Tagged: wonderfulworld

12
Oct
2013

AUTUMNAL

Darn it, I swear I’m going to write more, be present, and then time gets away from me and I realize I AM being present, just not here. All year long, people here in southern Sweden have been exclaiming in wonder about the weather. The sunshine, the blue skies, the perfect temperatures. It was a perfect spring, a fantastic summer and now a stunningly gorgeous fall. The leaves on the trees outshine the sun in a revolving spectrum of all the best colors nature’s got on offer. It’s hard to keep your eyes on the road when you’re driving, as...

25
Sep
2013

COLLECTIVISM

Yesterday, as we sat at the kitchen table eating dinner, we counted NINE magpies hopping about in the street in front of our house. That’s surely enough for a tiding. Or even a charm, which is one of the alternative collective nouns for magpies according to a couple of different websites I checked. A charm of magpies seems more fitting to me, since I think they are such charming birds. They’re so flashy and curious and bold. And big! Striking black and white with a brilliant flash of peacock blue that shines out when they spread their wings. They seemed...

13
Sep
2013

END OF A LONG WEEK

Tonight feels like a harbinger, of sorts. It’s not the first time that Karin has been away overnight, but Martin is out, too. He doesn’t go out often or socialize nearly as much as his sister, mostly because the majority of his friends live much farther away. She can bike to the next village or get one of us to drive her over since we’re in that town nearly every day for something: groceries, gas, soccer practice pick-up and drop-off, etc. But tonight they’re both gone, and while it’s not the first time that Karin has been away overnight or...

25
Jul
2013

AT THE TOP OF SUMMER

The lawn is crispy crunchy underfoot, every grass blade seared and sun-brittle. No one here wastes water on lawns so the whole neighborhood has a sere look to it. In the fields around our village, wheat and oats and grasses are tawny beige as well; harvest-time is nearly here. The only thing still blooming outside of pots around our house are the roses which are still going strong. The pots add dashes of color: pelargoniums, flowering succulents, begonias and some sad blasted pansies that weren’t quite done when I was repotting summer flowers some time ago. Tomorrow is 7 weeks...

16
May
2013

BLOGILICIOUS

OMG, how good do these peanut butter brownies look? NOMNOMCITY! I had to confess to The Things I Don’t Drink again today, this time to 3 colleagues during a training course I was at. They all boggled at me. I couldn’t decide which one each of them was boggling at me most for which beverage…as they seemed to be equally divided, all three. Yeah, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink tea. And I don’t drink alcohol. “For health reasons?” …no. I just don’t like the smell. Or the taste. Here in Sweden, most Swedes can’t decide which is worse:...

12
May
2013

BABY, IT’S NICE OUTSIDE

It’s true I love my job. I’m good at what I do and I like doing it, and every workday when the alarm goes off, I hop right up (albeit a bit more slowly than in younger years) ready to start the day…but after a long weekend like this? Retirement sounds pretty good. It’s nice to relax, spend the day doing the things I feel like doing, getting things done at my own pace, having time to set chores and projects down and just read for a while. Time to sleep in, go to bed late, plan excursions and enjoy...

16
Jan
2013

SUBZURRRRO

The trees have got their bling on again. Snow-sparkle ephemeral diamond gorgeousness. Yesterday, when I drove home the fog was so dense it was BLACK. Have you ever driven through black fog? It was creepy as all get-out. It was only when other car’s lights hit it that I could see the whiteness. It’s been FURRRREEZING this whole week, in the minus teens celsius. Then I drove Karin to soccer practice…outdoors. -11 degrees celsius, fog so thick they couldn’t see halfway across the field and still, an hour and a half practice on snow-covered (unswept) artificial grass. CURRRRAZY. I’m adding...

19
Oct
2012

AUTUMN BEAUTY & A BOOK DILEMMA

Most years, autumn here in southern Sweden is an afterthought. A quick flash through gold to brown and ashes! ashes! all fall down! Autumn is usually rainy, sodden, darkening and the leaves don’t stand a chance: they fall with the rain to lie in decaying circles beneath suddenly bare branches. This year, O! we’ve been blessed by cold, clear days and a long stretch of solid blue sky and flame-tipped, flame-topped foliage. The birches are golden, the maples are red, and everything else is in between: orange, pumpkin, crimson, amber, saffron, carrot, coral, terracotta, rust, umber, copper, bronze. Most of...

15
Jun
2012

THE SMALLEST THING ABOUT SUMMER THAT MAKES ME HAPPY

One of my best blog friends, who I sadly have not (YET) met in real life has also been kinda stuck with writing lately, so when she posted not too long ago and lamented this fact, I gave her a writing assignment. I asked her: What is the smallest thing about summer that makes you happy? And she wrote a lovely long post about the small things of summer that make her happy, that kept turning out to be pretty darn big things. That’s the thing about summer. It’s too big in all its beauty to be boiled down to...

24
May
2012

SUDDENLY, SUMMER

Suddenly, it’s summer. Nearly a week of it so far and no end in sight that I’ve heard…and don’t tell me if so; I’m loving this seemingly endless sunshine. Suddenly, the grass is long and rippling along the roadsides, the white flat wheels of Queen’s Anne Lace have bloomed and every other bush and tree sports lilacs in every shade of ecstasy: white, lavender, pink, purple. The chestnut candles are glowing, white and pearly pink. The starry lupine leaves have sprouted and the flowering stalks are rising and calling: summer, summer, summer! If I could slow it down, I would....

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