Old Friends Revisiting

 

In July 2024, I wrote a post entitled Old Friends, or "How Terribly Strange to Be Seventy" * - about a brief visit then from friends of mine (a married couple) from Karlstad (where I lived back in my 20s), whom I then hadn't seen IRL for 38 years. This past weekend they happened to be visiting Borås again - this time to attend a big national family history research society event, at which one of their daughters was one of the speakers. 

M informed me of this in good time, and expressed hopes of us being able to meet up for a while in connection with this as well. While the event was still vaguely "in the future" I had half in mind to perhaps try to attend part of it myself. But as it got closer and I understood how big an event it was (held at a large event center, and with pre-bookings for lectures etc), I realised I didn't really feel I had enough energy for that. Luckily M+K proved more "flexible" than me. So instead of us meeting up briefly in a crowd, they stopped by to visit me at home for a while on Sunday (late) morning, before starting their drive back home. And as then there were no other "distractions", we again had a good catching-up chat both about family history, our own current situations, and mutual old memories and friends. 

And on top of that, they came bringing a lovely bouquet of roses (photo above), wishing me happy (71st) birthday a week in advance! :) 

(Photo edited with a Picasa3 filter)

 

 * The 2024 post includes a video clip with the Simon & Garfunkel song "Old Friends"

August Skies

 

Monday 17/08/2026 (20:23)

Tuesday 18/08/2026 (20:24)

Saturday 22/08/2026 (14:08)

Saturday 22/08/2026 (19:18)

Saturday 22/08/2026 (20:13)

It's already Sunday Evening when I'm finding the time to put this post together. Perhaps a bit late for Skywatch Friday - but I decided to post (and link) my sky-watching photos from the past week anyway. It's been a week of swiftly shifting skies; and rain showers now and then - but rather brief, with some sunshine in between. Personally I'm grateful for a further drop in temperatures over the past few days, which has also brought down the indoors temperature in my flat to "normal". Since two or three nights I even have the duvet back on my bed. (Just a light synthetic one, but still giving a bit more "weight" than just the empty cover I've been using all summer...). 

Goldenrod Again

 In a recent post or two I showed some photos of the plant (herb) Goldenrod (Solidago); which I thought were of our (Swedish) native kind virgaurea rather than the canadensis - which is considered invasive here. (The Canadian kind may still have been around for 200 years, though!)

Today I noticed a whole field of Goldenrod in a wild area behind a parking lot, where they definitely looked rather "invasive" - which made me think again. So I went up close to take some more photos; and back home compared those again to Wikipedia. Actually these do indeed seem to be of the Canadian kind. And if so, the ones I saw in the cemetery and the ones growing on the slopes down to the railway are probably of that kind as well... (In fact, I'm no longer sure if I ever actually saw the virgaurea in real life?!)

Which just goes to show that you can't really take for granted that everything you happen to read online is true. "Not even" on this blog! ;)

 

 

 

Goldenrod - Solidago canadensis
Public domain picture from Wikipedia

Solidago virgaurea
Public domain picture from Wikipedia

Pelargoniums

 

I haven't been sitting on my balcony much this summer, except for a very short while now and then. On sunny days it's been way too hot - and otherwise too windy (or even wet). The balcony faces south-west and the sun comes round the corner around noon and stays until sunset. SW is also usually where our winds and rain come from here, though... And the showers we've had this summer have often been of the torrential kind. 

The pelargoniums (geraniums) that I bought back around Midsummer have been thriving, though. Because of the weather situation they've remained standing on the wooden bench against the wall under the windows (the most protected place); and I've been out to water them manually almost every evening. (A couple of times earlier in the summer when there were storm warnings issued, I took them in over night.)

The photo above is from today - which for a change has been rather rainy, and the temperature suddenly as low as around 14C (57F) all day!

The photo below is from my blog post 23 June, when I had just bought them:  

Photo from my blog post 23 June

  

Drought

 

Even if we've not really had "extremely" hot weather here lately, it has continued to be an exceptionally dry summer - and the evidence of that keep increasing now that we're half way into August. The all yellow tree caught my eye in the old cemetery today, and the other two examples of trees looking like they're kind of giving up are from last week.

 

I was tired over the weekend and haven't been doing much. Today I went into town for a pharmacy errand before lunch; and managed that, but felt no inspiration for anything "extra" - and also felt quite exhausted on my way back. Not even sure I can blame the tiredness on the weather (semi-cloudy and not really hot). Sitting down for a proper break before walking back home might have been better - I just didn't really feel in the mood for that either!

 

 
Late this afternoon we did get a short rain shower, which felt refreshing - but it did not last long. We may be getting a bit more later in the week - but how much remains to be seen!