While some parts of the world could see a total solar eclipse on 12 August, here in Sweden, we could only hope to perhaps catch a glimpse of a partial one. All I could see from my own balcony on Thursday evening was some clouds illuminated by the sinking sun, though (Probably just as well, as I was not in possession of proper equipment for staring right at an eclipse anyway!) The sky still looked kind of dramatic anyway, though.
... perhaps I was a bit premature in declaring a sense of autumn in the air already?
Anyway, today we were back to a clear blue sky with just a few decorative fluffy white clouds, and pleasant summery temperatures around 21-22C (~70F), with only a light breeze.
I phoned my hairdresser in the morning, and she was able to squeeze me in for a haircut at 1 pm. So I just had sandwich for lunch, and then set off on a walk into town around 12:15.
The city park and the little square across the river from there were full of people enjoying the sun.
See that low wooden chair in the foreground? That's new for this summer and the woman sitting in it seemed to find it the perfect place to spend her lunch break (or whatever! - maybe she was still on holidays...)
After my haircut (which only takes about 20 minutes), I also took the opportunity of a couple of other minor errands. As so often when in town, I visited the tea shop by the main square and stocked up on some loose leaf teas. Then I passed through one of my favourite clothes shops - just to have a "peek" really, but my eyes happened to fall on a denim shirt that I liked... So I tried that on, and ended up buying it. Not quite an impulse buy, really, as I have been on the lookout for something like it for a while. I bought it in a size large enough to wear on top of a t-shirt, so it can also be used as a light summer jacket.
On my way back, I stopped at the ice cream café in the park, and had small beaker of vegan mango ice-cream at one of their tables outdoors, before taking on the rest of the walk home.
In my previous post I mentioned Goldenrod in bloom (Swedish: gullris), but didn't supply a close-up - as on that day I hadn't actually been up close to them... Yesterday, I did come closer to some in the old cemetery, though. So if anyone is still feeling unsure of what kind of flower I was referring to, here's a photo:
Some other (from our point of view 'foreign') species of Solidago have also been spreading in Sweden in later years, though, and are regarded as invasive. I think (or assume) that the ones that I see around where I live are the old trusted kind, though.
On my walk yesterday I had a first sense of Autumn/Fall approaching*... Even if summer here has not been as persistently hot and dry as further south in Europe, it's still been very dry for this area. We've had a few showers lately, but not really a whole lot of rain in total - so the ground is still very dry, and many wild grassy areas have turned brown.
*Meteorological autumn starts on September 1, while astronomical autumn begins with the equinox on September 22, 2026.
Goldenrod is in bloom now in many places, along roads, or like in the photo above, on the slopes along the railway. There used to be a lot of Goldenrod growing in the "wild corner" of my grandparents'/parents' garden (my dad's childhood home, which then served us as summer cottage for a number of years, before my parents moved there to live in their own retirement years). My mum used to take in some to dry, which she then put in vases for winter decorations - sometimes together with other dried flowers.
In the old cemetery, one can already wade through "fallen leaves" in some places - although I think most of what we see just now is not really leaves, but remnants of tree blooms or seed pods (above, linden trees). After a few windy days, a lot of them just now, though!
And flower beds keep on changing and "maturing"...
♫... I beg your pardon
I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine
There's gotta be a little rain sometime... ♫
Lynn Anderson (1970)
Photos from the Rose Garden in the park in our city centre today; taken on my way back from having been to pick up my new glasses. The grey skies in the background brought Lynn Anderson's song to mind for me. The weather has been "back and forth" again a lot this week. Rain one day, 25C the next, and then again so stormy that one hesitates to go out just because of all the debris flying around. However, today the wind had once more subsided, the temperature was quite pleasant for walking - around 18C (64F) - and the rain actually kept away until I was safely back home again.
If you followed my July adventures, you may remember that I went to see my optician about a month ago; and after her examination decided to buy a pair new glasses, even if the results from the eye test only showed "minor" changes. (But it might have some impact on my ability to read small print.) You may also recall that I took a couple of frames home with me to ponder about over the weekend after the examination; but then ended up deciding on a third one in the shop instead, when I got back there. (Decicions, decisions...)
