Testa Torp

In the fall we demolished the rotten stairway ,which has made it a little difficult to get up to the second floor. We do have a hatch in the ceiling so we can climb up a ladder to a crawlspace on the second floor, but from there we needed a way into the living area.

We decided to make a hole behind a cupboard. The vertical planks that can be seen inside the cupboard are at least 7 cm thick. This is not going to be easy work!

But with a chainsaw everything goes fast.

Within 15 minutes we had a hole. Niklas sawed away a little paper so the hole would look nice.

Recycling in the 1930s - use the wooden boxes that sugar was delivered in as building material.

There are lots of really pretty wild flowers blooming at the cottage right now (among all the weeds). I picked three of my favourites for a bouquet - water avens (pictured), columbine and woodland geranium.

Svala loved being in the sun and dirt. She's our indoor cat that doesn't really know what an ordinary cat does outside. It's so fun to see how she prances around the yard as if she was the only cat that existed out in the country. I had hoped that her hunting instincts would kick in so that she would catch a few rodents, but that doesn't seem realistic.

The cottage, seen from the kitchen garden.

It doesn't really matter that this photo isn't in focus because there's nothing left in this row of arugula anyway. Some hungry little insects have eaten up all the arugula, "spicy mix" lettuce, and broccoli, which actually completely disappeared.

Here are my enemies - Mr. and Mrs. Flea Beetle. They got their name from their ability to jump like normal fleas. On this radish leaf you can see the little holes that the flea beetles make. Despite the invasion, the radishes are growing alright, but we're going to miss out on the tasty leaves.

But it's not just flea beetles that are eating my cabbage-family plants. I have also seen masses of rape bugs (what a lovely name!) in the garden. It's a shame that these insects do so much damage because they are quite beautiful.

I found no other method for protecting plants from these hungry bugs other than to use a row cover when the seeds are sown. We'll see if it goes better for the arugula now.

Niklas has played lumberjack during the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me when he did his most impressive work. Like a little monkey, Niklas climbed up a willow tree and sawed down several big branches, which were shading an old lilac bush.

This is an apple tree that was chopped down long ago and replaced with a mini wind turbine. The tree fought back and when we bought the cottage the turbine was surrounded by branches. It looked ridiculous! The turbine finally fell this winter, but the tree still looked a little sad. We saved the few branches that had flowers and got rid of the rest.

I hope we'll get a few apples now that the tree gets more sun and room.

One of our pear trees has started to split in two, so it has received a little support from a chain. So much work with old fruit tress!

Time to thin out in the lettuce patch!

And with that I had the first salad of the year, with radishes, chives, oregano, and lemon balm.

The first peonies of the year are also here. The colour in the photo turned out a little weird. In reality the flowers are blood red.

Despite us wanting to enjoy the beautiful spring weather, we've forced ourselves to do a little work inside the house. The foundation of the house is much too shallow and the ground is covered in scraps. It's time to take out our shovels! In the above photo, we've dug out about 20 cm of the top layer of soil. I've lost count now, but that's about 20 - 25 wheelbarrow loads. I'm hoping that we'll have enough dirt to fill in all the rodent holes that have appeared in the yard this year.

Last year we didn't get to the house during mid-May since my family was here for a visit. While we were away all of the cherry and plum trees bloomed. We didn't see any fruit on the trees last year - the trees are fairly old and not taken of - so we had no idea how many fruit trees we had. What a surprise it was this year! There must be at least 20 in total!

In addition to the cherry and plum trees, we have lots of bird cherry trees, which have masses of white fragrant flowers in early spring. Now that the bird cherry trees are almost finished, the apple and pear trees are starting. Soon it will be time for the white lilacs and then the mock orange bloom. We have white blooming trees from early spring until midsummer.

An extravagant cherry tree covered with flowers.

A more understated plum tree, which flowers and gets leaves simultaneously.

Frö med posten (a Swedish mail order seed company) has chosen one of my pictures to be in their photo competition! First prize is a gift certificate for 3000 kr (~ $450 CAD)! I could fill our whole yard with vegetables and flowers with that much money for seeds. I really have no hope of winning first prize as there have been a lot of beautiful pictures in the competition so far, but I'd still really like to get through to the finale. To do that, I need your votes. You'll find the poll here (right-hand side of the page) - select 'bild 2' and click "RÖSTA". Thank you!

This weekend I was busy cleaning up around the red currant bushes. There were masses of stinging nettles and wild raspberries growing there, which would have made it painful to pick the currants. It doesn't look so bad in the picture, but this is what it would have grown to in a couple of months.

After. The sun can shine on all the branches now.

I saved a few of the raspberries and transplanted them between the currant bushes and this old wood pile. I can't remember if they produced any good berries last year, but I guess we'll find out this year... if they survive. I also found some currant bushes in our little forest and transplanted a few of them here. The flowers of the forest currants look at little different, so it will be interesting to see what type they turn out to be.

Among all the old branches, I found one that seemed fairly young. I'm going to try to start a new bush by a procedure called layering. A branch is bent down so that a section ends up in the ground. It is held in place by  stone. If everything goes as it should, roots will grow from the buried section. In about a year you can cut the new plant from it's mother.

The first seedlings have come up in the garden - the lettuces and arugula that I planted only a week ago.

I really like this project, which we started last week - making a flower bed from materials that we were planning on cleaning up anyway. It started with a pile of dirt and weeds in the kitchen garden that we wanted to deal with. We transported the dirt down near the second house where we have made a seating area. We raked up some leaves and added them to the bed. A log and some stones, which were lying around, became a retaining wall. To prevent weeds from growing, we covered the bed with pieces of tin roofing, which were lying behind the second house.

Niklas' mother has let us borrow her trailer, so there will be several trips to the dump in our near future. We have seen that small rodents like it under the piles of scrap wood that have grown over the past year of demolition. Somebody, who is afraid of little animals, is extra motivated to get things tidied up.

The cedar tree we planted last year is doing so well, that we decided to plant another one. These trees are sold as inexpensive hedge-plants, but don't be misled. If you don't trim them into a hedge, they can grow to be 6-8 metres tall and can be quite beautiful.

It's been so nice and warm that I couldn't resist sowing some seeds. There are a few types of lettuces, parsnips, as well as the half-eaten wild strawberries under this window, where they should be protected from hungry deer. Radishes went under one of the other windows. Hope that no heavy frosts come!

We've planted two types of potatoes - an early type called Magda and a later variety called sparrispotatis (asparagus potato, directly translated). We're hoping that the few we've set out now will be ready to harvest for midsummer.

It was time for my first sleepover at the house this week. I was really looking forward to another "first" as well, the first harvest of the year, but someone had beaten me to it! A deer had eaten the leaves off the parsnips and wild strawberries. Last year we didn't lose anything to animals, only to insects. Were we just lucky? Do we really need to set up a big ugly fence to keep the veggies safe?

The chives were left untouched at least, so the scrambled eggs with chives I had planned for breakfast weren't spoiled.