Home Sweet Home

 

On my walk around the old cemetery today, I noticed this birdhouse up in a tree. I only had my phone camera, but did my best to zoom it in with that. I'm pretty sure it must be new, or I think it would have caught my attention before. Whether anyone has moved in yet, I don't know...  (I'd be interested to know how prospective tenants feel about the decorated roof!)

On the ground, I spotted the first primula veris of the season. I do think these flowers deserve a prettier name than the English "cowslip"! In Swedish, we call them gullviva - to with their golden colour. 

Easter Eve

Easter Eve was cloudy and forecasts predicted rain, but around 11 am it still didn't look too bad, so I decided to go for a walk into town and back. And I did manage that (about an hour) without getting wet. (Later in the afternoon we did have a rain shower or two.)

There were very few people about in the city centre and square when I got there. But I saw one kid dressed up in some sort of costume, which reminded me that there might be a (traditional) children's Easter Eve parade planned for later. But as I didn't know when (or even if), I did not hang around waiting for that. Below is what I would have seen if I had -  photo "borrowed" from the local newspaper's website later...

 
My only errand in town was to buy some tea in my favourite tea shop. That only took five minutes, and then I was content to turn back home again. (I was really mostly just out for the walk in itself.)

 Not the shop where I bought my tea, but another one. 

Small white magnolia bush in the park.

 A pink one, just starting to unfold its buds...

 

Cherry blossom trees in a car park by the river. (The building in the background is an old spinning mill, nowadays housing various offices and a gym and whatnot.)

Photo from a bridge across the river. Up the hill to the right is the old cemetery, which I then cross to continue my way back home.

Easter Decorations - Outdoors & Indoors

 

Today (Maundy Thursday in English, Skärtorsdag in Swedish) was the warmest day yet here this spring, with temperatures up to around 22-23'C (71-73'F) in the afternoon. On my usual walk around the old cemetery, I noted that various bushes and trees are turning green now. Possibly it might slow down a bit over the weekend as lower temperatures are predicted to return - but on the other hand, som spring rain might work wonders as well...

 

Chestnut tree in the foreground

 

Blue pansies on great grandparents' grave

 

 

Many graves are decorated with daffodils for Easter.

 

 

Glad Påsk! = Happy Easter!

 

 

Cherry Blossom Time

 

After having seen the first cherry blossom tree in bloom in the city centre on Friday, the next day I decided it was probably also time to go and check on the ones in a little park in my own part of town - some ten minutes walk in another direction from where I live. 

This little park used to be all surrounded by old cherry blossom trees, but it has been rather evident in later years that not all of them were faring well. Now I found that several of them had been replaced by new, small, young ones (which were not in bloom yet, and I did not get any photos of them). But luckily they left two or three of the big old trees at one end of the park, and those are still doing their best to prove that they're not "past it" just yet! 

"The beauty of cherry blossoms
lies in their impermanence,

a fleeting moment of grace." 

~ ~ ~

"Cherry blossoms are a reminder that
life is beautiful, even in its brevity." 

Linking to  Mersad's Through My Lens

Environment

Photo from Borås Tidning (local newspaper)

On Thursday I read in my local news app that a group of people had been making a climate-related protest by tying red scarves around a number of sculptures in the city. So on Friday I decided to go for a walk downtown to see if I could find some of those. 

 

The only statue I actually found (still) wearing a red scarf was this one, though:

 

 Sculpture Ute (= Outdoors) by Charlotte Gyllenhammar.

 

The Non-Violence sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (cf the newspaper photo) was no longer wearing a read scarf when I got there. Whether it was removed by someone protesting against the protest, or someone not having heard/read about the protest (so failing to understand what it was about), or someone perhaps just feeling a bit cold and in need of a red knitted scarf, I'll probably never know...

 

The Non-Violence sculpture stands in Anna Lindh's Park. Anna Lindh was a Swedish politican (for the Social Democratic party) who was tragically assasinated in Stockholm in September 2003. She was Minister for Foreign Affairs since 1998, and before that she had also served as Minister for the Environment for four years.

 

This sculpture was not wearing a scarf, but looked to me like it could have needed one. I was a bit surprised to find it where I did, as last time I saw it, it was somewhere else - and before that, originally, it used to stand outside the Art Museum. I had also forgotten its name, but managed to (re-)find it by googling. It's called Fauna, by Tilda Lovell (2010).

 

A more encouraging find on my walk was the first cherry blossoms on a tree opposite the old church in the city centre.

 

 

 

 On my way back home, I found wood anemones and daffodils growing along the river.