Of Trees and Politics

 

On the morning of Friday the 13th I woke up to white lawns and snow-covered roofs, while paved streets and walkways were still black - but possibly treacherously icy.  (Traffic warnings issued...) Not in the mood for possibly dangerous  and completely unnecessary adventures, I decided to devote my day to various indoors things, rather than taking risks.

 On Saturday there were no longer any traces of snow remaining, and in the afternoon I managed one of my usual walks around the old cemetery nearby. Nearly all the big trees have dropped all their leaves now - except various kinds of birches, which are still holding on to a few.

 

The Larch trees offer a peculiar sight just now - as they are "deciduous conifers". They produce cones and have needles, and yet they shed their needles every autumn, just like oaks or maples or birches shed their leaves. Larch trees weren't introduced in Sweden until the 1780s (according to Wikipedia); but have spread to become part of our nature, except in the very northernmost parts of the country. (I suspect the two or three growing in the cemetery were probably planted there, "once upon a time", though.) 

 What kinds of new trees they're planting in the new Park-To-Be is something that remains for me to try and figure out some time in the future. But they have continued with the planting during the past week - and towards the end of the week, they were also covering the ground around each new tree with something that I take to be wood shavings. Whether November is really a good time for planting trees is something that goes beyond my (non-existing) gardening skills - but hopefully they know what they're doing.  I put the question to all-knowing AI, which came up with the diplomatic answer that in Southern Sweden "a mild November can still offer good planting weather as long as the soil remains workable"...

So keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be getting seriously frosty too soon...

 

I don't usually write much about politics, but just now it's been two months since our general elections i Sweden; and we still haven't got a new government. (The old one is still acting as interim government.) Negotiations still seem to be in a very locked position. 

Basically, the election gave us a majority of four parties (Center, Social Democrats, 'Greens' and Left), who had all united around accepting the Social Democrats' leader Magdalena Andersson as future prime minister. The result was not as clear-cut as it might seem, though - as the Center party insist they don't want the Left to be allowed any ministerial posts, while the Left are just as adamant that they won't succumb to act as "support" party without such posts. (Worth noting is that the Left did get more votes than C in the election - and also more than the 'Greens'.) 

And as neither C nor Left seems willing to budge, the "negotiations" (if it can even be called that) just keep going round in circles. There are rules/time limits to stop that from going on forever - but it might end in a new election having to be held. (No guarantee that even that would solve it, though.) Another alternative may be for C to change sides - but then there are in turn similar problems connected with a much larger "extreme right" party they don't want to cooperate with either. Either way, just now we're still kind of held in limbo by a small party that only got c. 7% of the votes...