I may have to do some rethinking about my new year’s challenge of writing a letter a month. I’ve been struggling to decide who to write to for May. I wrote a short list of people (that haven’t already received a letter), and it made me realize how little contact I have with old friends and relatives these days. Social media just doesn’t cut it. Friendships that I once would have said were solid have become tattered and unraveled over the many years. In some cases, I haven’t seen a friend except once or twice since we moved to Sweden, and many of the relatives that I would have written to if it were 10 years ago have sadly passed away. I can’t write to Uncle Sam or Aunt Kathie or my dad. Or even my mom, really. I mean, I could, but it feels like an exercise in futility. <\/p>\n
I’ve only written 4 letters so far, and I didn’t have any trouble choosing the person for each letter that I sent. It felt like I was continuing a conversation. Possibly a conversation that only exists in my head, but nonetheless. I have one more person on my list that that feeling is authentic for (but I write to her at least once a year regardless), but the other names I’ve jotted down? It feels like I am trying to jumpstart a conversation that died a quiet natural death years ago. Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe just the act of writing the letter, the act of receiving it, will resurrect something. Maybe not, but it has me re-thinking a bit, that’s all.<\/p>\n
Today is cloudy and cool, after a complete week of the most gorgeous weather: full on sun, solid blue skies, and a slightly chilly breeze. Temperatures were in the mid-70s, though in the sun it was definitely warmer. 72F and sunny is my favorite kind of day, and Sweden has been consistently delivering this spring. Just in the 4 weeks since I got home, spring has sprung for real. The rapeseed fields are glowing neon-yellow and the lilacs are about to pop. We definitely have to trim our lilacs for next year as the branches with flowers are now above the garage roof line. Yesterday I went to the plantshop and bought new aliums for the front garden bed (the ones from last year didn’t survive the cold). Anders had aleady trimmed the rosebush, and I had removed last year’s detritus from the hosta bed. Karin was home during last week and spent 3 hours weeding around all the pavement and the front beds, and Anders has now removed all the dandelions in the yard and is weeding behind the house. I’m very grateful because I can’t get down on my knees and bending over to weed is murder on my back. <\/p>\n
I also bought 4 plants for the pots on the deck. The plantshop already had geraniums but I didn’t want to replace the pansies already so will wait another week or so. I put the pansies in nearly a month late in the outdoor pots due to being in the US when I would have normally done it. I just hope they don’t run out of them before I am ready to put summer flowers in. I bought another sedum for the big pot that I’ve had stonecrop in as well. Two of the plants I had from last summer survived, but it’s a big pot (and full of tiny yellow ants), so it needed one more to fill it out. <\/p>\n
Anders has already prepared the vegetable garden: he plants 3 kinds of potatoes in 3 rows, a row of yellow\/white onions, a row of red onions, a row of carrots, and a row of snap peas. We have two cucumber starters from Maria (for pickling cukes) and I’ll buy one of the regular cucumber starters probably next week. I bought 3 tiny cherry tomato starters as well. The cherry tree has been full of blossoms all this past week, so even though it’s been cold, I’m hoping for the best, and praying we don’t get any more frost (in mid-May!) that would kill our chance for fruit again. <\/p>\n
Anders turned 64 on Friday, 1 more year until retirement, which he is already looking forward to. The kids couldn’t come on Friday as they were both working, but they came home for several hours yesterday (Theo with Martin, but Essie had to work), and Anders grilled kebabs and made a delicious couscous salad with fresh cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, spinach, and feta. I baked a spice cake Friday evening and iced it yesterday with almond buttercream frosting. We sat on the porch for dinner for the first time. It was lovely. Martin fixed the problem I was having with the jigsaw puzzle that is taking me forever, and even started putting together one of the Lego peacocks that Sarah gave me for Christmas. It’s not actually Lego, but some sort of tiny brick version. The pieces are so small they flip right out of my fingers, and I had put it aside to have Martin help with. He’ll have to come back though to help finish it!<\/p>\n
I have one thing left to do before our roadtrip to Normandy and that is to book a tour of the Abbey on Mont-Saint-Michel. You can’t book more than 1 month in advance, but I’ve been trying every day with no luck since May 3 and the June calendar is still unavailable. I wrote them an email on Friday…hoping they will respond soon and help me out or let me know when the June calendar will open up. Our place for the first night in Bremen is ready, and everything else is booked and taken care of…including the repairs to the Tesla (crack in windshield and dented passenger side panel). John and family arrive in 2 weeks, and Normandy is in 3…eeek!<\/p>\n
Zooming toward summer and fun stuff, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n
Mood: relaxed I may have to do some rethinking about my new year’s challenge of writing a letter a month. I’ve been struggling to decide who to write to for May. I wrote a short list of people (that haven’t already received a letter), and it made me realize how little contact I have with old friends and relatives these days. Social media just doesn’t cut it. Friendships that I once would have said were solid have become tattered and unraveled over the many years. In some cases, I haven’t seen a friend except once or twice since we moved to Sweden,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,14,3],"class_list":["post-10036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-beinglizardek","tag-goodthings","tag-wonderfulworld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10037,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036\/revisions\/10037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMusic: Anthony Lucido and Carley Lusk\u2014Sober Weekends<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"