What did not really strike me until today when I tried on the new ones again in the shop, now with glass fitted... was how very little the new frame that I finally decided on really differs from my old one! I almost had to laugh. The new ones are a bit more rounded in shape but that's about it...
Old glasses: top/left, new ones: bottom/right.
I'm calling this collage: "Me and My Twin"...
There's a little bit more of a slight tinge towards green in the new frame compared to the old one (which is more just dark blue). But it's not really obvious...
Ah well. I guess I shall just have to claim that I've "found my style" and am sticking with it!
What I'm primarily hoping for is that the new glasses might make it a little bit easier to read small print on paper again. The main problem is macular degeneration in the left eye, though - diagnosed ~3 years ago. And that can neither be cured nor compensated with glasses. (But at least it does not really seem to have got any worse; which is good.)
I did not bother to also get new separate glasses for computer work, though - my old "computer glasses" still work well enough.
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The sentence "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem "Sacred Emily", which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays. In that poem, the first "Rose" is the name of a person. Stein later used variations on the sentence in other writings, and the shortened form "A rose is a rose is a rose" is among her most famous quotations, often interpreted as meaning "things are what they are", a statement of the law of identity, "A is A." (Wikipedia)
On my short walk this afternoon, I spotted an orange dinosaur grazing on the football field.
Back home, I asked AI what would be its Latin name, and learned that it would be either a Dinosaurius Aurantiacus, or possibly an Aurantiosaurus. **
Letting my phone camera zoom it in through a hole in the mesh fence, it became a little clearer what was going on, though:
In case you don't want to bother about going back to that post, below is the image of what they are planning to construct, again. (Please note the size of the people inside it.) How it tall it might in the end turn out to be compared to an Aurantiosaurus with its neck upright, I'm still not sure.
* * * * *
... and memories from Västervik, 2025...
In my own photo calendar for 2026, the photo for August (above) shows a view from Västervik, on the east coast of Sweden.
The link goes to a post of mine from August 2025, with some more photos from this charming old seaside town. My brother and I spent an afternoon/evening (and night) there on our holiday trip. The sky was cloudy when we arrived, but the sun came out later on in the evening. Looking up that post now, I see that I also wrote there that "I took so many photos that I won't use them all in this post, but will save some for later." I'm not sure if I ever got round to showing some more - but as it can still be said to be "later", here are some additional ones now... ;)
This year, we are not planning any "longer" trip . I for one have been feeling rather tired all summer. Besides "weird weather" a lot of the time, I'm still feeling limited by my knee, and am not sure how I'd cope with full days of travelling and touristing. Hopefully my brother will be able to drive down here for a visit towards the end of August, though (I spoke to him yesterday), and we may just make some shorter outing or two from here. (For me just now it doesn't have to be neither far nor long to make a bit of a change - while for him it will be a a few days away from home anyway.)
Sunset views from last Sunday, 26 July (at 21:16)
Since then we've had a "mixed" weather week, starting with rain (showers), followed by hot weather from further south in Europe suddenly visiting again for a couple of days (culminating on Thursday with around 31'C) - but then, without much drama, back to cooler temperatures around 20'C again yesterday...
Not all easy to keep up, but I'm thankful that the heat only lasted a couple of days this time, as that meant it didn't have time to heat up the indoors temperature much. Wednesday was laundry afternoon for me, which kept me inside. On Thursday I went for a short walk before noon (i.e. before it got "too" hot), but then shut myself in behind closed curtains etc during the afternoon. On Friday it was cooler but instead very windy, so I wasn't out for very long then either - but was able to let some cool air in at home... :)
Kept to shadowy paths on the old cemetery on Thursday...
Linking to Skywatch Friday
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English title: Poo-Poo and the Dragons; originally published in 1942.
My copy in Swedish translation was printed in 1952.
