First, there’s the April showers. I don’t mean rain showers though, they are more a snow and hail variety that come and go quickly. Yet it was officially time to start a garden. I can’t think of a time that (Christopher) didn’t have a garden since I’ve known him. Other than my grandfather, Christopher is mainly the one who’s taught me about gardening. My involvement with the garden has ebbed and flowed, more at an ebb though usually. I started with indoor seedlings that didn’t take root. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault, as I managed to get cactus soil instead of regular soil. Now we can see why I haven’t been in charge of the gardening. Christopher took over, planted more and took the seedlings outside. They are currently growing and doing just fine!
Then the patch of ground for the garden was chosen. Christopher dismantled the old, metal swingset that was there and saved only the slides. He made a new deck for the slide and attached it to the wooden swingset we have. We debating setting the plot of land to fire for the garden, but settled on mowing it. In the pictures, you can see what the land looked like-just losts of tall and mangled old grass and weeds.
Now we’re still in the process of turning the soil. It’s taking awhile-it’s a big plot, but also the ground is tough. Very rocky. Now we know why it’s mostly potatos and carrots here!
In the meantime, we get these occassional days of perfect weather. Sunny, blue skies, but still a Spring chill to the air. Today we made the most of it by biking, barnvagn in tow, to a little spot I found with a nice trail across the mire. Linnea immediately remembered being at another mire last summer and picking blueberries there. We found a sunny spot to have a picnic and then rode home to get back to all that garden work!
Friday was Walpurgis. To get a history of Walpurgis see: http://www.graphicgarden.com/files17/eng/sweden/walp1e.php , it gives a nice little summar. We cycled up to Råshult around 8:30 pm. It still wasn’t dark yet and we knew we had to wait until 9:00 or so until it got darker and the fire would begin. As soon as we arrived, Linnea saw one of her teachers who sings in the choir at the village church. She was there to sing with her choir for the ceremony! After the songs, there were some speeches. I could tell that there were some jokes about “When is the train going to come” (because the train line was right behind us) and of course the train passed at least twice while we were there. I couldn’t get much more of the speech, mainly because I was focusing on Linnea who was getting scared of the dark and was feeling unsettled.
Even with the dousing of some lighter fluid, the fire never really took off. In fact, by the end, after they sang some closing songs, there was no fire to be seen at all in the giant pile of dried wood and branches. But then Linnea’s teacher reminded us that it was time to go to see fireworks (saved)! We ran in to some friends and walked up to see the fireworks together, which were really great. Linnea loved them and Nora did not! We cycled home in the dark, managed to not run over the neighbors who were walking home across the bridge, and got a good sleep.
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