Pretty in Pink

Magnolia tree

 

 

I don't know the name of these.

(I don't think I ever saw the movie Pretty in Pink. The title just came to mind when I tried to think of a heading for this post...)

 

In the Shadow of the Chestnut Tree

Huge old horse-chestnut tree in the cemetery.

Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Weekend Reflection

 

It's been a rather wet week. But green.

Weekend Reflections #296 

FMTSO - Behind the Corner

May 29: Behind the Corner - Show us the little things in your town or home. What lies behind the corner that just makes you happy to get there?

This is a garden I pass by often; usually one of the first places where I see the first early flowers in spring. (Photo from about a month ago.)

Friday My Town – Behind the Corner
 

Blogworld Trouble

For years now I've been using Windows Live Writer to create my blog posts and publish them. Today suddenly WLW does no longer work with Blogger. I found a Microsoft discussion forum that shows that I'm not alone. There seems to be some sort of unresolved issue between Blogger and Microsoft. I'm giving up for today... It's been so long since I tried blogging directly in Blogger that I've almost forgotten how to do it (with pictures and all). I hope they'll find a way to fix it, or I may have to start looking for alternatives.

Forget-Me-Not (26.5)

Four mornings in a row now I’ve been out walking (‘Nordic’ style) around the old cemetery. Yesterday I stopped at this old grave – ‘forgotten’ in the sense of no one actively tending it any more, but still full of lovely forget-me-nots!

Today, 26th May, it’s six years since my mum died; and in a few weeks, it will be four years since my dad joined her. I can’t visit their grave in the village churchyard very often; but it is of course being taken care of (we’re paying for that service as we cannot do it ourselves).

You’re not forgotten. 

Photo of my parents taken by a friend of theirs in 2007.

FMTSO – Open Theme

About five minutes’ walk from where I live there is an old cemetery. When I go into town, I either walk along it or across it. Somtimes, though, I just walk around it, and back again.

Lately I’ve tried a bit of “Nordic walking” with poles.

If you google Nordic walking, please be aware that my recent hobbling performances (with a bad shoulder on one side, and a bad knee on the other) is alas only, quite literally, a “shadow” of what the supermodels in the instruction videos seem to accomplish…

One day, crossing the street with my poles, I overheard a little child nearby ask: “Mummy, what is she doing?” The mother’s answer blew away with the wind – perhaps just as well…

There’s also nothing in the instruction videos about how best to handle two walking poles + a camera. With or without poles, the camera is always a good excuse for taking a break, though…

 

These iron crosses stand out among all the headstones. A closer look at the inscriptions show that both mark the graves of foundry workers from around the turn of the century 1900 (one of them a master).

Linking to

Open Theme Friday (FMTSO)

Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Spring Market

Friday-Saturday this past week was Spring Market in my town. Twice a year (once in spring, and once in autumn) the whole city centre of Borås is turned into a huge market place, with market stalls filling not only the main square but also several of the surrounding streets.

I’m not sure how old this tradition is – for all I know, it may well go back to the 1600s. The town was founded around 1620 as a trading site; and the whole area has a tradition of peddlers going around selling their stuff.

We even have a statue in honour of The Peddler (Knallen) standing in one of the shopping streets. (Photo from my archives.)

Many of the same tradesmen (and –women) come back year after year, and often book their places early; so that they can be found by customers in pretty much the same spot as last year. This comes in very handy if, like me, you are not really all that fond of crowds, but still have a few favourite stalls that you like to check on.

One stall that I nearly always visit at these markets is one selling cheap postcards: 10 cards for 10 kronor (SEK) ($1.22, £0.77, €1.07). (And of course since I joined postcrossing this is even more interesting to me!)

I’m not usually tempted by general bric-a-brac.
But my camera is.

Same thing with balloons.

Can anyone tell me the name or context of the yellow fellow at the front?? I seem to come across him everywhere these days, but we’ve never been formally introduced…

In the past I found it hard to resist buying some market sweets, but these days I pass on those.

Handbags… Now there’s something I might be tempted to buy, even when not really looking for one… I did resist buying any at the market [feeling proud], but that’s partly because I just recently bought these two…

Linking to:

FMTSO: Important Buildings

If I choose to walk into town past the railway station, these are some of the buildings I pass by.

An ‘avantgarde’ triangular office building from 2010; the head office of a rapidly growing fashion company (Gina Tricot, founded in 1997).

The railway station, built in 1900 (building listed as an important part of our cultural heritage).

Not sure about the importance of the building in the background, but it’s one of rather few old wooden buildings in town, and is a restaurant of some kind. (It was really the tree that caught my eye now, though…)

Across the street from the railway station there is an old “senior high” school for technical sciences; founded back in 1856. On the ground floor in the red brick wing, facing the station, you now also find our tourist office.

Across another street from there, we have one of the town’s first cinemas, built in 1914 – Röda kvarn (after  the famous Moulin Rouge - note the decorative wind mill on top of the wall. 

This building is also a cultural heritage listed one. It still serves as a cinema, but is now run by the town’s culture administration. They show certain classics or more ‘difficult’ or educational films etc, usually just one or two shows per film (and daytime specials for schools sometimes).

The town centre this weekend was full of market stalls for the spring market, which I’ll save for a later post.  So let’s just sneak around all that for now and just have a look at some of the views along the river which I took from the town park while waiting to take a bus home.

View from the park across to the South Square, where most of our bus lines meet. It is surrounded on three sides by low old wooden buildings (and on the fourth side by the river).

Greener Every Day

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden –

Photos taken in the old cemetery close to where I live.
A good place to go for a short walk this time of year;
with lots of birds singing in the big old trees.

Spring, Jump, Climb and Run

One of the modern signs of spring around here is when you innocently walk into town on a Saturday and find the city centre turned into, for example, a giant obstacle course for an ActionRun.

Aren’t there any normal people around??

I made my escape while there was still a chance to sneak out of the crazy maze without climbing, jumping, running or swimming.

(This last one obviously not mine, but snapped from the local newspaper.)