Welcome

Following the crowning of my NHS experience with a stint at a PCT and the resulting redundancy (traumatic, though much wanted and worked for), my husband and I are going back to my roots near a small village in Smaland, Sweden. These are our experiences.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Bird feeding

Like a good wildlife friendly eco person, with delusional tendencies, I decided to feed the birds during the winter.  Last winter they just got a few fat balls hung up outside the kitchen window.  This year I decided to buy 3 feeders and a bag of wild bird food.  After banging in a couple of poles and putting a washing line up, I pegged the feeders out and now have a somewhat saggy, though artistically pleasing (delusional remember!), bird feeding line.  I congratulate myself on unaccustomed foresight when putting this line over the flower bed.  There is now a whole 5kg bag worth of husks scattered over the ground and I can now dig them into the bed!  Result.  I admit that the idea was more for home delivery guano, but I'll take what I can get.
What I didn't reckon on was the fussiness of the birds.  At first I bought Wild Bird Food.  As I would be feeding wild birds...  So they went through it with a fine tooth comb tossing out any wheat/barley seed, keeping the hemp for later and scarfing the sunflower seeds.  Obviously they aren't doing the Caveman Diet and I have less of a flower bed, more a cereal field, though we shall see how many sunflower seeds survived.
Now I just buy Sunflower Seeds for Birds, though I haven't yet got to the stage of getting the ready husked ones!
Think I'll plant sunflowers in the bed this year, they'll look nice above the barley...

Monday, February 17, 2014

Spring (?) Walk

First sunny day in ages today!  Yes, we've seen the sun for more than 2 hours today, I think that this deserves several exclaimation marks - !!!!  In fact, I went for a walk for the first time since, oooh, about November.

See - sunshine!
It was so lovely to got off the path and step into the forest with moss on the ground and a gentle breeze in the tree tops, and no ice to slip on, no snow to hide holes.  I'm becoming such an old woman, it's a disgrace.
On the way home.
The ground ice is beginning to melt and this path will be extremely boggy in a few weeks, but now it's just perfect.  I just need to change my route and revisit my rock.