Heading towards Lent.

Goodevening!!

Tomorrow is the last sunday before Lent begins, tuesday is the actual day. I will bring you a picture shortly of the buns we eat like crazy these days - The Lent bun.  It's a common sweat bun, with a lid cut, stuffed with almondcrumbles, sugar and egg whites, plus whipped cream . So the lid goes on top and some powder sugar on - voila!  From sunday to wednesday its carnival and then it all begins, but these buns are actually eaten from second day after christmas...hm.

So tomorrow there will be celebrated mass in church, solo songs and yes, church coffee with these buns and a girl that went to Tanzania for three months as a church volonteer. She will show pictures and tell us about her meetings there.

This week the children had sports holiday from school and we travelled to my mother. The snow was long gone and the weather was mild . They said there would be some rain come evening, perhaps some odd snow in it. We took granny to a nice greek restaurant and then home to the coffee table. I brought a birthday cake with me, finished the same morning actually and some other cookies. 

The Akropolis special plate.

Birthdaycake.. notice the lack of red rose!!!

Early evening we started our hometrip.....it had started to snow!!!
We left six pm, thinking it would pass. We have about 140 kilometres home, usually we make the trip in an hour 45 minutes. We drove into the yard 5 past nine!!!!

It was horrible!! But when we at last crossed the border to our county, it was more rain than snow. Pew!!  I drove the worst part, road disappearing frequently, cars passing us and slashing up our entire front, blinded by snow and wind. Sometimes it was hard to see where the road actually ended, I drove like a drunk......scary scary.  We changed drivers when we could find somewhere to stop.  

Ohhhhh, take me out of here!!!!

So we thought there would be no more, just rain . But what was that we found in the morning??
Where was the car?  Right, covered in snow.  But, I must say, these snowy days have been sunny days as well. 

Needed both brush and scrape and some severe force to even open the doors!!!

This is called Ingemars tree, because of the late vicar, he loved it

Again, friends, drop by in my other blog, would be nice to know what you think. The latest post is all true, no fiction whatsoever!!   And now, the chicken roasting in the oven is about to be eaten -saturday night.. God bless you all!!

Schooldays? Right next door!

I said I would collect some schoolmemories. Now I have, please share them with me on my other blog : Novels and true storys, you'll find it linked up left.  Welcome!

And ....that was wintertime!!

So that was winter!?  It started last wednesday and today the fields are all bare and muddy. Here are glimpses from both winter and whispering spring.

The sundial keeps the time right, standing in what used to be the vicars garden path.

The spotted woodpecker was heard high up in the chestnut trees and in our garden the Great tit and the blue tit have begun their spring tune - Tititaa tititaa tititaaatit!

You can easily tell we are not used to winter anymore, there have been more accidents these few days than I have ever noticed before.  In our parts there have scarcely been any ground frost and they are worried about the water supplies, we had a dry summer and autumn as well.
Still, there are worse situations, on the news they have been discussion how long we would last come war or any other main hostile action - it's worth thinking about even if the risk is minute.

This morning I had a long talk with a neighbour on climate, environment and alternate power sources and heating sources. She told me that there are experimental thinking on airplanes run on solarpower.  They have gotten one small aircraft running on solarpower only, but the jetplanes would become far too heavy. As yet. Come on - all you geniousies of the world - create a solution to lessen pollution!!!

And so even a car window turns into a work of art 

Not the easiest time for not being detected!!!

And so the evening sky got back to being magnificent for a couple of days, sunsets, starry nights.   I hope you enjoy!! Soon the grey and gloomy february will be over us again, like today.  But spring, as I opened with today, is marching on, sure as easter!!!

I will soon launch a schooldays post on my other blog, please drop in and read when it's ready!!!!
Blessings to you all. 
Welcome, new readers and please comment , it's nice to hear other voices than mine!!!

Behold - the first tiny aconites lurking in the mud!!!!

Sunsets and trails!!!

Scavengers!!!!

Well was that foxtrot, catwalk or badgersdrift, that stole our dinner so bold and swift?
Was it roaming and sneaking in bleak midnight, when the stars were silent and the moon was white?
Was it sharing with others with whiskers and paws, was it a cute little rasqual with eager jaws?
Whoever was here to feed on our behalf, there's one thing to be said to those who care:
Never ever leave a chicken casserole to get chilled on your front stair!!

This was actually the second attack, we never took the pot in, I mean, beasts and monsters has to eat!!

More snow has fallen, but this is only our garden, I AM A BIT LAZY!!!

Winter wonderland

We still have lots of winterapples for the blackbirds.

My husband lit the lantern for me,  darkness makes the winterland quite lovely.

We brought the christmastree out and stringed it up with the decorationlights, now it looks really nice.  This snow would have been nice on christmas but hopefully the children will have enough time for some snowracing up on the mountainside,  Stibyberget.

Some magical light and the window could be somewhere in Shire.

