Despite the apparently never-ending surprise snow days, I’ve switched out my wardrobe. Bring out the jersey dresses and lace-sleeve tops; put away the layers and layers of wool.

Now I have a whole pile of wool tops and sweaters to wash, and most of them I don’t dare put in the washer. They might survive, or they may shrink or stretch or felt etc. I’m not taking that risk. I only have room to dry one or two at a time (one on the blocking mat and one on the laundry rack) and the thick ones take multiple days, so this is going to take a while.

Drove to Hägerstalund and Hansta nature reserve to walk among the anemones. Nature delivered – endless seas of white anemones everywhere.

The woods there look like they belong in a picture book. As if any moment now, a group of singing elves will glide past in the distance. Or, at the very least, a group of hobbits.

There were many more liverworts flowering than I recall here seeing before. Perhaps I came earlier in the season than in previous years?

There were also some odd blue anemones, that almost looked like a hybrid between anemone and liverwort. Which is not botanically possible, I believe – even if the Swedish names of the two are very similar and make it sound as if the flowers are very closely related.

There’s a small wood nearby, fully contained within a single city block. Roads on all sides, housing along all of the roads – and behind that ring of houses, a rocky hill covered in pine trees. Climb up to the top and you can almost pretend the city isn’t there.

There are other small woods nearby. What I find interesting about this one is that it’s so hidden. I’d lived here for years before I discovered it. While some other nearby city woods touch a street somewhere, so you can see them when walking past, this one you can’t see at all past the houses around it. I found it on a map first, and then went looking for entrances. There are three, not counting people’s back gardens: two cul-de-sac streets, and this tree-shaded footpath between two yards.

Now I wonder whether there might be more similar hidden woods nearby.

Still a cold and wet day, but not actually raining, so I could have a “walk and talk” meeting with the new product manager in our team, to get to know each other. Suited me much better than an awkward and stiff “let’s have a coffee”.

I really hoped we were done with the snow.

There’s convenient bicycle parking just outside the Sortera office. I guess those with more expensive bikes park them in parking garages, but mine isn’t enticing enough to make me worry about anyone taking or damaging it in full daylight in the middle of a street.

The other bikes that mine shares the stand with are all also ordinary, classical city bikes. What I see on the roads is rather different. The classical bikes aren’t so common among commuters any more. Instead, commuters and their bikes are diverging into two extremes. On the one side there are the racers: long men (mostly) clad in Spandex, on skinny bikes with lots of gears. On the other side there are the e-bikers: people dressed in jeans or office wear, casually pedalling on e-bikes. One group focuses on the exercise; the other one on convenience. (And both are willing to pay a fair bit to get it.)

Both groups go quite fast, so the average speed of cycle commuting along the routes I follow has definitely gone up over the years.

For me, the city bike still seems like the best compromise. I like getting exercise while I commute (and really, while the e-bikers move their legs, it’s not like they’re going to break a sweat) and I also like being able to use my bicycle in my everyday life without making a whole deal out of it. I can bike to a store and step off the bike and walk around in normal shoes.

The bird feeder is still up. It’s still cold outside and insect life is not exactly teeming, so birds are still coming by. And occasionally, a squirrel.

A week after I came home to green grass and blossoming spring flowers, and concluded that spring was happening, we’re still exactly at the same point as then. Temperatures haven’t risen, leaf buds haven’t opened, daffodils are still not in bloom. Everything is on pause.

It’s still freezing cold outside and not really the weather for gardening. I can put on layers to keep me warm, but digging in wet freezing soil leads to freezing cold fingers. But I can at least do some picking up and general cleaning. When Nysse lets me us the bucket.

Stockholm Culture Night – cultural events, free of charge, all around town. Concerts, performances, open houses, etc.

Unfortunately when thousands of Stockholmers all decide to attend said events, the result is queues. Lots and lots of very long queues. In barely-above-zero temperatures.

I first went to Stockholm City Hall, but the broad queue there went along at least two sides of the building. It’s a public building, so I figured I could see it at another time.

Instead I took the metro to the Royal Institute of Technology, where the reactor hall – home to Sweden’s first, experimental nuclear reactor – was open to the public. The queue was again enormous, but at least I’d get to see something more unique at the end.

I stood for maybe forty minutes, by which time I estimated I’d gotten no more than a quarter of the way there, and I was freezing. No way I’d take two more hours of that.

Having given up on seeing the reactor hall, I opted for a (hopefully) safe bet and took the metro to Gamla Stan and the German Church for a concert. I got a seat (I believe everybody did), and it was indoors and warm, and I heard some lovely music, so at least there was that.

I had a pizza, which warmed me up yet a bit more, and considered my options. The reactor hall was still my top pick. I could either give it another try, or call it a night.

This time the queue was much thinner (and thus faster) and the end of it was well ahead of the point where I’d dropped out before. It still took over half an hour to get to the entrance, but it felt doable.

The reactor hall was a unique space indeed. It hasn’t housed an actual nuclear reactor since 1982, so now it’s just an odd-shaped cavernous space deep underground. For the past 17 years it’s been used as an events space, which has led to some interesting design choices. Tonight it was all lit up in blue, for example, and there’s an installation of mirrors along one side.

All the walls, floors and ceilings are covered in a grid of one-metre squares, for systematically measuring residual radioactivity after the reactor was shut down. The grid breaks up the otherwise monotonous surfaces and makes the hall look kind of like a magician’s experiment.

In the middle of the floor, there’s an irregularly-shaped concrete pit that used to house the actual reactor. Also all gridded up, of course.

Right next to the pit, there’s an antique Wurlitzer theatre organ, originally from the Skandia cinema. These days it’s hooked up to a computer, and we were treated to a loud and energetic performance.