Available for Kindle for about USD 1.05
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This month of July, with the weather shifting between too hot and too wet, and my bad knee still limiting me a bit as well, I seem to have reverted to a "second childhood" in my reading. On a whim, I started checking if some old childhood favourites of mine in Swedish (which I still also have in print) were also available in audio format from one of my library services - and as they were, I have been re-reading some of those "the lazy way" - i.e. by listening while resting, when too tired to do anything more productive...
So really not much point in reviewing them here... But I'll give you a brief summary anyway - hopefully you might understand why I still feel inspired to do so, before I get to the end.
I read these books more than once in my childhood/early teens, when visiting my maternal grandfather. Originally they belonged to my mum and my aunt - and later on, when that house was sold, they were among a few books that I decided to keep from there.
Published in the 1940s, the story in these books takes place a few decades earlier (early 1900s). The main character is a girl (Gulla) who grew up in an orphanage, and then had to go into service very early on (still really just a child herself) to help in the household of a poor crofter with many children. (The croft called Kulla, and thus the girl came to be known as Kulla-Gulla.) Back in those days, orphanage children were "auctioned" out as servants to whoever demanded the least money from the village authorities to keep them. As things turn out for Gulla, though, it is discovered after some time, that she's really the illegitimate grand-daughter of the lord of the manor in the village. So in the later books, we find her having moved to live with her grandfather at the manor, and struggling to balance between having grown up extremely poor but then suddenly being expected to become a "lady".
It's been several decades since I last read these books, but to my surprise I found I still liked them better than I expected. In some ways I can probably relate to them even more now, because of in later years also having learned more about my other grandfather's childhood: He was born the only child of an unmarried mother, and grew up in poor circumstances in a small croft cottage, too. After only a few years in the village school he became a shoemaker's apprentice - but then managed to change his career and became a journalist instead; and wrote a book about crofts in the village where he grew up (which was published after his death, by my parents).
...
Another of my old childhood books that I recently managed to find to listen to in Swedish is the book at the top of this post: Poo-Poo and the Dragons, originally written in English - and available cheap for Kindle if anyone should feel tempted...
It seems that this author, C.G. Forester, wrote many novels - and this one is not among the those he's best known for. (You can look him up in Wikipedia if you want to know more.) Personally I can only recall having read this one, though. Poo-Poo and the Dragons (1942) was created as a series of stories told to his son George to encourage him to finish his meals. (The boy had mild food allergies and needed encouragement to eat.) It is a totally whimsical story (involving dragons kind of "taken for granted"), but I found myself still enjoying it!
Now I'm curious to know if others among my blogging friends who have reached "senior" years also still have kept some of your old childhood favourites - and perhaps even re-read them now and then... ? (In my own case, as I don't have grandchildren, I can't "hide" my re-reading of children's books behind such excuses!)
Friday last week, 24th July, was my 18th anniversary of moving into the flat where I've been living ever since. Back then, in 2008, I had not yet started blogging; and I don't have the photos of the moving chaos on my computer or online. (Another commemorative post from last spring may give you a "hint", though: Memories of moving 2008.)
This July, another reason to let my thoughts wander back over the years that I've been living here, is that we just recently had new recycling bins for various kinds of packaging materials installed in three different places along my street. The photo below shows one of them, and another one just like it is more or less just across the street from where I live.
This means that I will no longer have to go for a longer "recycling walk" to a somewhat bigger recycling station some 8 minutes walk or so away - which will be a relief, not least in winter... and with getting on in years besides...
I'm also hoping that "people" will take better care to leave the close-to-home stations tidier than they tend to do with the bigger more out-of-the-way station... (The photo below was snapped some years ago - but alas it's very much of a repeat story.)
My thoughts travelling down the long and winding road of years past, it made me wonder how many weekly "recycling walks" I've made over the 18 years I've been living where I do now. It's usually been once a week. If I'm doing the math right, that means 52 x 18 = 936 times. And with each of those walks taking me about 20 minutes there and back, that means 312 hours, which equals almost two weeks (day and night).
