Well, it’s officially fall here in Sweden. Yes, that’s right, I saw a huge sugar beet on the side of the road on my way to work this morning. 🙂
Yesterday evening, the kids and I walked to the library and afterwards we went around the school and daycare yards and collected berries off the mountain ash trees. We do this every year and use them as table decorations at the Halloween party. We found some gorgeous red leaves (already!!). In a couple of weeks, we’ll go up to the abandoned youth hostel in Lund and collect more red ivy leaves and some of those cool orange papery seed pods which I can’t find the name of. I thought they were called “Japanese Lanterns” but I’m coming up empty on Google. It’s very hard to search for something when you know what it LOOKS like but not what it’s CALLED.
We spread the berries and leaves out on the porch table to dry, but I’m a little worried about the giant birds thinking it’s a free feast just for them. We’ve had jackdaws and magpies in the backyard each morning, waddling around having a field day with the bugs still stunned by the morning mist. Magpies nearly make up for not having blue jays. They are SO beautiful, especially if they spread their wings and surprise you with that flash of iridescent blue. None of the pictures I could find on the web do them justice. If you’ve never seen them in real life and only know them from pictures, you might think they’re just a big black-and-white bird.
All week long, each morning in the car, listening to the radio, I’ve heard Michael Jackson’s Blame it on the Boogie. Now, it’s not a bad song, and it instantly throws me into a 70’s time warp, but I couldn’t figure out why they were playing it so often. Was there some MJ anniversary I’m sadly unaware of? Turns out it’s a remake, but you’d never know it. It sounds EXACTLY like the original, at least to me. (and granted I haven’t done any side-by-side listening comparison tests as my Michael Jackson music collection is sadly lacking, i.e. non-existent) I don’t quite see the point of doing a remake of a song unless it has some distinguishing characteristics of the recording artist.
Anders is gone on an overnight work trip to Snogeholm (nice name, that) so I’m single-parenting tonight. Have to hit the grocery store on the way home. He is nearly finished with the paving, did the trim along the edge of the driveway and front walk last night, and it looks great. 🙂