the first time.

It has also been a year since our two cats Kwagga and Donkie joined us. Although there have been a few mini-dramas they also survived a year at Fors and we saw them grow up from two curious fur balls of disaster into lovable (quite obedient) house companions.

We are all settled into our house now and happily call Fors our home

Kitties exploring their new home

...and how we've grown - a year at Fors

C&R

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 house...

This is a short blog to show the inside of our new house in Fors, Tierp. As our previous blog outlined (see here), we had quite a busy December moving in to our new home and setting up everything. Things are getting there, slowly but surely, and the inside of our house are at least in a presentable state now :)  -- thus the three videos below. Since we are in the midst of a quite serious "downsift" of snow, I could not take the camera outside for an outside overview. But hopefully we can cover this part in the summer.

Some notes to the videos:
- Three videos; the upstairs living area, outside views from upstairs, and the downstairs basement
- Narrated in Afrikaans, sorry to the Afrikaans impaired (term stolen from my skoonsib (sister-in-law) Cindy :)
- Note pointed out by Ronnie to me, for the "extreme northern hemisphere impaired", you can actually see the sunrise and sunset from just one window in the winter at these latitudes (thus the comment on the window in the first video is correct). The sun just pops up over the tree lined horizon, make a weak attempt at a loop and pops down again, all framed in one window facing south.

Enjoy! :)

Inside, top floor living area


Outside views from living area


Downstairs basement and home to Donkie and Kwagga



(By the way: We now have quite a bit more room compared to our small apartment in Uppsala - open invitation to all family and friends in SA! Free lodging near the wonderful town, Tierp, in Sweden :)

C&R

Many many changes part 2

A month ago I wrote that we were changing a number of things in our lives. We are still in this process but seem that we are slowly finding our feet in our new environment. Below are some of the projects that we needed to do in the last few weeks:

Moving out
We of course needed to pack everything to move from our apartment. Below are pictures of this event.

Bedroom almost almost packed

Securing all doors

Bedroom packed

Fixing and cleaning
Since we drilled holes in almost all walls in the apartment we needed to fix it. Here is a before and after picture.

Before

After

Good enough to pass the inspection. We also spent one whole day cleaning the apartment - note that washing windows in the winter is not fun.

Moving in 
We had all our stuff moved by Allt i Transport. This company is excellent and we can highly recommend them. Loading took one hour, as did unloading. We had nothing damaged or lost. We did need a few days to unpack however.

Kitchen in disarray 

New bedroom

Living room

Loads of boxes

Making it habitable 
We had (and still have), lots of projects to make the house into a nice home. Here are some of the projects.

Reading the instructions of the house

Making curtains

Adding lamps and curtains to the kitchen

Hanging curtains in the bedroom

First meal in the our new house

Adding decorations

Cats
While we are changing everything in our lives we thought that we should add some animals for good measure. We decided on cats and they seem to be quite happy with us.

Donkie - the fluffy one

Kwagga in action

We also got a huge scratching post from Zheya which we assembled for them. If they are not on top of us they are usually on perched on it - thanks again Zheya.

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More posts will follow on our projects, our cats and our house...

R&C