Unfortunately we are never prepared for this kind of weather nowadays. So our oldest daughter got caught on the bus and the bus started gliding down the slope and that was not the only one in the ditches. She is alright! But there have been several carcrashes and other accidents.  Here in our parts the wind is the tricky part, the amount of snow is not so bad really, but combined with the wind coming sideways across the fields, the snow will mount up in the most difficult places. I drove through several of those, being a nervous wreck when I got home. I have great difficulties driving in the dark these days, my eyes are not what they used to be.
But the snow is lovely if we just look at it in it's glittering and bright dress. Everything gets brighter and shimmery for a while. Winter can be beautiful. 

A superstar has left us!!

This is insane, really!
So many fine actors and artists has left us for a better everafter and I have been given glimpses of my admiration for many of them, but this is actually disastrous for real.
HANS ROSLING is dead!!!
I knew he got cancer, but a person like Hans, was likely to survive anything we thought.
Hans was a doctor, among many other titles,  and a burning, living, compassionate, ever working man who made leaders of the world understand what caused a countrys development as well as decrease. His understanding of how we use and disuse resources was outstanding, he could make anyone see the connection in figures and thereby explain both how an economy could collaps to how you could stop pandemies, like f.i contageous deceases. He worked all over the world, f.i Mocambique and he also took the swedish initiative to Physicians without borders, Medicins sans frontiers.

I for one never understood maths or statistics and couldn't for the life of me understand how any of it could have any impact on the real world. But for Hans the picture was clear, many world leaders and leading scientists turned to Hans for support and information. He would always be there to help and he was actually working on his latest book only days before his departure. Please read about him and watch his work, I can't do it any real justice here.
He believed that the world could be understood in figures and facts. Below is one example!!

What made him so special was his absolute magnificent way of describing his theories so everybody could get it, he built models with crayons, lego, toys and what he had at hand, you know, like Macgyver.   His kind smile and generous sense of humour made everything bright, we could also enjoy his sharp mind in public televisison's competition shows, like På spåret - On the track.
His wife and children, brother and countless friends and collegues now miss him. I will miss him.

And on top of that, we got snow!! So sorry, Ricky, we are not dried out anymore, it has been falling all day and it's below zero and there is this awful, freezing, horrid wind drilling it's way through every muscle in my body.  BUT EVEN SO - I have a house to hide in and the heating works, a couple of miles from here the beggers sleep in their cars. I have an option, many don't.
Today we gathered in Lund, 400 ministers of the dioces, to meet up with bishop Johan and listen to three different lectures on Luther. I tend to like him more now, and what became of his work.

Oh no, it's time again!!!!

What now, I hear you say, especially my american readers, greetings to you, new friends!!!

If you check my blogposts for february and march last year, you'll know what I mean -
we are approaching ESC and in Sweden this is HUGE!

In other competetive countries this contest is no big deal but in Sweden it's more holy than sunday mass.  It took off yesterday with 7 contestants and will go on every saturday until march 11.  The winner that saturday will then travel to Ukraine and compete in the ESC.

By then, we will have listened to 47 artists and songs. And A LOT of comments from the three leaders of the show , broadcasted from 5 different cities. You see, this is almost too much.

The competition in Sweden is called the Melody festival. From a very modest competition with 8 or ten contestants in front of live audience and live jury groups and live orchestra, ONE single contest, to six.  Back in the fifties there was one year when one singer sang all the songs.
The artists are everything from well established to very unknown, stars-to-be.
Every year there will be one or two with acts not meant to take seriously at all, and one or two acts where the artists turns his or her entire life inside out and sings about personal tragedies and traumas. Every year there will be plenty of fancy dance acts and choirs to cover up poor voices, there will be clothes you wish you never saw and clothes you actually where everyday.
There will be spectacular hairdoes and haircolours, there will be animations and light tricks.
There will be rap, hardcore, country, singsong, jazz, funk, powerballads, disco, tango, bebop and gospel.  In this clip below you can watch the trailer that has been running for some time in swedish television. 

And there will be strange, funny, excellent or horrible intermission acts.
And there will be the endless chitter chatter about too old, too young, too boring, too much, favourite or down the slope. 

The great final takes place may 11th and as things are now, Australia is all of a sudden part of Europe but that is no more strange than the fact that Israel is part of the competition. And Belarus. 
 But this weekend we also had a massive biblestudy in three parts, very interesting and with many people coming, unfortunately I couldn't attend . 
The issue was the connection between promises, revelations and prophesies in the Old Testament and their fullfillment in the gospels. Right, the Israelissue, very very important today, but the non political side of it. Notice, there was no talk about taking sides,  no talk about Trump, this is quite another discussion. A wish for Gods plans to come true, the blessings for ALL people, with the number 70 as guideline, 70 for the heathenraces of the world, symbolicly mentioned all over the Old Testament.
So, blessed be the children of God, with or without the ESC!!