It's never too late to....
When we lived in the house we had a huge garden....
now we live in a flat, we have a microscopic garden (thank god!)...
but NOW finally I planted my first strawberry plant...after all these summers in Sweden....!!!!!
Aaah well....
Its never too late to.....
fall in love... give up prejudices....take care of your health...follow your passion....
and of course, grow your first strawberries!
And so, on 9th June, a sunny summers' day, in a beautiful terracotta pot I planted my first strawberry plant and placed it on our makeshift stairs to the back garden (our landlord is going to build us a veranda, he says) ....
Then the first flower bloomed... then tiny green spotted strawberries.... oh what joy! There were at least seven of them.... they turned from pale green to orangy-red to pink-red to the deep strawberry-pinkish red that we all know but is so difficult to describe!
One day ALL of them were gone!
Well I know the thieves r-a-t-h-e-r well. They are Larry and Liddy, the cheeky magpies who live in the birches and fir trees around the garden...!
Well, actually I don't really mind at all. I can always go to the market square or to the supermarket and buy some ...or to the strawberry farms and "pick and eat and buy" some! (One can do that in Sweden y'know ☺ you can eat as MUCH as you like while picking and you only pay for what you pick)
But then... a few days later I got the better of Larry & Liddy and picked the two that they had left for us!!!
Oooooh! How delicious they were... our very own sun-warmed, small, sweet succulent strawberries. One of Nature's myriad bonbons!
We shared them of course. With a dollop of vanilla custard cream.
We ate them with great pomp and ceremony indeed....
Signing off for now.
C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)
Butterflies at home.....
When I sit on the steps to the back garden drinking my morning coffee, I am visited by a friendly pale cream butterfly drinking its morning coffee (read: nectar!) too... from a mug of bright blue Lobelia ....
I am enchanted.... Imagine! butterflies were drawn 3500 years ago in Egyptian hieroglyphics ... but this is just "yesterday" as far as Time is concerned....I have read that the earliest fossil dates back to 40 million years ago!!! FORTY MILLION... It is absolutely mindboggling! to think that this butterfly keeping me company on a summer's day has its ancestors dating back all those millions of years....
Butterflies are a part of many cultures. They symbolise many things from the Japanese' "souls of the dead" to love, rebirth, good luck and so on...
For me.... they are just beautiful creatures in my garden...they bring me happiness by just "being here"...
"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you".
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
I don't chase them,
I don't catch them,
I don't go looking for them...
They are just there...and I am glad for the chance to see them when they alight on one of my flowers...
or they read my book...
or play on my sandals...
or listen to music in my stereo....
or play in the brown soil...
or take a break on my blue carpet...
(See pictures below....)
Rabindranath Tagore
Signing off for now.
C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)
Yes..... I know...I know...
You all must be so bored of my Swan family....
but ohhhh ... just LOOK at them...!
Aren't they the sweetest...cutest...nicest....kindest....
likeable-est....delightful-est....charming-est....adorable-est
things you ever saw????
Enjoy the photos....
Signing off for now.
C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)
Fields....
John Lubbock (an English biologist and politician 1834-1913) has said:
"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books."
.... I think that is very true indeed....
These photos of the fields are all around our village... we pass them every time we go to Skara for our shopping on country roads....
I remember singing John Denver's top hit "Country Roads" in the early 1970s as a young teenager.... I am sure Virginia is very happy for that song but for me it is "Take me home" to my little village here in Sweden "where I belong..:".
Even now, Elizabeth and I sing it on the top of our voices (me, off-key!) all the way when we are driving home....!!!!
One year, many years ago a farmer planted a whole field of sunflowers (where the potatoes are growing this year)... it was like a huge yellow square box!
Another year a farmer had planted flax... the flowers are a soft baby blue/sky blue and Elizabeth (she was 6 at that time) shouted from the back seat of the car:
Mummy, Mummy....look! The sky has fallen down!
Fields are beautiful expanses of open ground.
The summer fields are particularly joyous... and the autumnal "Fields of Gold" are a delight to the senses....
Enjoy the photos....
Beautiful fields of cornflowers!
Signing off for now.
C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)