Maybe I shall have to extend my walking in other directions to compensate for the exercise!! ;) ...
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| Sunset sky - Thursday 23 July, 2026 |
Photo taken from my balcony yesterday; after a sunny day with pleasantly "cool" Nordic summer temperatures (not rising much above 20'C). Clouds gathered in the evening, followed by a mostly overcast day today. I don't think we actually got any rain, though - so far, anyway! (writing this at 6:40 pm)
Personally, I much prefer it when I can open the balcony door or a window to let cooler air in, than having to keep everything shut, blinds down, curtains drawn, and fans running around the clock to try and keep the heat out (and yet not really succeeding) - as has periodically been the situation here too, this summer (but not for as long at a time as further south in Europe).
Linking to Skywatch Friday
I had a few comments on my previous post about how it still looks rather green here - and as I replied to some, for one thing we've not had the same long-lasting extreme heat as further south in Europe (Britain included); and for another we've probably also had more rain (even if mostly rather unpredictable showers combined with thunder).
In our area/town there has also so far been no ban on using sprinklers for watering, which means that the places where I usually walk and snap photos - like the old cemetery nearby, and the park down in the city centre - have had extra help to remain predominantly green.
However, today I walked a different way down to the riverside, and snapped the photo below to show you one example of places nearby where it's more obvious that it's really "fundamentally" rather dry around here too:
This is the grassy hillside below the cemetery up on the hill; and on the other side of the street, a slope down to the railway running in a valley further down below looks much the same.
But then down by the river, it's quite easy to forget about the drought again for a while. (There are dams at the northern vs the southern end of town to adjust the water level through the city centre, and it has been kept normal so far.)
Water lilies are now in bloom in certain places in the river - here, yellow ones. (Alas as I only had my phone camera, I could not really zoom in the flowers properly.)
Finally a day of neither glaringly hot, nor risk of sudden heavy downpours and thunder. As seems to have become the pattern this summer, I needed to take advantage of that for a couple of necessary errands in the city centre (mainly to the pharmacy this time); leaving me very little room for any more exciting excursions. But it did allow me a walk through the city park, and along the river, to get myself there and back.
I'm still using a walking stick, which is both "a blessing and a curse" at the same time. A blessing because it allows me to walk further than I would dare try without it. But a curse because it means I never have both hands free (and have to plan any errands or other activities accordingly - including photo stops!)
"Sudden drop in temperature" - AI generated image...
I know I said in my previous post that I'd welcome a drop in temperature - but then I had in mind daytime temps getting down to like perhaps just under 20C - not 12...
On Thursday afternoon we reached 32C here (89.6 F). Today, Sunday, it's not risen above 12C (53.6 F) all day . That's a drop of 20C (68F) in 2½ days... Not sure I've ever experienced that before?!
With unpredictable winds and rain showers reigning outside, I've just been staying in today - trying to let "enough" chilly winds in now and then to get the indoors temperature back to some kind of normal - but not too cold!!
Linking to Skywatch Friday
On Friday afternoon the heatwave that has been ruling here for the past week started to break up, as thunder and rain showers began rolling in from the south-west. The showers have been brief but violent. The night indoors was still hot and clammy, as one could not leave any windows or balcony door open. Nor can one do so today, even if just going out for a short while.
I did venture out for about 20 minutes around noon today, just for a "breather". I only walked 10 minutes in one direction and then turned around. The three photos above show my view of the sky on the way back. I managed to get back home dry, but shortly after, a sudden gust of wind blew shut the balcony door with a big bang (I had opened it wide when I got back in) and the heavens opened again. (The folding umbrella I had brought with me on my walk probably wouldn't have helped much.)
This weekend of thunder is likely to be followed by a whole week of cooler weather (even under 20C) and also quite a lot of rain. Whether one considers this a blessing or a curse probably varies a lot from one person to another! Personally, I welcome the drop in temperature, and I know that nature is thirsting for rain... No guarantee how long it will be before I'll start complaining about it being too wet, though! ;)
