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

Cart for air filter

Sawdust in your lungs are, apparently, bad. I knew this and to ensure I have good air where I work I recently obtained an air filter. This machine is quite big and my space is a bit limited. Additionally, I have two rooms that I use and wanted to move the air filter between them.

The solution, a cart to carry the filter. In addition, I now have an extra work area and included some drawers where I keep most of my sanding equipment. To see the process of building the cart have a look at the video below (c.a. 14 minutes of working at increased speed). 

For the frame, I used the long fence posts. This is the same as I used for the my work bench and there are still some left. The rest is made from some metal hardware I bought, a few pieces of plywood and thin press-board that came as free packing material in an order we received. 

I am using the cart and filter a lot with a new project that I am working on now. This new project is the most complex and elaborate thing I have ever build. More on this project later...

R&C

South African visitors from the UK

In April my sibling and her husband came to visit us for 2 weeks. In spite of Tierp being considered the 2nd most boring place in Sweden we had a action packed schedule. The whole adventure has been documented are excellently presented in my sib's blog (link below). We will not re-tell the story but invite you click on the link:

http://skaaptjoppiesandotherstories.blogspot.se/2015/04/no-moomin.html

The blog also includes other stories on their adventures in the UK and is worth a read.

A last note on their visit. We also enjoyed the vacation and having some visitors to entertain and show around for 2 weeks. We are looking forward to return the favour and spend some time in Edinburgh.

R&C

Why we need a chainsaw...

Where we live there it often seem are in the middle of a wind corridor. We often have quite strong gusts mostly in one direction. Looking at the landscape it there are not a lot of trees, buildings or other obstacles from where the wind comes.

In the beginning of June we had some serious wind and not surprising there was some damage in the area. We were lucky that only a branch form one of our trees broke but our neighbors had a whole tree blown onto a small shed. The branch from our tree fell into a bushy area breaking several shrubs. We needed to remove this and below is a video of the process. It took around an hour (the video is compressed to 5 minutes), and we had no motorized assistance. I feel that a chainsaw will be quite handy in these circumstances. There are also 3 dead trees in that we will remove at some stage and I am not sure that my ax skills are up well enough developed. We are thus considering getting a small chainsaw.



With all this wind around our house we at some stage start to measure it (as scientist we cannot help collecting). I also have several  ideas on how to harness this constant resource and will post some of the projects a bit later.

R&C

Dart Cabinet

During one of our shopping trips, Carina and I saw an extremely cheap dartboard set (around $4). We decided that we will include this in our jordkällare-game-room-cave (more on that later - but see picture here) and bought the set. Once home, we found that the quality of the set may reflect the price. The darts are made from a cheap plastic and not extremely straight - one even had a broken point that I needed to sharpen. After playing a few rounds with a plywood board as backing I decided that we need a very nice cabinet for this set. I thus build the cabinet shown below. There may be a bit of a discord between the quality of the set and the cabinet but overall I am happy with the outcome. The cabinet is made from stained pine plywood and the picture and scoreboard from birch plywood.

Finished dartboard cabinet

Cheap dartboard and darts - note the one dart has a shorter point...

Initially I thought that I will quickly build a plywood box to house the board and call it a cabinet. However, when I started to plan it I thought that doors that have a arch to the top may be nice and from then onward the whole thing took on a life of its own. At many steps a simple element became more elaborate and following is a few pictures of how this cabinet evolved from a box rather than just being built.

After quick glance online I saw that most dartbord cabinets are a square box with 2 doors. I thus started by cutting the back and sides using the pine plywood and 2x4 cm beams.

Simple box at the start

As mentioned the doors was where I started to change the whole thing from a mere box into a cabinet. This was of course due to the images on the interwebs of classical cabinets (I later found more information on cabinets and saw this video by DIRESTA - the video also inspired met to continue building something a bit more elaborate).

I therefore decided to make doors with arched tops. After I squared the doors I drew the top of one door and cut it on the scroll saw. I used this first one as template to mark and cut the second door. I spent a bit of time to sanding the doors together to get nice edges that are exactly the same.

Doors with arched tops being sanded

Checking that everything is square

I decided to stain the cabinet but first wanted to add a bit of detail to the front of the door along the edge. I made a cutting tool to cut along the edge and leave a thin line. This did not turn out as nice as I thought but I did have a straight line all around the edge of the doors. Using the Dremel with a I spent one evening carving (and then sanding) small half circles along the line. It looked much better but did take more time than i initially thought I would spend on the details on the door edges.

Adding detail to the door edge

I tried a light oak stain and added two coats.

Testing the stain on the backside

I found some hinges that were removed from a sandbox. I straighten, cleaned and drilled counter sink holes.

Old bent hinges

Hinges like new after some work

Checking fit of hinges

At this stage the project was already out of hand. A picture in contrasting wood across the two doors therefore seemed and OK addition and I started to look for pictures indicating that this may be a dartboard cabinet. I found a few and the simple picture was redesigned into something more complex. I spent a bit of time to edit all the lines to ensure that the whole image will not fall apart when done cutting.

Picture for front and scoreboard stuck to birch plywood

Cutting on the scroll saw

Broken...!?...nope - only half done

Cat critically evaluating progress

Image done

At the same time I realized that we have no idea on how to actually play a game of darts. After more searching online I found a common and seemingly popular game called "Cricket" (  more information on the game here). This necessitated that a scoreboard was included in the inside of the cabinet. I thus designed the scoreboard. I did not want a chalk board and sanded the scoreboard in the middle section. This created a groove for a paper to slide in where we could write the score.

Cutting of scoreboard done

Groove to be sanded marked

Lastly I made some shelves to hold the darts and a pencil. Here it helped that the scroll saw table could be tilted. I drilled holes for the darts, cut a groove for the pencil and stained and glued the shelves to the door.

Slanted shelves

Testing fit of darts

After all the parts were cut I added 3 coats of lacquer to the cabinet and 5 coats of spray lacquer to the image and the score board.

Shiny door

When all the parts were dry and shiny I fitted the doors to the cabinet and glued the picture parts carefully to the doors. Luckily everything seemed to fit nicely.

Right side of picture being glued to door

I glued the score board to the inside and the cabinet was done.

Final clamping

We tested the cabinet in the basement but Carina is hesitant to throw darts towards it (she thinks it is nice in the current condition and will not improve with the addition of holes). If we get a generous offer I will thus sell it ;) - Otherwise the plan it to place it in the jordkällare - and possibly buy better darts.

Doors closed

Parts nicely sliding past each other...

...to reveal...

...a cheap dartboard...

and some darts

The scoreboard

Sliding in a paper (A5)

Writing names and scores

Nice detail on the edge :)

Testing the cabinet

Not a good score

We have the feeling that this is a type of game quite often found in pubs and a future project is to install a bar next to the dartboard.

Opening in action

R&C