BUSY IS THE NEW HAPPY

This coming week and the one after are the two deadest weeks of the year; the weeks when everyone is Sweden is still on vacation and everyone in mainland Europe is just starting. Last week there were about 6 of us on the floor, and this week, I’ll be surprised if there are even 4 of us. I’m working from home tomorrow (Monday) and then again Thursday and Friday, so I won’t be lifting the count in the office, for sure.

Today, Debbie and Camilla and I went to Katrinetorp outside of Malmö for lunch in their lovely garden café and then a guided tour of the “main house”. Katrinetorp used to be the country house of a member of the middle-class in the early 1800s, after which it was sold a couple of times, and then sat empty for SIXTY years before the City of Malmö restored it, and opened it as a venue in 1990. The gardens are lovely, though we didn’t walk around in them today, and there’s even a little lake just outside the garden grounds.

There is a little antique store and another shop selling fine household accessories, plus a little exhibition room. The tour and the exhibition were about the Swedish East India Company and the pursuit of Chinese artifacts that was all the rage in the 1800s. It was really interesting, even if Chinese porcelain isn’t to my taste at all. Mostly it was a nice excuse to get together with my friends. We’re planning another expedition to Christinehof in August, and then to Svaneholm Castle when my mom and sister are here.

While I was gone, Anders went to Lund and picked up Martin and I gave him the biggest hug when I got home. He’s been gone for 4 weeks, after all. He was almost asleep but I made him get up and go with me to Flyinge plantshop, so he could stay awake until a reasonable hour instead of letting jetlag mess him up. I bought 4 pretty flowered plants for the new plant stands on the porch and the coffee table, and 2 pretty flowered plants that I planted in the front garden. Don’t ask me what any of them are, I have no idea. One is a succulent. One has purple flowers. One has magenta flowers. One has purple leaves with white-pink flowers, and the 2 in the front garden are tall with bright purple trumpet-like flowers.

Then I weeded in the front garden, and removed all the prickly things that keep trying to take over, and then I harvested a HUGE pile of snap peas from the vegetable patch. Anders dug up another potato plant and we cooked them all with more of the TUGG burgers that Martin brought home for us some months ago. He said he had probably rolled these himself, so the dinner was all Ek made-and-grown. 😀 Yum yum!

I have so many things to look forward to right now, so many fun things to anticipate. We booked my Christmas present from the kids which is now for my birthday: a moose safari at the new moose park in Skäralid, about an hour north of us. I can’t wait! When we stop, the moose come right up to the wagons to say hello. Squee!

Here’s a short list of things I am looking forward to (which no longer includes Martin’s arrival because he’s home now!): Karin coming home from Greece tomorrow, a long-overdue massage from Emily on Wednesday, flea marketing with the AIC and my kids, going to see the play Bothwell with Debbie and Camilla, another bookbinding workshop, Bornholm for a week with John & Co (and finally getting to meet my latest niece for the first time!) and my mom and sister, then my mom and my sister here for nearly 3 weeks, vacation, a papermaking workshop, and a crayfish party here in Flyinge. Whew! And that’s all between now and mid-September! At which point, I guess I will collapse, muddy and exhausted, and needing another vacation, haha!

Mood: happy
Music: Spill Tab—Splinter